No, They Are Not Going To Change Joel’s Story In ‘The Last Of Us’ Season 2

Thanks to a single line from showrunner Craig Mazin in a new Esquire interview about The Last of Us focused on Pedro Pascal, a zillion different websites are taking it and running with the idea that there are going to be some MAJOR and INSANE and WILD changes to the storyline of the second season of show, adapting the second game of the series.

No, no, no. No.

Before we talk about any of this, we have to get into spoiler territory for both the games and the show. Like, some of the biggest spoilers possible, so flee now.

The idea here is that Joel’s death could be altered in season 2 of The Last of Us. That maybe this time around he doesn’t die. The quote at hand is from Mazin, who first says “This should be fairly obvious to anyone by now, but I don’t fear killing characters,” but then says “But the important thing to note is that neither Neil [Druckmann] nor I feel constrained by the source material.”

This is just Mazin hedging, as I mean, you’re not going to expect him to say in an interview “oh yeah we’re totally killing Joel.” And while I do have my concerns about how a Last of Us TV audience may react to the brutal beating death of Pedro Pascal’s beloved Joel by Abby, similar to how Glenn’s death at the hands of Negan made many people quit The Walking Dead, I’m going to say it’s more or less impossible that this plot point is changed.

I mean have you played The Last of Us Part 2? What about that game suggests that the entire storyline could happen if Joel was still alive? Changing it so Joel lives erases the entire plot, which focused on Abby getting revenge on Joel for the death of her father (the Firefly surgeon operating on Ellie that he shot) and Ellie then trying to get revenge on Abby for killing Joel. The idea is that revenge and rage is an endless cycle you can’t escape, and without this you have…no story? You would have to rewrite the second season of the show as some bizarre alternate universe where Joel survives and he and Ellie go off on some new adventure that has nothing to do with the second game.

Guys, they’re just not going to do that. There’s a zero percent chance. The only changes I can see happening is maybe Abby beats him to death with a hammer instead of a golf club but Joel cannot escape his fate here. It’s impossible for the storyline of the second game they’re adapting to not be totally shattered. Again, I worry about how this will be received, as even a Game of Thrones-hardened TV audience is going to viscerally react to this, but it’s going to happen. There’s no avoiding it, I’m sorry, no matter how many clickbait headlines may suggest otherwise.

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