Fans have been eagerly awaiting news about The Last of Us season three since season two ended, but one announcement coming out of HBO isn’t making LGBTQ+ viewers happy.
The third season of HBO’s popular post-apocalypse drama will feature Lev, a transgender boy from the video game, but instead of hiring a trans actor, cis actress Kyriana Kratter (Star Wars: Skelton Crew) was cast in the role.
It seems like an odd choice in 2026 when they had to know that audiences would be unhappy with the casting, considering there has been such a big push from LGBTQ+ audiences to insist trans roles go to trans actors.
According to Deadline, despite a young girl playing the role of Lev, his character will still be portrayed as a 13-year-old transgender boy in the upcoming third season, and they chose Kratter because she “best embodied the character.”
Cis actors playing trans characters is nothing new; both Hilary Swank and Eddie Redmayne won coveted awards for playing trans characters, but things have changed since then — or at least LGBTQ+ audiences thought they had.
Kotaku called the decision to cast Kratter as Lev “an obvious misfire,” considering his gender identity plays a huge role in his story in The Last of Us II video game, which starred trans actor Ian Alexander as the voice of Lev.
The show isn’t unfamiliar with hiring queer actors, with both Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced starring in the series, but HBO has also gotten criticism in the past for casting actors who fans thought didn’t fit the role.
When Kaitlyn Dever was cast in the role of Abby Anderson in the second season, it was a controversial decision because fans felt she wasn’t muscular enough or beefy enough to play the role.
