In retrospect, it had been a suspiciously long time since we heard anything about FX’s cursed Y: The Last Man adaptation. We should never leave this thing alone for too long or, well, the film version of it falls apart, or the showrunners of the TV version quit, or any of the other countless things that have gone wrong with this project since we started hearing about it a decade ago. This time—and really it’s our fault as much as anything—the series has lost Barry Keoghan, who was set to star as Yorick Brown (a.k.a. the eponymous last man himself). This comes from Collider, and while a reason for Keoghan’s departure hasn’t been given, the Collider story’s extensive list of his recent film and TV credits implies that Keoghan may have just found a better offer somewhere else (he was in Dunkirk, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, and Chernobyl, and he’ll appear in Marvel’s Eternals).
Y: The Last Man just got a new showrunner, The Killing’s Eliza Clark, and Keoghan’s role will be recast—which presumably means it will get bumped back once again, but FX could always get lucky. It has literally never happened with this project, but you never know. Central character aside, Y: The Last Man still has the rest of its very good cast, including Amber Tamblyn, Diane Lane, Imogen Poots, Lashana Lynch, Marin Ireland, and Juliana Canfield. The series is based on the comic of the same name by Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, and it’s about the planet’s lone surviving man roaming a post-apocalyptic Earth with his pet monkey. Keoghan would’ve played that man, and the monkey from Friends is playing that monkey… at least as far as we know. It could’ve been recast at this point.