On tonight's new episode of The Last of Us, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) murdered Joel (Pedro Pascal) with a golf club, all while Joel's surrogate daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey) watched. Abby was getting revenge on Joel for killing her father in the season 1 finale. Now, Ellie has sworn revenge on Abby and her friends.
First, some tough love: Joel is dead. Abby beat him senseless and then shoved what was left of the golf club stem into his neck. There isn't much in the way of advanced medical care in the zombie apocalypse. At the end of the episode, we see Ellie, Dina and Jesse dragging Joel's wrapped body back to Jackson. He's gone.
In 2011, another HBO show, Game of Thrones, shocked audiences by killing off the man who everyone thought was the main character: Ned Stark. A couple seasons later, it killed other important characters like Robb and Catelyn Stark at the Red Wedding. Game of Thrones became known for killing characters; it's part of what helped the show turn into a phenomenon. In my opinion, not enough TV shows have taken the right lessons from Game of Thrones and put their lead characters in true peril. I think of what happened at the end of Stranger Things season 3, when Sheriff Hopper appeared in die only to get a full arc when the show returned for season 4. But The Last of Us is going there.
But that doesn't mean we won't see Pedro Pascal again. The Last of Us season 2 is based on the video game The Last of Us Part II, which includes numerous flashbacks to Joel and Ellie's time together before his death. We've gotten glimpses of those flashbacks in trailers for The Last of Us season 2. So even though Joel is dead, we'll see more of him.
But so far as the present-day storyline goes, it will now be all about Ellie trying to get revenge on Abby, just as it is in the video game. That story will take multiple seasons to tell; HBO has already renewed The Last of Us for season 3. So the show is moving forward without Joel.
And I expect it will do very well. Ratings for the season 2 premiere were up from season 1, which already had excellent ratings. I predict that Joel's death will inspire more people to watch, not less. I think producers sometimes make the mistake of assuming that fans will be too upset if their favorite characters are killed off, so they hold back. And it is indeed possible to bungle an important death scene. But when done right, killing a main character can raise the stakes and get people interested. And Joel's death, as painful as it was to watch, was done right.
New episodes of The Last of Us air Sunday nights on HBO and Max.
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