Alien: Romulus Director Confirms One Connection to The Last of Us

Alien: Romulus viewers have been drawing comparisons between the Alien movie’s protagonist, Rain, and Ellie from The Last of Us nonstop since the movie’s premiere, but as it turns out, there is an actual connection between the movie and game that’s been confirmed by the director. It doesn’t have anything to do with Cailee Spaeny’s character Rain and Ellie, however, and instead deals with Kay, the pregnant character in Alien: Romulus whose pregnancy becomes a core part of the movie. Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez confirmed this week that Kay’s character was in fact inspired by Dina from The Last of Us Part 2.

Alvarez discussed the connection over on X after one of many people asked him if he’d played The Last of Us. He confirmed that he had and said that he was actually playing The Last of Us Part 2 when writing Alien: Romulus. Upon seeing that Dina was pregnant in the game, he found inspiration for Kay.

“Fun fact: I was playing #TheLastOfUs2 while writing #AlienRomulus,” he said on X. “The story of a pregnant Dina made me think of having the character of Kay be pregnant too. Then I cast Isabella Merced to play Kay…. A year later she gets cast to play Dina on the HBO show…. True story.”

As Alvarez pointed out, the relationship here is even more uncanny than a normal inspiration for the character given that actress Isabella Merced played Kay in Alien: Romulus and has also been cast as Dina in the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us TV show. We haven’t seen Merced in the show yet since Season 2 has yet to be released, but we’ve heard plenty from her about her character’s relationship with Ellie as well as what it’s been like working on some of the tougher parts of Season 2. The next season has wrapped filming now, but it doesn’t have a release date yet.

As for Alien: Romulus, Alvarez has been revealing more and more details like these now that the movie’s out with people realizing that there are probably several things they didn’t pick up on during their first watch. There’s of course the question of whether or not we’ll see Rain in another Alien movie in the future, perhaps as a sequel to Alien: Romulus, but nothing’s been confirmed at this time.