HBO rolled out the news about the show’s third season in order to celebrate September 26 as “The Last Of Us Day,” a.k.a. the day in the game and TV series’ timelines where the outbreak of “Whoops, you’re a monster now” fungus cordyceps hit a world-ending, critical peak. (It used to be referred to as “Outbreak Day,” but somebody at game developer Naughty Dog apparently rethought that when the whole premise got just a tad too real in 2020.) In addition to announcing Goodman, the network also revealed that two stars from the original Last Of Us game series will also be making their way to the TV show: Ian Alexander, who played young Seraphite escapee Lev in The Last Of Us Part II, and Laura Bailey, who starred in the second game as its version of Abby, the “Yes, we know it’s complicated, but let’s just roll with it” “antagonist” of the show’s second season, played in the series by Kaitlyn Dever.
Goodman and Anderson will apparently be teamed up as Joey and Paco, “a friendly duo who dub themselves ‘Heroes of the Highway.'” (Given how screwed up humanity can be in the world of The Last Of Us—truly, man is the real monster, etc.—it’s impossible to know at what level of irony that description is being pitched.) Bailey, meanwhile, is swapping sides: Having played a prominent member of the Seattle-based militia in the game, she’ll now play a high-ranking member of the religiously obsessive Seraphites. (She and Anderson are also just the latest in a long line of Last Of Us game stars to show up on the series; original stars Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson both had small roles in the show’s first season.)
What HBO didn’t provide was a release date for the season; the most we’ve got at the moment is still a vague “some time in 2027.”
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