Posted in: HBO, Max, TV | Tagged: HBO, max, preview, season 2, the last of us

The Last of Us: Kaitlyn Dever Gets Warm "Abby" Welcome From Bailey

The Last of Us video game actor Laura Bailey offered Kaitlyn Dever a warm welcome to the role of Abby for the HBO series' second season.

On Tuesday, fans of Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann's Pedro Pascal (Joel) & Bella Ramsey (Bella)-starring The Last of Us received two bits of very good news. First, Pascal put to rest concerns that the sling he's been sporting and the surgery he needs at the end of the month won't impact his filming of the second season. Following that, we learned that Kaitlyn Dever (No One Will Save You, Last Man Standing) will be taking on the key role of Abby – a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved. Not long after the news officially hit (there had been some rumblings for weeks), Dever got a warm welcome from none other than the actor who portrayed Abigail "Abby" Anderson from the popular video game franchise Laura Bailey. "Huge congrats, Kaitlyn! So excited to see Abby's evolution in your performance!" Bailey wrote – before making Dever an offer. "Let me know if you want a workout buddy," Bailey added.

Here's a look at Bailey's post – followed by a look back at what Mazin had to share about the second season heading into last fall:

The Last of Us: Craig Mazin on Season 2 & Beyond

In an interview with Variety from Summer 2023, Mazin discussed how a 2025 debut for the second season was still workable (depending on when the then-ongoing SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes would end), confirmed that Season 3 will happen (as long as the viewers keep watching), and addressed the possibility of familiar faces returning in flashbacks (and why they have no plans to mess with that "beautiful" episode).

"The Last of Us" Could Still Make Its 2025 Delivery Date – For Now: "We had a little more flexibility, I think, than normally just because we had to wait a little bit longer any way to line up production with the weather. A lot of what we do is outside, and so we had a schedule that weirdly hasn't been immediately impacted. But we're getting pretty close; we can't keep our original start dates forever, obviously. If these strikes go much longer, we inevitably will have to push, and that hurts us, and it hurts the audience, and it hurts HBO. We all, everybody wants to get back to work; I think everybody that's actually doing the work, including the network people who are with us on the ground, I think everybody just wants to get this solved. So fingers crossed."

"The Last of Us" Season 3 Will Happen As Long As Viewers Keep Watching: "It's going to be more than one season. There's more story, so this show will not end with Season 2 unless people don't watch it, and we'll get canceled. Barring that, we will be doing some things exactly the way they were in the game. We're going to do other things that are in the game, and we're gonna do some things that are in the game, but we're gonna do them differently in our own method. No matter if you have played the game or not. You will be surprised as the season unfolds. We have some interesting twists and turns."

Could Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid & Others Return via Flashbacks? "There's always a chance for everything. With us, you never know, and we obviously don't confine ourselves by timelines. People who are dead sometimes reappear, and sometimes we meet people that we didn't even know, and then we find out that they are somebody."

Mazin on Why There Won't Be Another Bill (Nick Offerman) & Frank (Murray Bartlett) Episode: "What you won't see is, for instance, another very special episode with Bill and Frank; we aren't going to milk it. When we do something that we think is beautiful, we let it be as it is and find other beautiful things to do."

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