season 2, which has left critics united prior to its release, gets us up close and personal with an even more frightening variant of Infected that have a hankering to bite down on the last of humanity. Back in 2023, we encountered them briefly alongside Runners, Clickers, and the body-ripping Bloaters, but this season promises to provide even more intense encounters with one of the most feared stages of Infected — Stalkers.
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In the lethal stages of infection, Stalkers were the second phase that brought their own very special kind of terror that differed from the rest. While Clickers are no joke and Bloaters are flat-out juggernauts, there’s something perhaps even more terrifying about Stalkers because there’s some degree of intelligence left with this breed of Infected. The only issue is that it’s the worst possible kind, and something that the creator of “The Last of Us” universe recently alluded to.
In an interview with Empire, Neill Druckmann, who created the groundbreaking games that the show is adapted from, teased that the Stalkers are going to be something special in the second season. “You get to see a different evolution of this infection,” says Druckmann. “It’s kept certain parts of their brain alive, so they are smarter. They coordinate and hide and do things that we’ve never seen any other Infected do on this show.” For fans of the games, it’s a threat that will stir up some nightmarish memories of a danger that our heroes might struggle to take on this time around.
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