The Mandalorian‘s Pedro Pascal is further cementing himself as TV’s best surrogate dad thanks to his newest show, The Last of Us. More impressive, though, is that after just four episodes, it’s already one of the best video game adaptations ever. That’s no small feat, which is why it seems like the man who brought Oberyn Martell to life can do anything. And maybe he can. Because during his hosting gig at Saturday Night Live he made us want to watch a gritty HBO drama we could never have imagined. SNL turned Pedro Pascal into everyone’s favorite plumber in a serious take on Mario Kart.
We don’t care what this sketch’s narrator says: this is it. This is the best idea for a prestige television series we’ve ever seen. (Especially when you consider what Saturday Night Live did with less than a week to put this Mario Kart adventure together. This sketch looks amazing. Think what HBO could do with a 100 million dollar budget over ten episodes. Maybe they could build an actual road made out of rainbows.)
It wouldn’t even matter how absolutely absurd this show would be in every way. We would absolutely watch this every week, and so would you. Here at Nerdist, we would also have at least two videos and five posts about each episode. Just imagine how much fun we’d have finding every Nintendo, Super Mario Bros., and Mario Kart Easter egg in Pedro Pascal’s brave new show. (Though we’re only 99% sure bisexual Toad and Yoshi are bisexual in the games. We’re currently looking into it.)
We need this to be real for another reason, too. Think of all the potential spinoffs this series could lead to the way Game of Thrones resulted in House of the Dragon. Give us HBO’s hard-nosed take on Super Smash Bros. Think of the violence! Think of alive-action Kirby!
Okay, we’re going to start fantasy casting that right now. Well, not right now. We need to rewatch the SNL version of this Mario Kart sketch a hundred more times first and cheer on Pedro Pascal’s dastaredly stunys. Maybe if we all watch it enough, HBO will go into production.
