We might soon be forced to contend with the mental image of Moira Rose blasting a fungus monster in the face with a shotgun, as Variety reports today that living legend Catherine O’Hara has been cast in a role in the still-brewing second season of HBO’s critically lauded video game adaptation The Last Of Us. (Truly, the most terrifying concept we’ve contemplated since the days of The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening.) O’Hara is joining the series in an undisclosed role, which is the sort of thing that’s going to eat at us all day, honestly, because who the hell in The Last Of Us Part II
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As we’ve noted before, the second season of Craig Mazin’s show faces some unique problems, most of them owing to the very tight links between the TV series and the video games that serve as its source material. (Neil Druckmann, creative director and one of the lead writers on the games, is closely involved with Mazin’s show.) We already know, for instance, that Kaitlyn Devers is playing “Abby” in the show’s second season—a character new to the TV series, whose role in the second game is so important as to elevate her to co-star status with Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie.
The fact that they’re not saying who O’Hara is playing, meanwhile, suggests one of two possibilities: Either it’s a new character—similar to Melanie Lynskey or Murray Bartlett’s roles in the first season, which had only rough links to the original games—or it’s just a completely wild pick. There is, for instance, a character in the background of The Last Of Us Part II who’s referred to in-game only as “The Prophet,” a cult leader who took advantage of the mushroom apocalypse to seize control of a decent chunk of Seattle, turning it into a Luddite, fanatical nightmare. (You can kind of see it, right? O’Hara, mixing beatific and manic, handing out death sentences? We can see it, in our heads.)
This is all just speculation, though; the only thing we really know is that The Last Of Us is not a world with a ton of room for comedy, silliness, or light, which means, we’re absolutely fascinated by the idea of O’Hara being transplanted into it. (She’s largely resisted the urge to take a classic comedian “let’s get dramatic” swing in her career, although she did co-star in the semi-comedic Pain Hustlers
The second season of The Last Of Us is expected to arrive on TV some time in 2025.