Who is Isaac Dixon in The Last of Us Season 2? Jeffrey Wright's Character explored in depth

The Last of Us Season 2, episode 4, "Day One", introduced us to a new character, Isaac Dixon. He is a character from the game The Last of Us Part II, which was released back in 2020. The actor who provided the motion-capture performance and voice for the character is the same one playing him in the HBO series as well, Jeffrey Wright.

Wright spoke about playing a role in The Last of Us Part II in an interview with TV Insider back in November 2024. The actor in that interview revealed a surprising connection with that franchise before joining it:

“My son was a fan of the game and I met Neil Druckmann who’s the creator. He asked me if I wanted to be a part of the game. One of the writers from Westworld is a writer for the game and also for the series, Halley [Wegryn Gross]. And so, I asked my son, ‘What do you know about this thing, The Last of Us?’ And he was like, ‘What?! And so I agreed to voice this character Isaac Dixon for the game.”

Then, in the same interview, the actor said this about reprising the same role in The Last of Us Season 2:

“It was fun to go back and revisit that character but do it in the flesh.”

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Who is Isaac Dixon in The Last of Us Season 2?

In that November 2024 TV Insider interview, Wright suggested that The Last of Us Season 2 would also give Isaac Dixon a backstory, something that was not in the game:

“when we introduce the character this season, we tell a little about his history, which is a little more than we see in the game.”

This tease came into fruition in the fourth episode, "Day One". The episode opened with a flashback set in the year 2018, which goes into Isaac's past as a disillusioned FEDRA officer who sympathizes with the rebels. Thus, defects to the WLF and kills his fellow officers, except for one who goes on to join him. The episode then jumps to the present, which is 11 years later.

In the present, Dixon is the leader of the "Wolves" (the nickname given to the members of the WLF). It seems a decade later, Isaac has gone bad, as we meet him torturing a "scar", i.e., Seraphite, to learn about his fellow cult members' location. However, the Seraphite doesn't give in, and a frustrated Dixon fatally shoots the man.

After the fourth episode of The Last of Us Season 2 was released, fans tuned in for the official The Last of Us podcast, in which both Mazin and Druckmann appeared.

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Here is what the showrunners of The Last of Us Season 2 say:

The official The Last of Us podcast is released every week after the release of an episode. In this after-show podcast, the cast and crew working on the show go in-depth into various things from the episode of the week. Mazin and Druckmann spoke about the introduction scene of Isaac. Druckmann, who also worked on the game, pointed to an abandoned truck in the game as an idea behind Isaac's past.

He pointed to a:

"A truck that you find that has been blown up with the people still inside as part of this uprising."

Then, Mazin revealed:

"You understood that in Seattle, there was a moment where FEDRA officers started turning on FEDRA because it was not working well and that there was, in fact, a kind of internecine warfare. And you also do find a FEDRA truck at one point that you can climb into. And so all those things were bopping around my head."

Mazin later went on to reveal that this scene from The Last of Us Season 2 also allowed them to expand upon the story of Burton, the FEDRA soldier who was saved by Isaac and even joins WLF with him:

"It's clearly his, what? I don't know, first week on the job. His helmet doesn't fit very well, and he doesn't quite understand this brutal nature that these guys have, this us versus them, you know, the people are beneath us. And perhaps that is why Isaac chooses to give him a choice, as opposed to just...fragging him like he does the rest of these guys."

We see Burton in the present as a loyal Isaac Dixon supporter who instructs a fellow wolf not to feel uncomfortable when the latter is squeamish about their leader's interrogation techniques.

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Watch Isaac Dixon's past in the latest episode of The Last of Us Season 2, which was released on May 4, 2025.