This article contains spoilers for the last season two. Please do not read unless you have seen the first two episodes.
When is a twist not a twist? This is a question that many people will ask after the brutal episode of this week of The Last of Us. Entitled by the Valley, he demonstrated more clearly than ever than the spectacle has two types of spectators: those who know mainly as a television series and have been amazed beyond the belief by the violent and unusual death of Joel de Pedro Pascal to the hands of Kaitlyn Dever; And those who played the video game on which it is based.
The very first scene in last week’s episode seemed to set up Abby’s follow-up as a long ac, perhaps a covering all season. It would make sense; After all, if you have Pedro Pascal at your disposal, you want to withdraw as much as possible from him. But in the end, it was a deliberate red herring, and now Joel died. Most importantly, the star of the show – the man whose face is always on hundreds of posting panels of the last in the world – is no longer in the series. To judge by the reaction shocked online (“The players knew all this time that Joel was going to die and did not warn me?!?”), The death of Joel came almost the red wedding time a million.
But, of course, many of us saw him coming. The second season of the last of us is based on the 2020 The Last of Us Part II match and, well, this exact thing happens too. It was not a closely kept secret either. The last part of US, part II sold more than 10 million copies. He won nearly 50 awards. And, thanks to a hacking incident just before the exit, Joel’s death was announced in the world even before anyone who played it.
As such, Joel’s death has been a policeman for many years now. In 2023, Pascal almost revealed that his days were numbered to squire, stressing that “he would have no sense to follow the first game so faithfully to seriously move away from the way”. Do not say that he did not warn you.
If you saw the culmination of the first season, you will know that it was probably on the cards. History exists in a world where the human population has been launched by a fungus. Joel took care of a young woman named Ellie, who revealed that she was sort of sheltered from the Cordycepts infection. After doing this, a group of foreigners Kidnappé Ellie, planning to use it to create a vaccine in an operation that would kill it. But Joel would not let it happen, going on a deadly outburst in a hospital to save her, even if she was driving the world.
It was an act of love, but a selfish that could not be unpunished. A television season where Joel and Ellie continued to live adventures in the shade of such violence would have been embarrassing and unsightly. And it is a story where violence generates violence. The fireflies tried to kill Ellie, so Joel killed the fireflies, and now the daughter of one of the dead killed Joel. So it’s okay.
The question of Joel’s death is the worst is to be debated. With the television series, the fact that so many people knew that it was going to happen meant that it could build a feeling of terror much more deliberately than the game, making more missed links between Joel and Ellie and filling the scenes of previous violence with a more resigned inevitability. On the other hand, the game briefly makes you play as an Ellie, race to save Joel. When it ends with disappointment and Joel dies anyway, there is a palpable sense of agency that is torn to you that cannot be reproduced in something as passive as a television program.
Which brings me to a last spoiler for non-players. The last of us is about to make our most daring tip to date: make you get angry Abby. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that the last part II of us only achieved semi -succs – few games have received such a noisy reaction from such a furious minority – it will therefore be interesting to see how the show chooses to do so. If the last of us can go from Joel’s death and take the public with it, it deserves to become a masterpiece.
