John Goodman Joins The Last of Us as a Highway Hero

HBO cast John Goodman in The Last of Us season 3 on September 26, the in-world date of the cordyceps outbreak. He plays Joey, one half of a new pair that calls itself the Heroes of the Highway.

Ian Alexander plays Paco. Laura Bailey, who voiced Abby in the games, plays Elizabeth, one of the leaders of the Seraphites. The names look like a prestige drop. The jobs sketch two geographies the next season has to occupy: a road the games never named, and the island faith that turns Seattle into a two-front war.

The Highway Pair HBO Just Invented

Joey and Paco are original. They do not appear in the 2013 game or in The Last of Us Part II. HBO describes them only as a “friendly duo” who gave themselves that highway nickname, and it listed Goodman in a guest slot rather than as a series regular.

A self-branded rescue act is a loaded object in this world. Strangers who smile on a ruined road have been bait before, and the show has already trained viewers to wait for the knife. Pairing Goodman, still fresh off The Righteous Gemstones, with Alexander, who is decades younger, also gives the season a father-and-kid shape it can park anywhere between Jackson and the coast.

THE SEPTEMBER 26 BOOKINGS

That road pairing is connective tissue. Season 3 is built on the back half of Part II, which lives in Seattle, so a named highway act is how you get people from one sealed community to another without a title card. It is also the first clear sign that Craig Mazin’s room is writing scenes Naughty Dog never staged.

Bailey Now Ranks With the Seraphites

Elizabeth is not a walk-on. HBO placed Bailey among the leaders of the Seraphites, the strict religious group that holds an island settlement and fights the Washington Liberation Front in Seattle. In Part II she spent years as Abby, a WLF soldier who raids that island and later flees it with two Seraphite siblings. On television those raids belong to Kaitlyn Dever. Bailey now wears the other uniform.

Putting the performer who originated Abby inside the faith Abby fought is a faction joke with a job attached. Season 2 already made Dever the face of that revenge arc. Season 3 has to make the island feel like a government, not a mob of extras with shaved heads, and a named leader is how a TV show does that. Peter Sarsgaard is already booked as Amon, another Seraphite leader created for the series, which means Elizabeth is joining a council, not replacing one.

Bailey has been in this adaptation once already. She voiced a nurse in the first game and appeared in that part in the season 1 finale, a small in-joke that now looks like a trial run. The new role is the opposite of a cameo. It plants her in the plot engine of Abby’s year in Seattle, on the side that will have to justify the island’s laws, punishments, and war.

Game Voices Keep Arriving Under New Names

HBO has been folding Naughty Dog’s performers into the series since season 1, sometimes as the same people, often as someone else. Bailey and Alexander are the first pair to walk in as the two leads of Part II’s second half and then get handed different names, different factions, and no path back to the parts they made famous.

Alexander had been the obvious live-action Lev for anyone who wanted the game’s trans kid played by the same actor. That part went to Kyriana Kratter after a wide search, and Alexander is now riding shotgun as Paco. The booking still keeps the original Lev in the building. It also closes the door players kept hoping would reopen.

THE GAME CAST ON HBO

• Merle Dandridge: Reprised Marlene, leader of the Fireflies, in live action after originating her in the games.
• Jeffrey Wright: Reprised Isaac Dixon, commander of the WLF, and is set for more of that command in season 3.
• Ashley Johnson: Originated Ellie, then played Ellie’s mother, Anna, in the season 1 finale.
• Troy Baker: Originated Joel, then played James, the cannibal lieutenant, in season 1.
• Laura Bailey: Originated Abby, appeared as a nurse in season 1, and now plays Seraphite leader Elizabeth.
• Ian Alexander: Originated Lev and now plays Paco, an original highway survivor, while Kratter plays Lev.
• Jason Ritter: Played a clicker in season 1 and returns as WLF soldier Hanley.

The pattern used to feel like a salute. This round it is closer to a labor map. The people who already know Part II’s worst rooms are being asked to occupy the rooms next door, while the faces the series already sold as Abby and Lev stay locked to those names.

Mazin Is Writing Part II Without Druckmann

Neil Druckmann, who wrote and co-directed the games and co-ran the show, left after season 2. He stepped away in July 2025 to concentrate on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet at Naughty Dog, and the studio is not creatively involved in this season. Mazin is the sole showrunner for the first time. HBO renewed the series on April 9, 2025, days before season 2 premiered, and season 2 itself ended in May 2025.

The writers’ room still has a game credit in it. Ryan James, who worked on the games, stayed with Mazin alongside Alexandra Cheng. Halley Gross, who co-wrote Part II, left the room with Druckmann. That split is the quiet fact under every original name in this announcement. The highway pair, Amon, and Elizabeth are all new, and they are arriving in a season Druckmann hoped would stay “as deeply faithful” to the games as season 1.

