HBO’s The Last of Us Casts Henry and Sam with a Twist

Two more characters from The Last of Us have been confirmed for HBO’s TV adaptation of the same name with the actors who’ll portray Henry and Sam now named. Henry will be played by Lamar Johnson, IGN reported this week, while Sam will be played by Keivonn Woodard. The two will remain brothers just as the characters were in the game, but there will be some noticeable differences in their story that depart from the originally storyline found in Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us.

In the game, the two brothers (Henry being the older of the two) were found in Pittsburgh by Joel and Ellie. The pair found the brothers after Sam and Henry had a run-in with the Hunters and worked with them to escape Pittsburgh and the rest of the violent faction that inhabited it. Their story progressed from there to the point that it became one of the more memorable and impressing side storylines The Last of Us offered players.

But in HBO’s The Last of Us, that arc involving Henry and Sam will apparently look a bit different. A press release cited by IGN confirmed that the two brothers will be found not in Pittsburgh but in Kansas City instead.

“Lamar Johnson as Henry and Keivonn Woodard as Sam, brothers in Kansas City hiding from a revolutionary movement seeking vengeance,” the release said.

We’ve seen some leaked scenes from The Last of Us that appeared to show the Hunters in various states of their revolutionary ideals, though some of those scenes have similarly left fans wondering how the game-to-show storylines would translate. Given that we’ve seen precious little in the way of The Last of Us news outside of casting announcements like these, fans will likely be left to wonder a while longer until we learn more.

In addition to these two casting announcements, it was also reported that two more characters in HBO’s The Last of Us are now known. Those characters are Marlon and Florence played by Graham Greene and Elaine Miles, respectively. If they sound new, that’s because they are – they’re original characters described as “a married couple surviving alone in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic Wyoming,” though it’s unclear how they fit into the larger picture.

HBO’s The Last of Us series does not currently have a release date.