Viewers may still be reeling from the brutal twist in the latest episode of The Last of Us, but for actor Jennifer Aniston, the series held a different sort of surprise.
During the season 2 premiere episode, "Future Days," Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) go on patrol in the mountains outside of Jackson. They climb onto the second level of a convenience store to take out the infected inside, but things go sideways when Ellie falls through the floor. There, she finds a fun artifact from before the apocalypse: a 2003 issue of People Magazine, featuring none other than Aniston on the cover.
"Of all the things to survive the apocalypse," Aniston joked on her Instagram stories this Tuesday, tagging the official The Last of Us show account.
In The Last of Us TV show, the initial outbreak of the cordyceps plague took place in September, 2003; in the video games, it happens in 2013. Both versions of the story have delighted in dropping little period-appropirate Easter eggs like this. It's nice to see that tradition carry on in the second season of the show, and that it's catching notice of a legendary actor like Aniston.
Pedro Pascal and Jennifer Aniston are reportedly dating
As fun as Aniston's glib response to her brief appearance in The Last of Us is, there's another reason that outlets like Entertainment Weekly are writing about it: Aniston is reportedly dating Pedro Pascal, the actor who plays Joel on HBO's post-apocalyptic drama.
EW reports that Pascal and Aniston first met on the red carpet of the Critic's Choice Awards in 2024, where Pascal crashed an interview Aniston and Reese Witherspoon were giving about their Apple TV+ series The Morning Show. The rumors about them dating began last month, when they were seen leaving a Los Angeles hotel together. It doesn't take much to get the rumor mill spinning in Hollywood.
Whether Pascal's finding love off-screen or not, he's certainly having a big week on The Last of Us. The latest episode of the show, "Through the Valley," adapted an important scene from the video game series which saw Joel get brutally beaten to death with a golf club. It was a difficult scene to watch but an important one for where the story's going next, and the exact sort of shocker moment that gets people raving about the show around the watercooler. It was a bold move that recalled another classic HBO series:
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