The first season, based on the 2013 game The Last of Us, follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler tasked with escorting the immune teenager Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a post-apocalyptic United States.

[67] HBO chairman and chief content officer Casey Bloys and head of drama programming Francesca Orsi were unfamiliar with the game but trusted Mazin due to his work on Chernobyl and his investment in the story and world.

[74][75][76] Johan Renck, Mazin's collaborator on Chernobyl, was announced as executive producer and director of the series premiere in June 2020;[77] he dropped out by November due to scheduling conflicts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[87] In July 2021, the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) revealed Peter Hoar was assigned to direct,[74] followed in August by Mazin,[75] in September by Druckmann,[88] and in January 2022 by Liza Johnson and Jeremy Webb.

[90] After several months traveling between Calgary and Los Angeles, Druckmann struggled to fulfil obligations at Naughty Dog and returned home to advise remotely, feeling confident in Mazin.

[121] Borrowing an approach from Chernobyl, Mazin opened the series with a fictional 1960s talk show explaining the origins of fungal infections, implying humanity knew the potential risk for some time.

[95] Calgary officials felt Alberta was chosen for production partly due to the removal of the tax credit cap of CA$10 million per project.

[140] Ksenia Sereda worked as cinematographer alongside Balagov, Mazin, Druckmann, and Johnson,[141][142][143][144] Eben Bolter with Hoar and Webb,[145][146] Christine A. Maier with Žbanić,[147] and Nadim Carlsen with Abbasi.

[161] Filming took place in Okotoks and Waterton Lakes National Park in February,[162][163] and Airport Trail in northeast Calgary saw closures for three days in March.

[179] He said Latino viewers "will recognize touches" of his music,[180] and drew on his experiences in film and television, having composed the themes and some tracks for Jane the Virgin (2014–2019) and Making a Murderer (2015–2018).

[187] Streams of the song increased significantly following the episode's broadcast; several outlets compared it to the 2022 resurgence of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" after its use in the fourth season of Stranger Things.

[207][203] Notary wanted the creatures' movements to imitate each other, akin to schools of fish;[203] for the fifth episode, he set up a boot camp to prepare the actors for the role.

A different editor was employed for The Last of Us but departed due to scheduling conflicts; Good joined the series after finishing work on the third season of The Umbrella Academy.

[216] The visual effects teams consulted with Naughty Dog's concept artists when creating the infected,[4] and used timelapse videos of Cordyceps growth as animation references.

[146] Design studio Elastic created the show's title sequence to demonstrate the "unrelenting nature" of the fungus; creative directors Andy Hall and Nadia Tzuo researched fungi to ensure an accurate depiction and movement.

[247] The release contains behind-the-scenes featurettes including a short film about adapting the game, a conversation with microbiology and parasitology experts, and the Inside the Episode series.

[250] Emily Giannusa, HBO vice president of marketing, planned promotional material featuring game comparisons and endorsements from Naughty Dog to prove faithfulness to the source, but discovered it was unnecessary as fans created it themselves.

[253] Druckmann endorsed social and pre-release content,[253] and Mazin worked directly with the marketing team, including creative director Badger Denehy, who edited several trailers.

[256] The first footage of the show was revealed in a HBO Max trailer during the premiere of House of the Dragon on August 21, featuring Pascal, Ramsey, Parker, and Offerman.

[257][258] The first teaser trailer for the show was released for The Last of Us Day on September 26, 2022, featuring the first footage of Luna, Dandridge, Torv, and Reid, and confirming Lynskey's casting;[29] the teaser, which used Hank William's "Alone and Forsaken",[192] received over 17 million views in less than 24 hours across Twitter and YouTube,[259] and over 57 million organic views in its first 72 hours, the most-watched promotional video in HBO's history,[250] outperforming House of the Dragon by 50 percent.

[251] Giannusa's team noticed broader audiences were drawn towards cast portraying unusual characters, leading to focus on actors like Offerman and Pascal in subsequent marketing.

[252] HBO and advertising agency Giant Spoon recreated items from 2003 at the Angelika Film Center in Manhattan for the premiere in January 2023,[250][264] attended by 1,500 people over seven screenings;[250] attendees were given wearable Firefly pendants.

[3] HBO released the first behind-the-scenes featurette on January 6,[266] and several press outlets published interviews with cast and crew based on roundtable discussions from the previous month.

[274] HBO utilised virtual marketing for the series, including a lens on Snapchat adding post-apocalyptic overgrowth to worldwide landmarks, such as Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Storting building.

The website's general consensus reads, "Retaining the most addictive aspects of its beloved source material while digging deeper into the story, The Last of Us is bingeworthy TV that ranks among the all-time greatest video game adaptations.

[295][306] The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg felt it elevated the series to a new level,[307] and Empire's John Nugent called it "moving, surprisingly romantic, and one of the finest hours of television in recent memory".

[298] Inverse's Dais Johnston praised the use of lighting to highlight the humanity of both the characters and creatures, and called the cinematography "something other video game adaptations could only dream of".

[293][314][315] Evening Standard's Vicky Jessop said the two "steal every scene they're in",[316] while Rolling Stone's Alan Sepinwall called them "compulsively watchable and almost instantly endearing".

[322][323] For the fifth episode, IGN's Cardy lauded Johnson's emotional performance in his final scene,[324] and Total Film's Bradley Russell felt the naivety of Woodard's role intensified the narrative.

[338] The second episode had 5.7 million viewers on its first night, an increase of 22 percent from the previous week, the largest second-week audience growth for an original HBO drama series in the network's history.