Having already proven herself capable of stealing pretty much any scene she happens to wind up in, Game Of Thrones star Bella Ramsey—a.k.a. fan-favorite pre-teen ass-kicker Lyanna “Lil’ Mormont” Mormont—is now prepared to take the weight of the world on her shoulders. (Or, at least, the weight of HBO’s next big attempt to recapture those ludicrously big GoT numbers.) THR reports today that Ramsey has been tapped to star in Craig Mazin’s upcoming adaptation of critically acclaimed video game series The Last Of Us, playing the younger of the series’ two protagonists, Ellie.
For those unfamiliar with the series, The Last Of Us takes place in a world ravaged by a fungus-based apocalypse that’s turned most of the human population into creatures that are basically zombies, but grosser. As the game’s plot kicks off, a smuggler and soldier of fortune name Joel—still uncast at the moment—is tasked with delivering Ellie from their home in the Boston quarantine zone to a location far across the country, embarking on a sort of bonding-heavy roadtrip that manages to encompass a few lighthearted moments amidst all the bits about the very dregs of humanity battling it out for survival. Voiced in the games by Ashley Johnson, Ellie is a mixture of traumatized sidekick, violence-hardened survivor, and good-old-fashioned teenage pain in the ass, and is widely heralded as one of the most beloved and complicated characters from the last generation of gaming.
Ramsey, who’s now 17, made her screen acting debut with Thrones, immediately drawing attention as the no-nonsense Mormont. Since then, she’s starred in shows like Netflix’s The Worst Witch and Hilda, voicing the latter character throughout the animated series’ run. Her casting is the first major move for the Last Of Us series, which is being produced by Chernobyl’s Mazin alongside the game series’ creative director, Neil Druckmann.