Kaitlyn Dever is looking forward to sharing The Last of Us Season 3. But first, she’s got to film it.
The actress revealed to Deadline on Monday that she’s preparing to head back into production to film the third installment of the HBO drama series, confirming a bit more about what to expect from the continuation of the adaptation Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II.
“I’m getting mentally and physically prepped right now. I go up in a couple days, actually, to start prep over there. I’m so excited to kind of take on a much bigger role in the season,” she said.
The Last of Us Season 2 ended on a massive cliffhanger with Dever’s Abby confronting Ellie (Bella Ramsey) at the latter’s theater base in Seattle. Abby kills Jesse (Young Mazino) and holds Tommy (Gabriel Luna) at gunpoint, forcing Ellie out from hiding. The screen cuts to black before audiences find out what happens. The final minutes of the episode find Abby at the WLF’s base inside the city’s stadium. “Seattle Day 1” appears on screen, indicating that the moment takes place three days prior, when Ellie first arrives in the city, and suggesting that viewers will have to relive those days over again from Abby’s perspective — much like the video game.
Chatting with Deadline, Dever added: “The fans are really going to like it, I think, the shifting perspective onto Abby, getting some more context onto her storyline and going back in time with this season. So, I’m very excited for the fans to see it.”
The Last of Us underwent a bit of a creative shakeup ahead of the third season as Neil Druckmann, who co-created and directed the Naughty Dog video games for Sony Playstation and was very hands on throughout the first two seasons of the TV adaptation, took a step back from the series. He is not writing or directing any episodes this season but will continue to serve as a co-creator and executive producer.
Executive producer and writer Halley Gross, who co-wrote The Last of Us Part II, also exited her day-to-day duties on the series.
So far, HBO has not said whether the third season will be the last.
Based on Naughty Dog’s award-winning video game, The Last of Us takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal and heartbreaking journey as they both must traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.
Seasons 2 and 3 pick up five years after the events of the first season, as Joel and Ellie are drawn into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.
