The mushroom zombies are coming

Season 1 of The Last of Us ended on Sunday, with its final episode attracting a series-high 8.2 million viewers on HBO. And the fungus isn’t the only thing spreading among us: that’s up ~75% from the 4.7 million who watched the series premiere in January.

• ICYDK: The show is based on a hit 2013 PlayStation game, and follows characters Joel (played by the internet’s favorite dad, Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they navigate through a post-apocalyptic world where a fungal infection has turned most of humanity into zombie-like creatures.

🧙 Breaking the curse… From Super Mario Bros. (1983) to The Angry Birds Movie (2016), Hollywood has a long history of failed video game adaptations. So what made The Last of Us different?

According to the show’s creators, Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (one of the game’s co-creators), the source material was already cinematic and narratively fulfilling. Mazin and Druckmann stuck close to the game’s storyline, only deviating when the change could justify itself emotionally.

• One of the most striking departures from the game is the expanded romance between Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) in Episode 3, which some fans describe as one of the “greatest love stories ever.”

💗🍄 The Most of Love: Mazin and Druckmann must be doing something right, because the show currently has a 9.1 user rating on IMDB – making it the 9th- highest-rated TV show of all time.

And more is on the way. The co-creators have confirmed they’re adapting the game’s sequel, The Last of Us Part 2 (which has a much larger storyline), into at least two more seasons of the show.