If you’re reading MiscelAna for the first time and don’t know about my obsession and knowledge of Game of Thrones, you may have suspected how much I like actress Bella Ramsey, who I’ve been following and highlighting in series like Becoming Elizabeth. The actress who debuted in her career as the unforgettable Lady Lyanna Mormont was chosen to star in one of the great anticipated successes of HBO, the adaptation of the famous game The Last of Us for the screen. Bella is Ellie, the big star of the story and on whose shoulders the entire plot will eventually be driven. A huge burden for such a young actress. There are already those who doubt that he will be able to pass the test with flying colors, is it?

The Last of Us, sorry for the simplification, is sort of HBO’s version of Fox/Disney’s The Walking Dead. Fans of The Walking Dead underscore the brilliance of the series’ storytelling, which ran for 12 years and 11 seasons with a seemingly unique theme, which follows survivors of a plague that infested the Earth with zombies who fight each other to follow their paths, lives, but human nature usually is even more monstrous in its nature than those infected by the deadly virus. The Last Of Us has many parallels, a fungus pandemic has practically annihilated human life and the survivors do what they can to “get on with their lives”. The difference lies in the small hope of a cure, in teenager Ellie, the only one immune to the fungus. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but we’ll try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible.

The main spoiler is that Joel Miller, lived by Pedro Pascal, paid to transport Ellie to the group that is working on the cure, becomes attached to the girl and when he discovers that they are going to kill her to do the tests, Joel kills all the doctors and saves the young woman, whom she treats like a daughter. This will be the end of season 1, just like the game was. The problem is that right at the beginning of the second part of the story comes the twist that will leave Ellie/Bella exposed: Joel will be brutally murdered in front of her.

Before that, Joel and Ellie would have fought because she would accept dying to save the world and Joel lied to her saying that they tried the cure and failed. When she discovers the truth, Ellie separates from him, almost becomes food for cannibals, finds new friends, falls in love, and finally surrenders to look for Joel, her “father”, who is in danger. Is that Abby Anderson, the daughter of one of the Firefly doctors killed by the smuggler, Jerry Anderson, swears revenge for her father. Abby and her friends track down Joel and effectively kill him, brutally, in a scene reminiscent of the death of Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) in The Walking Dead. Now it is Ellie, traumatized, who swears revenge and from then on, the two young women will live a cat-and-mouse sequence, with fights, dramas, redemption, and dangers. That is, without Pedro Pascal, Bella will be the biggest star of The Last of Us. Complicated.

It’s impossible not to think about what it would be like remembering that before becoming a series, the game was going to be turned into a movie and Maisie Williams, from Game of Thrones, was the favorite to play Ellie. Maisie already showed as Arya Stark, a character who was the mirror of Ellie, the dramatic potential for the plot while Bella Ramsey did well in Game of Thrones, but never as a protagonist. The Last of Us still hasn’t demanded a reaction from her other than the typical angry, know-it-all teenager, it will take more for us to connect with her (I’m betting Episode 4 is the one that will reassure us).

Therefore, the real challenge for Bella Ramsey will be even when the series “loses” Pedro Pascal, at the beginning of Season 2. They still haven’t announced who will be Abbie, but she is an important casting for the franchise because, in her early 20s, she is incredibly strong, a determined and brutal leader, moving between being the villain and the unwitting girl. Among those quoted to play Abbie are award-winning stars like Julia Garner, Thomasin McKenzie, Erin Kellyman, Shannon Berry, Peyton List and some say, amazingly, no longer Maisie Williams, but Sophie Turner, who played Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones. The big favorite on this list is Shannon Berry, who looks just like the character from the game. Speculation only grows…