A newly leaked set video from HBO’s The Last of Us Season 3 may be about to unlock one of the biggest unexplored pieces of the Seattle storyline. Footage reportedly captured during ongoing production appears to show Gabriel Luna as Tommy Miller and Young Mazino as Jesse filming together, despite Jesse dying during Season 2 and Tommy’s present-day storyline reaching a very different point. For players who know The Last of Us Part II, that immediately raises one massive question: could the show finally be giving Tommy’s unseen Seattle journey the spotlight it never received in the game?
The brief clip circulated online around August 24, 2026, showing two figures in an alleyway setting who observers identified as Tommy and Jesse. Neither appears to be Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby, whose three-day Seattle journey is expected to form much of Season 3. That detail has sent fans straight into theory mode, especially because Jesse’s appearance alongside Tommy strongly suggests the footage takes place before the events of the Season 2 finale.
The most intriguing possibility is that HBO is filling in the missing stretch between Tommy and Jesse arriving in Seattle and the eventual theater confrontation. During Season 2, the two men are searching for Ellie and Dina, but viewers never see everything they do during that period. Now, Season 3 may be preparing to revisit those events and show what was happening away from the main storyline.
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Tommy and Jesse’s Seattle Story Could Finally Get the Spotlight
Jesse’s apparent return is easily the biggest reason this leak has fans talking. The character was killed during the Season 2 finale when Abby confronted Ellie’s group at the theater. Because of that, his appearance in Season 3 material would almost certainly represent a flashback rather than a continuation of his present-day story.
That creates a very specific opening for HBO.
The footage could belong to the period after Tommy and Jesse reached Seattle but before everything went down at the theater. During Season 2, they were hunting for Ellie and Dina, but their movements during parts of that search remained largely off-screen. Jesse eventually explains that he and Tommy split up while searching for them.
Tommy later reunites with Ellie, but only after she has already committed a major act of violence that night. What Tommy was doing during the intervening period has not been fully explored in the television series.
For fans familiar with the game, this is where things get especially interesting.
The Last of Us Part II gives players plenty of evidence that Tommy was an absolute menace in Seattle, but the game does not completely dramatize his journey from his own perspective. Much of what players learn about his actions comes through Abby’s side of the story or remains in the background.
The HBO adaptation has already changed enough of Tommy’s circumstances to make that unexplored period even more valuable.
In the game, Tommy reaches the West Coast ahead of Ellie and becomes a serious threat to the Washington Liberation Front, or WLF. Armed with a sniper rifle, he takes out WLF soldiers and creates widespread disruption throughout Seattle. One of the most memorable parts of Abby’s campaign even sees the WLF believing Tommy is trapped at a marina, leading Abby and Manny to attempt to confront him there.
Yet players never get a complete Tommy-focused account of everything he was doing across those days.
The television series has now created an even clearer reason to explore it.
HBO’s Tommy was not present when Joel was killed by Abby. Instead, he was defending Jackson from infected. That major change affects his motivations, his feelings toward the WLF and the circumstances surrounding his eventual journey to Seattle.
In the show, Tommy travels to the West Coast alongside Jesse with the goal of finding Ellie and Dina and bringing them home. That leaves a potentially juicy unexplored section between their arrival, their eventual separation and Tommy’s reunion with Ellie.
The leaked footage could be HBO’s way of finally opening that door.
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Could Season 3 Show Tommy’s Side of Seattle?
That remains the big question, and nothing about the leaked footage has officially confirmed it.
Season 3 is expected to shift its main focus toward Abby and adapt the second half of The Last of Us Part II. The game itself famously revisits the Seattle storyline from Abby’s perspective, covering the same three-day period from a completely different angle.
Season 2 already established that HBO is willing to use this structure. The finale ended on a major cliffhanger before effectively backtracking to prepare audiences for Abby’s side of the story.
That means Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby is still expected to occupy a huge amount of Season 3. Her Seattle journey, along with Lev and the conflict involving the Seraphites and WLF, requires substantial screen time.
A full episode devoted entirely to Tommy’s Seattle adventure could therefore be difficult to fit into the remaining story.
But HBO does not necessarily need an entire episode.
A handful of flashbacks could show what Tommy and Jesse were doing while Ellie and Dina’s story was unfolding elsewhere. Those sequences could add context without pulling the season too far away from Abby’s narrative.
