How ‘The Last of Us’ star channeled ‘Subway Surfers’ for infected chase scene

Warning: This article contains minor spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 4, “Day One.”

Add a bunch of zombies to the mobile game Subway Surfers, and that’s pretty much what it felt like for Isabela Merced to film the intense underground chase sequence in The Last of Us season 2’s fourth episode.

“All we were doing was climbing a subway car. I felt like it was Subway Surfers, but really dark,” Merced tells Entertainment Weekly. “The most messed-up version of Subway Surfers in the world.”

In another direct adaptation of a sequence from the original video games, the HBO drama sees Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Merced) flee into the collapsed Seattle metro tunnel to get away from “wolves,” members of a local militia group, the Washington Liberation Front. However, underground proves even more dangerous than above ground. Soon an entire horde with about five Clickers (by Dina’s count) is upon them.

Ellie and Dina’s only way out is to maneuver through the jungle gym that is a derailed and lopsided subway train. At times, Merced and Ramsey had to run along the top of the car in true Subway Surfer style.

“It was f—ing wild!” Merced remarks of filming that with Ramsey on a set constructed in an old newspaper factory. “There was a specific smell that was on that stage because of some sort of issue with something related to manure and fertilizer in soil. I will never forget the smells, the feeling, the noises, the lack of light. I mean, we were so vitamin-D-deprived, but it was so cool.”

The set for the subway train was placed atop a movable seesaw and bucked as all the background players portraying the infected slammed their bodies full-force into the side of the car. Merced describes the feeling of being on that set as an earthquake.

“Those guys had it the worst, I think, out of everyone,” she says of the infected actors. “They were covered in those prosthetics, had to camp there at probably 3 a.m., and then go on set and do a bunch of their own stunts and get thrown around. It was really intense. We were actually doing the majority of those stunts, so I’m really proud of us. I didn’t really want to do it, but Bella was so into it. I was like, all right, fine.”

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Merced also dug into deeper detail on Dina’s other big moments in episode 4, titled “Day One,” including the character’s pregnancy reveal and sex scene with Ellie, which directly follow the moment Ellie saves Dina’s life by letting an infected bite her arm.

“I think it’s more of an intense sequence,” Merced said, referring to how the events are portrayed on the show versus the source material. “The game is a little bit more casual. She finds out in a completely different setting and it’s too fast, so she doesn’t really get to fully process it.”

New episodes of The Last of Us drop every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.