As I'm sure you've heard by now, Naughty Dog and HBO are collaborating on a TV adaptation of 2013's critically acclaimed PlayStation exclusive The Last Of Us. With the original game's director Neil Druckmann writing and producing the show alongside Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin, it's safe to say expectations for this post-apocalyptic series are high.
But as exciting as this news is, there's still an awful lot we don't know about the show. The series will serve as a re-telling of the events of the original game, sure, but will the first series adapt the entire first game, or will it be split across multiple seasons? Will we get brand-new characters and stories that run alongside Joel and Ellie's own journey? Will Hugh Jackman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau have a fist fight to decide who gets to play Joel?
While we wait for answers to those questions, Druckmann has at least revealed the first wave of characters that we can expect to see in the show's first season. Taking to Twitter to celebrate International Women's Day, the director told HBO that they have a new wave of incredible women to tell stories with.
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As you can see from the above tweet, we'll be seeing Ellie, Riley, Tess, Marlene, Maria, and a "few others". While it shouldn't come as a massive surprise that most of these characters are all set to appear (especially Ellie), I'm particularly thrilled to see Riley in the mix. Riley was, if you can't remember, Ellie's best friend and (we assume) first love.
While Riley was referenced at one point in the first game, we didn't actually see her for the first time until the Left Behind prequel DLC. This suggests to me that the heartbreaking events of that DLC will be shown in flashback form at some point during the show, and I can't wait.
There's also the matter of a mysterious redacted character in Druckmann's tweet... who could that be? Some have already speculated that it could be a major character from The Last Of Us Part II that we've yet to meet. However, I'm more convinced by the theory that redacted and apparently four-letter name is actually Anna - Ellie's mum.
We never saw Anna in The Last Of Us, what with the fact she died before the events of the first game. Still, a TV series is the perfect place to add new characters and flesh out the story some more, so there's every chance Anna could show up in flashbacks, or even as a hallucination that visits Ellie at various points.
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We'll have to wait and see who this mystery character is, but I'd bet they're going to be a major player. While we wait for more news on HBO's The Last Of Us, why not take a look at our dream cast wishlist so you can get mad and disagree with our choices? You know you want to.
Topics: PlayStation, Naughty Dog, The Last Of Us
