TV SERIES · 2023–present · USA
The Last of Us
- Created by
- Neil Druckmann, Craig Mazin
- Network
- HBO
- Seasons
- 2
- Episodes
- 16
- Studio
- PlayStation Productions, Sony Pictures Television, Naughty Dog
188 archived facts 8 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Oct 2026
Twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed, Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the United States and depend on each other for survival.
188 Interesting Facts About The Last of Us
Interesting Facts (34)
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In the games, the fungus is spreading through spores in the air. For the show, they were replaced with tendrils. Neil Druckmann explained that this was a deliberate decision he made early on during the show's development, as he wanted to make the world more believable and the fungus more frightening.
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Pedro Pascal became available for a new series after the release of the second season of The Mandalorian (2019), attracting several offers for projects from large networks, of which he chose The Last of Us, partly to work with co-creator Craig Mazin. Mazin and co-creator Neil Druckmann had been considering Pascal for some time. He accepted the role within 24 hours.
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Pedro Pascal was in London at the time he was contacted by the producers that he was indeed given the role of Joel Miller. Next day he did not remember the phone call at all because he had taken an Ambien before receiving the call as he was planning to go to sleep after the busy day and was not expecting them to call so late.
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The series trended on Indonesian social media because the opening scene of the second episode takes place in Jakarta, the apparent ground zero of the outbreak. This also helped bring in Christine Hakim, one of Indonesia's most famous actresses, and generally ensured good research in portraying Indonesia in the early 2000s.
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Five actors from the games appeared in the TV series: Merle Dandridge reprised her role as Marlene from the video games and was the first cast member announced. Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie Williams in both games, played Anna in the series. Troy Baker, who played Joel Miller in both games, played James, a secondary character in the original game and a member of the group of survivors led by David. Jeffrey Pierce played Joel's brother Tommy in the games and the new character Perry in the series. Laura Bailey made a cameo in the first season finale as the Firefly nurse, originally named Kari; she appeared in the first game before playing Abby in the sequels. Also, although Kaitlyn Dever was not in either game, she had a small role in an earlier Naughty Dog game, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016).
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HBO initially ordered 10 episodes but ultimately combined the first two. The first ended with Joel callously burning the body of an infected child, cutting to a chained-up Ellie. After HBO realized this would end the premiere on a very brutal and ambiguous note — especially since Sarah's death occurs somewhat earlier — they moved up the first interactions between Joel and Ellie to balance it out.
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Tendrils appeared in concept art but were not included in the final game, where they were used as a secondary dispersal mechanism after nearly every human part of the infected was gone. In the series, the tendrils — which replace airborne spores as the fungus's main method of spreading — emerge from the infected's mouth as early as the 'Runner' stage.
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Pedro Pascal was in London when the producers informed him that he had been given the role of Joel Miller. He does not remember the phone call the next day because, after a busy day, he had planned to sleep and had not expected them to call so late, so he had taken an Ambien before answering.
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Production Story (63)
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Pedro Pascal became available for a new series after the release of the second season of The Mandalorian (2019), attracting several offers from large networks. He chose The Last of Us, partly to work with co-creator Craig Mazin. Mazin and co-creator Neil Druckmann had been considering Pascal for some time. He accepted the role within 24 hours.
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Pedro Pascal says there was a cut scene from season 1 that made him want to join the show, but showrunner Craig Mazin says it will appear in season 2. "There was a scene, early in Season 1, where Joel met with a therapist in the QZ in Boston," Pascal told Variety. "I found it a beautiful way into the character and the walls that are guarding his traumas and losses." The scene in question, however, didn't make it into the show's first season. "And he was like, 'That's half the reason I'm here!'" Mazin said, clarifying that the scene would indeed appear in season 2. "Therapy is a fantastic mirror to say not just 'What are you really thinking?' but what people are refusing to talk about."
