Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: Bella Ramsey, gabriel luna, Pedro Pascal, the last of us

The Last of Us S02: Pedro Pascal on Joel's Dynamics with Tommy, Ellie

The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal reflects on Joel's relationships with his brother, Tommy, and Ellie, and how they change in Season 2.

When we last left Pedro Pascal's Joel at the season one finale of The Last of Us, he made the fateful decision to save Ellie (Bella Ramsey) from a fatal operation that could have saved humanity from the ongoing Cordyceps plague, but at the potential cost of their friendship. Ellie was revealed to be immune from the disease that passed from bodily fluids and rampant exposure to spores, and a doctor had the key to extract that immunity but would have killed her in the process. Pascal spoke with Variety at a conference about where Joel's headspace is in regard to the relationships with his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Ellie.

The Last of Us Season 2: Pedro Pascal on Joel's Relationships

Pascal offered a reference from when we see Joel and Tommy from seasons one to two, "I think that there was just a very, very well-placed arc for us," he said. "I started the season with [Luna]. We started Season 1 together on D-Day, right? And so there was a kind of bonding, initiation process, stepping into all of it. We had our rehearsals and pre-production. We went river rafting." Luna added, "We did go river rafting, Bow River, which was really nice."

The two noted how far along they had come since filming started on the series, "I had you there when I feel like a lot of the flesh of my character started to display itself and got to be played," Pascal said, addressing Luna. "So in Season 2, it felt like a real natural building of what we had established as characters and as scene partners." Luna agreed before adding, "I think when we first started, we had a really nice FaceTime call where I felt a very uncanny familiarity with you."

When it came to how Joel and Ellie's estrangement, "I feel like it was a beautiful setup by Craig [Mazin] and Neil [Druckmann] that the first thing that I got to shoot was just you and I and in kind of an intimate setting," Pascal told Ramsey. "There's incredibly painful distance between the two of them and the playing of the scene, but we still got to be on set and fuck around and laugh and stuff like that. And that was incredibly comforting; that was like coming home."

Pascal also explained how it was difficult to separate the role and the world he's immersed in, "There's a very healthy and sometimes sick pleasure in that kind of catharsis and a safe space to see human relationships under crisis and in pain and intelligently draw a political allegory, societal allegory, and base it off of the world that we're living in," he said. For more, including co-star Kaitlyn Dever's Abby and Joel's protectiveness of Ellie, check out the interview. The Last of Us Season 2 premieres on April 13th on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.

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