As fans continue to unpack The Last of Us’s season 2 finale, some eagled-eyed viewers have noticed a subtle nod to its fellow HBO series, Game of Thrones, nestled within the episode.
The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference takes place during a flashback of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) waking up on a couch with a book on her stomach: Thieves of the City by Ben Davidoff. It’s a play on the 2008 book City of Thieves by David Benioff, who was a co-showrunner (alongside D.B. Weiss) of Game of Thrones, which of course also starred both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
For the uninitiated, City of Thieves is a World War II coming-of-age novel set during the Siege of Leningrad. In the original Last of Us video game, Abby is also seen reading the book as a deliberate nod to the story. Game director Bruce Straley confirmed in a previous interview that City of Thieves was one of the inspirations behind the PlayStation game.
If HBO’s The Last of Us continues to follow its source material closely, there could be another nod to Benioff’s book in the upcoming third season. Lev, a young boy born to a Seraphite mother, teams up with Abby for a large portion of The Last of Us: Part II. Lev is also the name of one of the main characters in City of Thieves.
The Last of Us’s showrunner, Craig Mazin, is well aware of the GoT-TLOU overlaps. He recognized Ramsey right away when he started watching their audition tape. “I was like, oh shit, it’s Lady Mormont,” Mazin told ELLE back in 2023.
Even though Ramsey’s fame could’ve been a distraction Mazin was confident the actor was the right match for Ellie. “[In] my mind, I was like, if we don’t cast Bella as Ellie, then I will go to my grave knowing that we could have made a better show than we did.”
