Spoilers observe.
“The Final of Us” has leaned heavy on big-name cameos and visitor roles because the begin of season 1. Nick Offerman received an Emmy for his single-episode flip within the critically acclaimed “Lengthy, Lengthy Time,” and the remainder of the season was stuffed with stellar short-term performances from the likes of Nico Parker, Ashley Johnson, Troy Baker, and Melanie Lynskey. All of these turned out to be meaty roles, however season 2 delivers a extra conventional cameo in episode 4.
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The episode opens on a flashback to 2018, 10 years previous to the primary occasions of “The Final of Us” season 2. We see an armored automobile carrying FEDRA troopers by the Seattle quarantine zone. Because the squad bumps by town, one amongst them — the compulsory jokester of the group — tells a “humorous” story about considered one of their superior officers brutalizing civilians. Whereas the actor taking part in this half is considerably obscured by his huge helmet, you might have acknowledged his face or voice as belonging to Josh Peck, former little one star of Nickelodeon’s “Drake & Josh.”
Although his compatriots giggle on the story, the soldier’s commander, Isaac (Jeffrey Wright), is not so amused. Quickly, we study why. When the truck stops at an obstruction within the street, Isaac will get out with the one new, fresh-faced soldier within the group, then promptly throws a grenade into the automobile, killing everybody inside, together with Peck’s character. It seems that this was all deliberate with a insurgent chief named Hanrahan, with whom Isaac joins forces. This altering of sides foreshadows the state of Seattle seen within the present’s 2028 timeline, and there is extra to Peck’s monologue than you may suppose.
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Josh Peck’s The Final of Us cameo hints at a significant season 2 battle
The story that Josh Peck’s character tells within the APC includes a bunch of civilians in Seattle caught “disseminating pamphlets.” One of many different troopers asks if the literature involved “WLF stuff,” referring to the Washington Liberation Entrance — the identical militant group that Abby belongs to in the primary story. Peck’s character responds, “I believed it was, turned out later it was some spiritual crap.”
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These couple of traces are literally fairly telling about how Seattle acquired to the state we see it in when Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabella Merced) arrive. Later in the identical episode, we see that Isaac is a rating member of the WLF, suggesting that he defected to hitch Hanrahan and her faction after rising pissed off by FEDRA’s repeated abuses of energy. The spiritual pamphlets talked about probably confer with the opposite main group in 2028 Seattle — the cult-like Seraphites, with whom the WLF are locked in a brutal warfare.
Within the present-day story, Isaac brutally tortures a captured Seraphite, displaying the very same sort of brutality he apparently discovered so distasteful when Peck’s character and the opposite FEDRA brokers have been joking about it. Like the sport on which it is primarily based, “The Final of Us” season 2 appears primarily within the cyclical nature of battle, and this can be a prime instance of that concept.
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Josh Peck has lately popped up in some main exhibits and flicks
These of a sure age (responsible) nonetheless know Josh Peck primarily from his time on “Drake & Josh,” however he is completed quite a bit within the years since that present went off the air. He is voiced Eddie all through the “Ice Age” franchise and Casey Jones on the 2013 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” cartoon, additionally on Nickelodeon. In live-action, he performed roles on exhibits like “Grandfathered” and in films like “Purple Daybreak” and “Danny Collins.”
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These days, although, Peck’s roles have been of a barely greater profile. He starred within the short-lived 2021″Turner & Hooch” reboot on Disney+ and landed a important sequence position on Hulu’s “How I Met Your Father” in 2023. That very same yr, Peck earned a small half in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”
Although his position in “The Final of Us” can be small, it is one other half in a significant, dramatic, big-budget mission, exhibiting that Peck clearly has goals to proceed redefining himself exterior of the comedy world the place he is most continuously labored. However given how shortly he is dispatched of within the dystopian HBO sequence, we probably will not be seeing his character once more.
