Whether you love it or hate it, the end of Abby’s third day in The Last of Us Part II is one of the sequel’s most memorable moments. While playing as Abby, the secret second main character of the game, the player is forced into a brutal fight with long-time protagonist Ellie in a Seattle theater. If you would like to relive this intense moment every time you look at your shelf, an incredibly expensive statue set is on its way that recreates the scene. If you’re willing to shell out a couple grand, that is.
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Collectible company Prime 1 Studio is releasing two statues that are sold seperately of both characters. One features Abby with swappable arm pieces holding either a handgun, hammer, or molotov cocktail (which she notably can’t use in The Last of Us Part II). The third of which you can only get if you buy the Bonus Version of the statue from the company’s website. The other statue features Ellie and has her sneaking around an archway with a shotgun on hand, but it isn’t available for pre-order at the time of this writing. Once both statues are placed next to each other, it recreates the scene of the two protagonists’ confrontation. There’s less forcing the player to choke Ellie out here, at least. The Abby half measures at about 22 inches in height, so the statues are both pretty big. Make sure you’ve got the shelf space for it before you get your hopes up.
Prime 1 Studios
It does look incredible, but I’m a Last of Us superfan, and I can’t even justify spending the money it would take to get the complete set. The Abby statue runs $1099 on its own, which means the Ellie one, whenever Prime 1 Studio puts it up for pre-order, will likely cost about as much. I already paid $2000 for the replica of Ellie’s guitar because a pandemic was happening and I was stuck in my house with more money than I should’ve been trusted with, and that was before I moved to one of the most expensive cities in the world. But if you’d like to buy the Abby statue alone or as prep for putting it and the Ellie statue on display alongside each other, start counting your pennies and head on over to Prime 1 Studio’s site.
While Abby is well-known for game fans, the character has yet to debut in HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us which aired earlier this year. However, it does look like the character will debut right on schedule during season 2. We don’t know who will play her, but the actor better be buff.
The first season of The Last of Us, the undeniable smash-hit HBO series based on the video game of the same name, has ended. And though the discourse about the controversial ending rages on, people are already looking ahead to season two, which will introduce one of the most infamous characters in the series: Abby Anderson and her incredibly toned arms.
I’d like a little more She-Bulk in my She-Hulk, please.Image: Marvel / Disney
But it’s not just the game industry, as proven time and time again by the dearth of women superheroes built like Victoria’s Secret models. Does Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman look like she can do anything other than strut and make mealy-mouthed comments on the Israeli-Palestine conflict? Is Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow capable of pulling off gymnastic stunts when she’s wearing a SKIMS waist trainer under a leather catsuit?
In an Entertainment Weekly interview, She-Hulk executive producer Kat Coiro responded to rumors that “Marvel requested She-Hulk’s muscles be made smaller,” saying that She-Hulk didn’t need to be all that big, actually.
We honestly talked about strength more than aesthetics. We studied musculature and we studied women athletes who were incredibly strong. We really leaned towards Olympians rather than bodybuilders. That’s where a lot of our body references came from, very strong Olympic athletes. So she doesn’t have a bodybuilder’s physique, but she absolutely has a very strong physique that can justify the actions that she does in the show. I think people expected a bodybuilder and for her to have these big, massive muscles but she looks more like Olympians.
Unfortunately, until recently, one of the few examples of a muscular woman in modern media was MMA-fighter-turned-actor Gina Carano as Cara Dune on The Mandalorian. Her arms were absolutely gigantic, exploding out from her chest armor with purpose. She dwarfed every other person sharing a scene with her. Sadly, Carano came out as a transphobe and a covid pandemic anti-masker, so she got the boot, and I worried I’d never see someone built like her on TV or in movies again.
