All The Last of Us Part 1 characters

After the release of The Last of Us season one on HBO, the franchise has become an even bigger hit among an even larger audience across the world.

The first game in TLOU, now being referred to as The Last of Us Part I, is one the most highly rewarded games in history, with its remake only further cementing that. This is thanks in large part to the amazing portrayal of dynamic and varied characters.

Each of these characters impacted Joel and Ellie along their journey getting to the Fireflies in Salt Lake City.

Here are all of The Last of Us Part I‘s characters.

All the characters in The Last of Us Part 1

There are a wide variety of characters in TLOU Part 1, ranging from friends to nameless characters that seek to murder Joel and Ellie for different reasons. This guide will cover the characters as they appear in the game, be warned that spoilers for the first TLOU game can be found below.

Sarah Miller

The 12-year-old daughter of protagonist Joel, Sarah is the first character players will control in TLOU. She’s a very thoughtful person, even going so far as to get her father’s watch fixed for his birthday, even if he didn’t remember. Unfortunately, Sarah was killed during Outbreak Day when a soldier was instructed to shoot her and Joel.

While she goes early in the game, her presence is felt throughout TLOU Part 1, with her loss affecting Joel throughout the rest of this game and beyond.

Joel Miller

One of the protagonists, Joel loves his daughter more than anything, working long hours to ensure they have a home and refusing to take a risk to help others when escaping Austin. After he loses her on Outbreak Day, his world is shattered and he becomes a shadow of himself for the next two decades, doing whatever it takes. Not much is known about his time between then and when he meets Ellie except that he and Tommy did many things they regret.

Throughout the events of TLOU Part 1, Joel kills a lot of people in defense of Ellie, while also dealing with his past trauma. It’s clear he doesn’t want to get attached to another daughter figure, but his resistance ultimately relents when he must take on what basically amounts to an army in the final sequence of the game.

Tommy Miller

Tommy is the younger brother of Joel and is portrayed in the game as someone who was a little rowdy before Outbreak Day, with Joel having to talk him down from presumably fighting their boss. At the same time, he seems to really care about his family, as proven by his willingness to stick by his brother and Sarah during Outbreak Day, and his brother after that.

Little is known about exactly what, but Joel and Tommy were forced to do many things they weren’t proud of in the many years following the outbreak. He finds love after a fight with Joel separates them, leading to a reunion at his community in Jackson, Wyoming.

Tess Servopoulos

Tess is hardened by her time spent in the world 20 years after Outbreak Day when players first meet her in the Boston Quarantine Zone. These zones are run by a military state, limiting who and what comes in or out. Tess and Joel have made decent careers smuggling goods into, and later out of, the QZ for several years, only getting caught once by FEDRA.

She is one of the biggest influences that convinces Joel to try and take Ellie to the Fireflies, even if she does pay the ultimate price because of it. However, like a true legend, she goes out in a blaze of glory, buying time for Joel and Ellie to get away.

Marlene

Marlene seemed to be in charge of, or hold considerable influence in, the Firefly branch at Boston QZ. She believed strongly in the cause of opposing FEDRA’s totalitarian rule, but that was only part of the reason she was in Boston. After being bit, Ellie is collected by Marlene, who knew her mother, and held captive until the Fireflies can take her to their doctors in the west. After a bad fight, she’s forced to give Ellie to Joel, which starts the events of the game.

She comes back unexpectedly in the final act of the game when Joel is finally able to make it to the hospital, which had been what she wanted all along.

Robert

Like Tess and Joel, Robert is a smuggler, although he’s not as true to his word as they are. He sold their guns to the Fireflies and gets beaten for it by the couple during an interrogation. He’s the reason players have to go talk to the Fireflies in the first place, making him an important character in the first act of the game.

Ellie Williams

Ellie is the other half of the classic father-daughter duo that made TLOU so famous, mostly thanks to her playing the funny person to Joel’s straight-faced exterior.

She was raised in the QZ in Boston at a series of orphanages, eventually being enrolled in the FEDRA training program. There she met another girl named Riley and the two quickly formed a relationship. However, after a goodbye date at the mall, both Riley and Ellie were bit, with the former succumbing to her injuries.

