The Last Of Us Season 2 Premiere Cameo Everyone Missed
Stop reading right now if you haven't watched "The Last of Us" Season 2 Episode 1, "Future Days." Spoilers lie ahead!
In the premiere of "The Last of Us" Season 2, we reconnect with Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and his surrogate daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey) — the duo we followed during the show's first season who started as strangers and became chosen family — and we learn that they've settled in the heavily armed and protected settlement of Jackson, Wyoming. As the cordyceps virus still rages across the globe, surviving humans have to make the most of what's left of the world they once knew ... and in "Future Days," we see a small expression of joy. Specifically, the town of Jackson throws a New Year's party to ring in 2029, and Ellie, who's currently at odds with Joel (though we don't know why yet), reluctantly attends the festivities with her friends Jesse (Young Mazino) and Dina (Isabela Merced).
Things turn sour quickly — and we'll return to that — but as the band plays and the people of Jackson dance, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Gustavo Santaolalla, who composed the music for the show and for both of the original video games created by Naughty Dog. (He's in the band, unsurprisingly; the camera lingers on him ever-so-briefly, but he's definitely there!) Santaolalla is an extremely accomplished and respected composer; aside from his work on "The Last of Us," Santaolalla has composed scores for films like "21 Grams," "Brokeback Mountain" (which won him an Oscar for best original score), "Babel" (which won him a second Oscar in the same category), and "On the Road." His digital likeness also appears in "The Last of Us Part II" in the same scene (meaning, the celebration in Jackson).
Gustavo Santaolalla appears in an extremely important scene in the Last of Us Season 2 premiere
As it happens, the scene where Gustavo Santaolalla makes a cameo is the final one in "Future Days," the episode that brings audiences back to the world of "The Last of Us" after a two-year break (Season 1 premiered and concluded back in 2023). Again, there's a pretty clear wedge between Ellie and Joel in this premiere, taking that emotional connection away from both of them; interestingly, both of them turn to Dina for companionship (Bella and Ellie, who are close in age, are friends, and Joel and Dina watch movies together and work on repairing things in and around Jackson).
We know, from Season 1, that Ellie is canonically queer; in a flashback, we see young love blossom between Ellie and her friend Riley (Storm Reid) before Riley is killed by an infected zombie and Ellie is bitten. (This is also the moment where Ellie finds out she's immune to the virus.) There's definitely a spark between Dina and Ellie, and after a little liquid courage, Dina invites Ellie to dance with her, and the two kiss. Unfortunately, a Jackson denizen named Seth (Robert John Burke) is offended by their public display of affection, using a homophobic slur to insult the pair ... at which point Joel springs into action and attacks Seth on Ellie and Dina's behalf. This only makes Ellie angrier, and she storms out of the dance, leaving everyone behind.
As Season 2 of "The Last of Us" progresses, we'll have to wait and see what happens with Dina and Ellie — and hopefully, we'll learn what's going on between Ellie and Joel too. "The Last of Us" airs new episodes on Sunday nights at 9 P.M. EST on Max and HBO.