No Way Does ‘The Last Of Us’ Recast Bella Ramsey For Season 2

In the wake of HBO renewing The Last of Us for season 2, I’ve heard some amount of chatter from fans who believe Bella Ramsey will be replaced as Ellie.

This appears to be based on the idea that there’s a time jump between games, and Ellie grows up and changes quite a bit, physically, in the process.

And yet in practice, there’s a zero percent chance that Bellay Ramsey will be recast. Why? Here’s the math:

• The time difference between The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 is five years.
• So, Ellie starts as a 14 year-old and in the second game she’s 19.
• Bella Ramsey, though she make not look it, is currently 19. By the time season 2 starts shooting, she will actually be older than Ellie was in the game.

As for the physical difference, might I just say…who cares? Bella Ramsey already looks a lot different than game Ellie at baseline, which has not mattered at all given that she perfectly channels her personality and attitude. This is Hollywood. They’ll change her hair and wardrobe and she’ll look at least somewhat older, and it will be fine.

I suppose I understand why people are guessing this may happen, because we just watched HBO’s House of the Dragon recast its younger actresses mid-season with older versions of themselves. And yet, the difference there is that House of the Dragon takes place, in total, over 20+ years, and the first time jump they did was a full decade. Not to mention I actually didn’t love the fact that they did the recasting in the first place, as it was a bummer to lose those talented younger actresses.

Here, it’s a different situation. The time jump is not as severe, just five years, and Bella Ramsey is already the right age, which I think a lot of people don’t understand. They’ll make her look older than she does now, and it will all be fine. Abby, her rival, is meant to be in her early 20s, and will mark a brand new casting. Yesterday, I talked about the theory that The Wilds actress Shannon Berry may snag the role, but there’s still been nothing official about that. It’s also been proposed that the game actors who played Yara and Lev should maybe just reprise their roles, given how similar they look to the characters, unlike Ellie and Abby’s voice actresses.

As for Joel well, that’s a conversation for another day.

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