‘The Last of Us’: Everything We Know About the Game’s Upcoming TV Adaptation

The Last of Us, a video game that practically held even nongamers in a chokehold during quarantine after part two dropped in 2020, is getting the HBO treatment. 

The original PlayStation game, which debuted in 2013, follows Joel—or well, I guess it’s more accurate to say that users control Joel—a smuggler escorting a teenage girl named Ellie across a zombie-infested, postapocalyptic United States. Ellie has been infected with the disease that wiped out civilization but shows no symptoms and believes that her immunity may lead to a cure. Along the way, friends and allies help the pair, often losing their own life in the process. Joel and Ellie develop a deep bond; at the outset of the infection, Joel lost his daughter, and he takes protecting Ellie very seriously.

The game debuted to major acclaim and popularity, as did its sequel. HBO greenlighted a television adaptation in November 2020. The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal will take on the role of Joel, while Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont on Game of Thrones) plays Ellie. You can see a picture of them in character here; although, don’t get too excited, because it’s from behind.

Here’s everything we know about The Last of Us.

The first season will be based on the first game. There have been expansion packs and, of course, the sequel, but The Hollywood Reporter notes that incorporating these storylines is just a “possibility” at this point.

It’s going to be dark. The writer and creator of the game, Neil Druckmann, will be involved with the writing of the series, per THR, and he’s teaming up with Craig Mazin, who made Chernobyl for HBO. So, yeah, pretty serious stuff. ICYMI, Chernobyl was also a kind of apocalypse story, a harrowing dramatization of the real-life disaster at a nuclear facility in the Soviet Union in 1986.