Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the finale of The Last Of Us.
In case you missed it, the first teaser trailer for The Last Of Us season two came out this week and, well, we’re still not OK.
Fans of the show will know that the finale of season one was a total rollercoaster, and it’s honestly taken all these months for us to recover from the emotional whiplash.
Now, we’ve had a snippet of Joel (played by Pedro Pascal) reckoning with that huge decision in a teaser for season two, which has left us wanting to revisit season one all over again in preparation.
As excitement (and a little bit of trepidation) is building for the show’s much-anticipated return, here are some behind-the-scenes secrets to tide you over until then…
There was almost a film adaptation of The Last Of Us before the TV series
Before the legendary 2013 video game was brought to life for the small screen by HBO, it was very nearly a feature film instead.
A year after the game’s release, a film version was optioned with Spider-Man’s Sam Raimi attached to direct.
However, the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, revealed in a 2022 interview with The New Yorker that he wasn’t so keen on the executives involved who wanted a bigger and “sexier” movie.
While Neil envisioned a movie that aesthetically matched No Country For Old Men, the higher-ups wanted something a little closer to World War Z.
And, of course, there was also the added challenge of condensing 15 hours of gameplay into a two-hour feature film.
The idea of an animated series was floated too
There was also a time when The Last Of Us could have been an animated series.
Speaking to The Direct, voice actor Jeffrey Pierce – who portrays Joel’s brother Tommy in the Last Of Us games – mentioned a “couple of different iterations” that were considered, including the movie and “motion-capture cinematic animated series”.
However, he clarified that this was “a long time ago”, before the TV series was ultimately green-lighted.
Joel’s original voice actor already had an idea of who he wanted to play the role in the TV edition
Troy Baker, who voices Joel in the game series, revealed during an interview on The Last Of Us Pods that he thought Josh Brolin would be the perfect Joel for a movie adaptation.
He recalled once telling the Dune actor that if the script landed on his desk, he should read it before dismissing it, because he believed the actor would “benefit from playing this character, and the character would benefit from it being played by you”.
Apparently Josh agreed to take a look, but we’re not sure if he was ever seriously considered
The voice actor behind Tommy in the video game makes a cameo in the TV show
Even though Jeffrey Pierce told The Direct that he was not “harbouring any illusions” about the possibility of reprising his role as Tommy in the TV series, he did have a smaller role playing Perry in two episodes, the second in command to resistance leader Kathleen Coghlan (played by Melanie Lynskey).
Another key voice actor also played a crucial role on the show
There’s a particularly poignant guest feature in The Last Of Us season one finale. The episode opens with a flashback to Ellie’s (played by Bella Ramsey) birth which explains how she became immune to cordyceps.
Fans of the video game might have spotted that Ellie’s mum, Anna, is actually the original voice actor of Ellie from the video game.
And Joel’s voice actor makes an appearance, too
Joel’s voice in the video game might be unmistakable to fans of the franchise, but his role in the TV series was a little more low-key. Troy Baker appears in episode eight as James, the right-hand man to cannibal survivalist David.
Troy also hosted the excellent HBO companion podcast that ran alongside the TV series, in which he broke down each episode with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann.
And did you recognise all these other voice actors?
Laura Bailey, who plays The Last Of Us Part II co-protagonist Abby, makes a brief cameo in the TV series as one of the nurses in Joel’s path of destruction when he rescues Ellie in the finale.
Meanwhile Marlene – commander of the Fireflies and close friend to Ellie’s mother Anna – is actually played by the character’s origianl voice actor, Merle Dandridge.
The Last Of Us isn’t the first time Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have appeared in the same TV show
Did you know this isn’t the first time Pedro and Bella have actually shared the screen before? Well, kind of.
They both had roles in Game Of Thrones, with Pedro playing Oberyn Martell (AKA the Red Viper) in season four, before Bella was introduced as the young but proud noblewoman Lyanna Mormont in seasons six to eight.
And they’ve become besties ever since starring in The Last Of Us together
The only antidote to the pure distress The Last Of Us can instill is seeing those adorable videos of Pedro and Bella being absolute besties.
Apparently, they would laugh so much during filming that they actually delayed shooting, as they admitted to Sony.
Pedro has an adorable nickname for Bella
“Bella Ramsey plays Ellie. I call her ‘Bellie,’ and she’s my blessing,” Pedro shared in a HBO Max feature.
The name is, of course, a portmanteau of the young actor’s real name Bella, and their character’s name, Ellie.
“It was just a match made in heaven, and I love her,” Pedro added.
Pedro and Bella were discouraged from playing the Last Of Us video game after being cast as Joel and Ellie
During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Bella revealed that both they and Joel were “encouraged”, “advised” and “ordered” to stay away from The Last Of Us game.
However, they quickly admitted that they “disobeyed those orders” completely.
Some other big names were considered to play Ellie
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, game director Neil recalled seeing “dozens and dozens” of actors for the part of Ellie.
Even Bella’s Game Of Thrones co-star Maisie Williams came in for a chat, while Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever did a table read (and has actually now been cast as Abby in season two).
Plenty of big A-listers were also discussed for the role of Joel
Speaking to The Direct, Jeffrey Pierce recalled that Oscar winner Mahershala Ali was at one point considered to play the role of Joel.