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Around 105 actors had been considered for Ellie; the producers sought a performer who could portray a resourceful, quirky, and potentially violent character. After watching Bella Ramsey's audition tape, they spoke to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, showrunners of Game of Thrones (2011), in which Ramsey had a recurring role, who assured them of their talent. Ramsey secured the role less than a month after their audition. Ramsey received news of their casting during production on a different project. They said the show feels "like the biggest thing [they have] ever done" and was immediately comforted Pedro Pascal would perform alongside them for the entire experience. Ramsey was aware of the game before their audition, but was encouraged not to play it to avoid replicating the original performance, instead watching some gameplay on YouTube to "get a sense of it"; they still had not played it after filming the series. Ramsey wanted their performance to be reminiscent of the games without copying them.
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In the games, the fungus spreads through spores in the air. For the show, they were replaced with tendrils. Neil Druckmann explained that this was a deliberate decision he made early on during the show's development, as he wanted to make the world more believable and the fungus more frightening.
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Against The Mandalorian (2019) Season 3. Both science-fiction shows star Pedro Pascal as an anti-heroic surrogate father, and The Last of Us (Left Behind (2023), When We Are in Need (2023), and Look for the Light (2023)) will air during the first three weeks of The Mandalorian (2019) Season 3's run. It also doesn't help that HBO required Pascal to prioritize TLoU above The Mandalorian (2019), resulting in him missing an undisclosed portion of principal photography for Mando S3.
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Pedro Pascal expressed interest during the Triple Frontier (2019) press tour at appearing in a video game movie. Starring in a video game-based show, especially one that positively "stunned" him just from the first two episodes' scripts, brings him one step closer to fulfilling that desire.
The Last of Us (2023): Pedro Pascal and Gabriel Luna in the snowImage: Wikimedia Commons · Mark Innes, CC BY-SA 4.0 - #050
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Before the movie was officially shelved, both Neil Druckmann and Troy Baker had shown interest in Josh Brolin to play Joel, while Ashley Johnson's choice for Ellie was Game of Thrones (2011) actress Maisie Williams, who stated she'd have been very happy to. Hugh Jackman was rumored to be considered for the role of Joel as well. Logan (2017), in which Jackman starred, came out right around the time the Last of Us movie was officially cancelled in late 2016/early 2017.
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Matthew McConaughey, Mahershala Ali, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, Jon Bernthal, Gerard Butler, Josh Brolin, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Keanu Reeves, Chris Hemsworth, Harrison Ford, Tom Hardy, and Joel Edgerton were considered or auditioned for the role of Joel Miller before Pedro Pascal was cast.
The Last of Us (2023): Pedro Pascal and Gabriel Luna grapple on setImage: Wikimedia Commons · Mark Innes, CC BY-SA 4.0 - #056
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Kaitlyn Dever was among the top choices for the character Ellie. Ironically, she was later cast as Abby, Ellie's antagonist, for the second season of the show, even though Abby is 5'9" and muscular in the game and Dever is only 5'3". (Note: The English text uses 5'9" and 5'3"; in Turkish, these are 1,75 m and 1,60 m respectively.)
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Returning from the game's Japanese dub are Koichi Yamadera as Joel Miller, Megumi Han as Ellie Williams, Hiroki Takahashi as Tommy Miller and Atsuko Tanaka as Tess. The same goes double for the European Spanish dub, as the entire cast, including minor characters, reprise their roles as well. Ditto in the Latin American Spanish dub, as Adrián Wowczuk, Mariela Centurión, Jimena Vallejos, Martín Gopar, Lucas Medina and Mara Campanelli return as Joel Miller, Ellie Williams, Tess, Tommy Miller, Bill and Marlene respectively from the dub of the first game.
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On March 6, 2014, Sony Pictures announced that Screen Gems would distribute a film adaptation of The Last of Us (2013), written by Neil Druckmann and produced by Sam Raimi. By January 2015, Druckmann had written the script's second draft and performed a read-through with some actors. Very little work occurred following this, as Druckmann stated in April 2016 that the film had entered development hell. In November 2016, Raimi stated that the film was at a standstill after Sony had a disagreement with Druckmann. Actress Maisie Williams expressed enthusiasm about playing Ellie and was in talks with both Druckmann and Raimi to take the role. In March 2020, development for an adaptation was restarted as a television series by Sony Pictures Television and HBO.
