SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” now streaming on Max.
Pedro Pascal is speaking out about the “The Last of Us” Season 2 Episode 2, in which his beloved Joel is killed off after being beaten to death by the vengeful Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). The shocking twist is straight out of the “The Last Of Us Part II” video game, which means Pascal knew when he signed on to play Joel in the HBO series that his time on the show would not last forever.
“It’s not like they said, ‘Hey, we kill you at the beginning of season 2,’” Pascal told Entertainment Weekly about the death. “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. It was just a matter of how and when.”
Speaking to HBO during the official “Last of Us” after show, Pascal added: “I have nothing but respect for the level of investment that people have in a video game or a TV show or movie or book. I experience that myself. I’ve flung books across the room because its impact is so profound on me and experiencing the story. I think it is incredibly painful for people and that’s obviously a brilliant achievement of the storytelling.”
In the series, Dever’s Abby holds Joel hostage and reveals she is the daughter of the doctor he shot in the head in the Season 1 finale in order to save Ellie. She then shoots Joel in the leg and bludgeons him with a golf club. After switching to her fists and beating him up, Abby delivers the fatal blow via a spike to Joel’s neck. Pascal told HBO that “meeting Kaitlyn was amazing” and “it’s ironic that something so violent and tragic between characters can immediately bond you to the actor.”
As for showing up on set with all of his bloody makeup, the actor said: “It was interesting to step into the room and see the reactions in people’s faces. It wasn’t one of revulsion but of heartbreak.”
“I’m in active denial,” Pascal added to EW about Joel’s fate. “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.’ And, no, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it because it makes me sad.”
“The Last of Us” has mostly been a two-hander between Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie during its run. That all changes now in the wake of Joel’s death. Ramsey told HBO: “I knew that Joel was going to die but reading it in the script I was dreading getting to that bit… and I cried. I actually sobbed my little heart out. It’s the first time I’ve cried from reading a piece of writing.”
In an interview with Variety, series co-creator Craig Mazin explained why the HBO show’s creative team decided Season 2 Episode 2 was the right time to bring the “fucking horrible” moment of Joel’s death to life on the screen.
“There’s a danger of tormenting people. It’s not what we want to do,” Mazin explained. “If people know it’s coming, they will start to feel tormented. And people who don’t know it’s coming are going to find out it’s coming, because people are going to talk about the fact that it hasn’t shown up yet. Our instinct was to make sure that when we did it, that it felt natural in the story and was not some meta-function of us wanting to upset people.”
Read Variety’s full interview with “The Last of Us” creators here.