You are denied your heroes and you’re denied your villains.

Craig Mazin, showrunner

He has described the Abby years as a bet on perspective, a refusal to hand the audience a clean hero. A guest star who nicknames himself a highway hero is either a joke at that line or a test of it. The louder objection around the booking is simpler: once the game’s writer is gone, original characters read as padding. The counter is already on the call sheet. The Seraphite bench is too large, and too specifically ranked, to be a detour.

Who Else Is Populating Seattle’s War

Season 3 follows Abby after she kills Joel, which means the WLF’s war with the Seraphites is the plot, not the scenery. Dever and Bella Ramsey both return, though Ellie is due for less time on camera because the viewpoint shifts. Gabriel Luna’s Tommy, a hero in Jackson for two seasons, becomes a threat in the stories other people tell about him. Isabela Merced returns as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac.

The WLF side is being rebuilt in the gaps. Spencer Lord, Tati Gabrielle, and Ariela Barer are now series regulars as Owen, Nora, and Mel. Jorge Lendeborg Jr. takes over Manny from Danny Ramirez, who left in December 2025 over scheduling. Patrick Wilson plays Jerry, Abby’s father, a part Darren Dolynski held for a flash in the season 1 finale. Jason Ritter’s Hanley adds another named soldier to Isaac’s ranks.

On the island, Michelle Mao plays Yara and Kratter plays Lev, the siblings who pull Abby into Seraphite life. Li Jun Li is Miriam, their mother. Clea DuVall is booked as a Seraphite without a public character name. Add Sarsgaard’s Amon and Bailey’s Elizabeth, and the faith that was a hostile environment in the game now has a leadership chart, a family, and guest stars. That is how you spend a season on Abby’s side without rushing her back to Ellie.

The source material for all of that is Part II Remastered PC features and the story they lock in: Seattle as a ruined city split between a militia in a football stadium and a religious colony that fights with bows. HBO is not hiding the destination. It is staffing both armies in public.

Maple Ridge Is Building the Island Now

Principal photography began March 2, 2026, in British Columbia under the working title Calm Current, and it is scheduled to finish on November 27. Dever was in Canada for prep in late January. Mazin directed early blocks to set the tone, with Vincenzo Natali, David Petrarca, Andrew Bernstein, and Hiromi Kamata taking later stretches. Ramsey was due to join around September, which puts Ellie’s smaller share of the season at the end of the shoot, not the start.

A 35-acre outdoor set went up near Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows with weathered buildings, boats, and blue screens. Local reporting treated it as a possible stand-in for Haven, the Seraphites’ island. Gastown and New Westminster doubled as ruined Seattle, including a WLF convoy and a stretch of BC Place dressed as the militia’s stadium. Production paused on June 1 for a break that ran seven weeks, then went back to Jackson Farm in Maple Ridge and to more Gastown nights.

THE CALM CURRENT SHOOT

1. April 9, 2025: HBO renews The Last of Us for a third season, days before season 2 airs.
2. July 2025: Druckmann leaves the series; Mazin remains as sole showrunner.
3. March 2, 2026: Filming starts in British Columbia under the title Calm Current.
4. March 30, 2026: Dever and Kratter shoot in Vancouver’s Gastown, including rooftop work.
5. June 1, 2026: The company takes a hiatus that stretches to seven weeks.
6. November 27, 2026: Photography is scheduled to wrap, with a 2027 premiere still the only air target.

HBO timed the Goodman news to September 26, which fans mark as Last of Us Day because that is when the outbreak peaks in the story. Naughty Dog kept its own calendar. The studio held the main Last of Us Day studio recap on September 28, with a No Return stream for the AbleGamers accessibility charity, new PlayStation avatars for the Seraphites and the WLF, and no comment on the TV casting. The split is neat. The game company celebrated the community. The network used the in-world anniversary to publish a call sheet.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The roles: Goodman is Joey, Alexander is Paco, and Bailey is Seraphite leader Elizabeth.
• The source: Season 3 adapts the second half of Part II from Abby’s side, with original characters added around that plot.
• The shoot: Cameras started March 2 and are due down November 27, aiming at a 2027 HBO premiere.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The air month: 2027 is the year, not a date, and HBO has not issued an episode count.
• The ending: Casey Bloys, HBO’s content chief, has said he believes Mazin “has planned it as the final season,” which is not a network confirmation.
• The highway plot: Joey and Paco have a nickname and no public function, and the Maple Ridge island set is still a local guess.

Goodman is the name that moves a Saturday press note. The season it points at is already in the mud in British Columbia, with Dever on rooftops, an island lot in Maple Ridge, and the woman who was Abby now listed among the people who run the island. The friendly pair on the highway will have to earn that title the hard way, because this show does not hand out heroes for free.