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Alberta locations becoming Instagram hot spots thanks to The Last of Us

Mar 13, 2023 | 10:56 AM

The beautiful vistas of Alberta are well-known to residents of the province. With the help of HBO’s The Last of Us, they’re becoming famous worldwide and a destination for Instagram users.

The season one finale of the smash hit series aired on Sunday. The series follows Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, and Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, as they make their way across a post-apocalyptic United States. Filmed from the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022, the nine episodes featured a variety of scenic Alberta landscapes standing in for locations across America.

A recent study by Gamblingngo analyzed filming locations to find which were most popular ranking them by Instagram hashtag data. Kananaskis, featured in the sixth episode as the fictional River of Death, topped the list. It was tagged 683,966 times on Instagram.

The Suntree neighbourhood in the town of Okotoks was used in filming episodes six, seven and eight. It garnered 377,067 hashtags. Waterton Park has the third-highest number of Instagram hashtags at 279,221. Waterton stood in for the resort town of Sliver Lake in the eighth episode.

Filming locations in Lethbridge, Calgary and Edmonton are also among the top 10 visited locations according to the analysis. See photos of all 10 locations below.

“The success of The Last of Us game has led to an epic first season of its television show, with incredible scenes shot in Canada,” says a spokesperson from Gamblingngo. “The country’s vast, rugged landscapes are the perfect place to tell the story of Ellie and Joel’s journey.”

The study used hashtag data from Instagram to reveal the most photographed places from a comprehensive list of 95 locations used in filming The Last of Us, says Gamblingngo. Film locations were sourced from MovieMaps, Twitter, Travel Alberta, Atlas of Wonders, Edmonton Journal and IMDb.

Throughout the series Travel Alberta has been tracking the filming locations after each episode.

Series star Pascal has hinted filming on season two will start sometime this year. There is no word on a release date.