The Last of Us Season 3 has made a major casting move, and it is shocking considering who the actress has been signed to portray. The series has mostly been consistently great on its casting, with Pedro Pascal fitting in perfectly as Joel and Bella Ramsey fitting in well for the role of Ellie. The third season will make a slight change to the story as it will mostly change over to Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby as the main character instead of Ellie, which is exactly what happened in the second video game as well. This forces the viewers into the shoes of someone who just killed a beloved character, and will show a different perspective on the story to this point.
With Abby comes some more characters, including Lev (Kyriana Kratter) and Yara (Michelle Mao), members of the Seraphites, a religious group in Seattle. In the game, they had a mother who was already dead and only appears as a corpse. However, Variety reports that Li Jun Li (Sinners) has been cast to play their mother, marking a change from the games.
Li Jun Li is coming off a breakout role in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which makes her casting for The Last of Us Season 3 a little confusing. In Sinners, Li played a shop worker who helped put together the opening night for Smoke and Stack’s juke joint before her husband was killed by the vampires and she sought to fight them all, setting off the climactic battle. This made her a huge fresh face in Hollywood, and she is following it up with a character in The Last of Us Season 3 who was only seen as a corpse in the video game. There is no way she follows up her breakout performance just playing a corpse.
In the third season of the HBO videogame adaptation, Li Jun Li plays Miriam, the mother of Lev and Yara. The announcement says that she is also a Seraphite, as her daughters were in the game. It also reveals that the kids will cross paths with Ellie as she starts seeking revenge in Seattle after Joel’s murder. In the game, the Seraphites were a brutal and violent cult in Seattle who are at war with the Washington Liberation Front for control of Seattle. That is where the two kids come into conflict with Abby, and eventually form a bond with her.
At the moment, it is unclear how big Li Jun Li’s role will be in The Last of Us Season 3. She will surely be more than a corpse, and it is likely that she will appear in flashback scenes as the series follows how Lev and Yara got to this point. She could be who explains the idea of the Seraphite Prophet to her kids, or in a possible change, she could be the Prophet who started everything, although that is simply speculation.
Li Jet Li joins an expanding The Last of Us Season 3 cast, that includes newcomers Jason Ritter (Hanley) and Patrick Wilson (Jerry), while Ariela Barer (Mel), Tati Gabrielle (Nora) and Spencer Lord (Owen) were all promoted to series regulars. New additions will be Clea DuVall as another member of the Seraphites, and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (who replaces Danny Ramirez as Manny).
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