The moment The Last of Us fans had been waiting for has come to pass: Joel (Pedro Pascal) is dead. He was brutally murdered by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) on the newest episode of The Last of Us, "Through The Valley." People who had played the video game The Last of Us Part II already knew this was coming. For everyone else: just breathe. This show will go on.
Joel's death is a key turning point in the story. When The Last of Us Part II came out for the PlayStation 4 in 2020, it inspired an uproar amidst the fandom. Time has been kinder to this plot twist, but it's still upsetting to watch, in the game or on the show.
The TV show adapted this moment pretty faithfully from the game, but there were some differences. Watch the scene from the game below, and then we'll outline some of the changes:
- The single biggest difference is that, in the game, Joel's brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) is present for Joel's death. On the show, Tommy is busy dealing with a massive zombie attack on the town of Jackson. Instead, Dina (Isabela Merced) is with Joel, whereas she's elsewhere at the time in the game.
- In the game, Joel introduces himself to the group, since he's assumes they're friendly. On the show, Abby tells them who Joel is after overhearing Dina say his name earlier.In the game, Abby's friends pistol-whip Tommy to take him out of commission. On the show, they inject Dina with something that puts her to sleep for a bit. Overall, they're much more gentle with Dina in the show than they are with Tommy in the game.
- Generally speaking, Abby's friends are less bloodthirsty in the show than they are in the game. In the game, they help hold Joel down. In the show, they give each other a lot of concerned looks once Abby starts torturing Joel. There's a sense that they all think Abby is going too far, whereas in the game they seem more like active participants.
- In the game, Abby doesn't say that the rumors were right about Joel being handsome. I guess they felt the need to add that part in after casting Pedro Pascal in the role.
- Visually, the lodge where Abby and her friends are hanging out is a lot dingier and darker in the game than in the show.In the show, Abby lays out exactly why she wants to kill Joel: to get revenge on him after he killed her father (and a lot of other Fireflies) in the season 1 finale. In the game, she does not tell him this information, or if she does, we don't see it happen.
- In the show, Ellie figures that Joel is in the lodge because she sees his horse outside. In the game, she puts things together when she sees a bunch of dead infected outside the gate to the lodge; before Joel and Tommy go inside, Abby's friends help them kill a bunch of infected on the other side of the gate. The show took that part out and streamlined things.
- The the show, Abby beats Joel so hard with a golf club that the head snaps off. She then uses what's left of the stem to stab him in the neck and kill him. In the game, the golf club never breaks; she just beats him to death with it.
- On the show, after Joel is dead, Ellie cradles his lifeless body. She doesn't do that in the game. Rather, she's knocked out and only awakens when Dina and Jesse arrive on the scene later.
Most of these changes are fairly minor, and there are a lot of details that carry over exactly from the games, like when Abby calls Joel a "stupid old man" and tells him he "doesn't get to rush this." A lot of what happens after Ellie enters the room is almost one-for-one, from the way Abby's friends subdue Ellie; to the way she slashes at one of Abby's friends; to Ellie begging Joel to get up and her telling Abby and her friends "You're gonna f**king die!" They also keep in Abby's friend Owen imploring her to, "End it. Now."
This is a key scene from The Last of Us games and I'm not surprised the show stuck close to the source material. We'll see whether that continues with the rest of the season. New episodes of The Last of Us air Sunday nights on HBO and Max.
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