Danny Ramirez will not be returning to The Last Of Us and his role of Manny will be recast.
The actor is unable to return to the show for its third season due to scheduling conflicts, it has been confirmed.
Ramirez appeared as Manny Alvarez in four episodes of the show’s second season, which aired earlier this year. Manny is a former member of the Fireflies, a rebel militia, a friend of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) who helps her enact revenge on Joel (Pedro Pascal) for the massacre he carried out on the Firefly hospital to save Ellie (Bella Ramsay).
The next season of The Last Of Us will, like the game series, focus on Abby. It is expected, therefore, that characters like Ellie, Dina (Isabela Merced), Tommy Miller (Gabriel Luna) and Isaac Dixon (Jeffrey Wright) will return.
It was confirmed earlier this year that season three will “definitely” air in 2027, but the number of seasons remaining is still unknown.
Showrunner Craig Mazin had previously said the show could run anywhere between three and five seasons “but four seems like a good number”. After the end of season two, Mazin went on to say there was “no way to complete this narrative” with just one more season. “Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth. That’s the most likely outcome.”
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However, HBO CEO Casey Bloys has now revealed season three of The Last Of Us might be the last. “The series is definitely planned for 2027,” he told Variety. “Craig is still working it out whether it will be two more seasons or one more long season. It hasn’t been decided yet.”
The show’s second season made it onto NME‘s list of the top 20 TV shows for 2025. “If season one of the post-apocalyptic drama raised the bar for video game adaptations, season two maintains its nuance and emotional intensity. That’s quite an achievement, because this run of episodes is based on much trickier source material,” NME wrote.
“Kaitlyn Dever makes a devastating first impression as vengeful survivor Abby, but the show’s beating heart remains the fraught relationship between stoic smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his teenage ward Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Now more than ever, she has a target on her back because of her immunity to the mass fungal infection that has felled humanity. As the season progresses, some of its non-linear storytelling can feel fiddly, but The Last Of Us still offers a chillingly prescient vision of a dystopian America. By the end, you’ll question how your own moral code might hold up under such monumental pressure.”
