Y: The Last Man Star Reveals Her Biggest Regret About Show's Cancellation

Published Oct 13, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

Adam has been writing in the entertainment news space for over a decade. Beginning his career of covering film and TV at CinemaBlend, he has also appeared on The Flash Podcast and done several radio spots. 

EXCLUSIVE: One of the main actors from FX’s The Last of Us-like show has opened up about how it was canceled after just one season.

In 2021, Y: The Last Man premiered on FX on Hulu, adapting the same-named comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. While the source material ran for 60 issues from 2002 to 2008 under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, the TV version only lasted for 10 episodes, roughly adapting the first volume of stories, before being canceled. Five years later, Olivia Thirlby, who starred in Y: The Last Man as Hero Brown, sister of main protagonist Yorick Brown, clarified what bothered her the most about the show prematurely ending.

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In an interview with ScreenRant's Adam Holmes for Fire Country season 5, Thirlby shared that Y: The Last Man’s cancelation was “a huge blow” to “everybody that participated in it.” Looking back, she believes that the show was “ahead of its time” in terms of themes being explored like “gender identity politics,” how “we've all been conditioned by the systems that we live with,” and “how that conditioning pervades even when those systems break down.” Thirlby continued:

What I regret most is that the show didn't actually have a chance to deliver the power and the potency of a lot of the messages that we were working with. I also regret that I didn't get to keep working with those people who became my family. Like, just such gifted, talented writers, creators, actors, directors, just everyone who was involved with that show. But I am still incredibly proud of what we made, even though it ended prematurely. It was badass, And we also shot that show during COVID, which was even more of a feat. So, yeah, rest in peace, Y: The Last Man. I love you forever.

Like The Last of Us, Y: The Last Man takes place in a post-apocalyptic landscape where the world has been ravaged by a widespread biological event. In Y: The Last Man’s case, every mammal with a Y chromosome is killed except for Yorick, played by Ben Schnetzer, and his pet monkey Ampersand. Thirlby’s Hero, a paramedic, has her own storyline where she’s paired with her best friend, Sam Jordan, a transgender man played by Elliot Fletcher.

Y: The Last Man’s other series regulars included Diane Lane, Ashley Romans, Juliana Canfield, Marin Ireland, Amber Tamblyn, and Diana Bang. The series’ development, which began in 2018, followed numerous attempts to get a film adaptation off the ground between 2007 and 2014. Hulu on FX’s Y: The Last Man earned primarily positive reception, ranking at 77% on Rotten Tomatoes’ critic-driven Tomatometer.

However, on October 17, 2021, the day before Episode 8 premiered, FX on Hulu canceled Y: The Last Man. This decision was reportedly driven primarily by rising costs. In particular, FX ended up paying extra money to extend the actors’ options for both delays caused by cast and showrunner changes, as well as the COVID-19-related production shutdowns. By January 2022, Y: The Last Man’s fate was officially sealed after showrunner Eliza Clark and her team were unable to find a new home for the show.

Though Y: The Last Man is no longer available on Hulu, and currently cannot be rented or purchased on digital platforms in the United States, Thirlby can be seen playing firefighter Cecilia Jade “CJ” Ryan in Fire Country, which airs new episodes Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.