Ever since The Last of Us began, there has been a certain contingent of game-playing fans who believed that Bella Ramsey was going to be recast as Ellie for season 2 of the show.
The justification there was that since there is a five year time jump between the games (and seasons), that Bella would be too young, and that they (Bella has previously said their pronouns are she/they) wouldn’t be able to convey the overwhelming physical violence that comes with the season 2 version of Ellie, hellbent on a revenge quest.
Not that many people are saying that anymore.
First of all, this never made sense, and there were never any official indications that HBO or the showrunners ever planned to recast Bella Ramsey in season 2. Ramsey, like everyone else, celebrated the early renewal of the show and talked about how they were eager to continue.
As for their age, it seems most people don’t understand that while Ramsey is playing a 14 year old version of Ellie, they’re 19 in real life, and by the time season 2 of The Last of Us airs, they will actually be older than the character of Ellie was in the second game.
Then, as for whether or not they’d be capable of dishing out the extreme violence that we see Ellie exact in the second game, well, do I have an episode to show you. Episode 8 serves as a preview of just how brutal Ellie can be. They start by biting/breaking David’s finger, and then by the end, they’ve killed both James and David with a literal meat cleaver in a nearly 1:1 recreation of the sequence from the game.
The show has been working set up Ellie’s propensity for violence even more than the games, I’d argue, which I don’t believe actually had a full plan for the second game when the original was made, so they didn’t know where they’d take Ellie. But they have absolutely planted the seeds for Ellie to become a hardened killer (though one you’re still mostly rooting for) in the future seasons of the show, where we’ve heard the second game will be split into season 2 and season 3.
There is zero question, absolutely none, that Bella Ramsey will be returning for season 2 of The Last of Us. They will likely change their hair and clothes and they’ll age them up a bit to look less like a 14 year old and more like their actual age, but it will be them. The biggest open question is who will play their rival, the bursting-with-muscle Abby, and how the two of them will feel squaring off in combat. Which I cannot wait to see.
Update (3/8): For those still questioning whether or not Bella will be back, here’s an interview with W which talks about the process of separating from the character now that filming has wrapped:
“It was very much like a grieving process,” they say. “When I [first] got home, I found it difficult to settle back into being just Bella and speaking with a British accent again.”
That’s not permanent, however, as the interview goes on to talk about the time between seasons 1 and 2, and how Bella hasn’t acted in anything since season 1 wrapped filming, but will:
“Before the already announced season two begins filming, they’ll dive into some other roles they can’t quite disclose yet. They think time away from Ellie will do them good. “The Last of Us is still the only thing I’m thinking about,” they say. “I have such withdrawal symptoms from set.” Ellie will, of course, eventually be back on screens, as will Ramsey—authentic as always.”
It remains to be seen what kind of physical transformation Bella will undergo for season 2. It’s true that in the game, the new Ellie is taller, more muscular and hardened from the events of the first the game. In the post-show podcast the showrunners talk about how what happened in the last episode will change Ellie forever.
I don’t know if the show will be overly concerned about changing Bella’s look. Again, Bella already looks a lot different than Ellie at baseline, which has been totally fine, and outside of perhaps adopting Ellie’s shorter haircut, I’m not sure it’s terribly important for them to like hit the gym or something so she sports Ellie’s tank tops in the second game. Abby, on the other hand, will need an actress that embodies that level of physicality, given that she’s one of the most swole video game characters out there, and it would be hard to lose that aspect of the character entirely.
Update (3/9): Things have taken a new turn in the quest to find who would play Bellay Ramsey’s rival, Abby, in season 2 of The Last of Us. While fans have been talking about The Wilds actress Shannon Berry for a long while now, whose face, at least, looks close to identical to Abby’s, I’ve heard a new name come up in conversation. Though one I would consider less plausible.
That would be Emma D’Arcy, who like Bella, is a non-binary actress and is also...attached to an HBO Game of Thrones series. D’Arcy currently plays Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon. Fans believe that both D’Arcy has the right look to play Abby, and they know that HBO tends to favor their own veteran actors a lot of the time.
I would, however, probably be remiss if I didn’t throw cold water on this idea to a certain extent. While yes, I do believe D’Arcy has “the look” for the part, as I’ve said previously, HBO has also shown they’re not terribly concerned with characters looking identical to their game counterparts, as evidenced with Bella, which has worked out great.
Second, D’Arcy is 30, a full decade older than Bella, and the two are supposed to be somewhat close to the same age in the game, with Ellie being 19 and Abby being in her early 20s at most. This is important given the age the two were for the events in the finale of the first game. I suppose D’Arcy could play younger but that’s...a lot younger.
Third, D’Arcy is still actively starring in House of the Dragon. This is not like Bella, whose Game of Thrones days are in the past. While we do see Pedro Pascal doing double duty in The Mandalorian and The Last of Us, two of the biggest shows on TV, at the same time, doing so created a Mandalorian delay, plus he doesn’t always have to be under that helmet. I don’t think that HBO would want to screw up either House of the Dragon or The Last of Us timing by committing D’Arcy to both shows.
So in my mind, this is not just a longshot, but it’s almost impossible. While yes, it’s true that casting Abby to play properly off of Ellie is probably one of the most important aspects of season 2, unlike Shannon Berry, and as much as I do like D’Arcy, I cannot see this one happening.
I do wonder if the show is going to go widely outside the box and cast an athlete, not an actor, given the pure physicality of Abby. While yes, actresses could undergo training to bulk up for the role, Abby is based on CrossFit superathlete Colleen Fotsch, which makes me wonder if the show will cast a really, really wide net for the part rather than picking an actress with a similar face and then sending them to the gym to start power lifting. But no official word on any of this yet, as ever.