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Creator Craig Mazin's collaborator on Chernobyl (2019), Johan Renck, was announced as director and an executive producer of the pilot episode in June 2020; Renck dropped out by November due to scheduling conflicts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was replaced as director in January 2021 by Kantemir Balagov, who had been interested in adapting the game for years and was set to direct several of the first few episodes. One of several sources for this is Craig Mazin's January 28, April 6 and May 3, 2021 'Scriptnotes' podcasts. In October 2022, Kantemir Balagov said he left The Last of Us a year prior due to creative differences and his work would not be featured in the show; however, after the debut of the pilot, he said around 40 percent of the first 40 minutes was his work.
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Pedro Pascal was in London at the time he was contacted by the producers that he was indeed given the role of Joel Miller. The next day he did not remember the phone call at all because he had taken an Ambien before receiving the call as he was planning to go to sleep after the busy day and was not expecting them to call so late.
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Neil Druckmann's hard and fast rule was to only change elements of the game plot if the proposed changes improved upon his original source. He found that Craig Mazin's writing of Bill & Frank and Sam & Henry were two key examples of improving upon the game plot, and even joked that he wished he came up with them.
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Tendrils were featured in concept art but not included in the final game, although as a secondary dispersal mechanism after almost every human part of the infected was gone. In the show, tendrils replace airborne spores as the fungus's main dispersal method and come out of the infected's mouths already during the first 'Runner' phase.
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On March 6, 2014, Sony Pictures announced that Screen Gems would distribute a film adaptation of The Last of Us (2013), written by Neil Druckmann and produced by Sam Raimi. By January 2015, Druckmann had written the script's second draft, and performed a read-through with some actors. Very little work occurred following this, as Druckmann stated in April 2016 that the film had entered development hell. In November 2016, Raimi stated that the film was at a standstill after Sony had a disagreement with Druckmann. Actress Maisie Williams expressed enthusiasm about playing Ellie and was in talks with both Druckmann and Raimi to take the role. In March 2020, development for an adaptation was restarted as a television series by Sony Pictures Television and HBO.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Five actors from the games appeared in the TV series: Merle Dandridge reprises her role from the video games as Marlene, and was the first to be announced. Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie Williams in both games, played Anna in the series. Troy Baker, who played Joel Miller in both games, played James, a secondary character from the original game that is a member of the survivor group run by David. Jeffrey Pierce played Joel's brother Tommy in the games, and new character Perry in show. Laura Bailey made a cameo in the first season finale as a Firefly nurse, originally named Kari; she originated in the first game prior to her portrayal of Abby in its sequels. In addition, while Kaitlyn Dever did not appear in either of the games, she had a small role in an earlier Naughty Dog game, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016).
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Contains a major spoiler — show
HBO originally ordered 10 episodes, but ended up combining the first two. The first originally ended by cutting from Joel unflinchingly burning an infected boy's corpse, to Ellie in chains. After HBO realized this would end the premiere on too grim and vague a note, especially with Sarah's death occurring only slightly earlier, they moved up the earliest interactions between Joel and Ellie to offset it.
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Behind the Scenes (36)
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Bella Ramsey shared that in taking the lead for Season 2 of the series, they decided to flex their power during contract negotiations and fought for a green rider. Though many celebrities use riders to guarantee a trailer or certain perks, Ramsey instead used it to make sure production would be thinking through the lens of sustainability, ensuring a reduction in food and material waste and the use of electric vehicles. "It covers every department, and the producers have to adhere to certain things and so does the actor," Ramsey said. "Both parties have to be accountable for being sustainability-conscious throughout the shoot. Making sustainable choices on set should be built into the very fabric of the production because it's not that difficult." Though not wanting to treat sustainability as some kind of sacrifice, Ramsey did feel it was important to put themselves out there in this manner to show their sense of values. "I would never consider myself a leader," they said. "But there's something that happens when I'm given responsibility where I really like the feeling and I take the responsibility very seriously. I'm very happy to lead a set and have a lot of influence over the tone and dynamic, especially given there's preconceived ideas about a young person who's No. 1 on the call sheet."
