Fans of The Last of Us have been dealt a tricky hand early into the latest season. Last week, we lost a central and beloved character, and it's hard to imagine the series without them.
The critically-acclaimed series follows Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie, as acting father and daughter, who are attempting to survive a post-apocalyptic USA, where people have become zombie-like figures because of a mass fungal infection. Now the show's creator has shared some thoughts on that unexpected shock death that rocked TV screens across the world.
Your warning: spoilers below...
Why was Joel killed off so early and is he really dead?
Joel Miller has gone. Sometimes you have to just say it out loud to believe it. Anyone who played the games (that the show's based on) and already knew this was coming – please let us mourn in peace. Not only was he killed off, but it happened in the most dramatic, awful way.
He was bludgeoned by a golf club by Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever) to avenge her dead father who he killed previously in the episode titled 'Through the Valley'. In a horrendous (yet admittedly artful) parallel, this happens after he saves her from a group of infected beings, and she returns the favour by murdering him in front of his de facto daughter Ellie.
'People are going to be upset. That's sometimes how good drama goes,' The Last of Us' executive producer Craig Mazin told USA Today. 'This was something that was always meant to happen. So much of the first season was, in a weird way, leading to this moment. And it's upsetting.
'Loss is kind of how this story functions, so this was largely preordained,' he said. 'When I talked to Pedro the first time, I said, "This is how this will go".' He went on to say Abby and Joel 'have a weirdly intimate moment of connection where Joel, on some level, recognises her right to retribution, to avenge her father.'
But for anyone absolutely devastated by the on-screen loss of Pascal, and the fictional loss of Joel, we've got a shred of hope. 'I don't think I'm spoiling anything,' Mazin said. 'We have not seen the last of Pedro Pascal on "The Last of Us".'
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pascal admitted that he had known his character would die when he first signed onto the series.
'It’s not like they said, "Hey, we kill you at the beginning of season two,"' he said. 'But it was always an understanding that it would stay true to the source material in a specific way and that the, let’s say, practical and exclusive obligation would be for season 1. It was just a matter of how and when.
'I’m in active denial,' he added. 'I realise this more and more as I get older, I find myself slipping into denial that anything is over.
'I know that I’m forever bonded to so many members of the experience and just have to see them under different circumstances, but never will under the circumstances of playing Joel on The Last of Us. And, no, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it because it makes me sad.'