Who is Kathleen in The Last Of Us?

Melanie Lynskey made them The last of us debuted in Episode 4, “Please Hold My Hand,” where she took on the role of Kathleen, the seemingly cold-blooded leader of a group of human survivors in Kansas City. As for the meaning of Kathleen, not even fans of the hit video game know where her story is going since the character was created entirely for the HBO series.

According to an interview with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the idea of ​​Kathleen came from a need to give the game’s “hunters” a more nuanced approach than just cannon fodder for Joel and Ellie. About ScreenRant:

In this video game you have to kill a lot of people, but for us violence was pretty serious and we didn’t want to stun people. So when enemies come, it was important for us to ask the question, ‘Well, why are they enemies? What do you want?” They’re not just bad people. From their point of view, it all makes sense and it’s defensible, and that was an interesting thing to explore.

“Everyone is trying to survive, everyone is trying to enjoy life to the fullest,” said Druckmann. “But often the ends compete with each other, and that’s where the interesting things happen and the different philosophies of how to survive or achieve the end justify the means.”

While Kathleen may be an entirely new addition to the series, the Hunters concept is not. In the game, Joel and Ellie are ambushed by the human survivors in Pittsburgh, while the HBO series has changed things by moving the action to Kansas City, where the hunters have taken over the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) and taken over the quarantine zone have. The presence of Kathleen adds an interesting wrinkle to the story, though, so it’ll be interesting to see what turns out when whatever’s going on in that basement reaches a boiling point.

(via ScreenRant)