If a single first-look photo from the upcoming HBO series The Last of Us riled up the internet earlier this summer, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that a 30-second preview would have fans hyped up to a point where they’re losing their collective minds.
Based on the 2013 PlayStation video game of the same name, The Last of Us is set in a post-apocalyptic America and follows Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler tasked to safely escort a 14-year-old girl named Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey) out of a quarantined area filled with humans infected by a mutating fungal virus.
The Last of Us preview that debuted on Sunday (August 21) was edited out of a longer trailer featuring all of HBO’s series. It opens with Joel leading Ellie across a snow-covered bridge over a body of water. Joel is wearing a brown coat and carrying a brown backpack, a rifle, and other supplies. Ellie is following close behind him in a blue coat and beige beanie. The pine trees surrounding them are filled with thick snow.
The scene cuts to the duo inside a building with its windows covered by sheets of newspaper. There, Joel shows Ellie how to hold a gun. “Everybody I’ve ever cared for, has either died or left me,” Ellie says as the scene transitions to what we can speculate is a shot of Joel running with his terrified daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) in his arms at the start of the apocalypse.
“You have no idea what loss is,” Pedro Pascal’s Joel responds. The trailer then cuts to a series of quick scenes where audiences see Ellie holding a knife and firing a gun and a scene where some creepy-looking fungus is growing on a wall. Viewers also get a quick glimpse of actor Nick Offerman (Pam & Tommy) playing a survivalist named Bill.
The preview doesn’t give fans a peek at actor Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate) as Joel’s younger brother Tommy, but there are still a few months to go before the series premieres. In July, HBO and HBO Max’s Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys revealed that The Last of Us would be released “closer to early 2023” instead of later this year, as earlier reports suggested.