The Last of Us 2 director reveals a cut character that was played by a writer on the game

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Halley Gross was supposed to play Leah however it didn’t make it into the final game

The Last of Us Part II Ellie
(Image credit: Naughty Dog)

A Twitter exchange between The Last of Us 2 director Neil Druckmann and writer Halley Gross revealed that Gross originally played a character in the game. 

In a hilarious - and at times disturbing - Twitter thread, Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross banter with one another which results in Druckmann revealing that Gross originally played a character in The Last of Us 2, however, that she got cut from the final version of the game. 

In his tweet, Druckmann shared a photo of Gross in mocap attire - complete with all the dots drawn on her face for facial motion capture - with the caption: "Now I want to put your character back in the game… JUST SO WE CAN CUT HER OUT AGAIN!" 

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Gross then replied to this with a short video of herself in the mocap studio with the caption: "Last of Us Part III: Leah’s Revenge." Thanks to Gross’ reply, we can now assume that the character she is talking about is possibly the Leah in the polaroid Ellie and Dina find in one of the Washington Liberation Front’s bases. 

In order to survive an ambush by the WLF, Ellie and Dina end up killing two of their fighters, one of which is found with the polaroid of Leah and a letter from her in their pocket. 

Once Ellie and Dina have reached a safe space, they look more into the letter and discover that Leah is based at the TV station so they decide to go and find her there. Unfortunately, once the pair arrive Leah is already dead - which makes sense since we now know that the character was mostly cut from the game.

To find out more hidden details in Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic game, take a look at our The Last of Us 2 Easter eggs guide. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.