Image Credit: © 2025 Home Box Office
Season 2 of “The Last of Us” captivated the masses through thought-provoking storytelling, jaw-dropping thrills, and stunning visuals. Episode 2 “Through the Valley” brought intense plot points to the table with horrifying looks at the post-apocalyptic world. We caught up with Nick Epstein, VFX supervisor at Wētā FX, to discuss how the stunning visuals of the show came to be ahead of the Production Session “Wētā FX Presents: ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2: The Horde” at SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver.
SIGGRAPH: The “Through the Valley” episode of “The Last of Us” Season 2 elicited a variety of emotions for various reasons. From a frozen horde beginning its attack on the town of Jackson to vital plot points in the show taking place miles away from the town, this work captivated the audience. When this episode debuted, what was it like to see your work on such a big stage?
Nick Epstein (NE): I knew exactly what was going to happen and yet my heart was still pounding all the way through. This work was pretty audacious, so while I thought we had pulled it off I didn’t know for sure. It’s hard to describe, but there’s a sense of duty when working with amazing source material like “The Last of Us”, you want to do Neil’s creation, Craig’s writing, Mark’s direction, Alex’s supervision — you want to do all of that justice, and I think finally seeing all of that come together on screen and, in some ways, hinging on our contribution was quite a daunting thing.
SIGGRAPH: Your SIGGRAPH 2025 Production Session “Wētā FX Presents: ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2: The Horde” is set to take the SIGGRAPH audience on a journey through the dystopian world that is “The Last of Us”. What are you most looking forward to sharing with the audience? What should attendees look forward to the most during your session?
Nick Epstein (NE): This will be an honest look at what it took to get the VFX of episode 2 done. I’m particularly looking forward to stepping through some of the gnarlier shots with the audience. We had some terrifying holes to crawl out of (literally), and I think we came up with some innovative ways to crawl out of those holes. It’ll be fun to walk through both the highs and the lows of the journey.
SIGGRAPH: Can you talk about that initial client brief and the timeline to turn around this work? When you are working with an ambitious request, what are those first steps to get this work in action?
Nick Epstein (NE): We started previs I think in December 2023, and everything crystalized in January 2024. We ran right up against the start of the Jackson siege shoot, and for me it was really the first few days on set that gave me a clear idea of what we were up against — and the processes we would need in place in order to tackle this monster. I think on a big show where you’ll hit a critical mass of shot production like this, the important things to establish early on are a clear understanding of the creative goals, development of great looking and fit-for-purpose assets, and robust processes for shot execution so you’re not solving the same problem over and over again in the heat of crunch.
SIGGRAPH: Talk about the challenges that the weather of this episode presented. Whether it is the creation of the Bloater, the intense weather effect on clothes and hair, or just capturing the perfect shots, how did your team attack the snowy mountains of Jackson?
Nick Epstein (NE): I think it was the second or third day of shooting we had blazing sunshine, followed by rainstorms and puddles everywhere, and even snow to cap it off. This would be the norm for much of the shoot. Knowing this wildly varying weather would have to be conformed to very specific blizzard conditions — the storm is pretty much another character in the episode — Alex and I had a running conversation about what was worse, sun or rain. In the end we decided sun was the worst because it would mean total environment replacement wherever it couldn’t be flagged off, whereas rain and puddles “only” meant the ground would need to be replaced. This led to the creation of our weather control toolkit, which I’ll detail in the Production Session.
SIGGRAPH: Working on “The Last of Us” in the capacity you did is certainly a large undertaking. As you look back on your work, what are some of your favorite memories?
Nick Epstein (NE): There were a number of shots that felt borderline impossible. Particularly the beat where the horde changes direction outside the gates and tramples over mounds of infected, and the “conveyer belt of death” when they round the corner of Main Street and are continually mown down.
The stages leading up to those shots going from impossible to possible are probably my favorite memories — seeing Andre’s first ragdoll simulation of the body mounds being trampled on; our Creatures lead, Claudio, figuring out and showing us we could actually simulate cloth and hair for the hundreds of ragdoll bodies that did not obey anatomy; our FX lead, Tomo, telling me it was totally no problem (even though it definitely was) to set 400 infected on fire with precise control; our CG supe, Snowy, showing us how we could re-texture infected clothing in lighting and notes like “we need a red and yellow checked shirt here” were really no problem; our comp lead, Owen, using the blizzard as a character to reveal the horde charging down main street — sharing and celebrating those and everyone’s breakthroughs are definitely my favorite memories of the show.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to co-create the future of computer graphics and interactive techniques. Register for SIGGRAPH 2025 by 30 June to secure advance pricing discounts!
Nick Epstein joined Wētā FX in 2008 to work on James Cameron’s first Avatar film. His most recent work was as Visual Effects Supervisor on The Last of Us: Season 2 and his credits also include Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, Avatar: The Way of Water and Alita: Battle Angel.
Prior to Wētā FX, Nick worked at Framestore on projects like Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, the Narnia films and Children of Men. He’s also spent time working at Rising Sun Pictures and Digital Domain.
Nick has a strong background in lighting, particularly creature lighting, and is very experienced in the procedural modelling, layout, and FX workflows required to create complex digital environments.
He has been instrumental in helping to establish the lighting looks for films like The Hobbit trilogy and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets as well as the highly detailed character lighting effects for the Paul Walker face replacement in Furious 7.
Nick studied photography and has a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Digital Image Science. He has had some success as an amateur screenwriter and director, and loves to ‘relax’ by scrambling the mountain peaks of Vancouver in his spare time.
