Gabriel Luna

From a Broken Knee to HBO's Apocalypse

Gabriel Luna was born in Austin, Texas, in 1982 and grew up under the influence of a mother who was widowed just months before he was born. His childhood had nothing to do with the glare of the cameras. Sports were his escape, and American football was his true obsession until his body said enough.

A serious knee injury forced him to hang up his cleats during his college years at St. Edward's. So he turned to theater almost by accident to fill the void left by competitive sports.

And the gamble paid off.

He started out in local Austin theaters with small roles. In 2005, he made his film debut in Fall to Grace, but the industry didn't take notice of him until Robert Rodriguez recruited him for his television channel. That series was called Matador (2014) and gave him his first leading role as a CIA agent undercover on a professional soccer team.

But the series was canceled after just one season due to international distribution problems. Luna lost his big showcase just as he was starting to stand out in Los Angeles.

Marvel's Fire and Skynet's Metal

In 2016, he slipped into Robbie Reyes's leather jacket for the fourth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. His take on Ghost Rider was so well received that Marvel planned a spin-off series for the character on Hulu.

The project was canceled in 2019 due to creative changes at the top of the company.

That same year, he faced the most demanding physical challenge of his career. James Cameron and Tim Miller cast him as the main villain in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). The actor had to gain more than seven kilos of muscle mass to play Rev-9, an assassin capable of splitting into two independent bodies.

The film grossed 261 million dollars worldwide. It was not enough to recoup its 185 million budget, but critics praised his cold, mechanical performance opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Success isn't measured only at the box office.

Redemption at the End of the World

Lasting stability came with one of the most expensive productions in cable television. In 2021 his casting was announced for the adaptation of The Last of Us (2023). He plays Tommy, a former soldier trying to keep his humanity in a world devastated by a parasitic fungus.

He shot much of his scenes in the frozen landscapes of Alberta, Canada. Because the production sought extreme realism, the crew had to contend with temperatures of 20 degrees below zero during the night shoots.

In 2023 he also appeared in the action series FUBAR. He played Boro, an arms dealer with an elite education who serves as the main antagonist of the first season.

Luna has always kept a low profile away from film sets. He prefers the calm of his home in Texas and his marriage to actress Smari Luna, whom he married in 2011, over the noise of red carpets in California.

In 2025, he returned to the world of the infected for the filming of the second season of The Last of Us. The HBO production employed more than 200 local professionals just to handle the logistics of the winter scenes around Vancouver.