'The Last of Us' Season 3: Everything we know so far from the game

USA Today

7 days ago

'The Last of Us' Season 3: Everything we know so far from the game
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Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal discuss father-daughter relationship
'The Last of Us' stars Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal reveal they didn't enjoy their character's estrangement in season 2.
Spoiler alert! The following contains details from "The Last of Us" Season 2 finale on HBO, as well as the video game "The Last of Us Part II."
Well that's one way to end a season of TV.
The seventh and final episode of "The Last of Us" Season 2 on HBO brought our hero, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), to the brink. In a single episode she: nearly drowns, is almost lynched, kills two people including a pregnant woman, and is rescued but then immediately hunted down by her enemy Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), who Ellie was on a mission to kill.
And just when the final confrontation between Abby and Ellie reaches a bullet-charged climax, the scene ends. All of a sudden we've flashed back three days and the camera's focus is solely on Abby, waking up in a football stadium-turned-compound for her militia, the Washington Liberation Front.
So what does all of this mean for Season 3? Producer Craig Mazin promises, "all of it will become clear," but clues can also be found in the video game that this season and the next are based upon, "The Last of Us Part II." We break down what can you expect in Season 3 if the series continues to follow the game as closely as it has in the past. Spoiler alert: Ramsey may have some time off from killing fungal zombies for awhile.
Kaitlyn Dever will take center stage in 'The Last of Us' Season 3
Get ready for Kaitlyn Dever to become the main star of "Us" in Season 3, which, if the game is any indication, will likely include very little of Ramsey's Ellie. The Season 2 finale's closing scene, showing Abby waking up at the WLF's headquarters on "Seattle Day One," implies the series will retain the controversial structure of the game, which divides its narrative evenly between Ellie and Abby.
In the game, players spend hours controlling Ellie on her quest for revenge against Abby for the murder of Joel (Pedro Pascal), as depicted in the show. This culminates in a confrontation between Ellie and Abby in the theater which − in a moment that made millions of gamers throw their controllers across the room in frustration − abruptly cuts to black mid-scene. The game then jumps back in time and has the player assume control of Abby to follow everything she was up to during the three days that Ellie and Dina (played by Isabela Merced in the series) were in Seattle.
From there, players stick to Abby's perspective for nearly the entire remainder of the game. It takes hours for the story to loop back around to the theater, where Ellie's fate is finally revealed, and the game ends not long after that.
Game vs. Show: All the major 'The Last of Us' Season 2 changes
Precisely how much of next season is devoted to Abby will depend on whether producers Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann decide to finish adapting "Part II" — which would also mean ending the show, given there are no more games in the series — in Season 3. If so, the resolution of the Season 2 cliffhanger could likely happen around two-thirds of the way through the season. But if the game is turned into yet more seasons, as Mazin has suggested, it's possible Ramsey would not be in Season 3 whatsoever until around the finale.
Abby's now-deceased friends will return for supporting roles
Fans should also anticipate a shakeup to the supporting cast, given the shift to Abby means characters like Dina and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) will be absent for the next stretch of the story.
But Abby's friends Nora (Tati Gabrielle), Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer), who were tortured and/or murdered by Ellie in Season 2, return for key roles in the second half of the game, as does Manny (Danny Ramirez), who joined them on the mission to kill Joel (Pedro Pascal).
In the Season 2 finale, WLF leader Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) learns that Abby's entire crew has gone AWOL, and that will be a big part of her storyline in Season 3. Because that story takes place at the same time as Season 2, it will shed new light on certain peripheral details already seeded into the second season, such as the fact that a medical procedure appears to have been performed at the aquarium not long before Ellie arrived.
Owen's relationship with Abby will also be a major focus. It's explored in flashbacks in the game, which could potentially get their own episode like the Joel and Ellie flashback episode of Season 2.
The war between the Seraphites and the WLF will be explored further
In Season 2, viewers received glimpses of a war between Abby's militia and a religious cult known as the Seraphites, but they were infuriatingly vague.
This conflict will become central to the next part of the story, so it's safe to say Wright will return as Isaac. In the Season 2 finale, we see Isaac set out to lead an attack on the Seraphites, which begins off screen as Ellie sets out to find Abby. In "Part II," this attack made for one of the most epic, visually stunning sequences in the game, meaning a battle episode on par with "Game of Thrones" could be in store for Season 3.
Also keep an eye out for casting news about a pair of crucial new characters: Lev and Yara, brother and sister Seraphites who Abby meets along her journey. In particular, the role of Lev, a trans boy, could be a star-making role for a young actor around age 13.
Don't expect any more Pedro Pascal
Pedro Pascal almost certainly won't return for any of Season 3, though if the show had followed the game more closely, he may have.
Whereas the show devoted a flashback episode to revealing what happened between Joel and Ellie during the time jump before Season 2, the game sprinkled those flashbacks all throughout the story and saved some for the second half. In fact, Joel and Ellie's emotional porch conversation from the Season 2 episode "The Price" is the penultimate scene at the very end of the game.
It's possible the show could replace that with a new flashback scene in a future episode. But more likely, fans truly have seen the last of Joel. And given Pascal's busy schedule, including Marvel's new "Fantastic Four" movie, a new Ari Aster film at the Cannes Film Festival and more future projects, it's not that surprising that his time in the apocalypse may be over and done for good.