Spoilers ahead for the second episode of “The Last of Us” Season 2.
It’s the last of Pedro Pascal.
During the second episode of “The Last of Us” Season 2 (that aired Sunday, April 20) the Emmy winning HBO drama did its darkest and most shocking move yet: it killed its main character and biggest star, Joel (Pedro Pascal).
During a pre-season interview with The Post, co-creator Craig Mazin compared it to when Ned Stark (Sean Bean) got killed on “Game of Thrones.”
“If you look at ‘Game of Thrones,’ like everybody, I was so shocked when Ned Stark got his head chopped off. I couldn’t believe it,” Mazin exclusively told The Post. “That incident never goes away,” he added, hinting that Joel’s presence will continue to be felt on the show in a similar way.
Mazin continued, “So, [Ned Stark’s] character is there, over everything from that first season [of ‘Game of Thrones’], all the way to the final moments of the last one – because that informs everything. It changes everyone, and people keep coming back to that story over and over.”
Based on a popular video game of the same name, “The Last of Us” is set in a dystopian future where society has broken down, there are zombie-like creatures, and gruff smuggler Joel (Pascal) has formed a pseudo father/daughter relationship with teen girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
Joel was killed by the new Season 2 character, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).
He had previously killed Abby’s father during his efforts to protect Ellie. So, Abby killed Joel as revenge. After Joel saved her life, she stabbed him in the neck while Ellie watched, crying. Ironically, since Abby killed Joel as revenge for him killing her dad, Ellie then swore that she’d kill Abby and her friends, as revenge for them killing Joel.
For this reason, Abby is a polarizing character.
When asked if Mazin and his co-creator Neil Druckmann took any measures to ensure that viewers wouldn’t dislike Abby, Mazin said, “People will and won’t like things. That’s fine. Neil and I didn’t really want to do anything to, say, address feedback as much as reinforce that character in this medium, which requires some different things.”
He explained that in the video game, people play as Abby, “so you connect to her right away, because you are her. You’re trying to keep yourself alive along with her, as you’re moving her around.”
Mazin added, “Well, that’s not the case for us in the show. So, right off the bat, we thought it was important for people to know, who is she? What does she want? What happened to her?”
When asked if he was concerned about losing the show’s big star in Pascal, Mazin told The Post, “I am a huge ‘Game of Thrones’ fan. And I always felt like the star of ‘Game of Thrones’ was ‘Game of Thrones.’ And so many characters came in, and so many characters died. And, if you watched our first season, my God, people were dying left and right. Some people died within 20 minutes.”
He explained that in his view, “The story, the world– that is the star.”
But, Mazin also teased that despite Joel’s death, he and Ellie “spend quite a bit of time together in this season…more than people might think.”
Season 2 of “The Last of Us” picked up five years after the events of Season 1. So this indicates that Pascal could continue to be on the show, if there are flashbacks to that five-year period between seasons.
Since the relationship between Joel and Ellie was the heart of the show in Season 1, when asked what the heart of the show is after Joel is gone, Mazin said, “still the relationship between Joel and Ellie…it [is] the kind of thing that is present throughout everything. Even when they’re not together onscreen… the things that happened with them in this season ripple out and echo forth across everything.”
He said that it shows in Ramsey’s performance, where he could tell that for Pascal’s absence, “the missing was real.”
The creator said that when Ramsey was acting in scenes without Pascal, “It’s not just, ‘I wanna be here with Joel right now.’ It’s also like, ‘hey, I’d like to be here with Pedro right now.’ That kind of bond between them is so remarkable.”
Joel’s death may not come as a surprise to many viewers, since it also happened in the hit video game that the show is based on. It’s one of pop-culture’s widely known open secrets.
“For me and for Neil, we’re not so concerned about people knowing something. Or, something coming to pass in the show that happened in the game, and people going, ‘Oh, well, yeah, I knew about that,’” Mazin explained.
“Because we’re not really a mystery; this isn’t a whodunit. What this show is about are relationships.”
The Emmy-winning “Chernobyl” writer and producer added, “And so the question is, ‘How are we going to experience any event that happens in the show through a relationship? What does it mean for these people going forward?’ Not just for this season. Assuming things go well, for some seasons to come.”
“The Last of Us” has already been renewed for a Season 3.
When asked how many seasons he sees the show continuing for – especially considering the loss of Pascal– Mazin said, “We certainly know where it ends, and we know it does end. So this is not meant to be, ‘and now in the 12th season of ‘The Last of Us.’ That’s not happening. So, depending on how it lands, [there will be] one more season for sure … but perhaps one more, beyond that.”