Isabela Merced's rise is more world-changing than any fictional apocalypse

Where she soars most however is in The Last of Us which pits Merced’s Dina against fungal zombies and — even scarier — the trolls who can’t handle her character’s journey in season two.....

By episode four, Ellie and Dina wind up in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, completely unaware of its queer history. “Maybe they’re all optimists,” says Ellie after they spot a few rainbow flags from that era. Later in the same episode, Merced and Ramsey end up making some queer history of their own in a pivotal love scene that Isabela opened up about in an interview with Variety:........

An unabashedly queer female love story like this is rarer than the cordyceps cure, and it’s even rarer to see two queer actors embody that love in mainstream fare like this. Before this, the majority of fans weren’t even aware that Merced identifies as queer, but in her talk with Variety, Isabela proudly discussed how much this role resonates with queer women like her.

“I just think about people from my hometown who maybe have never seen this side of me watching this and really getting to know me in a way, and understanding me and them really seeing it on a large scale. And then picturing someone maybe who was like me: Grew up Catholic, shoved down their emotions and maybe wants to be an actor — because you’d be surprised. There’s a lot of those specific archetypes in Ohio!”

https://www.queerty.com/isabela-merceds-rise-is-more-world-changing-than-any-fictional-apocalypse-20250601/