Amazon’s God of War series has already seen one major recast, with Kratos actor Ryan Hurst having to depart the role after suffering a bicep tear on set. While Hurst has reportedly had surgery and is recovering, the injury was severe enough that production was paused and Amazon has opted to seek out a replacement. Dave Bautista is apparently in talks to replace him.
But Kratos isn’t the only character in the TV show who will be seeing a change in actor. Amazon also plans to recast roles of Atreus and Thrud. Unlike Kratos’ impromptu recasting, however, the switch for these characters is a planned, creative decision that will take effect from Season 2 onward.
In Season 1, Atreus and Thrud are played by child actors Callum Vinson and Island Austin. But as reported by mp1st, casting calls for Season 2 suggest these characters will be significantly older when that second season rolls around. The casting calls for both characters (who have the codenames ‘Joshua’ and ‘Ruth’) to be “Teen” versions, while Joshua’s casting call states that in Season 2 Kratos’ son “finds his new identity and grows into manhood.”
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The new casting also implies that Season 2 will roll straight into the events of God of War: Ragnarök rather than splitting the first game into multiple arcs of television. Both seasons are being produced back-to-back, with production originally planned to wrap in April 2027. Whether or not this will be affected by the ongoing hiatus is unclear, as production is not expected to resume until October.
As for who will be playing Kratos instead of Hurst, there are reports Dave Bautista is “in talks” to step into the role. Presumably, Bautista would be more expensive to cast than Hurst. But this is Amazon we’re talking about.
At least by the time the God of War show launches, they’ll have a third season of material to film. The next game in the series, God of War: Laufey, is due to launch in February next year. Sadly, it isn’t coming to PC, as PlayStation has sworn off launching games on the platform for the time being. I’m curious to see how long this lasts, given how much money Sony made by releasing its PlayStation exclusives on PC thus far.