The Last Of Us season 2 casts its Abby

2023 has been an unbelievable year for TV, kicking off with HBO’s ground-breaking video-game adaption, The Last of Us.

The five-time Emmy Award nominee received critical acclaim, with a 96 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes thanks to its career-making performances, masterful story-telling, and utterly heartbreaking plots.

It’s no wonder HBO was so quick to renew the show for a second season, based on the follow-up game The Last of Us Part II.

Video game fanatics will already have a decent idea of what they can expect from season two but, if you’re sticking to the TV series and hoping to avoid spoilers, all you need to know is that your favourite post-apocalyptic drama is about to get a whole lot darker.

Not much can be done to make progress on season two right now, due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, but one thing that the TLOU team did manage to do before Hollywood shut down was cast their Abby.

For those unfamiliar, Abby Anderson is a key antagonist in The Last of Us Part II, who fans tend to either love or utterly despise.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, showrunner Craig Mazin confirmed that the infamous character had officially been cast.

“Once the series is back in production, key questions abound about the second season, such as who will play Abby, a new character who is a rival to Ellie,” LA Times’ Jordan Riefe writes, before noting: “The role has been cast, but Mazin isn’t dropping any spoilers.”

Mazin had hinted in an earlier interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Abby might have been scouted, and he sounded pretty confident with his team’s choice.

“The strike stopped us in our tracks. Things were in process. Look, Abby was the first role that we wanted to tackle,” he said.

“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.”

With no sign of the writer and actor strikes coming to an end, it could be a while before we find out who will be playing Abby. And while most fans are excited to see who was cast, others who are familiar with Abby’s storyline are worried for the actor.

“Scared for them honestly,” tweeted one concerned fan.

“I pray her heart is resilient and her social media is inaccessible to viewers,” commented a second.

And a third warned: “My girl will have to be the bravest soldier.”

Whoever has been cast as Abby will have plenty of time to mentally prepare for the daunting role, with production dates already being pushed back thanks to the strikes.

“I think it’s becoming essentially a near certainty that we won’t be able to start [filming] when we were hoping to start, which is upsetting,” Mazin told Entertainment Weekly last month.

“We are all raring to go. This is what we are born to do. This is how we not only choose to live our lives, but I believe [how we] are compelled to live our lives. Otherwise, why the hell would we do this insane job? I can assure you it’s not for money.”