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Six supporting cast members have been announced for the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation, giving us an idea how the show will expand upon Part 2’s story.
As reported by Variety, Joe Pantoliano, Alanna Ubach, Ben Ahlers, Hettienne Park, Robert John Burke, and Noah Lamanna will all be joining Bella Ramsey’s Ellie and Pedro Pascal’s Joel when the second season airs next month.
Pantoliano – whose previous credits include Bad Boys for Life and The Matrix – will play Eugene, while Burke (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) stars as Jackson resident Seth, and Lamanna (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) is playing Kat. These three characters have all featured in Naughty Dog‘s The Last of Us Part 2.
The remaining three actors will all portray characters who’ve been written specifically for the show. Ubach (Euphoria) has been cast as Hanrahan, Ahlers (The Gilded Age) is playing Burton, and Park (Hannibal) stars as Elise Park.
Please note, there will be some story spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 – and therefore potentially the show – below.
While it remains unclear how the three new characters will fit into The Last of Us Part 2’s narrative, the inclusion of Eugene and Kat gives us an idea as to how the series is expanding upon the game’s story.
For those unfamiliar, Kat (or Cat, as she’s known in the game) was Ellie’s ex, but never actually appeared in person during The Last of Us Part 2 – although she was originally supposed to feature during the Jackson dance sequence. Instead, she was only mentioned in passing, with Dina telling Ellie she didn’t think Cat was right for her, among other things. This is clearly going to change in the TV series, and a previous trailer appeared to show Ellie getting her tattoo (which came from Cat in the game). I wonder if we will also see Kat appear in the dance sequence, as well.
Next up, we have Eugene, who again is mentioned in The Last of Us Part 2 but doesn’t appear in person, barring collectables. Eugene was a patrolman who lived in Jackson before dying of a stroke aged 73. He formed a close relationship with Dina (played in the show by Isabel Merced), and more of his story can be uncovered by finding a letter in-game – which reveals he had a wife and daughter, but left them to join the Fireflies, where he served with Joel’s brother Tommy.
“The Fireflies will be fine without you. Your daughter won’t,” the letter from Eugene’s wife Claire reads. “She keeps asking me when you’re coming home. I can’t lie to her anymore. I miss you. But I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Come home. Please. We love you.”
According to Variety, Eugene’s season two appearance will be similar to season one’s standalone Bill and Frank episode (and because of which I still can’t look at strawberries the same way).
In a recent interview about the process of adapting Part 2 for the series, it was revealed the idea to bring Eugene’s story into the mix came from showrunner Craig Mazin, but Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann was all for it.
“I get excited when I see these opportunities,” he told Variety. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t know Eugene that well!’ The story we told [in the game] was somewhat superficial. The way this character comes in really gets to the heart of Joel and Ellie and their relationship.”
Given Druckmann’s words here, and how Bill and Frank’s relationship was expanded upon for season one of The Last of Us, I can only assume Eugene’s family relationship and his move to become a Firefly will become a key element of the show’s story. Oh, and Eugene is also very tech savvy and had a cannabis lab, so pretty sure that will come up.
The second season of The Last of Us is set to kick off in the US on 13th April, and will comprise seven episodes, with one of those episodes being “quite big” in length.
It remains unclear where the second season of The Last of Us will wrap up, but Mazin has already confirmed it will not cover the entirety of Part 2’s narrative. It will, however, feature a lot more infected than the first season.
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Kurt Indovina
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