The Last of Us: HBO Reveals New Look at First Season Finale

March 8, 2023, 7:05pm

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from The Last of Us season 1.] The last episode of The Last of Us is upon us. HBO has released the first photos from Sunday’s season finale, following Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) on the final stretch of their journey to find a Fireflies faction in Salt Lake City, Utah. “There’s no halfway with this,” Ellie tells Joel in the episode’s preview. “We finish what we started.” The episode is titled “Look for the Light,” bookending the first season with the Firefly mantra that spread across the Boston QZ: “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.”

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The new look at The Last of Us episode 9, below, features Ashley Johnson, who voiced and performed motion capture for Ellie in the video game. Johnson is the latest Last of Us alumnus to appear in the show, following Merle Dandridge’s Marlene, Jeffrey Pierce’s Perry, and Troy Baker’s James.

The network ordered an early renewal for The Last of Us for season 2 after the January 15th series premiere marked HBO’s second-largest debut, behind only Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon. HBO’s live-action adaptation of the Naughty Dog and PlayStation video game of the same name also scored series-high ratings with its penultimate episode, “When We Are in Need,” which pit Joel and Ellie against preacher David (Scott Shepherd) and his cult of cannibal survivors in Silver Lake, Colorado.

“I’m really excited. It still feels surreal to me that it’s going to go again,” Ramsey told ComicBook‘s The Last of Pods podcast of the second season. “But also, I don’t want to go into it comparing it to the experience of the first season, because […] season 1 of The Last of Us was the best year of my life, and it’s not going to be the same. I just have to go into it being like, ‘This is season two. And I love season one, but this is just going to be different.’”

Ramsey continued: “I’m really excited. I just, yeah, want to be back in Canada with [series co-creator and writer-director] Craig Mazin and Pedro for a little bit. It’s going to be really nice.”

See the first images from The Last of Us season finale below. The episode premieres Sunday, March 12th, on HBO and HBO Max.