The FX on Hulu series adaptation of Y: The Last Man is finally, finally happening. The network released the first trailer for the highly-anticipated post-apocalyptic science fiction series on Thursday. Y: The Last Man is based on the comic book series written by Brian K. Vaughan and art by Pia Guerra.
The show begins after a cataclysmic event has shaken the world by killing every mammal with a Y chromosome except one man, Yorick Brown, played by Ben Schnetzer (Happy Town, Warcraft) and his pet monkey, Ampersand. His mother, Jennifer Brown, played by Diane Lane, is now U.S. President. Yorrick joins Agent 355 (Ashley Romans) to learn how this event happened, while other characters on the show deal with the sudden grief from losing people they love and the breakdown of society. The cast also features Diana Bang, Olivia Thirlby, Marin Ireland, Juliana Canfield, Amber Tamblyn, Paul Gross, and Elliot Fletcher.
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A series adaptation of the comic has been in the works since 2015, with multiple showrunners coming and going. Eliza Clark (Animal Kingdom, Extant) came on in June 2019 as showrunner. Just before production finally began late last year, Gross replaced Timothy Hutton as the U.S. President who dies in the pilot, while Thirlby replaced Imogen Poots as Hero Brown. Lashana Lynch was also originally cast as Agent 355 before Romans came on. Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk) was also set to play Yorick at one point. Every episode of the series will be directed by women, beginning with Louise Friedberg, who helmed the first two episodes. Y: The Last Man will finally debut on FX on Hulu exclusively on Sept. 13.
Y: The Last Man was published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint from September 2002 to March 2008, running 60 issues. Before the series, Warner Bros.’ New Line Cinema was developing a film adaption, but that project was finally canceled in 2014 when the rights to the story reverted to Vaughan and Guerra. The project was then taken to FX in 2015.
Vaughan has been fully supportive of the new adaptation. “Twenty years since [Guerra] and I started working on the first issue, and absolutely worth the wait,” he wrote on Instagram on June 4. “Thanks to showrunner [Clark] and everyone who worked so hard to make this happen.”
