The Key Difference in Joel’s Death Scene in The Last of Us Show & Video Game Is ‘More Brutal’ Than You Expect
Warning. Major spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2. The Last of Us Season 2 delivered a moment on par with the Game of Thrones Red Wedding in Episode 2 of Season 2, titled “Through the Valley,” and though like in that show, there was a source material that could have made it so people could have seen it coming, it caught a lot of people by surprise. The HBO show didn’t just kill off its main character, it did so while having its other main character there to watch. Talk about a big swing.
It all happens because at the end of Season 1, Joel delivers Ellie to the Fireflies because they believe her immunity to the virus is the key to a cure. However, when Joel finds out that making a cure will require them to kill Ellie, he decides that’s too high a price to pay. He kills every one of the Fireflies, and the doctor who was supposed to operate on Ellie. That doctor just so happens to have a daughter, who in Season 2 comes to get revenge on Joel for killing her dad.
The episode sees Abby, played by Kaitlyn Dever, alongside a crew composed of Owen, Nora, Manny, and Mel, arrive at a lodge near Jackson, and be caught by bad weather. They are all contemplating what to do once they realize how big Jackson is and how unlikely they are to find Joel, when they run into good luck—Abby runs into Joel on patrol and is saved by him and Dina, managing to convince the two to come up to the lodge with her.
Related: Who dies in The Last of Us Season 2?
Once there, Abby tortures Joel, beating him to death with a golf club, only to finish him off by stabbing him through the neck with the broken shaft of that very same golf club. But how does this compare to what happened in the game? Is it the same? Is it more or less brutal? How does Pedro Pascal‘s Joel die in The Last of Us video game? Here’s the answer.
How does Joel die in The Last of Us video game?
The biggest difference in Joel’s death scene in the game and the show is who was with him. In the show, Joel is patrolling with Dina. In the game, he was with Tommy. The decision in the show seems to have been made to give Tommy a big moment in Jackson, which comes under attack at the same time Joel is captured by Abby and her gang. And, of course, as the trailer for the next episode shows, this also gives Dina information about Abby’s crew, information that’s likely to aid Ellie in her revenge.
For now, though, that’s a big difference in how the scene plays out. But the rest goes pretty much the same. Abby still picks up a golf club, it’s just that in the game, it never breaks. She just keeps hitting him with it until she kills him. No need to consider the reality of when a golf club would actually break when you’re playing a video game.
Game co-creator Neil Druckmann explained it this way to Variety, “We don’t actually hold back in the game. I think there’s just something in the live action adaptation that makes it more brutal. We talked a lot about this throughout the season. There’s other instances where we have to make certain adjustments because of that. But it’s also important just to see the brutality. You’ve played the game, and you know how important everyone’s mindset about what happened to Joel is going forward and the choices that they make. Therefore, we couldn’t spare the audience either, because we need them in that same mindset.”
In the game, the other big difference is that Abby never tells Joel who she is or why she’s after him. She just tells him to guess and proceeds to beat him to death. In the show, Abby lays out her motivations for killing Joel very clearly, which in turn makes it so Joel understands there’s really no way to convince Abby. She’s on what she believes is a rightful quest for revenge, and she won’t be talked out of it. And Joel doesn’t beg for mercy or forgiveness. At one point, he even asks Abby to just get on with it. But Abby doesn’t want it to be quick. She wants Joel to suffer. Ironically, the fact that she makes it last so long is what leads to Ellie finding them and Ellie subsequently making a vow of revenge on Abby and her crew. Something about our decisions coming back to bite us.
