The Last of Us HBO series casts Marlene’s actor to reprise her role from the game

The upcoming HBO adaptation of The Last of Us is taking the unusual step of actually casting an actor from the game to reprise the same role in the upcoming television series.

As reported by Variety, Merle Dandridge will apparently be playing the role of Marlene, leader of the Fireflies resistance group who are a big player in The Last of Us‘ story and, at the start of the game, are trying to research a cure to the Cordyceps Brain Infection largely responsible for the destruction of civilisation in the series’ universe.

Dandridge will be unique in reprising her role, with even the series leads’ Joel and Ellie being played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey rather than Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson who played them in the games. It perhaps helps that Dandridge herself has had a fairly prolific career in television since her role in the 2013 PlayStation game, including roles in HBO’s The Flight Attendant alongside Kaley Cuoco and FX’s Sons of Anarchy.

There’s still no date for the HBO version of The Last of Us at the time of writing, but the game’s director Neil Druckmann is also serving as executive producer on the show. He did warn back in March that the show may deviate greatly from the plot of the game, so we’ve still got plenty to look forward to whenever it arrives.