Mandalorian muscle mommies
This is the way: Cast more muscular femmes in TV shows and movies.Image: Katy O’Brian on Instagram / Kotaku
Thankfully, Katy O’Brian came to the rescue. Though she’s only briefly in The Mandalorian season 2, she returns as a major character in the third season, and yes, we do get to see her arms. In fact, her muscles are so prominent that fans of the series already made an apt comparison, tweeting that O’Brian, an actor and martial artist, should play Abby in The Last of Us season 2.
It’s certainly not a far stretch. Though Abby is voiced by Laura Bailey and has the face of former Naughty Dog dev Jocelyn Mettler, her body double is CrossFit athlete and former collegiate swimmer Colleen Fotsch, who looks like she could pick me (a pretty muscular woman) up with one arm and wield me like a baseball bat. Fotsch, who did not respond to Kotaku’s request for comment, has a litany of YouTube videos showing off workout routines—and considering she’s currently a data analyst by trade, she’s proof that women can be muscle mommies while also living fulfilled NARP (non-athletic regular people) lives.
Casting an actor who is athletically inclined and already ripped up like a bad report card as Abby in The Last of Us season two makes a ton of sense—though I find myself longing to see a wild bulk-up of an actor not already built like a brick shithouse. But also, I just want to see more muscular women in movies and television, guys. I don’t really care how they get there, I just want them there, muscles rippling like coiled snakes under their skin.
Big arms big arms big arms. Image: Sony / Naughty Dog /Kotaku
We’re only one episode deep into HBO’s live-action adaptation of The Last of Us and fans think they’ve discovered the actor who’ll play Abby.
In a recent tweet, The Last of Us News, a community-run TLoU fan account, uploaded a screenshot of the game creator, Neil Druckmann, following actor Shannon Berry on Instagram. Of course, Druckmann’s following of The Wilds actor could just be his way of pulling a Hideo Kojima by showing interest in actors who star in shows that are similar to his own works.
But give the internet an inch and they’ll take a mile because Twitter has been buzzing about how perfect Berry’s casting would be for Abby, especially when you consider how closely her face resembles the former Firefly and surprise co-star of The Last of Us Part II. It probably also doesn’t help that Berry’s followed Druckmann back on Insta, but that’s show business baby!
“Hey, she’s 22. Bella Ramsey is 19. Their age difference is spot on for Ellie and Abby,” one Twitter user wrote.
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“God, I hope it happens. She’s the perfect Abby,” wrote another.
“Whoever gets the role I really hope they don’t get the abuse Laura Bailey did!! Neither Laura or whoever gets the role for the series deserves it!” another observed.
“Becoming a Shannon Berry Abby Anderson truther as we speak,” wrote one Twitter user, who went the extra mile by making a Kpop-style fancam video of the actor after someone’s suggestion that Florence Pugh would be a good Abby.
Should Abby appear in TLoU (prestige TV edition), “Abby Anderson truthers” think the show should save her appearance for the final episode of the season, so as to create a neat throughline between the original game’s ending and its sequel.
Since The Last of Us premiered on the streamer, fans and critics alike have heralded the HBO show as the one that’s finally broken the terrible video game adaptation curse. While I think the show knocked it out of the park with its 80-minute pilot episode, I can’t help but notice the pop culture zeitgeist’s tendency to haphazardly regurgitate that accolade whenever a new video game adaptation that isn’t dog water comes out.
The ‘95 Mortal Kombat movie (which is good, don’t @ me), Paramount Pictures’ Sonic films, and Netflix’s Castlevania, League of Legends, and Cyberpunk 2077 shows have all rightfully received the same praise for their overall quality and respect for source material. But much like how Disney keeps having new “first LGBTQ characters,” gamers always tout the latest video game adaptation hotness as finally having “broken the curse” despite us having gone through this whole song and dance like five times over the past two years or so. I suppose recency bias is a bitch.
Regardless, we’ll have to wait and see whether the internet’s admittedly parasocial stalking of Druckmann’s Insta follows results in Berry’s casting as Abby. But right now let’s just appreciate how yoked out Abby is.
