Will HBO’s The Last of Us Reveal the Origin of the Cordyceps?

With the zombie genre done time and again over the years, The Last of Us managed to stand out by having a story that focuses not so much on the zombies, but the humans that are affected by them. Fans are currently awaiting the premiere of The Last of Us series on HBO Max, and a new TV spot teases that we could be seeing the origin of the Cordyceps.

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A lot of people are fixating on the woman with the hazmat suit with the ‘tiny octopus’ on her tweezers. Though we know different stages of the Cordyceps infection thanks to the game, we don’t really know where the disease comes from or how it started.

Probably the closest we have to an origin is in The Last of Us Part II when we have Abby descend into a hospital where the outbreak was said to have started in Seattle. We get to piece together what how the staff tried to contain the infection, but they just ended up locking the whole thing down, resulting in one of the game’s main bosses—the Rat King, which is one hulking monster that is a fusion of all the different infected locked in the hospital trauma center.

It would be certainly interesting to know more about the history of the Cordyceps, and with the third game said to be incoming, I think it would bring the whole thing full circle if we finally got to know just how the Earth got plagued by mushroom people.

Catch The Last of Us when it premieres on HBO Max on Jan. 15, 2023.