Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: the last of us

The Last of Us Season 2 Designers Discuss Developing The Scars Look

The Last of Us designers Barrie Gower and Ann Foley discuss developing the look of The Scars for the second season of the HBO series.

As new seeds for the story were laid in season two for The Last of Us in "The Path", following the second episode "Through the Valley," a watershed moment in the franchise that saw original protagonist Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) dying at the hands of a vengeful Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever) and her group. She lucked out after stumbling upon Joel, who helped her escape from a fungal horde. She subsequently led him and Dina (Isabella Merced) to her trap. As Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina set off on their journey to avenge Joel's death, they stumble upon a new group, which was introduced in 2020's Part II, the Scars. Tasked with developing their look are prosthetics designer Barrie Gower and costume designer Ann Foley, who spoke with Variety on how they would appear on TV. The following contains minor spoilers.

The Last of Us Designers on Developing the Look of the Religious Group, the Scars

The Scars, which are also more commonly known to The Last of Us game fans as The Seraphites, are a primitivist cult and antagonistic faction in Part II who are at war with the Washington Liberation Front, which we also find out more about in the HBO series as Dina shares with Ellie on who was responsible for Joel's murder. As we're introduced to the group, they're walking on a path before Ellie and Dina find them murdered later in the episode, likely from an ambush of gunfire.

Gower and Foley distinguished the adults and children of the group, where kids under 12 wouldn't have the scarring of their adult counterparts. The designers started doing tests to find a "very clean" look. "They're very thin and delicate prosthetic appliances which are made out of a paste, which is the actual adhesive that we glue a lot of prosthetics on with, but it's whipped up in a food mixer and thickened," Gower said. "By sculpting various different shapes and sizes and splitting a couple into two pieces, we're able to sculpt lots of generic pieces and mix and match them with different performers."

Gower tried four variations of scarring. "We did what's known as the inverted scar, so it's a depression of the skin. We also tried a raised keloid scarring as well, which is a bit of a departure from what we see in the game," he said. As far as the ponchos the Scars wore, "The idea with the ponchos was, 'Maybe they took this off an old boat and then they created these waterproof ponchos for themselves.' It's all of this really great canvas that we found and then broke down," Foley said. "Some of that stuff was so stiff you could make a tent out of it. So we sent it to the stone washers and painted into it. The seraphite symbol on the back was all hand-painted by my crew."

For more on Gower and Foley talking about the need for the makeup and costumes to become flexible, especially in the elements and more, you can check out the whole interview. You can catch The Last of Us on Sundays on HBO and Max.

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