Who is Kathleen in HBO’s The Last of Us?

HBO’s Last of Us takes Joel and Ellie — and the show’s viewers — to Kansas City, Missouri in its fourth episode, adapting the game’s Pittsburgh storyline to fit the new location. If you’ve played the games, you know that Pittsburgh’s bad guys are called the Hunters, a largely faceless group that provides bullet fodder for the player to run up against. They’re tough and iconic, with the massive “RUN” plow, but that’s just about as much depth as they’re given. HBO’s The Last of UsThis gives the faction new identity and motivations.

Melanie Lynskey takes over an entirely new character named Kathleen, the ruthless leader of Kansas City’s rebels. Jeffrey Pierce (the voice of Tommy in the games) plays Perry, Kathleen’s top soldier. Because she’s not in the game, there’s not much we can infer from her backstory there, but the fourth episode has definitely set up her motivations.

[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for The Last of Us on HBO.]

Kathleen, who are you?

Lynskey’s Kathleen is clearly a villian, the leader of the Hunters. FEDRA in Kansas City was destroyed by this violent group. Kathleen’s brother was the original leader of the group, someone Lynskey told EW was “basically Jesus” to the group. She took over when he was killed, taking a different approach: “The thing I found very interesting about her is, when she did step into the role, she didn’t have a lot of guilt about doing bad things, whereas her brother did,” Lynskey said. “She found out that she was quite heartless and so she was able to be pretty effective in a way that he maybe wasn’t because she didn’t care about people.”

As we can see, her quiet voice hides a tendency towards brutal violence. We’re dropped right into her story when she’s interrogating a doctor — the doctor who delivered her — for information on the person she blames for her brother’s death: Henry.

Lynskey described Kathleen in EW as someone that you could overlook at first but is unaware of the forceful influence she has over the group.

“I do feel like there was something about her being a person that you might dismiss, that you might not be necessarily afraid of until you suddenly realize, ‘Oh shit! This is somebody who I’m supposed to be the most afraid of,’” she said. “I wanted her to be kind of gentle. She should be kind and soft-spoken, as well as delicate when she looks around. Her sweetness and her ability to act violently was what I desired. I thought the difference between how she carries herself and how she speaks and the things she’s doing would be interesting.”

She is indeed capable of violence. We first see this when she kills the doctor, then sends her soldiers on a massive citywide hunt for Henry.

The Last of Us’ fifth episode will likely continue Kathleen’s story, and it’ll be interesting to see how HBO weaves together Henry and his brother Sam’s story with the Hunters.