Warning: This article contains major spoilers from The Last of Us season 2, episode 2, “Through the Valley.”
Weeks before HBO aired a pivotal episode of The Last of Us season 2 — the one that kills off his character, Joel Miller, and alters the course of the story moving forward — Pedro Pascal contemplates what his plans will be for the moment that hour of television hits the airwaves. “It’s April 20. If it were the ’90s, I’d be high,” he jokes with Entertainment Weekly in late March, referring to the annual cannabis holiday, 420. “But I think I’ll be working. So I have no idea.”
In truth, Pascal hasn’t thought about it much, even as he embarks on a press tour to promote the new season of the Emmy-winning drama series. That’s by design.
“I’m in active denial,” the co-lead of The Last of Us with Bella Ramsey admits. “I realize this more and more as I get older, I find myself slipping into denial that anything is over. I know that I’m forever bonded to so many members of the experience and just have to see them under different circumstances, 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.”
Pascal knew this day would eventually come from the moment he accepted the job ahead of season 1. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann were determined to adapt the core events of the Last of Us video games, which entail Joel slaughtering the Fireflies rebel group in order to save Ellie (Ramsey), even though her death would lead to a vaccine against the monster-spawning codryceps virus that destroyed the world. That mission also meant bringing a moment to life in season 2, when Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), the daughter of the slain Firefly doctor, hunts down Joel for retribution and kills him in front of Ellie. “It was just a matter of how and when,” Pascal says.
Pedro Pascal poses for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot. Gina Gizella Manning
That day arrives now with the debut of episode 2, titled “Through the Valley.” Pascal remembers shooting his death scene in Kamloops, Canada. It felt like any other day. He recalls the “weirdly relaxing time” in the makeup chair, where he had a “good conversation” with prosthetics guru Barrie Gower and makeup designer Paul Spateri. The effects did a lot of the work, so he didn’t need to put himself in any particular mindset.
“I was always sidestepping how I really felt, that in a big way my experience was coming to an end on the show,” Pascal reflects. “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 remembers the moment he stepped onto set in full makeup and prosthetics that emulated a swollen left eye, blood stains, bruises, and cracked limbs. “[I] killed the vibe completely as soon as anyone set their eyes on me,” he recalls. “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.”
The scene itself proved fulfilling for Pascal. He calls Dever, known for Booksmart, Unbelievable, and No One Will Save You, “a gangster of an actor.” Even though there were so many individuals involved in that sequence — including Isabela Merced as Dina, Spencer Lord as Owen, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, and Danny Ramirez as Manny — Pascal describes the experience as if everything around faded away until it was just him and Dever.
Pedro Pascal’s Joel on ‘The Last of Us’ season 2. Liane Hentscher/HBO
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In a separate conversation with EW, Mazin praises Pascal’s performance as a dying Joel. “It’s easy to imagine that his day was just lying on a floor covered in blood, but there are these beautiful moments,” he says. “Bella watched the episode and then they called me and said it’s when he moves his hand, when he just tries to move towards [Ellie] that Bella just fell apart. It’s very easy to screw that up. It’s very easy to just be stage deaf-y or do nothing. To find something that beautiful there, it’s magical.”
Pascal adds of that moment, “I have no idea if it’s captured on camera, but [there’s] a subtle sense that Joel can hear her in the last breath of life that he has left in him. He can hear her calling for him and hear that she’s in danger and wants to help her and is unable to lift even a finger to do so. I remember playing that, and that was really devastating.”
To clarify for those unfamiliar with the video games, Pascal’s Joel isn’t completely gone from The Last of Us. There are scenes teased in the season 2 trailers involving him that we haven’t seen yet. Mazin and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann (a co-creator of the games through studio Naughty Dog) confirm those scenes “are coming.”
Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot. Gina Gizella Manning
“We’ve shown that we screw around with time,” Mazin says. “So characters are gone but not forgotten, and sometimes they are remembered in interesting ways.”
“Something that I do feel like keeping secret is, how will those things play and where will they be placed,” Pascal comments, “which I think is still a lovely thing to not know for people that watch the show.”
The Last of Us season 2 will continue dropping episodes on HBO and Max every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Read more about this episode and what it means for the show in EW’s cover story.
