Isabela Merced and Young Mazino Praise ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Writing, Discuss Their Character Development

The second season of the acclaimed HBO series The Last of Us is starting today with episode one, “Future Days.” The season promises to dig into the story of the second game and a lot of fans are very excited to see how the writers and actors will execute some of the game’s most important moments.

We have already seen some teasers, images, and trailers, as well as heard a lot from the cast and crew members. In this report, we are going to provide you with another insight into the upcoming season.

Namely, series stars Isabela Merced and Young Mazino, who will be playing Dina and Jesse, respectively, have revealed more information about their characters for the press.

The two young stars revealed that Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin helped them a lot to develop their characters, praising the writing. “With the writing itself, they added a lot of detail for sure. For me, they added moments between Dina and Joel. I really enjoyed that,” Merced said.

“Yeah, I really relied on the writing. It was a lot of excavation and just going deeper into the lines, which is a testament to the writing. It’s great stuff,” Mazino added in response, highlighting the role that the writers have.

Merced also discussed how her character is sometimes downplayed as being simply a love interest for Ellie, but she said that Dina has a lot of substance as a standalone character. “I think she’s extremely caring and extremely invested and devoted to Ellie before there was romantic involvement as well,” she explains. “I think she guides Ellie in a lot of ways and brings a light to everyone that she’s around.”

As for Jesse, Mazino claimed that the perception was similar, but admitted that Jesse did, indeed, have a significantly different role in the story. “Sometimes he may seem like a bit of a Boy Scout or a stickler for the rules, but he doesn’t want to do that. He does it because he has to,” he began. “I think he’s a bit more of a hippie than people realize, but he’s forced to be a pillar of his community. I don’t know how voluntary that is or if that was kind of impressed upon him by the people [of Jackson].”

Based on this, we’re in for a very exciting season and we cannot wait to see how it all plays out!

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