John Goodman has joined The Last Of Us cast for Season 3, along with Ian Alexander and Laura Bailey. The three additions push the HBO series closer to the video game world it has already mined for live-action casting, and they arrive with Season 3 scheduled to premiere in 2027.
Goodman, Alexander, Bailey
Goodman will play Joey in The Last of Us, while Alexander will play Paco and Bailey will play Elizabeth. Joey and Paco are a friendly duo who call themselves “Heroes of the Highway,” a detail that gives the new casting a clear comic and character-driven lane inside a series that has mostly treated each season like a major narrative reset.
Alexander previously voiced Lev in The Last of Us: Part II, and Bailey previously voiced Abby in The Last of Us: Part II. Bailey’s move back into the property matters because she now plays Elizabeth in the live-action series, while Kaitlyn Dever already plays Abby in the same version. That split keeps the casting tied to the game without making the live-action roles a one-to-one copy of the source material.
HBO and Naughty Dog
HBO has already used this model before. Merle Dandridge reprised Marlene, the head of the Fireflies resistance movement, and Jeffrey Wright reprised Isaac Dixon, the leader of the WLF militia in Seattle. Ashley Johnson also appeared in the Season 1 finale as Ellie’s mom, after voicing Ellie in the games. The pattern shows a series willing to use familiar voices where the adaptation can absorb them.
The series itself was co-created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, and it draws from Naughty Dog’s game universe rather than copying it scene for scene. Season 2 picked up five years after the events of the first season, and the next season is expected to focus on Abby Anderson’s arc, which makes the arrival of Bailey especially notable even though the source does not spell out how Elizabeth fits into that structure.
Season 3 in 2027
Season 3 is scheduled to premiere in 2027, giving HBO a long runway to shape the cast around an arc that has not been publicly detailed. Casey Bloys said Mazin has planned it as the final season after HBO’s 21 Emmy wins, so the new additions now read as part of the endgame rather than a routine refresh.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: the live-action series is leaning harder into the game’s casting DNA, but the plot still has not been laid out. The unanswered piece is how Goodman’s Joey, Alexander’s Paco, and Bailey’s Elizabeth will fit into Abby Anderson’s season-long path.
