The Last Of Us Joel Death:Â Even more tragic than expected, the most recent episode of HBO‘s “The Last of US” reproduced a pivotal scene from the video game series that fans had been dreading. Here’s the controversial twist on Joel Death Game.
In “Through the Valley”, the second episode of season two, Joel (Pedro Pascal), the protagonist of the series, is severely beaten with a golf club and killed by q vengeful daughter, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is made to watch him die.
Joel’s death was inevitable, according to fans of the game that the TV series is based on; the only question was when the show would include it.
It’s unexpected to kill off a main character so early in a season. However, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the show’s co-creators and showrunners, explained why Joel’s death had to occur in that episode in an interview with Variety that was released on Sunday.
Although they thought of every scenario, Druckmann stated that it made sense to remove the character early on from a narrative standpoint “because this is the inciting incident for this story.”
The showrunners also wanted to spare fans from any more suffering because Joel’s death had been looming over the series.
“There’s a danger of tormenting people,” Mazin told Variety. “It’s not what we want to do. If people know it’s coming, they will start to feel tormented. And people who don’t know it’s coming are going to find out it’s coming because people are going to talk about the fact that it hasn’t shown up yet.
“Our instinct was to make sure that when we did it, it felt natural in the story and was not done meta-function of us wanting to upset people.”
In the season one finale, Abby is completely overwhelmed by her anger over Joel killing her father five years earlier, making the scene far more graphic than it is in the game.
Ellie’s response to witnessing her father figure in such helplessness adds to the moment’s melancholy.
“Joel is brought low here in a way that it’s so heartbreaking,” Mazin said.
Joel’s death, according to the showrunners, was “important just to see the brutality” because it will influence other characters ‘ choices in season two.
“Therefore, we couldn’t spare the audience, either, because we need them in that same mindset,” Druckmann said.