The Last of Us TV series: first official trailer drops at CCXP

Last Updated on December 5, 2022

We’re just over a month away from the January 15, 2023 premiere of the HBO series based on the hit video game The Last of Us, and HBO has finally revealed the full trailer, courtesy of a presentation at Brazil’s CCXP (Comic Con Experience) which has been absolutely loaded with exclusives and reveals dropping left and right. The much-anticipated first full look gives us a good idea of the chemistry between Pedro Pascal’s Joel, and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, along with a glimpse of the show’s scale which is said to be huge. I especiailly liked the use of A-Ha’s classic “Take On Me” (which seems to be sampled from a brilliant, stripped down version they performed on MTV Unplugged). The show comes from the man behind one of the greatest HBO limited series of all-time, Chernobyl, Craig Mazin. Whether or not the elevated vibe of that series will come into play here remains to be seen, but based on what we’ve seen so far, this looks to be going down a different artistic path than any of the Walking Dead series over on AMC. If anything, the show seems more influenced by Children of Men than anything else.

The cast of HBO’s The Last of Us is led by Pedro Pascal as Joel, who is “tormented by past trauma and failure. He must trek across a pandemic-ravaged America, all the while protecting a girl who represents the last hope of humanity”; Bella Ramsey as Ellie, “a 14-year-old orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet and who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging… as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world”; Anna Torv as Tess, “a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world”; Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, “a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world”; Merle Dandridge as Marlene, “the head of the Fireflies, a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime”; Nico Parker as Joel’s daughter Sarah; Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, “a rebel in a quarantine zone”; Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, “two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town”; Storm Reid as Ellie’s best friend Riley; and Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard as brothers Henry and Sam.

Mazin also serves as one of the directors on the series, along with Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole), Jasmila Zbanic (Quo vadis, Aida), Peter Hoar (Doctor Who), Jeremy Webb (The Punisher), Liza Johnson (What We Do in the Shadows), and the game’s creative director Neil Druckmann.

The Last of Us is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, and game developer Naughty Dog. Druckmann serves as executive producer alongside Carolyn Strauss, Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan of PlayStation Productions, and Mazin.

Check out some of the previously released Last of Us character posters below, and let us know in the comments what you think of the new trailer!