Yahoo News Gabriel Luna is already thinking about The Last of Us season 2: 'I've pitched a few ideas'
Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Last of Us season 1, episode 6.
Gabriel Luna was preparing for The Last of Us season 2 before he even started filming the role of Tommy in the premiere. HBO didn't renew the series until the ratings proved strong after the second episode, but Luna had played both of the acclaimed video games that spawned the popular apocalyptic drama and knew what was coming.
"When I played the games, I experienced the story as one big chunk, one unified story. So I was just as much prepping for Part II as I was for the work that was immediately on hand," Luna tells EW in an interview. "I'm fully... Yeah, I'm ready."
The actor says he even ran some things by showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann about Tommy in season 2. "I've pitched a few ideas to Craig and Neil about what we could explore, considering we can bubble out to certain pockets of the story that we don't get to experience in the game," he says. "So we'll see what they have in store, but I was ready before we shot the first frame of [season 1] for Part II. I'm excited to get into that work."
Season 1 of The Last of Us, which just aired its sixth episode on Sunday, is based on 2013's The Last of Us. Mazin and Druckmann have said these first nine episodes will adapt the main events of that game, while season 2 will tackle material from 2020's The Last of Us Part II. Without getting into spoilers, Druckmann, who also co-created the source material, has said he received death threats and online harassment over the twists of that sequel — and Tommy has a significant role to play.
Liane Hentscher/HBO Gabriel Luna in season 1, episode 6 of 'The Last of Us'
Audiences first met Luna's version of the character on HBO's The Last of Us adaptation amid the chaos of outbreak day in the premiere episode. Joel's brother and a vet of the U.S. Army, Tommy doesn't resurface until episode 6, which fills in some gaps about what the brothers were up to over the previous two decades.
After Sarah's death, Tommy convinced Joel to join a group heading towards Boston to secure access in one of the FEDRA quarantine zones. During that time, the brothers committed certain atrocities in order to survive. Luna describes those acts as "spirit-damaging." They killed people, but Tommy, Luna says, "couldn't let that stand. It's just not who he is. He couldn't kill selfishly like that."
While the world of The Last of Us is incredibly detailed, Luna felt Mazin and Druckmann were leaving him to imagine Tommy's backstory in this time off-screen. He always saw those atrocities as creating the wedge between the siblings.
"As they get to Boston, when it only increases the violence, increases the mistrust, he had to find somewhere to apply his skill and his need to fight, to restore life and joy and the reasons for living, not just survival," Luna muses. "So, in my mind, he joins the Fireflies, and he realizes at some point that the killing doesn't cease. In fact, it probably increased exponentially."
According to Luna, he and his costar Merle Dandridge, who plays the role of Marlene, leader of the Fireflies rebel group, had conversations about the relationship between their characters. "In my mind, he and Marlene probably had a little thing going and it probably didn't end well when she, of course, has so much responsibility as the leader of the Fireflies in the Boston QZ. I think that might have been the straw that sent Tommy on his own way," Luna explains. "There's only so many times you can wake up every morning to see the woman you love and not be able to make it work."
Joel finally reunites with Tommy in Jackson, Wyo., where his younger brother has found his purpose in a thriving commune led by Maria (Rutina Wesley), a former assistant district attorney from Omaha. Tommy and Maria are now married and expecting their first child, the news of which is difficult for Joel to hear, given his constant PTSD over the death of his own daughter years earlier.
Liane Hentscher/HBO Tommy (Gabriel Luna) reunites with his brother Joel (Pedro Pascal) in 'The Last of Us'
Jasmila Zbanic, the director of the episode, brought Luna and Pascal to a small frontier town in Calgary a day before filming Tommy and Joel's barroom confrontation. They rehearsed the scene for a full day. Luna says he felt the same as when he was performing theater in Austin as a younger actor.
"In that session, Pedro and I completely rewrote the scene. We didn't change a single letter. We just restructured the way that this scene unfolds," Luna recalls. "Craig being the mensch and the incredible artist that he is, he was like, 'This is better.' It made it feel right in terms of the way we hit each of these beats: how I eventually build the courage to stand up to [Joel] and tell him the truth and tell him what is an extremely joyful thing for me but potentially a very hurtful thing for him to hear, that I was gonna be a father. That was pretty much the only scene on the slate that whole day. It was just Pedro and I being brothers and doing what brothers do: laughing, joking, needling each other, and eventually fighting."
To comment on what comes next, especially after Ellie is left alone in the wild with a severely injured (and possibly dead) Joel at the end of episode 6, would be to wade too deep into that other River of Death (i.e. spoilers). But Luna is visibly excited at the thought of what's to come for his character down the line.
Now a fan of the games, he taught himself how to play some of the songs heard in those PlayStation releases on the guitar, including Pearl Jam's wrenching "Future Days" from Part II. "I played that Pearl Jam number a few times on set when we were there," he says.
"Bella is a great musician herself. She's just a phenomenal singer-songwriter," he adds, offering some comfort for fans of Ellie's guitar skills in Part II. "She and I would jam."
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
