The Last of Us Season 2 will bring one of gaming’s most controversial, brilliant villains to the screen: Abby – and it looks like the role has already been cast.
The first season of HBO’s video game adaptation was a runaway success, somehow condensing the entire arc of the game into nine episodes while expanding on certain elements; for example, Ellie’s experience with David.
Season 2 was quickly green-lit, but there’s two sides to that coin: Part II is an extraordinary game and one of the most acclaimed titles in PlayStation’s library, but it was also the subject of fierce vitriol – specifically targeted at its villain, Abby.
While we’ll likely be waiting a while for the next chapter of the small-screen story due to the writers’ and actors’ strikes, it seems like Abby’s casting is already pretty nailed down.
The Last of Us Season 2 may have already found its Abby
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, which was permitted by the WGA, Mazin spoke about his expectations for Season 2, and if they’ve managed to find someone to play Abby.
“Maybe [laughs],” he responded. When the interviewer told him this seemed like a yes, Mazin said: “The strike stopped us in our tracks. Things were in process.
“Look, Abby was the first role that we wanted to tackle. We’ve got a pretty good track record of making major cast announcements and people going ‘really?’ which will probably continue. So people may disagree, but I think we got it right so far and the audience seems to feel we got it right and the Academy seems to feel we got it right.”
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We’re about to enter major spoiler territory for Abby’s arc in The Last of Us, so leave now if you don’t want to ruin it for yourself.
In Part II, Abby murders Joel in front of Ellie, in revenge for him killing her father in the hospital at the end of the first game. This is the first and most significant reason behind some fans’ disdain for Abby (that and her being a complex and flawed female character), and Mazin was asked if he’s looking forward to the “explosive reactions” that are bound to come from the second season.
“I’m very studiously avoiding confirming anything even through a passive acceptance of a question. Anybody that has played the game and then watched the first season knows that sometimes we do exactly what happened to the game and sometimes we do something wildly different,” he said.
“We also don’t necessarily do things in the same order, or at the same time… people understood watching the show that this was a story where people aren’t safe.
“As for backlash, sometimes it’s hard to tell the different between emotion because they care and backlash. But neither I nor Neil make things with that in mind. There are also times during the season where we think they’re probably gonna be annoyed with us, but later they’ll get it.”
You can find out more about who we’re expecting to play Abby in The Last of Us Season 2 here, and everything we know about the second season here.