Warning: the following article contains massive spoilers for HBO’s The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II video game.
HBO’s The Last of Us has received raucous reception from both newcomers to the franchise and fans of the game since its debut last month, and even though 2023 is still young, it’s shaping up to possibly be the most celebrated television event of the year.
This is in no small part thanks to the performances of series leads Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, the latter of whom joined Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast for an in-depth chat about her involvement on The Last of Us as well as its future.
With The Last of Us renewed for a second season, Horowitz asked Ramsey about what aspects of Ellie she is excited to flesh out when the character’s story continues. Ramsey, ever-so-carefully trying to avoid spilling the beans about her knowledge of The Last of Us Part II, dove into what her biggest cause for nervousness is going forward.
Consider this your second and final spoiler warning, because below this video (timestamped at the relevant point of discussion), we’re opening Pandora’s box and alluding to some plot points which are perhaps common knowledge to fans of the source material, but not to the story’s newcomers.
While Ramsey expressed excitement about seeing Ellie’s relationship with Dina play out, she tells Horowitz that she is quite nervous about having to potentially shoot a lot of the second season without Pedro Pascal, seeing as Ellie very much takes the lead at this point in the narrative.
In case you’ve read this far and haven’t played The Last of Us Part II, we’ll spare you the specifics as to why Pascal may not be around very often in season two of the HBO adaptation, but we’ll leave you with a meme that has been circulating on Twitter since news of the the show’s renewal broke, and leave it at that:
Reservations about being front and center without her costar aside, Ramsey went on to add that she’s looking forward to depicting an older version of Ellie who is much closer to her current age. Ellie is 19 in The Last of Us Part II, and at the time of writing, Ramsey is also 19. Of course, she took a moment to crack a joke about how many people legitimately think she is still 14.
Season two of The Last of Us is still a while away, and we still have six more episodes of its first season to look forward to. While Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal have certainly carried their weight, Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett certainly stole our hearts in last Sunday’s episode. Offerman recently spoke about how he has never played the source game, but there is another title the actor was obsessed with once upon a time.
The Last of Us will continue breaking our hearts this Sunday on HBO Max.