Jennifer Aniston Subtly Clarified Where She Stands With Pedro Pascal After Rumors They’re Secretly Dating
Warning. Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2. The Last of Us Season 2 has been a hit for HBO, to no one’s surprise. The adaptation of the hit video game was very successful in Season 1, and though the second season already delivered the game’s biggest twist: the death of Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller, people have done nothing but talk about the show in the days since the twist happened. And though there were some surprises and some shock from the general audience, there still seems to be enough interest in what’s coming. It seems like HBO has already conditioned fans for big deaths. We’ve grown since the days of Game of Thrones and Ned Stark.
But one thing people are still talking about is a fun little cameo that happened during the premiere episode, when we were still happy and Joel was alive. And that cameo might explain a dinner that gave everyone a lot to talk about a few weeks earlier. Remember when paparazzi caught Jennifer Aniston and Pedro Pascal together leaving the Sunset Tower Hotel, and that set up a flurry of speculation about their possible relationship status? Enough that Pascal was even asked about it on the red carpet for The Last of Us? Well, Pascal did tell Entertainment Tonight at the time, “Jennifer and I are very good friends,” shutting down any romance speculation, so we’ll take the cameo and be glad they didn’t spoil it for us.
Related: Who dies in The Last of Us Season 2?
Aniston herself responded to her little cameo on Instagram stories, writing, “Of all the things to survive the apocalypse 🤣.” But what was she talking about? Well, Aniston actually makes an appearance, albeit a really small one, in the show’s first episode of Season 2, titled “Future Days.” The hour, written and directed by co-showrunner Craig Mazin, sees Bella Ramsey’s Ellie and Isabela Merced’s Dina discover an abandoned store full of infected. The two very recklessly go into the store, and once there, Ellie ends up standing in a spot where the floor gives in, meaning she falls into a basement of some sort. There, she discovers a PEOPLE magazine.
The magazine is dated 2003, the year when society’s collapse began in the timeline of The Last of Us. It’s not just any issue, though; it’s the “Best & Worst Dressed” issue, featuring Aniston alongside Kate Hudson and Britney Spears. Quite a cameo indeed.
It was one of the last moments of levity for Ellie, even if she was at the time barely talking to Joel. The second season picks up after a five-year time jump, to find Joel and Ellie’s relationship very much changed from what we’d last seen in Season 1. But all of that is very much forgotten considering the events of the second episode, when Abby, the daughter of the doctor Joel killed at the end of Season 1 to save Ellie, comes looking for revenge. Abby brutally kills Joel, with Ellie there to witness it and vow she will “kill Abby” too. Now, the story changes. Now, it’s about Ellie’s revenge for what happened to Joel.
This means there probably won’t be time for a lot more fun cameos. But at least we know that, somewhere, the PEOPLE Magazine “Best & Worst Dressed” issue of 2003 survived intact in this fictional world.
