The 81st edition of the world-famous Golden Globe Awards is not due for another 11 months, but the word around the campfire is the various television categories are already sewn up, despite us only being one and a half months into 2023. When they become available, the odds on the industry-leading Bovada sportsbook online are almost guaranteed to have The Last of Us as a lock to win everything there is to win in the various television categories.
HBO’s first series based on a video game is enjoying rave reviews. The joint production by Sony Picture Television, PlayStation Productions, the game’s developers Naughty Dog, the Mighty Mint, and Word Games has taken the world by storm. Not only does The Last of Us TV series replicate the award-winning video game perfectly, but it also has incredible writing and visuals in its own right. The first episode aired on January 15, 2023, and saw 4.7 million viewers on its first day. That viewership increased to 22 million within 12 days, and HBO wasted no time in renewing the series for a second season before January was done and dusted.
Lead Pair Are Phenomenal
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey had glowing reputations before being cast for The Last of Us. Pascal, best known for his roles in The Mentalist, Game of Thrones, Narcos, and The Mandalorian, is portraying The Last of Us lead character Joel to perfection. Anyone who has played the video game is delighted with how Pascal’s portrayal has remained true to Joel’s video game persona and how he is evolving the character on the big screen.
Ramsey, also of Game of Thrones fame, has been nothing short of incredible in her role as Ellie. Ramsey was chosen from over 105 fellow actresses for the role, and she is wowing viewers with her adaptation of the popular Ellie character, something Ramsey has managed to do despite having never played the video game on that the series is based upon.
What is The Last of Us?
The Last of Us is a 2013 action-adventure game with survival horror elements developed by Naughty Dog and released as a PlayStation exclusive. The series follows the path of the game but has a few deviations in how it reaches its conclusion. An outbreak of a mutated Cordyceps fungus has ravaged the world, turning human hosts into aggressive creatures known as the infected. Civilization falls, and survivors of the global pandemic live in totalitarian quarantine zones and independent settlements or remain nomadic and traverse the barren wastelands and decimated cities, hoping to survive.
Joel lives in one of the quarantine zones but regularly sneaks out and leaves as he is a smuggler. The Fireflies, a rebel group determined to overthrow the quarantine zone authorities, task Joel and his girlfriend, Tess (Anna Torv), with transporting the 14-year-old Ellie to the Fireflies’ headquarters in Massachusetts, which is way outside the quarantine zone. One of the infected bit Ellie three weeks ago, but she has not turned into one of them, despite this happening, usually within minutes or hours of being exposed, so it appears the youngster is immune to infection. The Fireflies believe Ellie could hold the key to a cure to the deadly outbreak and, therefore, a return to normality for the world.
Where is the Series At Now?
At the time of writing, five of the scheduled nine episodes of the fantastic television series have aired. The last episode aired, “Endure and Survive,” introduced viewers to a new type of infected that acts as a boss character in the game, “the Bloater.” The original costume for the Bloater cost a reported $500,000 to design and manufacture, although the producers used a green screen for the action shots. The CAFTCAD Awards has already nominated The Last of us for the Excellence in Crafts – Costume Illustration award for 2023, and we are only in February!