And that may actually be the smartest approach.
The game leaves Tommy operating largely in the shadows. Players hear about the damage he is causing, encounter the consequences of his actions and eventually see how dangerous he has become, but they do not experience his entire Seattle campaign as a dedicated playable storyline.
A few carefully placed scenes could change that.
For players who remember Tommy as the sniper stalking the WLF from a distance, seeing that violence directly from his perspective could be one of the coolest additions HBO has made to The Last of Us.
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HBO Has Already Rewritten and Expanded the Games
This kind of expansion would not be new territory for the series.
One of The Last of Us television adaptation’s defining choices has been its willingness to take material that was brief, implied or completely absent from the games and turn it into full storylines.
Season 1 established that approach almost immediately. The series added original cold-open sequences, including a 1960s scientist theorizing about fungi potentially causing a pandemic. It also showed the discovery of the initial Cordyceps outbreak in Jakarta.
Then came Bill and Frank.
Their relationship was presented very differently in the game, but HBO transformed it into a much larger emotional storyline by dedicating an entire episode to their lives together.
Season 2 continued pushing beyond the game’s exact boundaries. One notable addition involved Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac and a Seraphite he was interrogating, giving viewers more insight into characters and events that the game handled differently.
That history makes the Tommy theory feel less like a completely random fan fantasy.
HBO has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not view the games as a scene-for-scene blueprint. Instead, the adaptation has used its expanded television format to explore characters, relationships, events and pieces of the world that Naughty Dog either condensed or left unexplored.
Tommy’s Seattle story fits that strategy almost perfectly.
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The Leak Is Interesting, But Nothing Has Been Confirmed
There is still a huge disclaimer attached to all of this.
HBO, showrunner Craig Mazin and the production have not officially confirmed what was filmed in the leaked footage. There has also been no official explanation of where the apparent Tommy-and-Jesse sequence fits within the timeline or how much either character will appear in Season 3.
The current interpretation comes from the leaked video, observers’ visual identification of Gabriel Luna and Young Mazino, and the apparent connection between the footage and an existing gap in the Season 2 storyline.
So the clip does not prove that HBO is giving Tommy an entire Seattle storyline.
The footage could instead be a brief flashback, a small part of another character’s sequence or material whose context cannot yet be determined from such a short clip.
Still, the possibility is extremely interesting.
Production on The Last of Us Season 3 began in early 2026 around the Vancouver area, with filming taking place at locations including Gastown and Maple Ridge. Cameras continued rolling through the summer after a brief pause connected to the World Cup.
Earlier set videos and photographs have largely focused on Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby and Kyriana Kratter’s Lev, as well as imagery tied to the conflict between the Seraphites and the WLF.
That makes the apparent Tommy-and-Jesse footage stand out even more.
Both characters had already reached major turning points in their present-day stories by the end of Season 2. Jesse is dead, while Tommy’s storyline has moved to a very different place. Seeing the two together therefore strongly points toward earlier events rather than a straightforward continuation of the present-day timeline.
Season 3 is currently projected to premiere in 2027 and is widely expected to bring HBO’s adaptation of the existing The Last of Us game narrative to a conclusion.
For longtime players, though, the final season could still have room for one unexpected detour.
A closer look at Tommy’s violent, largely unseen Seattle journey would give viewers something the game never fully provided: a direct look at the man who spends much of Abby’s campaign lurking in the shadows while leaving an increasingly brutal trail behind him.
And considering just how dangerous Tommy was in Seattle, that is one flashback players will want to watch very closely.
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Disclaimer: The reported Season 3 set footage is unofficial, and its context has not been confirmed by HBO, Craig Mazin or the production. Character identifications and interpretations of the scenes are based on publicly circulated footage and reporting. Details about the sequence, its position in the timeline and its eventual inclusion in the finished season may change.
Sources:
- ComicBook.com – The Last of Us Season 3 Set Video Teases a Storyline That Even the Games Didn’t Tell
- ComingSoon.net – The Last of Us Season 3 Set Video Hints at a Major Return Fans Won’t Expect
- ScreenRant – The Last Of Us Season 3 Set Video Reveals Major Dead Character’s Return For Key Tommy Scene
- Wikipedia – The Last of Us season 3 (production details)
Featured Image Credit: HBO
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