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HBO’s The Last of Us recently wrapped up its second season. Showrunner and writer Craig Mazin has now reacted to one of the major events of Season 2, which was the death of a major character. Mazin also discussed why he believes the team behind the show “f**ked ourselves” when it comes to the upcoming third season.
Spoilers follow below.
In the second episode of Season 2, Pedro Pascal’s character Joel Miller is brutally killed by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). This prompted a strong reaction from viewers, just as it did for gamers when Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us: Part II killed off Joel.
Mazin told Variety that “everyone lost their sh**” when Abby killed Joel, and some of the feedback he heard was, “Why did you kill Pedro Pascal?” Mazin said he wants people to know that he did not kill Pascal. In fact, you can find Pascal in many roles, so many that it’s become something of a meme that Pascal is in everything.
“I keep explaining, ‘We didn’t kill him! He’s a man, he’s alive. He’s fine. And he’s in literally everything else,” Mazin said.
Neil Druckmann, for his part, added, “People had very strong reactions to whatever controversial story decision we made” in Season 2.
Also in the interview, Mazin discussed the challenge of making a second season of a TV show. In a first season, he said it’s a “huge achievement” for a show to even come out. For The Last of Us, the show was well-received and extremely popular in terms of ratings, which created “so many expectations” for Season 2, Mazin said.
“We did learn a lot of lessons. And the problem with learning lessons is then you have to be accountable to those lessons. And you’re not allowed to make those mistakes anymore, which is tragic,” he said. “You do feel pressure to somehow fulfill what people want but also surprise them. You’re now a topic of discussion, whereas before you were just new and surprising. I mean, the bar for video game adaptations was pretty low. We had that going for us in Season 1–now we kind of f**ked ourselves.”
The Last of Us is coming back for a third season, but a premiere date has yet to be announced. A fourth season is expected to follow thereafter to wrap things up.
