On Friday, Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) shared an inaugural behind-the-scenes photo from HBO’s highly-anticipated video game adaptation, The Last of Us, on Instagram. The photo features the Miller family – Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones) as protagonist Joel, Luna as his brother Tommy and newly announced cast-member Nico Parker (Dumbo, The Third Day) as his daughter Sarah – with Luna including the hashtag #MillerTime, via Instagram. Despite the jovial tone of the picture and Luna’s caption, many fans of the game franchise will note that the crew has seemingly begun production on a tragic story-beat.
While The Last of Us takes place in a recent fungal post-apocalypse, Joel Miller lost his daughter Sarah in the early chaos of society’s collapse. Though The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) has stated that the HBO series will provide an “enhanced” look into the plotlines of the first game, Entertainment Weekly believes that Luna has indeed given fans a glimpse behind-the-scenes of the game’s tragic opening sequence in which Joel loses Sarah.
This first glance behind-the-scenes arrives just on the heels of Deadline’s announcement that Parker would be joining the cast as Sarah. Thanks to Luna’s photo, fans immediately received a glimpse of Parker in the role alongside himself and Pascal.
As for Joel’s later adoptive daughter Ellie, on whom the events of The Last of Us hinge, it was announced that Pascal’s fellow Game of Thrones alum Bella Ramsey (Hilda, His Dark Materials) would be taking on the role. Now that production on the series has officially gotten underway in Calgary, fans will eagerly await a first-look at Ramsey in the pivotal role.
While Friday’s The Last of Us set photo was certainly exciting for fans, production on the series will be a marathon, not a sprint. Collider reports that “filming isn’t set to wrap in Calgary until June of 2022,” meaning fans will have to subside off set photos for quite some time before they can expect a release schedule or trailer for HBO’s adaptation of the beloved video game.