Last night, The Last of Us did what fans of the video game series had been dreading for weeks: killed Joel, the main character played by Pedro Pascal. Newcomer Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) did the deed in the lodge with a golf club, in revenge for Joel killing her father offhandedly in the season 1 finale. And it all happened in front of Joel's surrogate daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
Joel had his reasons for killing Abby's dad, but clearly, Abby isn't interested in hearing them. Joel's death scene was every bit as brutal as fans expected, and marks a huge turning point for the show. Although Pascal will appear again in flashbacks, he was still bummed that the character was getting killed off. "I was always sidestepping how I really felt, that in a big way my experience was coming to an end on the show," he told Entertainment Weekly. "I guess that was the strangest thing to step through because I felt so bonded to everyone in the show after going through the gauntlet of season 1 together, not just with Bella, but with the entire cast and crew. So to have this goodbye was very sad for me, and I had such a physical manifestation, a violent mirror of how sad it was for Joel to die. To be honest, it was quite dreamlike."
Pascal tried to treat the scene like any other, but it was hard to keep that up when he came on set made up to look like he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. "[I] killed the vibe completely as soon as anyone set their eyes on me," he said. "This kind of shock and heartbreak… it was weird to be on the receiving end of that. It's like the extreme version of, 'Is there something on my face?' I really could see this sort of grief take over everyone's look in their eyes."
Of course, this is not the first time Pedro Pascal has had a memorable onscreen death. Pascal broke out as Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones, who was memorably killed in the fourth season when Gregor "the Mountain" Clegane crushed Oberyn's head with his bare, massive hands. "I get killed a lot," Pascal quipped. "I like to die."
So how does Joel's death compare to Oberyn's? "I think this is the best one," Pascal said. "No, it's in competition, I think, with Game of Thrones. It has to be. I love the golf club. I'm going to start golf."
The Last of Us will continue with Bella Ramsey in the lead
Even Kaitlyn Dever, who played Joel's murderer, was emotional over the scene. "I watched you guys in season 1, and your relationship was so beautiful," she said. "And watching the end of you guys was really, really hard for me, as a viewer."
As for playing the scene, Dever was in a very strange place. "I lost my mom two or three weeks before I actually shot this scene [on The Last of Us], and my mom's funeral was three days before I did my first day. So I was sort of in a fog. I was in a daze," she shared. "Because of my life circumstances, I wasn't actually able to do my normal routine as an actor, which was really interesting because I was kind of worried about it. Usually if I have a monologue like that, I'm memorizing it three weeks before I do it. I had a different approach, and I think that it really served the character in a lot of ways. I was able to sort of… I don't know, just really let it go and not think about it too much because the words on the page are so powerful anyway."
Now that this scene is out of the way, the show will change to become more about Ellie's quest for revenge. "It definitely felt heavier," Ramsey said. "I've felt the weight of the responsibility of it more, and not the responsibility of being the main character as much. It is more just the workload and being there literally every day. I did feel at times I was carrying the whole thing on my back, which obviously isn't true. So many people are contributing. Within how dark the story gets this season, it definitely felt heavy, but I was supported the whole time."
We'll see how that plays out as new episodes of The Last of Us air on HBO and Max on Sunday nights. For now, the team is still basking in the grim honor of having effectively adapted one of the most infamous scenes in all of video games to live-action. "So many times adaptations don't, and you can't recapture that moment. Here, I feel so lucky that we did," said co-showrunner Neil Druckmann, who was also the main creative force behind the games. "Honestly, knowing now Pedro and Bella, I had no doubt that we would, because I know how they act and what they throw into it. The fact that it still works just speaks to the magic of these incredible actors."
Co-showrunner Craig Mazin also weighed in: "I feel this weird sense of guilt, but also a sense of pride because I think we've made something remarkable here. I think we've made something very shattering that will earn people's attention and interest for seasons to come," he said. "I guess if there's one thing I would want people to know, it's that night, I'll sit there and I'll watch it. And [if] they are upset, I get it. We're not doing it because we like to upset people. We're doing it because this story echoes life, and life unfortunately includes this."
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