Should This ‘Last Of Us’ Villain Get Their Own Spinoff?

One of the reasons that The Last of Us is such a powerful piece of storytelling — both in televised and video game form — is that it offers our heroes Ellie and Joel (Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal) truly terrifying and complex villains to contend with.

Whether that be the cannibalistic cult leader David, or the quietly menacing and unyielding Kathleen, played to perfection by Melanie Lynskey. While Kathleen’s time in the series was cut short by a tidal wave of underground-dwelling fungal zombies, there’s still so much of her backstory to be mined. Lynskey, it turns out, would love nothing more than to do just that!

“If they wanted to go back and do an origin story, I would be there for it,” Lynskey told Variety. “The story of how this woman got into this crazy position would be really interesting.”

For fans of the games, Katheen was a new surprise on the show, as she was created for the series. This also means any further adaptations with Kathleen would be almost entirely free of the bounds of canon. It’s an exciting prospect for the expansion of the story of The Last of Us and its post-apocalyptic world.

Lynskey herself is also similarly detached from the original source material, having never played the game. “My thumbs don’t work that way. I didn’t even play Atari,” Lynskey admitted. “I was reading books. I was reading D.H. Lawrence when I was a child.” She credits her husband Jason Ritter for encouraging her to audition for the role.

Considering the massive success of The Last of Us and HBO’s history of exploring spin-offs of its properties a la House of the Dragon, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that further tales of Kathleen could be a future possibility — and with Lynskey attached, it would be a total must-watch.