The Last of Us (2023): Bella Ramsey behind a blue fence on the filming setImage: Wikimedia Commons · MSTakesPictures, CC BY 4.0 - #099
The work started with the two Clicker hero performers, Samuel Hoeksema and Olivier Ross-Parent, both from Canada. "We took dental casts and created a vacuform tray which fit onto their own teeth. We also sculpted dentures on the outside of their lips like a veneer, which went over the front of their lips, top and bottom. By doing that, we cheated the whole face forward, and we were able to sculpt that broken cleft in there as well. These incredible dentures sit over the actor's own lips but also clip into their own teeth and give you the illusion that part of the face is missing." Barrie Gower said about the possibilities this technique provides, "It is interesting. We always say putting prosthetics over somebody's face is one thing. But when you start augmenting the mouth or the eyes, it always has such a big effect on the final result. So, the dentures played a huge part in the Clicker makeup."
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The crew at BGFX worked very closely with Alex Wang, the visual effects supervisor at WETA. "Our first test with the Clicker makeup was to establish what would be [shot practically] on the day and what may need to be augmented digitally in post." To accommodate either approach, the BGFX team had to get creative. "In profile, we could achieve that deep crevice, but obviously, we could only go so far," said Barrie Gower. "We then cut that area of the sculpture out, floated that off the lifecast, put that to one side, and molded the whole crown with that area missing. With this removable piece, the Clickers could be shot two different ways: first, with the piece in; second, if this didn't look good, the interior piece could be removed, and the interior could be painted a chromakey green so the crevice could be added digitally. But Alex said, 'Don't worry about the green areas in the face, process it as a practical makeup, and we will shoot it on the day, and we'll see what we see, and if we need to do something, we can gently augment it in post-production.'"
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The BGFX team then created further stages of the infected. "We had a second stage, which was slightly more extensive, raised veins with small fungus starting to erupt from the skin," said Gower, "then stage three, stage four, stage five, everything was getting larger in size and scale and coverage as well, and we're starting to get more infection over the body." Along with facial appliances, this would require Gower's crew to create body appliances as well. "We had various people in lots of different costumes, some without sleeves so that we could put infection on the arms. We probably spent the best part of four to six months testing the infected stages. We were trying different materials and a lot of foam latex for the larger fungal pieces, some of which worked, some of which looked exactly like what it was, foam latex."
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Regarding the Clicker paint schemes, Barrie Gower said, "Something we spoke about quite early on in our build, in our testing period, were ways of deciphering the different types of infected, not only by how extensively they were covered with infection but also the colors and the finish. So, we talked about whether they would be in hot or cold environments, moist or dry environments, dark or bright environments, and that would dictate how vibrant the coloring would be on some of the Clickers."
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Vision was one of the critical considerations for the BGFX team when devising the Clicker makeups. "To enable the performers to see out of the Clicker makeups, small gaps would be sculpted between the petals of the mushrooms exploding out of the Clicker's head," said Barrie Gower. "We put a black mesh on the interior of the foam latex so you wouldn't be able to see their eyes."
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Chris Harrison-Glimsdale, the hair designer, had a wig made for Wendy Gorling, but the BGFX team decided to also give her a receding hairline because the actress had a very thick and youthful head of hair. "So, we put a vinyl bald cap on her, and she had this white wig, which showed her scalp through, and we just PAX painted and mottled it all up and then stuck the appliance on. I think we got the whole makeup on in about two hours."
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Because of the lack of time, the BGFX team floated the sculptures off Wendy Gorling's lifecast and flattened them onto a board rather than making conventional molds. "The cheeks, the lips, the neck, they were all flattened. The turnaround doing flat molds is so fast that we were able to do it in a week." But there would be one exception: the chin. "We made a conventional positive and negative mold for the chin because it has so many contours and forms to fold around."
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One of the most important things to consider when designing the Clicker characters was the fact that performers would have to be put into prosthetics and body suits and deliver an excellent performance. "You could take the design from the game, but there would need to be some compromises or nuances that you would need to change to make these work physically over a performer."
