“The inside of Joels house looks like someone left in a hurry.
A mug with the phrase “can’t touch this” above a cactus rests on the kitchen island.
A brown ring forms around the bottom as stray coffee grounds linger along the countertop.
Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, and Kaitlyn Dever for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
“It feels like too big of a thing to just speak about it.”
“It was just a matter of how and when.”
The season 1 finale, which aired in March 2023,left Joel with a choice.
Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, and Kaitlyn Dever for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
He picked Door No.
“So many times adaptations don’t, and youcan’trecapture that moment.
Here, I feel so lucky that we did,” Druckmann says.
Pedro Pascal for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
The fact that it still works just speaks to the magic of these incredible actors.”
“I like to die.”
“The location lived up to the expectation of being a really tough terrain,” Pascal remarks.
Bella Ramsey for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
“It was freezing cold.”
“This kind of shock and heartbreak… it was weird to be on the receiving end of that.
It’s like the extreme version of, ‘Is there something on my face?’
I really could see this sort of grief take over everyone’s look in their eyes.”
“March 7, it was.
I wrote, ‘Kill Joel Day,'” Ramsey says, giggling.
Talk us through it.
Well, I pretended like it was a normal day.
I actually tried to not be in the zone between takes.
Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller on ‘The Last of Us’ season 2.Liane Hentscher/HBO
I read the scene minutes before shooting it.
I watched a video of ‘Peanut Butter Jelly Time.'"
The song became an inside joke between Ramsey and Mazin.
Kaitlyn Dever for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
“It’s like a death song,” Ramsey explains in an aside.
“It’s like, ‘Peanut Butter Jelly Time’ comes for us all.'”
“I watched you guys in season 1, and your relationship was so beautiful.
Kaitlyn Dever on set of ‘The Last of Us’ season 2, episode 2, “Through the Valley”.Liane Hentscher/HBO
And watching the end of you guys was really, really hard for me, as a viewer.”
The first time Pascal and Dever met was on a picket line.
In 2023, they joined dozens of other actors, writers, and industry allies outside of Warner Bros. “It was just a massive scene emotionally, and with blocking, too,” Dever describes.
Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Pedro Pascal as Joel on ‘The Last of Us’ season 2.Liane Hentscher/HBO
“There were so many moving parts and so many things to navigate.”
Dever, however, had a singularly difficult experience preparing for this moment.
On Feb. 21, 2024,Dever shared a deeply personal statement on Instagram.
Kaitlyn Dever for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
So I was sort of in a fog.
I was in a daze."
Mazin and Druckmann remain in awe of Dever for the fortitude she displayed during this period.
Pedro Pascal’s Joel on ‘The Last of Us’ season 2.Liane Hentscher/HBO
“We said, ‘Take your time.
Take all the time you need,'” Mazin recalls.
“While I care extraordinarily about the show, it’s a TV show.
Bella Ramsey as Ellie cradles the remains of Pedro Pascal’s Joel on ‘The Last of Us’ season 2.Liane Hentscher/HBO
She then picked the day she felt most comfortable filming Abby’s big scene with Joel.
The shoot was a closed set to limit the number of bystanders to the necessary people.
Usually if I have a monologue like that, I’m memorizing it three weeks before I do it.
Pedro Pascal for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
I was able to sort of… To her benefit, Dever wasn’t alone.
The entire cast came together to pull off this crucial sequence.
Director Mark Mylod (Succession) treated the troupe almost like a sports team.
Bella Ramsey’s Ellie and Tati Gabrielle’s Nora on ‘The Last of Us’ season 2.Liane Hentscher/HBO
They would all gather in between takes to receive notes as a group, rather than individually.
“It made us all feel like we were a team and doing this together,” Dever says.
“I’ve never experienced that before.”
Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover story.Gina Gizella Manning
Mylod, whos also been tapped for HBO’s upcomingHarry Potterseries, came in specifically to direct this episode.
Druckmann spoke at length with the filmmaker in advance of the shoot.
Almost the entire time we chatted, it was about the event.”
Kaitlyn Dever, Pedro Pascal, and Bella Ramsey for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
“The action sequences were a huge logistical challenge and a brilliant challenge, a totally different muscle.
Instead, they focused on faces to tell that story.
“It wasn’t anything that Mark or I had asked her to do,” he says.
Kaitlyn Dever for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover story.Gina Gizella Manning
“It was just she was feeling it.
It matters more than any kind of grotesque detail.
But every good story I think always starts with some sort of original sin or an original trauma.
Pedro Pascal for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
And here is that one right here.”
One such divergence is a dream sequence that opens episode 2.
“She so badly wants her old life back.
Bella Ramsey for EW’s ‘The Last of Us’ season 2 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning
She so badly wants the situation to not be what it is.”
Mazin also wrote a monologue for Dever that isn’t in thePart IIvideo game.
In the minutes before Abby kills Joel, she tells him everything that’s been weighing on her.
“What is important for her to convey is that what he did was wrong.
I do love how Pedro portrayed this kind of acceptance of it there.
The truth is, what he did is what she’s doing now.
We kill for the people we love.
Two other massive story changes offer different shades of the story gamers once knew.
In the show, Dina, a love interest for Ellie, now fills that role.
“Dinadidcare deeply about Joel.
I think there was some real jealousy.
Being stuck becomes a recurring theme.
We’re going to see in the season how Dina, in a sense, is stuck.
And we clearly see here that Abby is very stuck.
This is part of our human frailty.
Enemies at the gate
Tommy’s (Gabriel Luna) role, meanwhile, is repurposed.
He continues: “We really wanted to talk about community.
The director even calls out the stuntman who portrayed the Bloater that Tommy fights on the ground.
They put all these cooling pads and a cooling tent on.
But he just kept going.”
One constant of both the game and the show is Ellie.
That, he explains, ultimately comes down to logistics.
“The hardest part was watching Bella watching it happen,” he notes.
Mazin continues, “Pedro and Bella are extraordinarily close.
They worked hand in glove, they care deeply about each other.
Ramsey got emotional the first time they read the script for this episode.
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.”
The final minutes of the episode are solemn.
Jesse (Young Mazino) finally catches up with Ellie and Dina, but he’s too late.
It’s the same song Johnson recorded forthe very teaser that first announcedThe Last of Us Part IIin 2016.
Pausing in between camera setups, Mazin predicts Joel will be trending the night of episode 2’s debut.
“I feel like I’m going to be [hiding] underneath my sheets that night.”
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.”
To say gamers had strong reactions to Joel’s death inPart IIis putting it mildly.
“It’s so hard not to,” she says.
“I’m taking all of this as it comes,” Dever continues.
“Honestly, I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know how to plan for it.
I don’t know how people are going to react.
I feel good sitting in that space just because I really don’t have any control.
What I did is out there, it’s going to happen.
Pascal isn’t completely gone from the show.
“I’m in active denial, Pascal admits.
What fills him with pride, however, is seeing Ramsey take charge.
The pair went through the gauntlet together in co-leading season 1.
Now it’s Ellie’s story.
“It definitely felt heavier,” Ramsey admits of being the only No.
1 on the call sheet.
It is more just the workload and being there literally every day.
So many people are contributing.
Dina brought over homemade cookies as they plot next steps.
“So… what do we do now?”
Merced, in character, closes out this scene by asking the question through a mouthful of cookies.
Ramsey then delivers a response.
