HBO has released the first official images of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) from The Last of Us Part II.
They were both posted to the official HBO Max Twitter X account.
Pedro Pascal and @BellaRamsey in #TheLastOfUs Season 2, now in production.
Coming to @HBO and @StreamOnMax in 2025. pic.twitter.com/g8khQYhzoX
— Max (@StreamOnMax) May 15, 2024
In the first shot, Joel is standing in a well-lit room looking a bit sad. Pascal also has decidedly more hair than in the first season — more so, even, than Joel’s already longer hair in The Last of Us Part II, the PS4 game upon which Season 2 is based. The other image, meanwhile, shows Ramsey’s Ellie wearing winter clothing and brandishing a shotgun.
Based on what we know from The Last of Us Part II, it seems like the first image is taken from early on in the game in a party scene in Jackson, Wyoming, where Joel and Ellie have an altercation with a belligerent man. The second image, meanwhile, appears to also have been lifted from the opening hours of the story during a section in which Ellie and her soon-to-be-girlfriend Dina (played by Isabela Merced in the show) are on a winter patrol.
In its post, HBO also reiterated a previously confirmed 2025 premiere window for the second season. It will stream on Crave in Canada.
HBO’s release of these images comes shortly after leaked Vancouver set photos of Ramsey and Merced have started to hit the web. However, this is our first look in any capacity at Pascal’s Joel from the second season.
Filming on Season 2 began in February and will likely continue for at least a few more months. (For context, the first season took a year to shoot, although that was during COVID lockdowns.) Therefore, we may not get a trailer for the upcoming season for a while still.
For now, we do know some key casting details beyond Merced as Dina. One of the major characters from The Last of Us Part II, a woman named Abby, will be played by Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart). In the game, she has a close connection to Joel and Ellie and is even a playable character. Other key figures include Ellie’s friend Jesse (Beef‘s Young Mazino) and Toronto’s Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek) as a mysterious character.
Outside of the HBO series, PlayStation also recently released a PS5 remaster of The Last of Us Part II.
Image credit: HBO
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