The Last of Us fans may not have seen the last of Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller.
Show cocreators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann weighed in on whether we’ll see more of Joel in season 3 after his shocking death in the second episode of season 2.
Though Joel died at the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), viewers were delighted to see Pascal back on screen for a flashback-heavy episode 6.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mazin recently teased that we may see more flashbacks featuring Joel and his younger brother, Tommy, played by Gabriel Luna.
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“Next season, we probably will have a lot more flexibility [to tell side stories]. Maybe a side trip to do Joel and Tommy terrorizing the countryside, we’ll never know,” Mazin said. “I wouldn’t have guessed we’d have a short story about Joel’s dad before we wrote the season.”
“[Tommy’s] been in war, and we also know that for some time, he and Joel were doing some pretty bad things. So there is the potential of seeing this other side of Tommy, and that is now about him delivering on his understood promise to his brother,” Mazin later said.
As for Bella Ramsey’s fan favorite character, Ellie, the actor told Variety that she expects to have a smaller role in season 3 following the Sunday, May 25, season 2 finale.
“I haven’t seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that. I think that I’m going to be there, but not a whole bunch,” Ramsey said. “We’ve had conversations about that. I sort of have a rough idea of what it’s going to be, but I can’t tell you.”
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In Sunday’s finale, Ellie had a showdown with Abby, but at the end of the episode, the show switched to Abby’s perspective, suggesting that she’ll be the focus of season 3.
“I don’t think television is supposed to work like this. We’re clearly breaking quite a few rules, and I love that,” Mazin said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “And I love it because that is the point. This is not something we’re doing as a gimmick. The point of this story — and this is looked at from so many different angles in so many different ways — is that the entire concept of protagonist is flawed. The entire concept of villain is flawed. Our way of processing the world through heroes and villains is a mistake. It ends up creating these barriers between people that shouldn’t be there. It ends up giving ourselves justifications and conveniences for bad behavior, and it ends up allowing us to judge others summarily for things that we don’t quite understand the motivation behind it.”
“We know this is a challenging thing to keep track of emotionally. We understand people are going to be provoked. But part of this story is about examining why we’re so comfortable with following one person’s point of view about everything,” Mazin added.
All episodes of The Last of Us are now streaming on HBO Max.
