5 Ways I Know Joel’s Death Will Change Everything in ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2
The Last of Us isn’t even halfway through its second season yet, but it might as well be classified as HBO royalty already. The first episode of season two provided an excellent setup for the remaining installments, but last week’s “Through the Valley” was an absolute knockout. The attack on Jackson during the blizzard was so superbly done that it makes us wonder how much more intense any future attacks could possibly be, and yet it wasn’t even the most memorable part of this spectacular episode. That honor belongs to the emotionally devastating death of Joel (Pedro Pascal).
For those who haven’t played both games, Joel’s death in the show was quite a shock. The previous episode left more than enough room for his character’s potential growth, so it seemed it would take longer for him to encounter Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). Nope—and just like Game of Thrones during its prime, there is no plot armor to spare. The former Fireflies’ decision to let Ellie (Bella Ramsey) live both makes sense for their code and sets up yet another violent reckoning. Moreover, Joel’s torture and death was a plot twist that has structurally and tonally shifted our expectations in a few other ways as well.
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More Flashbacks than Expected
With Joel dead, the evolution of his and Ellie’s relationship still needs to be clarified.
“Future Days” showed Joel and Ellie during a troubled time in their relationship. It was unclear whether she believed Joel about what happened at the end of season one, and Joel’s therapist at the beginning of season two brings up the fact that he’s clearly been lying about what’s actually been bothering Ellie. Along the way, Ellie yells at Joel that she doesn’t need him to protect her. The audience can piece together that she probably does know that Joel killed a lot of people to save her in Salt Lake City. Yet their relationship doesn’t recover by the time he’s killed, so it would be incomplete to end the exploration of their relationship at this point of the show. Five years have gone by since we last saw them, so it stands to reason that they’ve had some significant conversations during this time.
There’s also the fact that we can even see them talking in the trailer, including a part in which Ellie tells Joel that “you swore”—probably a reference to that final scene from season one. Put together, this means that we’re going to have at least a decent number of flashbacks between Joel and Ellie throughout the rest of season two. It’s not unprecedented for the series to feature an extensive use of flashbacks that puncture the present action. In fact, a few of its best episodes take on that structure and help The Last of Us work as such a terrific drama. But these were made for the sake of backstory in season one, whereas they will now function more in the mode of filling in gaps between the seasons. And those who never played the games probably didn’t expect such flashbacks to be about Joel and Ellie.
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The Season will be More About Ellie’s Revenge than Abby’s
Those who thought Abby would take all season to get Joel were in for a surprise.
Season two began with the final scene of season one, followed by a funeral with the leftover Fireflies. Abby is understandably furious, since Joel killed her father and ruined what appeared to be mankind’s best chance at finding a vaccine (or cure) to the Cordyceps. She insisted that she would kill him slowly, and one of her peers was extremely discouraged when he noticed that Joel’s current dwelling place was visibly strong and sophisticated. This guy even said his plan was to convince her not to go through with her plan, so viewers who didn’t know what would happen were reasonable to assume that her hunt for Joel would take the entire season.
Well, it didn’t. In one of the show’s best plot twists, Abby was saved by Joel in just the second episode. He fell right into her lap, and she was able to kill him the way she described just one episode ago (though that would be five years in the series’ timeline). Because Abby was at least willing to follow her group’s code (of not killing people who can’t defend themselves) for Ellie, it appears that Joel’s death is the actual inciting incident for the season as a whole. This also means that Abby and her small gang of surviving Fireflies, who started the season on the offensive, will probably spend most of it on the defensive—as someone who’s just as tough as Abby now has her and her team as her number one priority.
3
Jackson Will Be Even More Difficult to Defend
Without Joel’s expertise, the town lost one of its best soldiers.
Nearly as surprising as Joel’s death would be the enormous attack on Jackson itself. The blizzard surely heightened the intensity of both, signaling an emotional and a strategical loss. The attack on this town was so huge that it was worthy of a season finale, much like Abby’s revenge, yet here it is in episode two. It didn’t come out of nowhere, as it was established that the infected have become more sophisticated in the last five years. Details like the zombies’ roots reaching the pipes and Abby nearly getting killed by them were enough to set up this huge battle without it seeming random.
But the scale is still shocking; though the infected lost, they were able to pretty easily breach the town’s wall and lead to shots of defenseless citizens hearing monsters trying to reach them ala The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers. Given that snipers were the first form of defense as infected approached Jackson, it’s clear that people there can use every good shot they can get. Joel (one of Pedro Pascal’s greatest performances) proved a formidable sniper in season one, not to mention his closer-range skills, so his passing will surely be a huge loss in regard to this former-haven’s ability to protect itself from future attacks.
2
Joel Will No Longer Be the Main Character
Now it’s everyone else’s turn.
Possibly the best video game-adapted series ever made largely took on Joel’s perspective. Sure, sometimes we got Ellie’s, and we even got an episode that’s largely about two men who are no longer alive during the present action. Season two has also had a fair amount from Abby’s perspective. For the most part, however, this was Joel’s show. Now that he’s gone, it looks like the other characters will be taking over. Unless the five remaining episodes will comprise mostly flashbacks, which doesn’t seem likely, Joel should be getting the screen time of a minor character.
That’s not a bad thing, though. It will be interesting to see what Abby and her gang decide to do now that their half-decade-long journey has been completed. She’ll probably be unable to find peace of mind, despite her success at exacting revenge. Ellie, of course, will be as compelling to watch as ever; how she navigates the task of finding those former Fireflies while a more sophisticated form of infected hides beneath the snow should be a challenge. There’s also Joel’s brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), whom we’ll probably get to know even better. Along with new characters, including Dina (Isabela Merced) and Jesse (Young Mazino), there’s plenty of solid character development to be had.
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The Series’ Mood is Now Irreversibly Bleak
The show is all about vengeance now.
The Last of Us always had a gloomy feel to it, as it takes place in such a dangerous world that so few people can survive in, but now it’s reached an entirely new level of darkness. It didn’t take long for the audience to care about Joel, and our attachment to him only deepened throughout season one’s nine episodes. By the time season two began, most fans’ opinions of him were likely more complicated; but he was nonetheless someone we cared about. It was clear that his relationship with Ellie was damaged, and perhaps the season would take the time for him to somehow partially redeem himself.
Obviously, that’s no longer possible. Joel and Ellie will never be able to reconcile their dynamic and live the happy life that Joel killed all those people for. That’s a harsh truth, almost as if Joel’s murder of the Fireflies at the end of season one was for nothing. If he was able to save Ellie but not their relationship, then his rosy idea of their future father-daughter dynamic flew right in his face. It’s also brutal because that means the show is essentially about two things now: survival and revenge. Leaving Ellie alive in a series driven by consequences means that Abby and her gang will likely have to answer for what they did, making for a show that has realistically and bleakly entered a relentless period of post-apocalyptic rage.
