Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2.
I’m not sure how anyone could make it through The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 2 without bawling their eyes out or yelling at their screen. I just watched it, and even though I knew what was coming, it still hit like a gut punch from a clicker.
Joel’s brutal death wasn’t just brutal and is was hard to watch, and apparently, we’re not alone. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are right there with us, feeling every bit of the heartbreak.
Pascal, who wonderfully brought Joel to life with quiet strength and deep emotional layers, knew his time on the show was limited. But that didn’t make filming any easier.
“It’s not like they said, ‘Hey, we kill you at the beginning of season 2,’” he told Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
The episode closely follows the events of The Last of Us Part II video game. In the series, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) reveals she’s the daughter of the doctor Joel killed in the Season 1 finale. Then she makes him pay for it—violently.
We’re talking gunshot to the leg, a vicious beating with a golf club, and an unflinchingly graphic final kill. Pascal recalled the experience of filming the scene with Dever:
“Meeting Kaitlyn was amazing… it’s ironic that something so violent and tragic between characters can immediately bond you to the actor.” And the moment he walked onto set drenched in blood? “It wasn’t one of revulsion but of heartbreak.”
Speaking on the official HBO after show, Pascal shared how deeply he respects the emotional reaction from fans.
“I have nothing but respect for the level of investment that people have… I think it is incredibly painful for people and that’s obviously a brilliant achievement of the storytelling.” Still, he’s struggling to let go. “I’m in active denial.
“I know that I’m forever bonded to so many members of the experience… 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.”
For Ramsey, saying goodbye to Joel was just as crushing. She said: “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.”
As for the creative decision to rip off the emotional Band-Aid this early in the season, co-creator Craig Mazin said: “There’s a danger of tormenting people. It’s not what we want to do.
“If people know it’s coming, they will start to feel tormented… 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.”
Mission accomplished. This episode was a full-on emotional demolition. And while it hurts like hell to say goodbye to Joel, there’s no denying it was executed with raw, gut-wrenching brilliance.
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