The Last of Us will air on HBO this coming weekend and the team has decided to make a huge change to the Cordyceps infection to make it more palatable for the audience. The Cordyceps will no longer be an airborne virus, although it’s not the after-effects of the Covid-19 virus we have to blame for this, just that the team didn’t want the cast to wear gas masks.
How will the Cordyceps infection be portrayed in The Last of Us on HBO?
The Cordyceps infection will be spread by tendrils that will be able to connect to form a network in The Last of Us HBO TV series. The infected will become more frightening as an interconnected network, and like fungus, “there’s a passage that happens from one infected to another” creator Neil Druckmann and showrunner Craig Mazin told Collider. However, the most important reason for the change is that the cast wouldn’t have to spend the majority of the show wearing gas masks to avoid airborne spores.
In the game, the infection spread through a mutation of the real-life Cordyceps fungus, and its origins weren’t particularly explored. Now that the show will be looking into life before the infection, the team delved further into actual science, especially as “the audience is smarter about pandemics than they were five years ago.” You can see the changes for yourself when the show airs on January 15.
