Seriously, stop reading this right now if you haven’t watched “Through the Valley,” the second episode of season 2 of “The Last of Us.” Spoilers lie ahead. You’ve been warned!
Anyone who watched “Through the Valley,” the landmark episode of “The Last of Us” — HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s universally acclaimed game series — is likely still reeling from the major event that happens at the end of the installment. Just like in the 2020 video game sequel “The Last of Us Part II,” Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), whose father was a victim of Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) murderous rampage through a rebel Firefly hospital at the end of the show’s first season, brutally murders the man she’s been hunting for years. (With that said, the show dials up the violence considerably by letting Abby’s final blow come courtesy of a jagged golf club shaft embedded in Joel’s bloodied neck.)
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Entertainment Weekly’s Nick Romano spent time on set while this episode was being made, and when he spoke to showrunner Craig Mazin, who helms the series with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, Mazin said the hardest part of shooting this scene actually had everything to do with Bella Ramsey, the actor who plays Joel’s surrogate daughter Ellie. “The hardest part was watching Bella watching it happen,” Mazin told Romano before speaking to the working relationship built throughout the show by Pascal and Ramsey. “Pedro and Bella are extraordinarily close,” Mazin continued:
“They worked hand in glove, they care deeply about each other. If you’re going to pretend to be in that moment, it’s probably a simple thing, but this isn’t pretend. I can tell you just from being in that room, it’s happening: The pain that [Ellie’s] feeling there and then that rage… That is not calculated or synthetic. It was hard to feel like we were breaking something that we had all spent so much time very carefully building and making work.”
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Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal revealed that this Last of Us scene was difficult for both of them
As Bella Ramsey told Nick Romano in the article, they had an extremely visceral reaction to just seeing the script for “Through the Valley” — which certainly comes through in their dynamic and heartbreaking performance in the episode. “I’ve never cried reading a piece of writing before, but I had such a gastral reaction to it,” they mused. “It’s almost like we’ve played that dynamic, me and Pedro, for a year, and it feels like father-daughter in some way. I think my reaction to that being over was quite a gradual feeling. Also knowing that that would be the end of Pedro and us two working together in this capacity.”
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Pedro Pascal, unsurprisingly, agreed; anyone who’s seen the press tour for either season of “The Last of Us” knows that Ramsey and Pascal formed a sweet bond while playing found family. So, how does Pascal feel about Joel’s bloody, violent death? “I’m in active denial,” Pascal admitted. “I realize 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.'” Pascal then clarified for those wondering, “And, no, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it because it makes me sad.”
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Not only that, but Pascal — who, after playing the doomed Oberyn Martell on “Game of Thrones” and thus is no stranger to brutally dying on HBO — said he’s proud to watch Ramsey take center stage on the production now that Ellie has, effectively, “replaced” Joel as the show’s main character. “Bella was never my child, but there’s an obvious parental dynamic between the characters of Joel and Ellie,” Pascal said. “I did feel this sort of pride that I had nothing to do with, but was able to observe how effortlessly they stepped into a position of leadership.”
Both Craig Mazin and Kaitlyn Dever knew this Last of Us moment was right — but felt anxiety over fan reactions
Back when Nick Romano spent time on the set of “The Last of Us,” Craig Mazin pretty bluntly said that he was worried the Internet would essentially explode after the episode eventually aired. “I feel like I’m going to be [hiding] underneath my sheets that night,” he said at the time. Romano ultimately followed up with Mazin when the episode was set to air — a while after filming — and he had a slightly more measured response:
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“I feel this weird sense of guilt, but also a sense of pride because I think we’ve made something remarkable here. I think we’ve made something very shattering that will earn people’s attention and interest for seasons to come. I guess if there’s one thing I would want people to know, it’s that night, I’ll sit there and I’ll watch it. And [if] they are upset, I get it. We’re not doing it because we like to upset people. We’re doing it because this story echoes life, and life unfortunately includes this.”
Kaitlyn Dever also had to take a pretty metrical approach to her character violently murdering fan-favorite Joel, particularly after the backlash received by Laura Bailey after “The Last of Us Part II” came out in 2020 (Bailey portrayed Abby in the video game in both voiceover and motion capture). “I’m taking all of this as it comes,” Dever said. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to plan for it.” Frankly, how could anyone? “I don’t know how people are going to react,” the “Booksmart” and “Apple Cider Vinegar” actress continued:
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“I hope that people appreciate what I did with the role, and that’s all I can really do. I feel good sitting in that space just because I really don’t have any control. It’s done. What I did is out there; it’s going to happen. I think that in playing the role, I obviously wanted to do the game character justice, but also bring my own authenticity to the role and humanize her in the best way that I could. With the help of Craig and Neil developing who that character was going to be, I’m very, very proud of it.”
Dever should be proud; she delivers an electrifying performance in this episode alongside Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, and it’s easy to imagine that all three of them endured quite a bit during filming. “The Last of Us” airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 P.M. EST on Max and HBO.
