“The Last of Us” S2 Takes Its Huge Swing

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR “THE LAST OF US” SEASON 2, EPISODE 2

The producers of HBO’s “The Last of Us” aren’t messing around it would seem. Before the season aired, there had long been speculation that the TV series adaptation might pad out the events of Jackson in order to avoid coming to the second game’s most divisive moment.

That hasn’t been the case. Even with the inclusion of a massive “Game of Thrones” -style battle not in the game spanning a good chunk of the episode, the series followed through on the game as Abby took her revenge and beat Joel to a pulp before killing him.

The actual death made some minor changes with a neck stab as opposed to a sharp blow, a monologue from Abby beforehand about right-and-wrong and justifying her actions, switching the knocked-out Tommy with Dina, and the scene taking place in full light as opposed to the dimmer chalet interior of the game. Otherwise it holds pretty true to the original scene.

In the wake of the episode, EW has posted a feature piece about the making of the episode and the scene in question, which was shot last March in a remote location in Kamloops, Canada. While the whole episode took a month-and-a-half to film, the death scene was a two-day job.

Pascal himself tells the outlet he knew this was coming when he accepted the job. When it came time to filming though, he says it wasn’t until he emerged in the room in his final ‘bloody pulp’ make-up that he noticed a shift amongst the crew:

“I’ve never experienced anything like I did that day where I stepped onto set in full makeup and then killed the vibe completely as soon as anyone set their eyes on me. 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 was especially rough on actress Kaitlyn Dever who plays Abby – it was not just Pascal’s first scene with Dever but also the first material she shot as Abby. After a 14-year battle with cancer, Dever’s mother passed away just three weeks beforehand which only added to conveying grief in the scene in which Abby explains to Joel how he slaughtered her father and how she’s had to deal with that.

Both episodes to date have started out with an Abby scene, one a flashback and the other a dream, which go much more into the character’s motivation. Abby’s monologue was an invention of showrunner Craig Mazin who explained its inclusion:

“It’s really just about imagining how angry she is and how hurt, but also how correct she is in her mind. What is important for her to convey is that what he did was wrong. The end. Guilty. Sentenced to die. No argument. No debate. No nothing. I do love how Pedro portrayed this kind of acceptance of it there. The truth is, what he did is what she’s doing now. We kill for the people we love. Joel has an experience that neither Ellie nor Abby have – and we’re going to explore this further in the season – and that is the experience of loving a child, which is different than being a child and loving a parent.”

This won’t be the end of Pedro Pascal’s Joel in the season – the actor will be back for at least two major flashback sequences, with episode 6 expected to be a big one on that front. Mazin says: “If we’ve done our jobs right, you’ll feel Joel there a lot.”

But now the series moves forward, with the trailer for the third episode out and showing Bella Ramsey’s Ellie dealing with the grief of the loss and making plans to hunt down Abby in Seattle. Check out that trailer below along with the ‘inside the episode’ for season 2, and a photoshoot video in which the trio talk about the scene.

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