The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones, Hilda) discloses that the first season’s finale will be controversial, according to ComicBook. It is HBO’s biggest debut in the past decade, and it has already been renewed for a second season.
During the filming of the eighth episode, the penultimate episode, Ramsey teased about how exhausting it was. “It was… exhausting, but those were some of my favourite days on set. That sounds really masochistic, but it’s the scenes that break me that I love the most, in a way,” Ramsey revealed via ComicBook.
“It’s going to divide people massively – massively,” Ramsey told Vogue in an interview.
In The Last of Us, Joel, portrayed by Pedro Pascal (Narcos, Game of Thrones), and Ellie, portrayed by Ramsey, travel a post-apocalyptic USA in search of the Fireflies, a revolutionary group aiming to save mankind. After initially wanting nothing to do with Ellie, Joel mustered up feelings for Ellie that he hadn’t experienced since before the Cordyceps outbreak.
According to ScreenRant, in the upcoming episode, Joel and Ellie will visit the Fireflies, where, hopefully, they will discover a cure for the Cordyceps fungal infection.
Early on in its run, the adapted series drew criticism for changing core elements of the video game’s mythology and has been met with criticism for its inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters and themes, according to CBR.
“The revolution that we’ve gone through as a culture to become accepting of homosexuality and whatever we’d call non-hetero normative sexualities hasn’t occurred… in this world, that stuff is still ‘problematic’ as they say,” conveyed co-creator of the video game series, Neil Druckmann (Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, Uncharted: A Thief’s End).
Druckmann tells CBR that certain characters’ regressive attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community illustrate how society has stagnated since the Cordyceps pandemic.
“It’s an open-and-shut case: this is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games,” proclaimed Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, Identity Thief), co-creator. “[Joel and Ellie] didn’t shoot anything out of their eyeballs. They were just people. And that, in and of itself, is remarkably rare in games. The fact that they kept it so grounded, and really made you feel – I had never experienced anything like it, and I’ve been playing video games since 1977.”
The series’ cast also includes Nico Parker (Dumbo, Reminiscence) portraying Sarah, Gabriel Luna (Bernie, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) portraying Tommy, Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, 21 Jump Street) portraying Bill, Anna Torv (Fringe, Mindhunter) portraying Tess, Elaine Miles (Smoke Signals, Wyvern) portraying Florence, Lamar Johnson (The Hate U Give, Your Honor) portraying Henry, Graham Greene (The Green Mile, Dances with Wolves) portraying Marlon, Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures, Togetherness) portraying Kathleen, Murray Bartlett (August, The White Lotus) portraying Frank, Keivonn Woodard (Fractal, Seeds of Hope: The Andrew Jackson Foster Story) portraying Sam, Merle Dandridge (Greenleaf, Station 19) portraying Marlene, Storm Reid (12 Years a Slave, The Summoning) portraying Riley, and Jeffrey Pierce (Bosch, Castle Rock) as Perry. According to ComicBook, the original stars who played Joel and Ellie in the video games, Ashley Johnson (The Avengers, Blindspot) and Troy Baker (Naruto: Shippuden, Avengers Assemble), are also set to make an appearance.