Tommy was introduced in season one — before the outbreak and the ensuing apocalypse — as a war veteran with some serious issues. How did the end of the world ultimately reshape him?
He did his time in the service, and took pride in what it means to be a soldier — but he also takes pride in rebuilding as a man, away from combat. You already see him [in season one] reassembling himself and the shards of your own soul that you might lose in combat. But you see him have to revert immediately back to that when the whole world ends, and there you are with your brother trying to keep your family safe and fight your way out.
Then, the 20-year gap that happens before we meet again, there’s a rift between Joel [Pedro Pascal] and I because of our different ways that we survive and tend to live our lives . . . You can see that he’s retrieved most of those shards of his soul.
Viewers certainly struggled to accept Joel’s shocking death in episode two. How does Tommy reckon with it?
Putting together this community with his wife, Maria [Rutina Wesley] . . . we’ve created something that has some semblance of life, not just constantly fighting. That beautiful journey of just expanding and building — and not hiding — is the tragedy of Tommy’s story. Because once I lose my brother and set out on this “wheel of violence” that Neil [Druckmann, game and series creator] describes, it’s just the inertia of momentum — the drive to do that splinters everybody apart, which is an entire family. My surrogate niece, this person who now has become my surrogate daughter . . . [Tommy’s mission is] to bring her back, to speak sense to her — but we only fuel each other’s journey of revenge. It becomes destructive in every way.
This is an interesting “revenge story,” because as much as we love him, we also know that what Joel did last season — killing the Fireflies, killing any hope of a cure, in order to save Ellie [Bella Ramsey] — was an atrocity. His killer, Abby [Kaitlyn Dever], had her own right to revenge . . .
In this season, we’re very much the heroes and you very much side with us. We’ve grown to love Joel. We know what he’s dealt with, losing [his biological daughter] Sarah. We know what I’ve dealt with in building my family. But Abby doesn’t know us. Abby’s family, the people she loves, don’t know us. To them, I’m the boogeyman. When I go to Seattle, leaving this trail of dead . . . through their eyes, I’m the bad guy. It’s very nuanced, the way that Neil writes. Tommy, the same things that he struggled to forgive Joel for, why he left Joel to begin with, are the same atrocities that I’m gonna commit as I go on this journey. So, who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong?
It’s not often that a show kills off its main character. What was it like for you all taking the baton from Pedro?
In the third episode, after he’s murdered, there’s a scene where we have our own makeshift morgue in our mess hall. I walk in, in what essentially amounts to this one-man wake, and I speak to my brother and say, “I know what you want to know. She’s OK. I promise I’ll take care of her.” And I remember thinking, “Wow, that felt, in the moment, like this analogy for the show itself.” Because [Pedro has] done such a beautiful job making the audience love that character. And at that point, there’s certainly a handoff to Bella to carry the story forward.
The season finale of The Last of Us airs Sunday, May 25, on HBO Canada
MEMORABLE ROLES:
Gabriel Luna first roared onto our screens in 2016 as flame-skulled antihero Ghost Rider in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He later made his mark on another mega-franchise, playing the robot assassin in 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate — soon after reteaming with co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger for Netflix action comedy FUBAR.
CURRENT GIG:
Since 2023, the native of Austin, Texas, has played post-apocalyptic survivor Tommy Miller on HBO’s zeitgeist-throttling video game adaptation The Last of Us. Wrapping season two tonight, Tommy — still grieving the murder of his brother Joel (Pedro Pascal) — now fights to protect his vengeful adopted niece Ellie (Bella Ramsey), from both her enemies and herself.