Original Joel from ‘The Last of Us’ teases his appearance in next week’s episode

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us video game and potential spoilers for The Last of Us TV show.

More of the original The Last of Us cast will be making their way to the HBO series. Troy Baker, the voice actor behind Joel in the games, recently teased his upcoming appearance in episode eight and excitement is in the air to see this actor come to life on TV.

Baker posted a screenshot of his upcoming appearance from the episode eight trailer. While he didn’t say who he will be playing in the show, according to his IMDB page, he’s going to play James, David’s second-in-command in their small group of survivors. This revelation came with a simple caption that reads “Oh… hey.”

In the games, James is one of the members of David’s survivor group. He also tried to kill Ellie when she tried to leave and return to Joel safely, ignoring David’s orders to keep her alive. The episode eight trailer revealed that Baker will be speaking in the upcoming episode, just like the other The Last of Us alumni that made it to the show. This means fans will get to see Baker play an antagonist in a show based on the game he originally starred in.

Baker received support from fans after learning about his upcoming role on Twitter, who are looking forward to seeing him on screen. Some also wondered how it felt to play someone who wants to harm Ellie after playing a character that protected her in the original games.

Asides from Baker, Tommy’s video game voice actor Jeffrey Pierce played Perry in episodes four and five. It was also revealed that Ashley Johnson, who voiced Ellie in the games, will be playing Anna, Ellie’s mother, in a future episode. While it’s unfortunate that Baker and Johnson didn’t play their video game characters in the show for obvious reasons, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann revealed in The Last of Us podcast that they tried to put a bit of the original voice actor’s essences in Joel and Ellie in the TV show.

Episode eight of The Last of Us, titled ‘When We Are In Need,’ will air on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, March 5, 2023, at 9pm ET. Meanwhile, previous episodes are available to stream on HBO Max.