Ellie at the abandoned mall in The Last Of Us. Right: Ellie and Riley in a photo booth.
The seventh episode of The Last Of Us has just aired and Calgarians might recognize one of the city's malls which played a crucial part of the story.
Episode seven, 'Left Behind', jumps back in time to Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) life before meeting Joel (Pedro Pascal) and explores her relationship with best friend Riley, played by Euphoria's Storm Reid.
A lot of the action takes place over one night where Riley and Ellie sneak into a deserted mall in Boston.
If you're reading ahead, there may be spoilers.
Okotoks
Suntree Place in Okotoks was used to film The Last Of Us
After Joel is injured during an incident at the University of East Colorado, Ellie finds shelter in an abandoned house while she decides on what to do next.
The scenes took place in a neighbourhood in the small town of Okotoks.
Northland Village Mall
Northland Village Mall was used in The Last Of Us.
The main location for almost the entire episode is a Boston mall that was sealed off due to being full of the infected. However, Ellie and Riley's adventure were actually filmed at Calgary's Northland Village Mall.
Parts of the centre were closed off to the public from November 2021 ahead of redevelopment taking place so the mall was able to be completely transformed for filming.
In a podcast, showrunner Craig Mazin said the crew had got "kind of" lucky to find Northland Village Mall in Calgary which was scheduled for demolition.
"On the one hand, it was great because they basically said 'you can do whatever you want. You can break up the floors. You can gak up the whole place with mud and vines and everything and you have the run of it for shooting for as long as you want.'"
"The problem was the mall itself was a little sad. It was one storey mall. There was only one area at the very end of the mall where there was an escalator, which obviously we use, that went up to this one little extra taller section," he explained.
Because of this, The Last Of Us' visual effects team had to put in a lot of work to bring the full effect of the mall to life as Ellie and Riley explore.
