Amber Tamblyn Just Joined FX’s ‘Y’ As A Very Powerful & Political Character

FX's next series will be about what happens when women inherit the Earth and it will star one of your favorite actors from The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants. According to Deadline on Wednesday, July 18, Amber Tamblyn will star in FX's new series, Y, based on the post-apocalyptic comic book series Y: The Last Man, which yes, like the title states, is about the last male on Earth. But, what it really posits is a world in which women are in charge, which sounds right up Tamblyn's alley.

Deadline reported that Tamblyn will play Mariette Callows, the daughter of the President of the United States, who has been preparing for her own political career. The plan being that she would eventually follow in her dad's conservative footsteps. Now that her dad and the rest of the men are gone, it's likely her leadership skills will be put to the test in a way she never could have expected. According to Comicbook.com, Tamblyn's character is an original one for the series.

Tamblyn confirmed her casting in a tweet, writing that she was "thrilled to join this incredible cast," which includes her friend Marin Ireland, who will play Nora, “the President’s senior assistant and right hand. She effortlessly balances family life with a job navigating the corridors of power," according to Collider. Tamblyn said she was most excited to "play a character unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Prepare yourselves. This show has something powerful to say and an even more powerful way to say it."

The sci-fi series is based on the DC Comics series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, which began in 2002, and looks at the aftermath of a cataclysmic event that wipes out all but one mammal with a Y chromosome. Yorick Brown (Dunkirk's Barry Keoghan) is the last male survivor, and more importantly humankind's last hope. Along with his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand, also a male, he sets out to discover what wiped out all the men. But, the FX series is also looking at what a world run by women looks like, albeit in a time of confusion and mayhem.

As for what this show, which has been in the works since 2015, will look like onscreen, Tamblyn will be joining a majority female cast featuring Diane Lane as Yorick’s mother, Senator Jennifer Brown, who, according to an FX press release via Variety, is a junior senator in her first term who has "made a name for herself in political circles for her willingness to put personal ideals above politics.”

Imogen Poots will play Yorick's sister, Hero Brown, an EMT "who nurses a deep emotional trauma that often leads her to cross personal and professional lines." Succession's Juliana Canfield stars as Beth, Yorick's girlfriend, while Captain Marvel's Lashana Lynch plays Agent 355, a Secret Service agent who is loyal to her job even in this trying time.

The logline of Y says that "the new world order of women will explore gender, race, class and survival." Just because women are in charge doesn't mean that everything is completely different, but it does mean they'll be different kinds of problems to look at. Like, for instance, the fact that there is an apocalypse cult in the Amazons that starts after the men are wiped out.

Y will likely offer a new take on gender politics that doesn't show women losing power, like say, The Handmaid's Tale, but what it's like when they gain it. FX's Y will be a female-led series that deals with gender and power, in a way that most shows haven't by focusing on female dynamics. A tale of women empowerment that feels like an appropriate way to explore a future that is female.