The legendary video game The Last of Us is getting a highly-anticipated TV show adaptation, coming to HBO with a cast headlined by none other than The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal. Now, the show has cast another major role, and this star comes from a Marvel history on the small screen. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Gabriel Luna is on board The Last of Us.
Gabriel Luna played Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Variety reports that he has joined The Last of Us to play Tommy, a former soldier who held onto his hope for a better world and ingrained idealism despite everything that has gone wrong. Tommy is the younger brother of Joel, who will be played by Pedro Pascal.
In addition to Pedro Pascal and now Gabriel Luna, the Last of Us stars Bella Ramsey of Game of Thrones fame to play Ellie in the young actress' return to HBO. The show centers on Pascal's Joel and Ramsey's Ellie as Joel is hired to get Ellie out of a quarantine zone, with Ellie as one of the rare individuals immune to the infection that ravaged humanity.
Joel isn't so lucky, and the job to smuggle Ellie out of quarantine gets complicated as they head out on a journey across that United States that is both heartbreaking and brutal, forced to depend on each other for survival. With Gabriel Luna portraying a character who hung onto hope and idealism, seeing the dynamic between Tommy and Joel should be interesting, as should seeing whether Tommy can hold onto that hope. There's no way things aren't going to get worse before they get better on The Last of Us, right?
The Last of Us definitely isn't Gabriel Luna's first venture into genre productions. He made an impact on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which stands as the longest-running live-action Marvel TV show to date, as Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider. He appeared in several episodes of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4, but fans started talking about him again after a certain WandaVision twist despite the Ghost Rider spinoff never moving forward. The Last of Us also isn't Luna's first post-apocalyptic project, as he starred in the 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate.
It's not clear at this point how much of a role that Gabriel Luna will have to play on The Last of Us, but it's worth noting that the TV show will change things up from the game, so even experts on the events of The Last of Us game can't say for sure what to expect from Tommy and his relationship with Joel, among other things, even though it reportedly won't undo the original game story.
The Last of Us has been in development since March 2020, and HBO moved forward with a series order in November. There is no official word of when viewers can expect to see the video game adaptation premiere as a TV show, but the series is making enough progress that it's possible the first episode could debut in late 2021 or early 2022. HBO already has another high-profile project releasing in 2022, but I think we can be confident that The Last of Us will score plenty of viewers regardless of when the first Game of Thrones spinoff debuts.
