Who the hell is Catherine O’Hara playing in The Last Of Us season 2?
A comedy legend meets mushroom monsters and human depravity in the latest casting notice from HBO's The Last Of Us show
Aux News The Last Of Us
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 would be a good fit for comedic superstar Catherine O’Hara?
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 last year.)
The second season of The Last Of Us is expected to arrive on TV some time in 2025.
16 Comments
The Prophet wasn’t merey a fanatical cult leader, that came later. The info we get about her in the game is that she was a more peaceful, mellow, spiritual figure who was murdered by the WLF. The Seraphites were driven by desperation and retribution, which after their attacks on the WLF, motivates te WLF as well. The whole conflict is meant to parallel the Joel-Ellie-Abby thing, it’s not very subtle. That said, her character and the Seraphites in general are part of the game’s veiled liberal Islamophobia (if you read it in light of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which Druckmann says inspired it).
I immediately thought of this. A background episode dealing with “Martyr’s Gate” would be my guess.
Is it really “veiled liberal Islamophobia” to portray a generic made-up faith to make the point that it’s bad for a religious movement to treat women like property and violently repress queer people? That seems to me to be broadly true, whether the religion in question is Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Seraphitism.
No, it isn’t on its face. But Neil Druckmann has said that the game was inspired by his brooding over the Israel-Palestine conflict. One of the sides, the WLF, is broadly humanized. The other side is a bloodthirsty superstitious fanatical cult known for homophobia and misogyny that reveals “the prophet”, that carries out suicidal terrorist attacks, and moves around their territory unseen using secret sky bridges between weapons caches hidden in skyscrapers (a kind of inversion of the Gaza tunnels).
Wow. Thanks for this. I always thought the games looked mediocre, but I’m glad I never supported that cunt.
I actually still really loved the game when I played it, the Seraphites thing only hit me replaying it, and is an unpleasant note in a game I otherwise like. But yeah, it makes me really wary of Druckmann over all from now on.
One of The Three Wise Men People?
Who the hell is Catherine O’HaraFIFY
She could be playing Lev and Yara’s mother.
That’d be a helluva stretch considering O’Hara is almost 70.
Yeah, that’s… fair. Not sure why that didn’t immediately occur to me, lol.
She’s clearly playing Kevin McAllister’s Mom
I’m thinking she’s playing Abby’s mom. One episode, maybe two.
The ubiquitous and all knowing Catherine O’Hara should be in everything.
I can agree with having the Beetlejuice, husband-licking, Winona Ryder mom in everything!
2 days later: “Oh no, Kevin!!!”
They wouldn’t hire her for a random bit part like Lem’s mom. Either she’s a fully invented character or the Prophet – my guess would be the Prophet, and we’ll get some fiddling with timelines so that the Prophet gets martyred around the time that Abby & Friends show up and join the WLF. I maintain that I think they’re going to ditch the flashback structure and just have parallel Ellie and Abby storylines for season 2 that draw from Ellie’s diary, the flashbacks, and some original content. We’ll get a lot more development and time spent in Seattle before Ellie shows up.