This text incorporates spoilers for “The Worth,” the penultimate episode of season 2 of “The Last of Us.” Cease studying proper now if you have not watched it — spoilers lie forward!
It feels unattainable to think about a world the place Joel Miller, the unique protagonist of the 2013 online game “The Last of Us” and the 2023 HBO tv adaptation (performed by Troy Miller and Pedro Pascal, respectively), remains to be alive. What I imply by that is that, in each the sport and present, Joel type of has to die to drive the narrative for his surrogate daughter Ellie, portrayed by Ashley Johnson within the unique video games and Bella Ramsey within the present. According to sport creator and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann, although, there is a world the place Joel possibly survives. Nevertheless, as he defined to Alan Sepinwall for Rolling Stone, he and his co-showrunner Craig Mazin finally determined in opposition to Joel surviving a vengeful assault from Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever).
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“Sure, as a result of we focus on every thing,” Druckmann instructed Sepinwall when the latter requested in the event that they thought-about saving each Abby and Joel’s demise for a later season. “We even mentioned what if we did not kill Joel, simply to interrogate it. As a result of every thing needs to be on the desk. Every thing needs to be interrogated to ensure we’re making the perfect decisions for this model of the story. We even mentioned, might we inform this different story, might we lengthen this second? However the extra we mentioned it, the extra it simply felt fallacious. It felt like we’d solely be doing it for enterprise causes, to take care of this sense that folks have for longer. However there wasn’t a narrative there to inspire it. The inciting incident, the origin of this story is Joel’s demise. Any inciting incident, you must get to it as quickly as potential. What motivates this whole journey that Ellie goes on begins with Joel.”
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So, as Sepinwall requested, what got here out of a dialogue about not killing Joel? Did Druckmann recall any specifics? “I do not, as a result of that was a really quick dialog that did not have any impression on us,” Druckmann clarified. “As a result of we knew we have been exploring one thing that, you recognize, we’re not going to get a lot out of this, and we did not.”
Pedro Pascal needed to come again to shoot Joel’s flashback scenes … and shutting out his time on The Last of Us was arduous
Neil Druckmann stepped into the director’s chair for “The Worth” — marking his second time doing so on “The Last of Us” after the season 1 episode “The Contaminated” — and as he instructed Alan Sepinwall, the present’s creatives did not shoot any of Joel’s flashback scenes earlier than filming his on-display screen demise, that means that Pedro Pascal did must return to the set of the sequence to reprise his function one final time. “We shot out Pedro for episode [2], then he went to work on a special undertaking,” Druckmann revealed. When Sepinwall requested if it felt totally different when Pascal got here again, his reply was measured:
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“Sure, though within the day-to-day, you would not really feel it. However undoubtedly, as we have been getting nearer to the top, you can really feel this parting of the methods coming. After which the final day, particularly, it received actually emotional after we completed the final shot and we frolicked for some time and simply hugged it out and chatted and reminisced.”
Not solely that, however Druckmann additionally knew full nicely that the ultimate go-round with Joel and Ellie within the tv sequence — who’re portrayed so fantastically by each Pascal and Bella Ramsey, two actors with obvious and apparent actual-life chemistry and a candy relationship as nicely — could be actually troublesome, due to the work they’d already put into their roles. “I knew due to their chemistry, due to what they introduced, how painful this is able to be,” Druckmann mentioned, chatting with the truth that Pascal’s Joel and Ramsey’s Ellie have gained over audiences the world over.
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“And it wanted to be painful to inform this story,” he continued. “In the event that they did not have chemistry, I’d have been frightened about how we inform this story. So for me, it was extra of a query of, that story might be full, that story can stay by itself. That is how we made the primary sport. However we put in sure adjustments and tweaks prepping for the subsequent story if we received the prospect to inform it. And by chance, the present was profitable to such a level that HBO was, with open arms, excited to have us proceed to inform the story.”
Filming the ultimate scene between Joel and Ellie was extremely stunning, in line with Neil Druckmann
Clearly, Joel does die (at Abby’s fingers in season 2, episode 2, “By the Valley”), and that is why we solely see him through flashback in “The Worth,” residing by a number of of Ellie’s earlier birthdays and charting the ups and downs of their relationship. Neil Druckmann mentioned that filming this episode with each Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey was at all times intense, significantly due to the actual-life affection between the 2 and their shared understanding of Joel and Ellie (and their relationship).
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“It is such a pleasure. They’re so gifted,” Druckmann gushed. “They now perceive these characters a lot. I am in such a novel place, as a result of I’ve lived with these characters and these scenes for thus lengthy, and to get to revisit them in these scenes that imply a lot to followers, but in addition to me personally … I used to be very nervous. I wished to ensure I did it justice for not solely the present, however simply ‘The Last of Us’ as a complete, and what the avid gamers are going to count on from these sequences coming off the sport. In the second, I used to be so pleasantly stunned by what they have been placing in entrance of the digicam.”
Plus, as Druckmann identified, working exterior of movement-seize — which was used for the “Last of Us” video games — allowed for a sure stage of emotionality. “There’s sure moments in stay-motion the place you may have joyful accidents, like you may’t plan for one thing,” he mentioned earlier than revealing a touching second between Ramsey and Pascal that occurred organically in a scene the place Joel brings Ellie to an deserted area museum for her birthday. “Once they’re within the area capsule, and Joel is asking Ellie how he did, and you then see he has this simply stunning smile on his face, and he turns, and also you see the glint of a tear in his wrinkles. You do not see him cry; simply that. We could not plan for that, and the truth that we caught it, I am like, it is simply … you simply catch these stunning moments which can be simply there, after which they’re gone. That’s the great thing about stay-motion.”
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The season 2 finale of “The Last of Us” airs on Could 25, 2025, at 9 P.M. on HBO Max and HBO.