However, co-creator Craig Mazin did clarify on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he “actually never talked to Mahershala”, although he did meet with another True Detective star: Matthew McConaughey.
“I did talk to Matthew,” he said. “I can’t say that it was serious, it was more of just like, ‘Hey, here’s something we can talk about’.”
Craig Mazin’s daughter also (sort of) features in the series
Music has always played an important role in The Last Of Us, so Craig Mazin went ahead and drafted in one of the best singers he knows for one important episode: his daughter.
The stripped back version of Never Let Me Down Again by Depeche Mode that features in episode six is performed by his daughter Jessica, which plays during a pretty poignant moment.
There’s a very particular reason they chose that song
Speaking on HBO’s official companion podcast for The Last of Us, Craig elaborated on the “grand tradition of 80s music” in the game, which he approached with a slightly different mindset for the show.
“A lot of ’80s music is chipper and fun but with this, I was looking for an up-tempo ’80s song that had a darkness to it lyrically. What Never Let Me Down Again is about is I’m taking a ride with my best friend’ – he was singing about drugs, it was a song about addiction.
“Well, Ellie’s about to take a ride with her best friend and Joel is a dangerous man. Joel’s about to take a ride with his best friend, he doesn’t know she’s his best friend yet. She’s a dangerous little girl,” he explained.
“Now, the point is, you’re ’never gonna let me down’? They are gonna let each other down, and then they’re not, and then they are, and then they’re not. That thought was a really interesting way in.”
One of the most distressing episodes almost turned out very differently
It’s undoubtedly the toughest watch in the whole of season one – episode five, titled Endure And Survive.
Joel and Ellie escape the city with brothers Sam (who is deaf) and Henry and, just like the game, Sam is bitten and infected, meaning Henry has no choice but to kill him. The trauma of the moment causes him to end his own life.
But showrunners Craig and Neil actually debated a different outcome for Henry in the show. During an episode of The Last of Us Podcast, Neil explained: “We had a lot of long conversations. I don’t know if we should get into the alternatives because people might get mad at us that there were alternatives.”
He elaborated that it was “almost an identical process to what we went through in the game, because in the game, initially, Henry didn’t die”.
However, they wanted to reflect the “worst possible outcome for a parent”.
And the final scene was nearly even bleaker
In the final moments of the first season, Ellie asks Joel to swear that he told the truth about the Fireflies – that they’ve stopped looking for a cure and the hospital was raided.
Joel, who has arguably just doomed all of humanity, doubles down on his lie and insists he was telling the truth.
But in an interview with British GQ, Craig revealed that he and director Ali Abbasi were “playing around” with a “slightly longer, sadder version where Ellie says, ‘okay’, and then she turns and walks away.
“And Joel looks after her. We see the two of them walking, not really together but apart, down towards Jackson. It lingers and then fades.”
However, they decided that the close-up on Ellie would be more impactful, because the audience doesn’t know what comes next.
“Does she walk away from him, does she walk with him, how does she feel? That moment gets suspended permanently,” he explained.
But one episode did change the outcome for two characters in particular
The third episode, Long Long Time, is all about the beautiful love story between Bill and his partner Frank, played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, respectively.
In the game version, we do not get the bittersweet ending in which they both die peacefully in each other’s arms after deciding to end their lives together.
Instead, Bill discovers in the game that Frank has taken his own life, leaving a bitter note that explains he was sick of living with his old partner.
The cast learned sign language behind-the-scenes
The character of Sam, played by Keivonn Woodard, is deaf in real life, so the cast learned sign language to communicate with him better.
His on-screen brother Lamar Johnson told TV Guide: “I started taking lessons as soon as possible.
“Leading up to and even during filming, I would be training, and I’d be working on my sign so that it can feel as organic as possible. Especially with Keivonn- Sam, being deaf in real life – I really wanted that communication to feel organic and authentic.”
In an HBO behind-the-scenes look at that episode, Pedro spoke about how the rest of the cast began using it too, sharing that Bella was particularly fast at picking it up.
That infected attack scene was a serious feat of CGI
It can’t just be us who’s still having nightmares about that swarm of clickers emerging from the ground in episode five?
According to IndieWire, that scene required close to 400 visual effects shots, with the help of some motion capture magic, extras and make-up.
When they first burst out of the sinkhole, that wave of monsters you see are all CGI characters. Then the second are ones that were filmed on set that they “made up and recaptured”, according to Wētā VFX supervisor Simon Jung.
And that Bloater was quite a work of art too…
Remember the horrifying Bloater that emerges in that scene? The lumbering, infected beast that basically has Cordyceps body armour? First of all, that was a real guy – six foot six stuntman Adam Basil who, according to prosthetics designer Barrie Gower (via Variety) was the perfect “build, girth and fitness”.
After casting a suit out of foam rubber and foam latex, they covered it in a slimy lubricant, which gave a “gloss” to the fungus, and attached “little spines and spiky hairs punched into his body, like little growths burrowing out”.
Apparently it was estimated to weigh 40 kg or more in total, which was even heavier than Vecna from Stranger Things.
The Last Of Us season one is available to watch on Now.
