Featured Image Credit: HBO
Warning: major spoilers ahead for The Last of Us season 2 episode 2
We always knew this day was coming, and with The Last of Us season 2 making its much-anticipated return, it wasted no time in cementing itself as one of the most shocking shows around.
If you thought Game of Thrones came with some dramatic deaths, it pales in comparison to the big twist that showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann just pulled off.
For those who've played 2020's The Last of Us Part II, they knew that the tragic demise of Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller was on the way.
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Despite the show's fast and loose interpretation of Naughty Dog's video games leading to hope that Joel would live to fight another day, the fact that big moment is one of the most iconic video game deaths of all time means it was only a matter of time until Joel was taking a golf club to the cranium.
Like how the death of Glenn Rhee in The Walking Dead comics was always going to play out in AMC's live-action adaptation, Mazin and Druckmann have explained why Pascal's Joel was never long for this world of parasitic mushroom monsters.
Discussing Joel's gruesome death scene on the official The Last of Us podcast, Mazin explained: "Well, they’ve [gamers] been one step ahead in that they understood it was going to happen. don’t think that anyone knew exactly when it would happen."
Druckmann chimed in saying: "We did see some people say, ‘Oh, Pedro’s too popular, HBO will not let them."
Mazin compared it to Ned Stark's (Sean Bean) death in Game of Thrones season 1 and how he's still 'reeling' from that moment even 14 years later.
He continued: "Well, the easy part was the source material was correct. I remember playing it and experiencing it and feeling horrible. But there is that difference between experiencing something and feeling horrible because you loved somebody.
"You’re grieving for the loss of that person, and you’re shocked that the story would be so dangerous as to kill that person. And a different response, which is a critical, 'I don’t think that was a good choice.'
"I thought it was a brilliant choice. I thought it was incredibly brave. And I thought it was really smart because, in the end, you have to take plot armor away at some point."
Mazin said that The Last of Us is a story about consequences, and while Joel's decision to save Ellie at the end of season 1 was because of his paternal love for her, gunning his way through a hospital full of Fireflies was a 'terrible' thing.
He concluded: "The feedback here is brutality. That’s how the world works. So there was never a question that we were going to do this. The real question was when."
While the first episode of season 1 was about Joel's fractured relationship with Ellie (Bella Ramsey), episode 2 was the right time to pull the rug from beneath her and the audience. "Here we get to Episode 2, and this happens, and you feel this double destruction because, as far as we know, her relationship with Joel was broken and now she’s forced to watch him die. And it’s like a double wound to the heart."
Even if Naughty Dog made Joel's death an inevitability, the show made it even more brutal.
Whereas the game saw a vengeful Abby deliver that final blow off-screen, fans were forced to watch it happen, with another tweak where she rammed the broken end of the golf club into his neck. There are five episodes left of The Last of Us season 2, and while the story will continue, nothing will be the same again.
