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That’s enough time to change relationships, introduce new characters and give the survivors of a pandemic time to assess what’s next.

For Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie, a girl with immunity to the infection killing thousands across the country, it’s a real switch.

“Ellie was 14 and is now 19,” says Ramsey. “In any teenager’s life, that’s the formative years, so a lot has changed.”

A relationship with Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, has become strained, even though he was the one who smuggled her out of a quarantine zone and across the United States. When the season begins, the two are at odds and hardly ready to reunite.

The first day of shooting, Pascal and Ramsey had a scene together. Even though there was “an incredibly painful distance between the two of them,” Pascal says, “we got to be on set (together) and that was incredibly comforting. It was like coming home.”

Before the first season of the series, both actors were relatively unknown. “The Last of Us” hit, however, and made both big stars and Emmy nominees.

Season Two, Ramsey says, “is quite scary but it’s exciting. I’m trying to see it like a celebration of all the hard work we did.”

“The storytelling is cathartic in so many ways,” Pascal adds. “My development is based on the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve seen and the television I’ve watched. It’s very much going to reflect the human experience. And under such extreme circumstances, there’s a very healthy and sometimes sick pleasure in that kind of catharsis.”

As the characters see what their “next steps” are, they add in new travelers, including Kaitlyn Dever as Abby.

For fans of the video game upon which it was based, Abby was a character they could choose to play as. In the series, says Executive Producer Neil Druckmann, “you’re not playing as her, so we need other tools.” In the first episode of the second season, her connections are very clear.

“If we were to stick to a similar timeline, viewers would have to wait a very long time to get that context,” Druckmann adds. “We felt it appropriate to move that up and give viewers the context right off the bat.”

For Dever, the series was a great way to tie her love for the game and her work. “The world of ‘The Last of Us’ is so large,” she says. “You can definitely feel that. I felt less nervous once I got onto the set because of this wonderful group of people….it really felt like I was being cared for and taken care of in a way that I haven’t ever experienced before.”

Producers were thrilled with Dever’s level of engagement. Even in a blizzard, she was willing to go through with the shoot. “Kaitlyn would never say no,” Executive Producer Craig Mazin says. “When you see how physically tremendous her performance is, it’s kind of insane.”

Young Mazino, who’s also new this year, says he didn’t realize the scope of the series until he came into the town where it takes place and saw the huge gate producers had built. “That’s when I started to feel a little tripped out,” he says. “The longer I was there, I realized the energy was so, so warm and so inviting. There was no ego on set. And that’s a rare thing, especially the larger the set gets.”

Dina, a friend of Bella’s, played by newcomer Isabela Merced, often lightens the mood with her comments. “That’s our superpower as humans,” she says. “We have the power to shift our perspective and make our own reality. Dina is also Ellie’s compass and light, in a way.”

"The Last of Us," season two, begins April 13 on HBO.