The Last Of Us Is Officially Replacing An Actor From Season 1

Published Oct 19, 2026, 6:30 PM EDT Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock. A lot of exciting new actors are joining the cast of The Last of Us in season 3. The Last of Us’ third and possibly final season will follow Abby on the road to redemption, and Abby’s video game performer, Laura Bailey, has been tapped to play a Seraphite leader in the TV show, which is just deliciously meta casting. Peter Sarsgaard and Clea DuVall have both been cast as Seraphites, and Jason Ritter has been cast as one of their enemies allied with the W.L.F. John Goodman and Ian Alexander are set to play a pair of new characters dubbed the “Heroes of the Highway.” Jorge Lendeborg, Jr. is taking over the role of Manny, because Danny Ramirez has been busy fighting Doctor Doom alongside his fellow Avengers. Kyriana Kratter and Michelle Mao will play arguably the two most important characters in this leg of the story: Lev and Yara, two young Seraphites who challenge Abby’s worldview as she reluctantly takes them under her wing and comes to love them like a little brother and sister. The Last of Us season 3 will introduce us to Lev and Yara’s mother — she’ll be played by Sinners standout Li Jun Li — and it’ll reintroduce us to Abby’s father, Jerry, who we met briefly behind a surgical mask in the season 1 finale. At the end of The Last of Us season 1, Joel and Ellie finally found the Fireflies, and their doctors determined that they could, indeed, reverse-engineer a vaccine from her mutated brain. The only catch was that the procedure would kill her. The Fireflies were happy to go ahead with the surgery, but Joel, having come to love Ellie like a father, made damn sure they wouldn’t. Darren Dolynski played Jerry when we saw him in the season 1 finale, and he did a fine job with limited material. But when the role gets expanded in Abby’s flashbacks in season 3, he’ll be played by Patrick Wilson. Why Patrick Wilson Is The Perfect Casting For Abby's Father In The Last Of Us When we saw Jerry from Joel and Ellie’s perspective, he was just the faceless, nameless surgeon who was a little too eager to save the world. But when we see him from Abby’s perspective (the part of the game that The Last of Us season 3 is adapting), he’s presented in a whole new light. To Joel, Jerry is the monster who wanted to kill Ellie. But to Abby, he’s her sweet, loving, dependable dad. Jerry is one of the most important characters for The Last of Us season 3 to get right. The purpose of Abby’s story is to recontextualize Joel and Ellie’s story, and show that characters who are villains from their perspective (and, up until now, our perspective) are actually heroes in their own lives. When we meet Jerry in Abby’s first flashback, he’s going out of his way to save a mama zebra and reunite her with her family. He’s kind, charming, funny, and just generally an all-round good guy (apart from his occasional willingness to euthanize a teenager for the betterment of humankind). All this is to say, Patrick Wilson is the perfect casting choice to expand Jerry from a murderous surgeon into a human being with multitudes. The audience needs to love Jerry as much as Abby does in order to grieve him like she does, and Wilson has the warmth and charm to make that happen. Wilson previously appeared on HBO in one of Girls’ best episodes — a lost weekend romance with Lena Dunham’s Hannah Horvath — and he brought plenty of charisma and likability, but also brought some depth and complexity to the character, where it’s not all roses. If he can just bring 10% of that to Jerry, then one of The Last of Us season 3’s most crucial characters is in very safe hands.