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The BGFX team did extensive research into many varieties of fungus. "There are different types or 'breeds' of mushrooms. For all our Clickers, we were looking at reference of a mushroom called Chicken of the Woods or Chicken of the Forest. They're these huge, vibrant yellow and orange fungi you find in the forests with undulating shapes with knobby, popcorny bits on the end. They look exactly like our Clickers and like somebody's been in the forest running foam latex everywhere 'cuz they do look like foam latex." Barrie Gower continued, "The Bloater had a lot of clusters of these puffball mushrooms as well, or puffball fungus, and they were kind of like domes with these little holes where all the spores would come out. We looked at parasitic diseases, things like larvae growing under the skin. Yeah, we had a lot of favorites. A lot of favorites." But ironically, mushrooms are far from Barrie's favorite in real life. "I hate mushrooms," Gower revealed with a laugh. "I can't stand mushrooms. I don't eat mushrooms. So, it wasn't exactly the best project to get on with the subject matter."
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BGFX was responsible for creating an old age makeup for the actress playing Nana, Wendy Gorling. "It's funny because I don't think we found out until really late in the day that that was going to be an old age makeup," said Gower. "We assumed reading the scripts it would be a fairly elderly person, and then it would be a stunt double who would probably be shot over the shoulder and do a lot of the frantic movement." But Barrie Gower recalled that producer Craig Mazin was "very confident that we could do a beautiful old age makeup."
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The Bloater suit was sculpted in wax-based clay over this copy of the performer's body, then broken up into individual parts, molded, and cast in foam latex. "We have an incredible fabrication team here in the UK, a company called Stitches and Glue run by Becky Johnson and her partner Paul Vincett. They fabricated this whole Lycra suit for us, which we could foam the appliances onto. It had a zipper up the back, and we had separate arms. So, we ended up with a big, thick pair of foam rubber pants, a foam rubber top with a zipper at the back, and a foam rubber head. They all had button attachments around the neck, the back, and the waist, and everything popped together. The beauty of this was, it was a big rubber suit that we could get Adam into in about 25, 30 minutes."
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"We 3D scanned Adam's body head to toe," said Barrie Gower. BGFX then had Adam's body scan milled in rigid foam and his head and hands printed in resin. These were then combined, molded, and cast in plaster for the artists to sculpt onto. Before sculpting began, the plaster body form was painted with a mold release so the sculpture could be broken down and floated off later. "We knew that we were going to be splitting the suit up into several parts, so we treated it very much like a head and shoulders makeup and how we would normally split up a complex aging makeup."
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WETA would then scan the BGFX Bloater suit with the performer inside it. "They were able to use our fully painted suit with all the textures. He had all these little spines of hair punched into him as well. They scanned him when he was very glossy and when he was very matte. They had a scan of our original sculpture as well. They were able to use all of that to create their fully digital character in post-production." said Barrie Gower.
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"One of the things with our huge crowd-infected days, which was always going to be a challenge, were the numbers," said Barrie Gower. "You're okay if you have a scene with two or three infected characters, but not when you have sequences with 60 to 80 characters." BGFX collaborated closely with costume designer Cynthia Summers and her team to speed up the application time for the many infected performers. "We made these Lycra tops and bottoms," said Gower, "which had pre-glued appliances on top, so we could easily slip those on for the shoot day. It would completely reduce our application time." Summers worked with Gower's team to expose these fungal appliances coming through the wardrobe on the shoulders, the chest, and the arms of the performers.
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The Clicker makeups were airbrushed primarily with rubber cement paints thinned with naphtha. "It's very, very, very thin. It's different from using PAX paint on foam latex because you can do lots and lots of layers and colors. But when you stretch and move the foam, it looks like it's hardly got any product on whatsoever." On top of the PAX paint jobs, the BGFX team also used a mix of water-based inks.
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While the large, deformed Bloater was brought to life digitally by WETA, BGFX was called upon to provide a highly detailed creature for VFX and on-set reference. "It's quite common that you get approached by the visual effects team to provide what's called a lighting stand-in," said Barrie Gower. "It could be a head on a pole, or it could be a complete figure you could wheel in on set, or it could just be a swatch of creature skin or something. But it gives them the perfect reference on the day in the lighting on that set for colors, textures, shapes, whether something's matte or shiny."
