HBO’s The Last of Us was renewed for a second season late last month and while the first season of the wildly popular adaptation of the Naughty Dog video game of the same name is currently airing, series star Bella Ramsey already has words for trolls complaining about the show’s queer storylines: “they’re gonna have to get used to it.”
Speaking with GQ UK (via Variety) Ramsey, who plays Ellie and is themselves nonbinary, addressed the backlash about the show’s queer storylines in the first season and said that as the series continues, they’ll need to just deal with it because those are stories in the game as well.
“I’m not particularly anxious about it,” Ramsey said. “I know people will think what they want to think. But they’re gonna have to get used to it. If you don’t want to watch the show because it has gay storylines, because it has a trans character, that’s on you, and you’re missing out. It isn’t gonna make me afraid. I think that comes from a place of defiance”
Ramsey also told the magazine that they’ve visited the writers room for Season 2 and they think the series will continue to follow the storyline of the games. That would include seeing Ellie go on to have a relationship with a woman named Dina as well as the introduction of a transgender teenager named Lev.
“There are a few bits with Ellie on her own, probably, but I like the fact that she also has [Dina] now,” Ramsey said.
About HBO’s The Last of Us
Craig Mazin, the Emmy-winning creator of HBO’s Chernobyl, produced The Last of Us alongside Druckmann, the creator behind the hit video game series. In an interview earlier this year, the writer said The Last of Us is the “greatest” video game story ever told. “It’s an open-and-shut case: this is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games,” Mazin said in an interview with Empire Magazine. “[Joel and Ellie] didn’t shoot anything out of their eyeballs. They were just people. And that, in and of itself, is remarkably rare in games. The fact that they kept it so grounded, and really made you feel – I had never experienced anything like it, and I’ve been playing video games since 1977.”
Joining Pascal (Joel) and Ramsey (Ellie) include Gabriel Luna as Tommy, Anna Torv as Tess, Nico Parker as Sarah, Murray Bartlett as Frank, Nick Offerman as Bill, Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen, Storm Reid as Riley, Merle Dandridge as Marlene, Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, Lamar Johnson as Henry, Keivonn Woodard as Sam, Graham Greene as Marlon, and Elaine Miles as Florence. Original game stars Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker, having played the part of Ellie and Joel in both video games, are also set to appear.
Episodes of HBO’s The Last of Us air every Sunday.