Big spoilers follow for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 2, “Through the Valley,” as well as the games on which the show is based.
Well, pretty much ever since the TV show adaptation of The Last of Us was first announced, fans have been wondering if and when Joel would suffer the same fate in live-action that he did in The Last of Us Part 2. And now we have our answer: In Season 2’s second episode, Pedro Pascal’s Joel was brutally killed by Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby, all while Bella Ramsey’s Ellie looked on in horror.
And now Pascal is speaking out about the ultimately inevitable death of Joel in both the “Making of The Last of Us” segment that followed the episode on HBO and Max, as well as in an interview with EW.
The actor, who will soon be starring in Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, says that he always knew Joel was doomed. In other words, the plan was never to deviate from the source material on that story point.
“It was just a matter of how and when,” he says in the EW report.
“It’s not like they said, ‘Hey, we kill you at the beginning of Season 2,’ but it was always an understanding that it would stay true to the source material in a specific way and that the, let’s say, practical and exclusive obligation would be for Season 1,” adds Pascal.
As fans of the game series know, Dever’s Abby has been on a mission of vengeance against Joel because he killed her father while rescuing Ellie from the Fireflies (as seen in the Season 1 finale). When she accidentally runs into Joel (and is rescued by him) during a siege of the infected in the latest episode, her thirst for blood is not diminished and she beats him with a golf club before delivering the final death blow in front of Ellie.
“I knew that Joel was going to die right from Season 1,” says Ramsey in the “Making of” segment. “But reading it in the script, I knew that it was coming as I was reading the episode, and I was dreading getting to that bit. And I cried, actually sobbed my little heart out. It was the first time I’ve ever cried from reading a piece of writing.”
Pascal says that he doesn’t think about what’s happened to Joel all that much because it makes him sad.
“I’m in active denial,” Pascal says. “I realize this more and more as I get older, I find myself slipping into denial that anything is over. I know that I’m forever bonded to so many members of the experience and just have to see them under different circumstances, but never will under the circumstances of playing Joel on The Last of Us.”
Prosthetics designer Barrie Gower recalls that early in production meetings for the episode, co-creator Craig Mazin told him Joel’s beaten and battered make-up was “the most important” of the season. “Don’t screw it up,” Mazin said.
And according to Pascal, the effect of Joel’s bloodied look was clear on the cast and crew when he walked onto the set to shoot the character’s final living moments.
“Walking around like the visual representation of your last breaths, it was really interesting to step into a room and see the reaction in people’s faces,” says the actor. “And it wasn’t one of revulsion; it was heartbreak.”
But as EW confirms, Pascal will return in flashbacks this season. (Trailers have already given this impression.) How often he’ll return remains to be seen of course, but no matter what, Joel is now dead and the show’s characters — and actors — must move on from this point.
“If we’ve done our jobs right, you’ll feel Joel there a lot,” Mazin tells EW.
