Besties, reach out to your The Last of Us-watching friends after the emotional turmoil they endured on April 20. Spoiler alert: Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 follow. Though loyal players of the video game saw it coming and were able to mentally prepare to lose the beloved character of Joel (played by Pedro Pascal), that didn’t make it *any* easier. So many fans are wondering, will Joel return to The Last of Us?Â
In Season 2’s second episode, “Through the Valley,” viewers witnessed Joel brutally murdered at the hands of Abby (played by Kaitlyn Dever) as she avenged the loss of her father. Truly, there’s nothing more gut-wrenching than having to watch Joel’s death twice (once on the show and once in the game), and many gamers were already in mourning of Joel before his death in Episode 2. Losing Joel sets the stage for what’s to come in Season 2, with Ellie seeking revenge against Abby.
It was no surprise to Pedro Pascal that his character would end up dead, though that didn’t make it any less heartbreaking. “It’s not like they said, ‘Hey, we kill you at the beginning of Season 2,’ but it was always an understanding that it would stay true to the source material in a specific way,” Pascal said to Entertainment Weekly. Bella Ramsey, who portrays Ellie, discussed the scene (because, yeah, they were dreading it just as much as fans were). “I think it was a hushed thing, like scary words no one wants to utter,” Ramsey said. “It feels like too big of a thing to just speak about it.”
Many fans are already missing Joel, wondering if there’s any way that they could expect to see Pascal grace their screens again as the beloved character. Lovers of the video game The Last of Us Part 2 are familiar with the fact that losing Joel doesn’t mean he’s gone forever, thanks to the art of flashbacks. In the video game, Joel dies early on, but he still returns to screens throughout the game in the form of flashbacks that leave no one dry-eyed. Many are crossing their fingers that this will be the case for the show, too.
Neil Druckmann, one of the co-creators of the game and one of the showrunners of the series, talked about this turning point in the The Last of Us podcast. “This is where the story starts in earnest,” he said. “But I will say that we do know there are some mysteries here, some gaps, in Ellie and Joel’s relationships. And I think this is a spoiler because we put a trailer out there with lots of shots in it. This is not the last that we will see of Joel.”
If that confirmation didn’t make you breathe a deep sigh of relief, I don’t know what will. I, for one, am excited to see more of Ellie and Joel’s relationship (of course, with a box of tissues by my side.)