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HBO Max's The Last of Us creative team and stars looked back at the sophomore season of the show at HBO Max’s Nominee Celebration, which was released on April 13, 2025. The event also celebrated the show's 17 Emmy nominations this year, with stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Kaitlyn Dever, Joe Pantoliano, editor Timothy Good, and co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann in attendance.
The stars discussed one of the most monumental moments from The Last of Us Season 2, Joel's death. The sophomore season introduced Dever's character Abby, who had sworn to kill Joel in revenge for her father's death.
After luring Joel and Dina back to her cabin, she brutally tortured Joel and later killed him with a golf club, while a helpless Ellie watched. The brutal scene not only shocked audiences but was also the subject of much conversation on social media. The scene also marked Pascal's departure from The Last of Us, but his character still appeared in the sophomore season in many flashback sequences.
Here is what Pascal and Dever said about The Last of Us Episode 2.
Pedro Pascal opens up about Joel's death in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2
The Last of Us Season 2 featured the most gruesome death on television in Episode 2. While fans of the video game saw Joel's death coming, new audiences were devastated by his shocking murder at the hands of Abby. Not only did Abby brutally kill Joel after subjecting him to a lot of pain, but Ellie helplessly watched as his surrogate father took his final breaths in front of her.
Discussing that monumental episode and his character's death, Pascal said:
“You’re so inside of it that you really kind of lose sight of what it will mean when a TV audience experiences episode two of season two.''
He added:
“I’m like, ‘Well, everyone knows this is gonna happen,’ because I’ve just been living with it for such a long time. I guess the context of that is that none of us were really thinking about that as we were shooting it. We were just like really in the story.”
Joel's death was a turning point in The Last of Us Season 2, with Ellie declaring revenge on Abby and setting out on a quest for Seattle with Dina. Episode 2 shifted gears and saw a transformation arc for Ellie, suggesting that revenge is a vicious circle and sets forth a chain of cataclysmic events.
The Last of Us Season 2: Kaitlyn Dever breaks down Joel's death scene in Episode 2 from Abby's perspective
While Joel's death in Episode 2 was brutal for The Last of Us fans and cast alike, it also formally introduced us to Kaitlyn Dever's Abby. The Season 1 finale ended on a major cliffhanger, where Joel killed all the fireflies (including Abby's father) to save Ellie from their experiment. Joel's actions had lasting consequences for him in the sophomore season, and his massacre changed his relationship with Ellie forever.
However, unbeknownst to Ellie and Joel, Abby burned in the fire of revenge, and Episode 2 saw her finally killing Joel and avenging her father's death. While Abby had no regrets about murdering Joel in front of Ellie, Dever discussed the brutality of that scene in The Last of Us:
“Joel is lying there dead, I don’t know how you guys [Pascal and Ramsey] did that moment. I had to leave the room. I couldn’t watch it. I don’t know how you did it.”
The upcoming season of the show will follow Abby's side of the story in Seattle, which is why Dever played her character with a hint of grief. While Abby is ruthless in the video game, the HBO adaptation featured another side of the character, wronged by Joel. Discussing this shift, Dever added:
''I wanted people to be able to really see that and feel that and really understand just how deep her pain is, understand how much time she’s spent thinking about this and obsessing over it...''
She added:
“There was a moment at the very end when she kills Joel, and I think that there’s a moment where she doesn’t feel better and now she has to live with that. So I really wanted to just be able to see the human parts of her and that she’s not just this evil person that did this horrible thing.”
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