The Last of Us’ Gabriel Luna on Tommy’s epic season 2 bloater encounter

Are you counting down? HBO’s The Last of Us returns in just a few days for its second season, and it’s one that arrives to much critical acclaim. Already, the season has secured a ‘Certified Fresh’ score of 92% over on Rotten Tomatoes, so it certainly sounds as if showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have achieved near-perfection in their adaptation of the challenging The Last of Us Part II.

If you’ve played The Last of Us Part II then you’ll know that we’re in for what’ll assuredly be an intense season; I won’t drop any spoilers for those who haven’t though. Ahead of the season’s upcoming premiere, I briefly caught up with actor Gabriel Luna at the 2025 BAFTA Games Awards to discuss exactly what we can expect from Tommy this time around.

ICYMI: Take a look at the trailer for season two of HBO’s The Last of Us below.

For those who are familiar with Tommy’s arc in the game, it’s fair to say that he could potentially be described as a bit of a loose cannon, but there are several new factors influencing Luna’s take on the character.

“Loose cannon?” Gabriel said with a laugh. “I think more free wheeling. Loose cannon sounds wild, although there was a little wild going on in his youth.”

“But yes, in the second season, he certainly has a different set of responsibilities. [There’s] our young son, Benjamin. Rutina [Wesley], who plays my wife Maria, we have this young son, and that’s really framed things up in a new way for Tommy.”

He continued, “It frames up his brother’s experience, losing his child, even though Sarah was very important to Tommy as well, but I think he has a greater understanding of what that loss meant to Joel, and I think that is what fortifies his sense of family and community, and community beyond just his family.”

“It’s a lot to think about. It’s a lot more to lose. That’s what great TV shows do. You try to raise the stakes.”

And that sentiment is apt, because season two’s trailers reveal a huge infected horde encroaching on Jackson - a scene that certainly doesn’t feature in the game. Talk about raising the stakes. For those who criticised the lack of infected in the latter half of season one, it doesn’t look like you’re going to be disappointed here. Naturally, I had to ask Gabriel what he could tease about that sequence.

“I was so happy that it was in the trailer,” Gabriel confessed. “I was keeping that under my hat for so long. I did show my mom a video of me burning my friend Jonathan [Vellner], who’s a stunt person on the show, and my buddy Glenn [Ennis], who plays the bloater, who was actually the Canadian rugby captain back in his youth. He also played the bear in The Revenant.”

“He’s a massive man, and they threw some six, seven, eight inch platforms on him. He looked like Gene Simmons from Kiss. Then he had a little helmet on with a Teletubby antenna with a tennis ball on top, because I kept looking him in his eye when bloaters are supposed to be nine feet tall. I had to remind myself to look at the Teletubby.”

“But it was super exciting, [we used] a real practical flamethrower. It took us a long time to shoot that scene; maybe about three weeks? A lot of work,” he concluded.

The Last of Us season two premieres on HBO this Sunday 13 April, or on Monday 14 April here in the UK on Sky and NOW TV.