‘The Last Of Us’ original game actors join cast for final season of HBO adaptation
The Last Of Us season three has added a trio of new names to the cast – and gaming fans will be familiar with two of them.
Laura Bailey, who originally played Abby in The Last Of Us Part Two, will be returning to the franchise as Elizabeth, the leader of religious cult Seraphites (AKA the Scars) for the upcoming season.
Meanwhile Lev actor Ian Alexander will now be playing Paco, one half of the self-nicknamed ‘Heroes Of The Highway’ duo opposite John John Goodman’s Joey. It was recently confirmed that Clea Duvall, Patrick Wilson, Jason Ritter, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Michelle Mao and Kyriana Kratter will also be joining the cast of The Last Of Us season three.
The HBO adaptation of The Last Of Us has been criticised for recasting both Bailey and Alexander for the live-action adaptation. Fans accused bosses of being “tone deaf” for casting cis actor Kyriana Kratter in the role of Lev, a trans character who’s persecuted for their gender dysphoria while gaming fans didn’t think Kaitlyn Dever looked physically imposing enough to play Abby.
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Responding to the backlash, Dever said: “I want to do this character justice and make the fans proud by bringing her to life. “My main focus was making sure I was really getting to the core of who she is and what drives her and her emotional state; her anger and her frustration and her grief and all of that. I wanted to make sure that that was what I was focusing most of my energy on.”
After sticking faithfully to the source material for the first season of The Last Of Us, gaming fans weren’t happy with some of the changes that were made for season two and viewership dropped by 55 per cent. Following the backlash, Ellie actor Bella Ramsey told critics not to watch season three which is set to launch in 2027 and is expected to be the final chapter in the adaptation.
Earlier this month, The Last Of Us creator Neil Druckmann distanced himself from the upcoming season, saying game studio Naught Dog “did not have a creative role in the direction” of the third season. He went on to tease “a couple” of new projects set within the universe though.
In other news, Borderlands 4’s eclectic soundtrack is getting a vinyl release to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the looter shooter
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.