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Initially, when infected by Cordyceps, humans develop a vein-like fungus beneath their skin. "The infected characters were the hardest characters for us to establish for the show," said Barrie Gower. "The Clickers were almost predesigned, and we could pretty much follow [those designs] to a T. With the infected, it was trying to find out how many stages we would have throughout the show." Barrie continued, "Our history with working with Craig Mazin on Chernobyl, he absolutely loves different stages. Our radiation burn victims (for Chernobyl) ended up having about six different stages of burns." For The Last of Us infected, BGFX started off with three-dimensional veins coming from eyes, noses, and other parts of the face, with inflamed makeup and glossy textures around the eyes.
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The two hero Clicker performers, Samuel and Olivier, were called back for more fun later in the season. "We sculpted two brand new looks for each of them," said Gower. BGFX also created additional background Clickers. "We had 15 stunt performers who wore pullover Clicker hoods with removable eye sections, which were like fungal goggles they could take out, and they had Velcro inside, so we could pop them in, close them up, and then they would shoot. Then we could rip them out, and they would have their eyes exposed, and they had complete vision. The idea was when we were doing the really vigorous crazy fight sequences with all these stunt guys falling all over each other, they would have their eye areas removed, and VFX would replace anything in post-production."
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While the design work that Naughty Dog had done for the games set the tone, Barrie Gower also wanted to put the BGFX spin on the creatures. "We looked at all the Naughty Dog concepts and used a lot of that as a springboard. Then we did some new designs with different shapes and forms, slightly different anatomy here and there. One of the things we discussed quite early on was trying to achieve the look of this crown, which has a very inverted sort of crevice in the center of the design, which in three-quarters of profile would almost be negative space."
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Although BGFX specializes in practical makeup effects, Barrie Gower embraces the interplay with visual effects departments. "We're always keen to have a very close relationship with VFX and give them as much as possible. With the Clickers and the Infected, we ended up seeing a lot of them practically in the final show. With the Bloaters, it was always said, from day one, we don't know how much will end up being practical in the show, but ideally, we want a guy in a complete rubber suit there on the shoot day who can give eye lines to the actors and can perform as this creature." BGFX enlisted an old friend, UK stunt performer Adam Basil, to perform inside the Bloater suit. "Adam stands six-foot-eight. He's huge," said Gower. "He's built like a house. He's a really muscular, very well-toned, athletic stunt performer, and he's played in a lot of creature suits before. So he knows creature suits inside and out."
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As always, time was a factor and "We were quite keen not to completely cover Wendy in prosthetics. So, it was a fairly subtle makeup." Wendy Gorling was 3D scanned in Canada, and the file was sent to BGFX. "We had about a week to sculpt it, mold it, and turn it around before we tested it in Calgary. She had little cheek appliances, a chin appliance, and a little triangular neck wattle appliance. Those were all silicone. And then she had some little Pros-Aide transfer lip appliances." Barrie elaborated, "The beautiful thing about using Pros-Aide transfer appliances is if you have cheek appliances and they go down just past the nasolabial folds, if you have little Pros-Aide appliances that can just pop over those edges, they save your bacon, and you don't have to worry about edges for the rest of the day. It's the same on chins as well. Any little Pros-Aide appliance is great for blending."
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Characters & Cast (31)
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This marks the third time Pedro Pascal plays a morally-grey single father on HBO, after Game of Thrones (2011) anti-hero Oberyn Martell and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) anti-villain Maxwell Lord. Unlike Oberyn and Maxwell, Joel outlives his offspring, and instead cares for a surrogate child in the main story.
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Bella Ramsey addressed the haters of LGBTQIA+ stories by saying: "I know people will think what they want to think. They will have to get used to it. If you don't want to watch the show because it has a gay storyline, because it has a trans character, it's your fault and you're missing out on something."
