Maisie Williams was once up for the role of Ellie in The Last of Us

Last week, we found out that Game of Thrones veterans Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell) and Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont) had been cast as Joel and Ellie in HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us, the critically acclaimed video game from Naughty Dog. Produced by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, who was the creative director on the game, The Last of Us sends Joel and Ellie on a cross-country trip through an America devastated by a zombie apocalypse, where the other survivors can be as dangerous as the monsters. The story relies heavily on the relationship between the two leads, and with talented folks like Pascal and Ramsey on board, it should be something worth watching.

The first Last of Us game came out in 2013, and was an immediate success. There was actually talk of a movie version way back then, with a different Game of Thrones actor as Ellie. In 2014, a then 15-year-old Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) told Flicks And The City about meeting with Druckmann and how excited she was about the potential role. “There’s no script, no director, it’s still very early days for the whole project, but if it all goes ahead soon enough I think, yeah, I would love to,” she said.

Of course, things didn’t go ahead. Apparently, there was a disagreement between Druckmann and Sony, who produced the game, and the project was scuttled. They later rebounded with this TV series. Hopefully in the end that’ll be a better fit anyway.

Early on, fans were casting Maisie Williams and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us

And at least they kept it in the Game of Thrones family, with the 17-year-old Bella Ramsey picking up where Williams left off. Their Game of Thrones characters definitely had things in common: Arya and Lyanna are both fierce Northern girls who don’t take crap from anyone and don’t hesitate to speak their minds, qualities also shared by Ellie.

That said, I do kind of wish we could have seen Williams in the role, because she was the first person to pop into my head when I thought about who could play her. At 23, she’s probably a little too old now, but my dreams of a Maisie Williams-Nikolaj Coster-Waldau team-up endure:

Pascal will make an excellent Joel as well, though. And the fan-art to prove it is already here:

There’s no release date for The Last of Us show yet, but we’ll keep our ear to the ground.

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h/t Screenrant