The Last Of Us Season 2 is still a long ways off, but we now have the first official images of the upcoming HBO post-apocalyptic series.
Recently, we saw the first-look set images that showed actor Bella Ramsey working on the show and looking just as young as ever. As my colleague Paul Tassi noted at the time:
One issue here is that Bella Ramsey…just looks young for their age. They were 17 when they started shooting The Last of Us season 1, so a few years older than the character they were meant to play. Now, they’re 20, playing…a 19 year old. But Ramsey still looks as young as they did in 2021 when TLOU was start to film.
(Paul is using they/them here in reference to Ramsey, but since Ramsey herself has said she’s fine with either they/them or she/her or even he/him I will be using she/her).
I agree with Paul that Ramsey appears quite young. I’d add that she’s also quite small. This could be a problem for Season 2, in which Ellie is even more violent and dangerous and bloodthirsty than Joel was in Season 1. I’m referring to the game the second season will be based off of, of course, since nobody has seen the show’s version of that yet. But in the game, Ellie is older, stronger and more dangerous than in the original. I’m not sure how they’ll pull that off.
Here’s Ramsey’s Ellie in Season 2:
She really just does look like a 12 or 13-year-old still. For what it’s worth, I think Ramsey did a great job as Ellie though I think the writers made her version of the character much less likable than the video game version (played by Ashley Johnson). That’s more of a writing issue than an actor issue, however.
And maybe it’s for a reason. Maybe it’ll help set up the far, far less likable version of Ellie we get in Season 2 (The Last Of Us Part 2) who I genuinely ended up despising in the end. I have deeply, deeply mixed feelings about the second game if you haven’t noticed (my review).
This is what Ellie looks like in the second video game compared to the first:
Of course, all of this gets one extra wrinkle thanks to the fact that the character Abby—a playable antagonist in the second game—was cast as someone that looks just like Ellie in the games:
Here’s Abby in the game:
Frankly, I don’t think they should have Dever bulk up at all for this role if only because Ramsey is so small. Imagine if a character as huge and strong as the video game version of Abby got in a fight with the TV show’s version of Ellie.
In any case, I’m still not sure how they’re going to pull this new season off without upsetting fans and leaving us all super depressed. It’s just so bleak. The first season was pretty grim, but Season 2—if it follows the games—has almost none of the charm that made the first game and season bearable.
As for Pedro Pascal’s Joel, he honestly looks a bit younger in the photo at the top of this post than he did in Season 1, but it might just be that he’s had time to rest and brush his hair and whatnot. Maybe he’s just cleaned up.
What do you think about the game being adapted for Season 2?
