Who is Kathleen in The Last of Us ? Melanie Lynskey character explained
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Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Last of Us season 1, episode 4.
The fourth episode of HBO's The Last of Us gave viewers well-versed in the games another curve ball — not as hard-hitting as the emotional wreckage left in the wake of Bill and Frank's arc, but one that expands the history of this world in a significant way.
Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey debuts on the show as Kathleen, an original character created specifically for the series adaptation. All viewers knew about her heading into the start of her arc was that the character serves as the head of a revolutionary movement in Kansas City. Sunday's episode confirms her presence is meant to explain the background of a major portion of 2013's The Last of Us.
Liane Hentscher/HBO Melanie Lynskey's Kathleen interrogates a collaborator in 'The Last of Us.'
The Hunters
The events of the video game bring Joel and Ellie, played in the show by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, to Pittsburgh. A pile-up of cars blocking the main road forces them to find another way through the city. They encounter a man begging for help, clutching his side as if injured. It ends up being a trap set up by a group referred to as the Hunters, who track down and often brutally kill the "tourists" who unwittingly stray into their territory.
One scene finds Joel and Ellie coming across the corpses of some of the Hunters' recent victims, who are stripped of all their belongings and disemboweled.
Naughty Dog
Pittsburgh becomes Kansas City in the context of HBO's The Last of Us, and the Hunters become a group of survivors who rose up against the FEDRA military regime and took back the Kansas City quarantine zone.
Henry and Sam, played on the show by Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard, are two characters Joel and Ellie meet who are also trying to escape the city without drawing the Hunters' attention.
In the game, players can learn more about the world around them by finding scraps of paper or abandoned letters with information. Neil Druckmann, who developed the game and executive produces the show with Craig Mazin, tells EW they took some of that lore-building and blew it up for the adaptation.
"We try to humanize the people that you're fighting [in the game], the kind of henchmen you have to take down or to escape the city with those notes to show the history of what happened, how this quarantine zone came down," he says. "With the show, there was an opportunity to dramatize a lot of it and have the camera linger on the other side to show other survivors that are trying to eke out a life in this world. Now they have this black market smuggler with this girl showing up in their town and messing their shit up."
Who is Kathleen in The Last of Us?
Lynskey's Kathleen is the leader of the group that's largely inspired by the Hunters. Through an interrogation sequence in the middle of the episode, viewers surmise that Kathleen's doctor once ratted out their neighbors to FEDRA soldiers in exchange for perks, like protection.
Kathleen mentions Henry was one such informant who gave information to FEDRA about her brother, who was beaten to death in a cell. Now that Kathleen is in charge, she's determined to hunt Henry down. It's also worth noting that Jeffrey Pierce, who voiced the character of Tommy in the video games, now appears in the series as Perry, Kathleen's rifle-touting right hand.
The change makes the story morally more complex. Instead of clearly vicious villains like the Hunters attacking Joel and Ellie, we have a group on their way to becoming the very fascist regime they just overthrew.
Liane Hentscher/HBO Melanie Lynskey's Kathleen is the leader of a revolutionary movement in Kansas City in 'The Last of Us.'
"[Mazin] said to me, 'I hope you're not offended, but I would love for you to play a war criminal,'" Lynskey recalls. "I said, 'Ugh, I don't know.' He was like, 'I felt like that would be your reaction. Let me tell you a bit more.'"
Kathleen's brother is "basically Jesus," Lynskey continues. "Imagine growing up as the sibling of Jesus and being like, 'My brother's the greatest human being. He's leading the world. He's the kindest, most decent person. I don't think I'm that great of a person. I don't really need to be anything in particular because I have this person by my side.' And then somebody brutally kills him and it's so unfair. Who are you after that?"
What intrigued Lynskey about Kathleen is that, once she steps into a leadership role she didn't want for herself, she learns that she doesn't feel guilt over the bad things she does. "She found out that she was quite heartless and so she was able to be pretty effective in a way that maybe wasn't because she didn't care about people," the actress says. "That's a very interesting dynamic."
The Last of Us audience will learn more about Kathleen in episode 5, premiering on HBO and HBO Max next Sunday.
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