Our Last Creative Team on How They Make Season 2's Most Critical Episode | IGN LIVE 2025

Complete spoilers for Season 2 of “The Last American Season”.

Today at IGN Live, Our last one Co-Creator and Executive Producer Craig Mazin was joined by several of the show's core creative team – including Ksenia Sereda (Cinematographer), Ann Foley (Costume Designer), Don Macaulay (Production Designer), Alex Wang (VFX Supervisor), Timothy Good (Editor), and David Fleming (Co-Composer) – to discuss the tremendous amount of work that went into the HBO series.

When the group was formed, Mazin said: “The truth is that Neil (Druckmann) and I were greatly recognized for the success of the show. We really worked hard. But these guys brought it into reality and they should get so much honor…all of it is necessary.”

When the group is asked to name the favorite episodes of Season 2, almost everyone is named Episode 2 (“Through the Valley”) or Episode 6 (“price”), which makes sense because they are so good – and well illustrates that both plot hosts Amelia Emberwing focus on dialogue.

Of course, there were two huge events in “Through the Valley” including the infected attack on Jackson's tribe, and… another thing we're going back to. With the footage of the massive attack sequence, Mazin notes that basically every shot has visual effects, saying, “I think Alex has to touch almost everything here.”

Macaulay re-watched the attack on Jackson, and he joked, “All I can think of is the thousands of meetings we had.” They said they attended 10 meetings seriously, involving starting from the gates of the town into the tribe's barrels. As he said, “It took almost 10-15 meetings in this game. Craig loved the meeting!” Even after all that, “there were a lot of remodeling on the spot. We were not going to do a lot of roof.”

Furley said the second episode was definitely the toughest part of her season as a costume designer, as how many cast and extra cast members in the plot work on multiple shooting units — and that's all going on while they're still making Seraphite costumes for the upcoming episode. As she explained, this involves “65 people in three different regions”.

Wang stressed that Previs is crucial, and their many discussions on what Macaulay will be building with what Wang will add on the numbers. It's a long process, Wang noted: “You are planning to succeed in the 6-8th month of the game” and he's been communicating with Macaulay, the stunt team and others. Mazin joked that when he called Wang for a notorious meeting, “his heart sank because he knew he would be out of his budget again.”

One of the reasons an infected tribe is so tricky is that it handles such a large army, and as King explains in the world of visual effects, when you have a large “repeat” group because you have characters in the same costume or the same type of the same costume or creature. However, here, Mazin wanted to sell these initially different humans, and before they were infected, they were of different sizes and ages in different clothing. As he said, they almost “break the wētā(fx)”.

Then there is his important work as an editor. He has to start editing without the final effect, which can be tricky. As he pointed out, in the early shots, it wasn't just because “the bloater wasn't a pot bag, it was a green spot.” But after they cut the plot they were happy with, “we restored the animation and everything changed. The motion became faster than the human actors could,” so they had to re-edit and adjust.

When it comes to scoring “through the valley”, Fleming described it as particularly challenging because Mazin asked him, “How do we start from 11 and then go on a whole episode?” The idea is that they are “building momentum, so it feels flawless. Finally, contrary to Joel's key scene.” When Fleming paused and said he had been talking about the end of the episode so long, Mazin couldn't help but be in: “He's dead!”

As Fleming explains, the original music of Joel's struggling death scene is busier, but then “Craig asked'deprived''. Fewer cases are a lesser case. ”

In praising the performances of Pedro Pascal, Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey, good reveal that for Joel's death, “I actually edited it five times before I was ready to show it to Craig” because he knew how important it was to the right thing.

The group couldn't help but get somber when Joel's death scene aired, and when Mazin cracked, “Let's talk about the golf clubs we picked out. They make a lot of sense” to release some tension, then he paused and added that in fact, when it comes to which club Abby would use to beat Joel for the whole discussion! ”

The conversation then moves to episode six and goes back between season 1 and 2 of Joel and Ellie.

It was an interesting situation, he added, and the actual dinosaur built for Ellie “too much so Alex prevented it from swaying. But then it looked fake, so we had to make it swing a little (again) a little.”

Foley, discussing Joel and Ellie's clothes, noted that they did their best to match the look in the game, although occasionally there may be some changes for specific reasons. One such case is at the museum site. In the game, Ellie wears the vest of this sequence. However, on the show, they wanted to emphasize that Bella Ramsey played the younger Ellie in these flashback scenes, so they ended up making it a t-shirt because “changing it from a tank to a t-shirt makes it look clumsy and making her look younger.” Overall, though, “Joel and Ellie are in the same thing they wear in the game because there is no reason to change it.”

Ksenia Sereda said she was excited and nervous about the scene where Ellie and Joel entered the space capsule because “the way in the game is so great”, including the closed-end style of Ellie smiling, imagining entering space. Sereda joked that the game offers “the most expensive trailer I've ever had to work with.”

Mazin marvels at how Sereda illuminates the screen so that all the light changes on Ellie's face are actually done without the visual effects. Sereda explains how difficult this is because “the entire sequence is lit up through this tiny window on the side of the capsule. It’s very challenging to find the entire look.”

This sequence has special meaning for Mazin because “this is the first thing Neal showed me from the second game.” He elaborates on the team approaching the completion of our second part when he went to Naughty Dog to talk to Druckmann and turned our last game into a TV show. When Druckmann showed Mazin the space capsule sequence, his answer was, “We’re doing this!’ In my opinion, I was like, “We need to do enough work for Season 1 so we can renew it (do that). ”

Mazan said that with the final season of our final season, he longed to return to its thickness, turned to his group members and said, “I can't wait to do this. I can't wait to do it with all of you.” Then, he declared, “Don, we're going to have a meeting!!”