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Bella Ramsey spoke about coming into their own in real life and how that's reflected in "The Last of Us." Though they try not to pay attention to the fandom while making the show, they completely recognize the impact they're making even so early in their career. "It isn't something that I ever think about when we're filming," Ramsey told IndieWire. "Then, afterwards, when people come up and share how Ellie has impacted them and seeing themselves represented on screen, it makes it feel like, 'Wow, everything that we've been doing really means something and is worth it.'"
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A non-gamer, Pedro Pascal watched his nephew play the beginning of the first game because he lacked the skill to play it himself; he found Joel to be "so impressive" but was concerned about imitating the games too closely, instead choosing to "create a healthy distance" and allow the showrunners to decide the characterization.
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Even though the video game depicted Joel, Tommy, and Sarah as Caucasian, Chilean-American Pedro Pascal, Mexican-American Gabriel Luna, and Zimbabwean-English Nico Parker respectively portray them in the TV show. Similarly, while Maria is also depicted as Caucasian in the game, she's played by African-American actress Rutina Wesley in the show.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Nico Parker watched videos of the game years before getting the role. She wanted to "stay away from the game version" and provide her own interpretation of the character; she felt intimidated at the prospect of portraying Sarah's death due to its impact in the game. Pedro Pascal felt an instant bond with Parker, with whom he filmed scenes first.
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The producers of The Last of Us looked for actors who could portray Joel and Ellie as individuals and replicate their relationship; although Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey had both appeared on Game of Thrones, they first met when filming began and discovered immediate chemistry that grew throughout production.
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On March 6, 2014, Sony Pictures announced that Screen Gems would distribute a film adaptation of The Last of Us (2013), written by Neil Druckmann and produced by Sam Raimi. By January 2015, Druckmann had written a second draft of the script and held a read-through with some actors. Little work followed, and by April 2016 Druckmann said the film had entered development hell. In November 2016, Raimi said the film had stalled after Sony fell out with Druckmann. Actress Maisie Williams expressed enthusiasm for playing Ellie and met with both Druckmann and Raimi about taking the role. In March 2020, development of an adaptation was restarted as a series by Sony Pictures Television and HBO.
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Matthew McConaughey, Mahershala Ali, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, Jon Bernthal, Gerard Butler, Josh Brolin, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Keanu Reeves, Chris Hemsworth, Harrison Ford, Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton were considered for or auditioned for the role of Joel Miller before Pedro Pascal was cast.
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Easter Eggs & References (8)
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The resistance group against FEDRA calls themselves the Fireflies. During the revolt against King Charles III, also known as Charles the Fat, in 9th century France, one of the main resistance groups called themselves the fireflies. They painted a picture of a firefly to mark important areas like safehouses. They chose a firefly as a symbol because it was something people would not typically associate with war or a militia group, something that could both stand out and be easily ignored by someone not knowing what to look for. Likely the same reason the militia group in The Last of Us chose it.
- #168
Bella Ramsey said that Craig Mazin repeatedly quotes one of her most iconic lines from Game of Thrones (2011) at her. Ramsey sat down with her costar Pedro Pascal on HBO Max's YouTube channel to guess whether certain lines were from The Last of Us or other shows. Among the lines were some from each actor's turn on Game of Thrones (2011): Ramsey as Lyanna Mormont and Pascal as Oberyn Martell. Ramsey successfully identified one of those lines, "We're not a large house, but we're a proud one," as her own. Pascal, for his part, also immediately identified his own Game of Thrones line from his time as Oberyn Martell. His line was: "'Tis a great and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don't want to be most of us," from The Laws of Gods and Men (2014).
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- #171
Contains a major spoiler — show
Eagle-eyed viewers spotted that in the first episode the Miller family unconsciously (or somewhat consciously in Joel's case, as he's on the high-protein/low-carb Atkins Diet) avoided food with flour in it on the day of the outbreak, and in later years adopted the theory of fungus spreading via infested flour. This theory was furthered by the beginning of the second episode, as one of the first people to fall victim to the fungus worked at a flour and grain factory. The third episode all but confirmed the theory, as Joel says the best guess about how the outbreak started is that the fungus got into some key food ingredient that hit the shelves at around the same time all over the world.
