Why Joel Deserved To Die In The Last Of Us Season 2

This post contains major spoilers for “The Last of Us” season 2, episode 2.

“The Last of Us” is a show full of heartbreak, a bleak, post-apocalyptic drama about Infected (don’t call them zombies) where death is at every corner. From the very first episode, where we see Joel (Pedro Pascal) lose his only child tragically, audiences were forced to get used to not getting attached to anyone. Everyone we met was probably going to get killed, whether they were old friends of Joel, Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) first crush, or friendly strangers they met on the road. No one was safe.

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Season 2, however, just took that idea further than ever, with the second episode delivering without a doubt the most shocking and emotionally devastating moment of the entire show — a moment that echoes the shock and heartbreak of early “Game of Thrones.” It comes during what is already a rather shocking, violent, yet spectacular story, with Jackson getting attacked by a horde of surprisingly smart Infected. Seeing Jackson, a safe haven and seemingly the one community in the Cordyceps apocalypse that isn’t run by cannibals or dictators, devastated in an attack like this is awful.

And yet, that’s not the shocking and emotionally devastating moment in the episode. That one comes when Joel is brutally beaten to death and ultimately stabbed with a broken golf club by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).

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It’s a moment gamers have been dreading since the TV adaptation was announced, and one that’s led to plenty of extremely dumb controversy regarding Abby, both in the game and when Kaitlyn Dever was cast as the live-action version. And yet, it’s a moment that perfectly fits the ethos of “The Last of Us.” No, Joel did not deserve to be killed that way. And yet, he most definitely had it coming after the life he lived.

HBO’s “The Last of Us” makes lots of changes in its adaptation. Ever since the first episode, where we get a prologue about a scientist warning about fungi, the show knows where to expand and where to course-correct the game. Case in point, season 2 begins with Abby and her friends mourning the death of the Fireflies at the hands of Joel and swearing revenge. This is a very different approach from the game, which just has Abby show up suddenly and brutally kill Joel for seemingly no reason, with gamers only discovering her reasoning much later.

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Including Abby’s motivation so early in the show forces the audience to reckon with the fact that Joel didn’t just save Ellie from being killed, he slaughtered comrades, spouses, siblings, and parents to do so. Any one of them was bound to have someone who cared for them like Joel does for Ellie and who would like to avenge their loved one. Did Abby have to kill Joel? Of course not, but it’s perfectly understandable that if she were the protagonist of “The Last of Us,” we would root for her to hunt down Joel no matter what it took.

That is the key to the TV adaptation and why it makes Joel’s death feel more thematically impactful than the game: From the opening scene, the show doesn’t let either Joel or the audience forget what he did. Rather than just go for shock value, “The Last of Us” TV show makes Joel’s death an inevitability, with the first two episodes making sure not to let Joel off the hook for his past actions.

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All throughout the first episode, it’s clear something is weighing Joel down, and it isn’t just the fact that his relationship with Ellie is estranged. He’s even going to therapy with Gail (Catherine O’Hara), who can clearly tell there’s something big that’s worrying him. By the time Joel realizes Abby’s group are Fireflies, there is a look of resignation in his eyes, as if he’s known all these years that eventually what happened in Salt Lake City would catch up to him. When Abby tells him who she is, Joel is not interested in hearing any big speeches, he just wants her to kill him already and be done with it.

That’s a stark difference from how the game begins. The season 2 premiere of “The Last of Us,” before we meet Abby, begins with a brief flashback of Joel lying to Ellie about what happened at the hospital. This is similar to the start of the game, which does a brief recap of the events of the first game. The difference is that Joel narrates that opening scene, as he tells his brother Tommy what happened at the hospital, and rather than explicitly say he shot a bunch of people, he just says he saved Ellie.

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Joel knows the price he paid to save his surrogate daughter, but by starting from Joel’s point of view and him excusing his actions, both the game and Joel oversimplify what happened. That erases some of his culpability in order for the audience to sympathize with him before he’s brutally killed.

It’s commendable that the show, having Pedro Pascal and his handsome face readily available, would choose to instead keep Joel at arm’s length for most of the first episode. Additionally, the first two episodes naturally keep bringing up what he’s done, even if characters don’t always say it out loud. “The Last of Us” does not let Joel off the hook, but forces the audience to think of Salt Lake City every time he’s on screen, anticipating his reckoning. “The Last of Us” are terrific games (so good that you can’t blame Pedro Pascal for ignoring orders and trying to play them), but decisions like this help justify the TV adaptation and make it feel like it has its own identity.

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Joel did not deserve to be brutally killed, especially with Ellie forced to watch. And yet, the moment Joel decided Ellie’s life was worth killing 18 soldiers and one doctor, he sealed his own fate. He who seeks revenge digs two graves, or in the case of “The Last of Us,” a whole lot more than that. Now, just like Joel’s actions inevitably led to Abby’s path of vengeance, her own killing of Joel has ignited a vengeful fire in Ellie. It looks like the cycle is bound to repeat itself.

New episodes of “The Last of Us” season 2 hit HBO and Max on Sunday nights.