This article contains spoilers from The Last of Us season 2, episode 5, “Feel Her Love.”
The creators of The Last of Us promised viewers would still feel Joel’s presence long after his death on season 2. “If we’ve done our jobs right, you’ll feel Joel there a lot,” showrunner Craig Mazin previously told Entertainment Weekly. Episode 5 gets more literal with it.
Pedro Pascal makes his first return appearance on The Last of Us since the big event in the final moments of “Feel Her Love.” Ellie (Bella Ramsey) just killed her first member of Abby’s (Kaitlyn Dever) crew on her mission to avenge Joel, and we get the beginnings of what looks like a flashback. Ellie wakes up in her bedroom back in Jackson, and Joel is there, standing in her doorway.
HBO
Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller in ‘The Last of Us’ season 2
“Hey, kiddo,” he says in that all-too-familiar tone.
In 2020’s The Last of Us Part II, the video game which season 2 now only begins to adapt, Joel appears regularly throughout the story. Flashback sequences involving him and Ellie are interspersed in between the main timeline to show how their relationship became so fraught. Similarly, there are scenes involving Joel in The Last of Us season 2 trailers that we haven’t seen play out on the series yet.
It all indicates adaptations of specific flashback moments from the source material. One sequence involves a trip for Joel and Ellie to a museum to see the dinosaur and space exhibits, which gamers know well. Another involves the death of Eugene, a character we’ve only heard about so far but will be played by The Matrix and The Sopranos actor Joe Pantoliano.
“Something that I guess I do feel like keeping secret is how those things will play and where they will be placed, which I think is still a lovely thing to not know for people that watch the show,” Pascal told EW during an interview in late March.
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
In returning to the production to film these scenes, having been a lead of The Last of Us alongside Ramsey, Pascal felt pride in seeing his younger colleague now step up as the main star of the season. “From my first day of season 2, it’s what I saw,” he said. “And then in returning, seeing how bonded everyone was in their experience as a cast and as a crew, I feel like that had so much to do with Bella’s kindness and patience and generosity.”
The Last of Us season 2 releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