- #172
Deeper Meaning (9)
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And while the Infected, sometimes referred to as "clickers" and "bloaters", may appear zombie-like, fans and crew alike would be remiss to allude to them as such. "We weren't allowed to say the Z word on set," series cinematographer Eben Bolter told The Credits in an interview. "It was like a banned word. They were the Infected. We weren't a zombie show. Of course, there's tension building and jump scares, but the show's really about our characters; The Infected are an obstacle they have to deal with." Since the series's premiere, many viewers unfamiliar with the original video game have incorrectly labelled it a "zombie show". Ben Shapiro was mocked after he complained that the fan-favourite Long, Long Time (2023) had "no zombies" and "no real threat". "There's a lot of things The Last of Us is not," Bolter added. "It's not a cliché zombie movie, it's not Hollywood backlit where everyone's close-up is perfect. It's a world of organic cinematic naturalism, and that's something I could just feel."
- #174
It's not lost on a majority of viewers that the show draws similar parallels to the real-life COVID-19 pandemic, with Ellie's "their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic" line being reflective of many people's view of how various governments have handled the COVID-19 pandemic, which was still ongoing in 2023 in some parts of the world.
- #175
John Hannah's monologue in the opening mentions that fungal cures and vaccines are nonexistent, and that it's not even possible to actually make them. While the cure one is inaccurate, for vaccines this is very much the case, as Professor Neal Ar Gow who co-edited the Oxford Textbook of Medical Mycology (the study of fungi) notes that this is in part due to the fact that fungi are extremely complicated in immune response. His observation that global warming can lead to the spread of deadly fungi worldwide is accurate for Batrachochytrium, which has ravaged several amphibian species since the '70s, sometimes to extinction. Fungi do form underground networks between hosts that are used to transfer nutrients.
- #176
John Hannah's monologue in the opening mentions that fungal cures and vaccines are nonexistent, and that it's not even possible to actually make them. While the cure one is inaccurate, for vaccines this is very much the case, as Professor Neal Ar Gow who co-edited the Oxford Textbook of Medical Mycology (the study of fungi). He notes that that is in part due to the fact that fungi are extremely complicated in immune response. His observation that Global Warming can lead to the spread of deadly fungi worldwide is accurate for Batrachochytrium, which has ravaged several amphibian species since the '70s, sometimes to extinction. Fungi do form underground networks between hosts that are used to transfer nutrients.
- #177
The resistance group against FEDRA calls themselves the Fireflies. During the revolt against King Charles III, also known as Charles the Fat, in 9th century France one of the main resistance groups called themselves the fireflies. They painted a picture of a firefly to mark important areas like safehouses. They chose a firefly as a symbol because it was something people would not typically associate with war or a militia group, something that could both stand out and be easily ignored by someone not knowing what to look for. Likely the same reason the militia group in The Last of Us chose it.
- #178
Observant viewers noticed that in the first episode the Miller family unconsciously avoided foods containing flour on the day of the outbreak — or, in the case of Joel, who was on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, somewhat consciously — and that in later years they adopted the theory that the fungus spread through contaminated flour. The theory was reinforced at the start of the second episode when one of the first people to fall victim to the fungus is shown working in a flour and grain factory. The third episode nearly confirmed it; as Joel says, the best guess for how the outbreak began was that the fungus contaminated some key food ingredient that reached shelves all over the world at the same time.
- #179
The resistance group fighting FEDRA calls itself the Fireflies. During a 9th-century revolt in France against King Charles III, also known as Charles the Fat, one of the main resistance groups called themselves the fireflies. They drew a firefly to mark important areas such as safe houses. They chose the firefly as their symbol because it was something people would not usually associate with war or a militia group — something that could stand out yet be easily overlooked by someone who did not know what to look for. This is probably also why the militia group in The Last of Us chose it.
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Career & Awards (6)
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The show trended on Indonesian social media primarily because the opening scene of the second episode was set in Jakarta, the apparent ground zero of the pandemic. It also helps that the scene featured Christine Hakim, one of Indonesia's most famous actresses, and overall was well-researched in portraying Indonesia in the early 2000s.
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Life & Family (1)
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia The Last of Us (TV series) — Wikipedia
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