Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 episode 1.
HBO’s beloved sci-fi drama The Last of Us has finally returned with season 2, and it featured some big revelations. Alongside reuniting us with an older Joel and Ellie, and welcoming some fresh faces in Dina and Jesse, the show also introduces a new kind of infected. And boy, are they creepy.
In the first episode, Dina and Ellie head on patrol with some other members of the Jackson community before they decide to break off and explore an abandoned market. When roaming the halls Ellie accidentally falls through the ceiling to a shop floor below – and soon realizes that she’s not alone.
But the infected that’s following her is not like the Clickers, Runners, or even the Bloater, that she’s seen before. We first see it in the background crawling over the shelves before Ellie starts pursuing it around the shop floor. Dina manages to shoot it dead before the show cuts back to Ellie and Dina trying to explain what they saw to Tommy and the council.
“So you’re saying it was what, smart?” Tommy asks, before Ellie replies, “I’m not saying it can do math or anything but it didn’t run at me. It did what we do, took cover, planned, waited, lured me in, stalking.” This type of infected has origins in The Last of Us games, called a ‘Stalker’. Below, we break down everything you need to know about ’em…
What is a Stalker in The Last of Us?
Stalkers actually appear way earlier back in the first The Last of Us game where they’re particularly tricky to spot and kill off. It’s thought they are the second stage of the infection when the Cordyceps brain infection has taken hold but before they become Clickers. They’ve been infected from anywhere between two weeks to about a year.
They have the same speed as the Runners as well as the ferocity of the Clickers and are usually categorized by the fungal infection not completely covering their faces yet. They tend to attack their victims by stalking them (hence the name) before they run up and attack them. In the games, we’re never given any indication that they’re smarter than any other kinds of infected, but they do prove to be a pretty annoying adversary to try and beat.
It’s not clear how much the Stalkers will appear in The Last of Us show as unlike the Clickers and the Runners, they’re pretty uncommon in the games. When playing as Ellie and Joel in Part I, you only encounter them a few times, and they similarly don’t appear much in Part II either.
That being said, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin do like to switch things up a bit from the games so we could be seeing a lot more of these sneaky zombies. At the very least, we do know the infected lore will be broadening as season 2 goes on as Druckmann and Mazin have confirmed that Spores will be introduced in the show too. Intriguing…
The Last of Us is airing weekly on HBO and Sky. Read our The Last of Us release schedule and our The Last of Us season 2 review for more. You can also check out our guides to all the new TV shows coming in 2025 and our round-up of the best shows on Max.
