In a hilarious fake trailer, Saturday Night Live has cast The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal in HBO’s Mario Kart and tasks him with taking Princess Peach to Rainbow Road.
The trailer, which you can check out below, is roughly three minutes long and also features appearances by Bowser, Yoshi, Toad, and Luigi.
HBO’s adapting another iconic game pic.twitter.com/YtsIswwSBb
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 5, 2023
In this world, it’s been 10 years since Mushroom Kingdom fell and the only thing left is “hope.” Pascal’s Mario, who introduces himself with the iconic line, “It’s a-me, Mario,” is asked to take Princess Peach to Rainbow Road in an attempt to save humanity, and he’s given a kart to do so.
Instead of Clickers, our heroes have to face off against Goombas, but luckily they have shotguns with red shell ammo to keep them safe. We even see Mario eating a mushroom and, when Princess Peach asks why he’s eating poision, he responds with, “It makes me feel big, okay?! I need to feel big, because Bowser is out there, and he’s the main bad guy.”
The trailer is full of other Easter Eggs, the death of a major character we won’t spoil here, and even more.
One of the funniest bits also notes that this new series is from the “master storytellers behind Mario Kart 1-8.” As everyone knows, we all flock to the Mario Kart franchise because of its riveting tales.
Pascal’s appearance on Saturday Night Live arrives in the middle of The Last of Us’ first season. We gave the latest episode a rare 10/10, saying, “A masterfully told love story set in a world designed to leave them unwritten, episode 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us is a sensational hour of television.”
For more, check out our breakdown of the real version of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, why we said this third episode is adaptation at its finest, and the latest on Pascal’s return as Din Djarin alongside Grogu in Season 3 of The Mandalorian.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.