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The following story contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 2, “Through the Valley.”
HBO JUST ADAPTED one of the most brutal moments in video game history. In The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2, “Through the Valley,” Joel (Pedro Pascal) dies onscreen in a gruesome, execution-style murder that sets off a revenge-fueled story pulled straight from the award-winning video game The Last of Us Part II.
While there had been some speculation that The Last of Us Season 2 would deviate dramatically from the game and keep Joel alive, there was never any doubt internally that Pascal’s character was doomed. “It was always an understanding that it would stay true to the source material,” Pascal revealed to Entertainment Weekly. However, that’s not to say the HBO series didn’t make some major changes to Joel’s death. In fact, the episode actually differs from the game in a few notable ways that could alter where the story goes next.
So grab your best zombie-killing gear and let’s dive into how exactly HBO’s The Last of Us changes Joel’s death compared to the game, along with what stayed the same, and what it all means for the show’s future.
How Joel’s Death in The Last of Us Changed in HBO’s series
HBO
The biggest changes to Joel’s death have more to do with what’s happening around his murder than the murder itself. In the show, Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced) go off on a patrol together during a brutal snowstorm and run into Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). Joel saves Abby from a swarm of infected zombies, inadvertently sealing his own fate. Abby then brings the two of them two a nearby mountain lodge, where she and her Firefly friends drug Dina to knock her out and then slowly, violently kill Joel. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) arrives just in time to watch the final blow.
While all of this is happening up in the mountains, a massive wave of zombies attack the town of Jackson, Wyoming, where Joel and Ellie have been living for the past few years. Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) leads the town’s defenses and they manage to survive, but the death toll appears to be astronomical.
In the game, things play out slightly differently. Joel isn’t on patrol with Dina: Instead, he’s with his brother Tommy. And when Abby and her fellow Fireflies capture the two of them, they’re a lot less kind to Tommy, knocking him out with a few violent bashes to the head. As for the zombie invasion of Jackson, that doesn’t happen at all in the game. The HBO series added it to provide a B-plot for the episode, while also exploring the type of storytelling the game never could.
“This was something that we just couldn’t do in the game because we were so dogmatic about POV,” Neil Druckmann, who directed The Last of Us Part II and co-created the HBO show, told Entertainment Weekly. “You’re only seeing events either through Ellie’s eyes or Abby’s eyes, that’s it, in the game.”
The other major change is in how the HBO show portrays Abby and the other Fireflies. In the video game, you’re not supposed to have any sympathy for those characters. Abby’s motivations are never explained (at least not until much later into the story) and her friends are as cold and violent as she is. They watch stoically as she tortures Joel, and only tell her to finish the job once Ellie shows up and they start to worry that more of her friends could be close behind.
The show takes a very different approach. Abby gets to deliver an entire monologue explaining why she wants revenge against Joel (long story short: He murdered her father). Meanwhile, the other Fireflies are visibly pained to watch Joel’s slow death—one of them even cries at one point.
HBO
Joel’s final moments are slightly altered, too. In the show, after Ellie shows up, she cries out to Joel and, for a second, it looks like he might have the strength to stand up and fight. In the game, there’s never any question that he’s out cold by that point. However, the HBO series does ratchet up Abby’s final blow when she impales Joel in the neck with a broken golf club handle. In the game, she finishes him off with a slightly less disturbing swing of an unbroken club.
Finally, after the Fireflies leave, Jesse (Young Mazino) shows up to rescue Ellie and Dina. Together, they head home, dragging Joel’s corpse behind them. In the game, it’s Dina who finds Ellie passed out before calling to Jesse somewhere else in the lodge.
What this means for rest of The Last of Us Season 2
It’s tough to say exactly how these subtle changes might influence the rest of the story, but the biggest shift will probably come down to Tommy. In the game, Tommy vows to avenge his dead brother, and quickly sets off for Seattle to find and kill Abby. Ellie and Dina follow close behind.
In the HBO show, Tommy wasn’t there to witness his brother’s death. The series also gives Tommy a young son, who didn’t exist in the game. This all suggests that Tommy may not be as eager to immediately travel across the country for revenge. Instead, Ellie and Dina may have to lead the charge on their own.
It’s also worth noting that while Joel is definitely dead, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve seen the last of him on the show. In the game, Joel appears several times later on through flashbacks, some of which were even playable levels. It seems like we may get even more of that in HBO’s The Last of Us.
“If we’ve done our jobs right, you’ll feel Joel there a lot,” series co-creator Craig Mazin told EW.
Please don’t harass Kaitlyn Dever
HBO
Finally, here’s one thing worth nothing: After the release of The Last of Us Part II, some players were so mad about Joel’s death that they harassed Laura Bailey, the voice actor who portrayed Abby. In a documentary about the making of the game, Bailey described the hateful messages she received, revealing that some people even threatened her newborn baby.
Now that a second actress is taking on the role of Abby, there’s some concern the same thing will happen again. (This may even explain why the HBO show makes an effort to portray her as a more sympathetic character from the start.) This should go without saying, but please don’t harass Kaitlyn Dever. She’s just an actress doing her job, and a good one at that.
Jake Kleinman is a critic and journalist whose writing has appeared in Inverse, The Ringer, Polygon, Mashable, Vice, Rolling Stone, Inc. Magazine, and more. You can follow him on Twitter/X @jacobkleinman.
