LOOK: First glimpse at 'The Last of Us' season 2 shows Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal returning as Ellie and Joel
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are back as Joel and Ellie!
HBO gave a first look at the two actors in the upcoming season of the hit series The Last of Us.
In its post to social media, it also announced that season 2 is now in production and will stream in 2025.
"I swear," Pedro captioned in his post.
"I'll follow you anywhere you go," wrote Bella.
So far, the cast of The Last of Us season 2 includes Pedro, Bella, Gabriel Luna as Joel's brother Tommy, Rutina Wesley as Maria, Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, Spencer Lord as Owen, and Danny Ramirez as Manny.
The HBO series is a post-apocalyptic drama following Joel, a smuggler tasked to take teenager Ellie across the United States in the hopes of finding a cure to fight the mutated fungus causing humans to become cannibalistic monsters.
The first season of the game tackled the events of the first Last of Us game, which was first released in 2013. The second season, however, won't cover the whole 2020-dropped Last of Us Part II game, series creator and game creative director Neil Druckmann told GQ Magazine in March 2023.
"[The second game will take] more than one season," he said. "I think it's exciting because [the show] leans into those feelings you had from the game, really heavily, in a new way."
The upcoming season will also see a time jump as the 14-year-old Ellie will be 19 at the time the show picks up again. Bella said in an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023 that the character would be closer to her real age.
"I'll be 20, probably by the time we shoot that, and I'll be playing 19. So yeah, I will be closer to my age," they said.
Showrunner Craig Mazin told Collider that this time jump is important as "it reflects the changing nature of Ellie's relationship with Joel, as she gets older."