Here’s how the show will portray The Last of Us characters.
The official Twitter account of HBO’s The Last of Us TV series has dropped several character images, teasing the highly anticipated adaptation of Naughty Dog’s award-winning title. The new images reveal how the show’s cast breathes life into the familiar faces in the game, including Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, Pedro Pascal’s Joel, Anna Torv’s Tess, and more.
HBO’s long-in-the-works The Last of Us TV series is slated to make its debut on HBO Max on January 15. Nearly two months before the show’s launch, the show’s social media account started teasing the fans with a multitude of character images. The images reveal how the upcoming TV show depicts the characters we have met throughout the story of The Last of Us, the action-adventure game that launched back in 2013.
A total of 12 images with captions have landed on Twitter. The teasers start with Nico Parker’s Sarah Miller, whom we have been introduced as Joel’s daughter in the first minutes of the game. The new images also include Anna Torv’s Tess, Joel’s fellow companion in his smuggling endeavors. Alongside Torv, the posters of Storm Reid’s Riley, Lamar Johnson’s Henry, Murray Bartlett’s Frank, Merle Dandridge’s Marlene, and Gabriel Luna’s Tommy have also arrived to offer a glimpse into the adaptation’s portrayal of the game’s characters.
Neil Druckmann has also shared the teaser images with quotes from the characters themselves. Druckmann, who previously served as a writer and creative director in both games, also wrote the script for the first season of HBO’s adaptation alongside Craig Mazin.
The first season of the long-awaited post-apocalyptic action-drama will come with nine episodes, which will mainly focus on the storyline of 2013’s The Last of Us. While both the images and the trailer video convey that the series would be faithful to the source material, showrunner Mazin stated that his crew had revisited some parts of the title’s storyline to offer an enriched version of the game to both longtime fans and people who are new to the series. It will also expand upon the game’s story, which is set 20 years after a cordyceps infection that is transmitted through inhalation takes over the world and turns people into frenzied “the infected.”
As revealed in the images, the upcoming show has no shortage of Hollywood talent in its characters. Its main characters are played by Pascal and Ramsey, who was encouraged by the showrunners to not play the game during her audition.