After leaving with Joel, Ellie is exposed to a world she had never known, being inspired and broken by what she’s forced to experience. At the end of the game, Joel ends up lying to Ellie about what happened in the final act, setting up the sequel The Last of Us Part II.

Riley

Riley isn’t in the main game, instead showing up in a DLC that takes place before The Last of Us, but she is included in TLOU Part 1, introduced alongside Ellie.

She is determined not to fight for FEDRA, instead joining up with the Fireflies in the hope of opposing the military organization. Ellie and Riley have a tight bond, going on a date in a mall so that Riley can break the news that she’s leaving.

While they thought the infected were cleared from the mall, loud music attracts a horde, forcing Ellie and Riley to run from them. Eventually, they’re cornered, and they both are bitten. However, Riley doesn’t have immunity like Ellie and was likely put down when she began to turn.

Bill

Even before the start of the Cordyceps pandemic, Bill was prepared for anything with his wealth of supplies and familiarity with cars and other mechanical skills. After Outbreak Day, Bill lived in the town of Lincoln alone with his partner Frank until he left one day. Alone and aware of the threats, Bill built a number of walls and barricades to keep out infected and bandits.

He ends up helping Ellie and Joel by leading them to a truck and giving it to them, but not before warning Joel his attachment to Ellie will end up getting him killed.

Henry

Henry mirrors Joel in the game, taking care of his brother Sam and trying to survive against the threat of the hunters after Hartford QZ was abandoned. He and Sam become quick friends with Ellie, while Joel remains cautious of the brothers. Henry is very defensive of his brother and his sole goal in the game is to ensure Sam’s survival.

That’s why when Sam is bitten, Henry almost lets him tear into Ellie’s throat out of pure shock. Likely realizing his brother was gone, Sam shoots the newly turned runner in the head. After initially blaming Joel, he takes the gun to his own temple and ends his life.

Sam

Sam is a couple of years younger than Ellie, but they seem to get along when they cross paths while running from the hunters. While his brother doesn’t give him much credit, he was learning how to survive in the world and care for his family as much as Henry took care of him. He was 13 when Ellie first met him, around the same age as Sarah when Joel lost her.

After escaping a near-death interaction with the infected, everything seemed to be fine as the group relaxed and joked with each other. However, the next morning Sam would be infected and pounce on Ellie before being put down by his brother.

Maria Miller

Maria is the leader of a settlement in Jackson, Wyoming that has managed to thrive after the Cordyceps pandemic. This is mostly thanks to Maria and her father creating a safe place with power thanks to a local hydroelectric power plant. The settlement has been thriving for a long time before the start of the game and continues to do so by the time Joel and Ellie meet up with Tommy there.

Tommy and Maria had apparently been married for some time and she was not happy when Joel suggested her husband take Ellie to the Fireflies. After Ellie insists Joel take her instead of Tommy, Joel relents, saying that his brother’s new wife scares him.

James

James is David’s right-hand man, although it seems he doesn’t always agree with him. After David sends him to track down Ellie and bring her back alive, he attempts to kill her because it would be easier. That being said, he does ultimately trust David’s word, as he is the one who helps cut up the meat alongside the group’s leader.

When Ellie’s captured, he attempts to help carve Ellie up but gets confused when Ellie proclaims she’s infected after biting David. James dies when Ellie grabs a butcher’s knife and takes it to his throat.

David

Not much is known about David except that he leads a civilization and tries to help them survive by any means necessary, which means killing and looting whoever. He was a leader of a group of survivors who had previously attacked Joel and Ellie, leading to the former being severely injured. After they retreated, David returned home and continued to lead his group that apparently fell on hard times.

He and James ran into Ellie in the wild, letting her go back to Joel with medicine in the hopes of tracking him down. After being kidnapped, it’s revealed David and his group have been eating people.

David tries to flirt with Ellie before she breaks his fingers, causing him to try to chop her up as well. While being tortured, another survivor calls Ellie David’s “latest pet.”

Jerry

While his name wasn’t known by players when TLOU Part 1 was released, he would be revealed in the second game to be named Jerry. Not much can be said about him other than what’s revealed in the first game’s audio logs where he states he is under severe stress, having no luck crafting a cure up to that point.

That’s all the named characters in The Last of Us Part I.