Warning: this article contains major spoilers of The last of us Season 2, Episode 2, “Through the Valley”.
Weeks before HBO broadcasts a pivotal episode of The last of us Season 2 – The one who kills his character, Joel Miller, and modifies the course of history in the future – Pedro Pascal Contempled which will be his plans for the moment that the time of television is knocking on the air. “It’s April 20. If it was the 90s, I would be high,” he jokes with Weekly entertainment At the end of March, referring to the annual vacation on cannabis, 420. “But I think I will work. I have no idea.”
In truth, Pascal did not think about it much, even if he embarks on a press tour to promote the new season of the dramatic winning series of the Emmy. It is by design.
“I am in the active denial”, the co-leader of The last of us with Bella Ramsey admit. “I realize it more and more as I get older, I find myself denying that everything is over. I know that I am forever linked to so many members of the experience and that I must simply see them in different circumstances, but I never go in the circumstances to play Joel on Joel on The last of us. And, no, I don’t spend much time thinking about it because it makes me sad. “”
Pascal knew that this day would finally come from the moment he accepted work before season 1. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have been determined to adapt the fundamental events of the Last of us Video games, which involve Joel The slaughter of the Rebel group of Fireflies in order to save Ellie (Ramsey), even if his death would lead to a cordycep virus vaccine that destroyed the world. This mission also meant giving life at a time in season 2, when Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), the daughter of the doctor killed Firefly, hunts Joel for reprisals and kills him in front of Ellie. “It was just a question of how and when,” explains Pascal.
This day is now coming with the beginnings of episode 2, entitled “through the valley”. Pascal remembers shooting his death scene in Kamloops, Canada. It was like any other day. He remembers “strangely relaxing time” in the makeup chair, where he had a “good conversation” with the guru of the Barrie Gower prostheses and the make -up designer Paul Spateri. The effects did a large part of the work, so he didn’t need to put himself in a particular state of mind.
“I was always upset by what I really felt, that, in an important way, my experience touched the series,” reflects Pascal. “I guess it was the strangest thing to go because I felt so linked to everyone in the show after crossing the glove of season 1 together, not only with Bella, but with all distribution and crew. So having this farewell was very sad for me, and I had a physical demonstration, it was quite dream.”
Pascal remembers when he entered the plateau in complete makeup and prostheses that imitated a swollen left eye, blood spots, bruises and cracked limbs. “(I) has completely killed the atmosphere as soon as anyone puts my eyes,” he recalls. “This kind of shock and sorrow … It was weird to be at the reception of this. It’s like the extreme version of” Is there something on my face? “I could really see this kind of grief taking over everyone in their eyes.”
The scene itself turned out to be fulfilling for Pascal. He calls Dever, known for Books,, AmazingAnd No one will save you“A gangster of an actor.” Even if there were so many people involved in this sequence – including Isabela Merced As Dina, Spencer Lord as Owen, Ariela Barre like Mel, Tati Gabrielle like Nora and Danny Ramirez like Manny – Pascal describes the experience as if everything that was moving away until he is right and get him.
Liane Hentscher / HBO
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In a separate conversation with EW, Mazin rents Pascal’s performance as a dying Joel. “It is easy to imagine that his day was just lying on a soil covered with blood, but there are these beautiful moments,” he said. “Bella watched the episode, then they called me and said it was when he moves his hand, when he just tries to go to (Ellie) that Bella was getting rid of it. It is very easy to kiss this. It is very easy to be just deaf or to do nothing. To find something so beautiful there, it’s magical.”
Pascal adds this moment: “I do not know if she is captured on the camera, but (there is) a subtle feeling that Joel can hear him in the last breath of life he left in him. He can hear him call him and hear that she is in danger and wants to help him and is unable to lift even a finger to do it. I remember having played this, and it was really devastating.”
To clarify for those who do not know video games, Joel De Pascal is not completely left The last of us. There are stained scenes in the trailers of season 2 involving that we have not yet seen. Mazin and the Co-showrunner Neil Druckmann (a co-creator of the games through a bad dog from the studio) confirm that these “arrive” scenes.
“We have shown that we are targeting over time,” says Mazin. “The characters have therefore left but not forgotten, and sometimes we remember any interesting anyway.”
“Something that I want to keep secret is, how these things will play and where they will be placed,” comments Pascal, “which, I think, is still a beautiful thing not to know for people who watch the show.”
The last of us Season 2 will continue to lose episodes on HBO and Max every Sunday at 9 p.m. He / PT. Learn more about this episode and what it means for the series The history of EW’s cover.