It wasn’t the last of Pedro Pascal.
The actor made his big return to “The Last of Us” Season 2 in the sixth episode – despite the fact that the seasons’s second episode brutally murdered his character, Joel.
He wasn’t a zombie or a ghost, but rather, the May 18 episode featured Joel in flashbacks.
This is in line with what series co-creator Craig Mazin told The Post, as he said that even though Joel died, Joel and Ellie “spend quite a bit of time together in this season…more than people might think.”
Spoilers ahead for the sixth episode of “The Last of Us” Season 2.
Based on a popular video game of the same name, “The Last of Us” is set in a dystopian future where society has broken down, there are zombie-like creatures, and gruff smuggler Joel has formed a pseudo father/daughter relationship with teen girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
This episode filled in what happened in the five-year gap between Season 1 and Season 2, and answered the question of exactly why Joel and Ellie’s relationship soured before his death.
Their father/daughter relationship fell apart because of two main fractures.
The first is that while they’re out on patrol, they see that Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) got bitten by an infected, so Joel executes him.
Eugene pleads for Joel to allow him to say goodbye to his wife, Gail (Catherine O’Hara). Instead, Joel kills Eugene and lies to Gail about what happened. Ellie is so furious that she doesn’t yell at him in private — rather, she exposes his lie immediately.
Then, Ellie later finds out exactly what happened at the end of Season 1, when Joel slaughtered several people in order to save her.
Ellie is immune to the infection that turns people into zombies – but, as Joel confesses during the episode, if other people used her to make a cure, that would have killed her.
Ellie is outraged that Joel chose to kill people instead of letting her die to make a cure.
“Then I was supposed to die,” she exclaims. “That was my purpose! My life would have mattered. But you took it from me. You took it from everyone!”
“Yes, and I’ll pay the price, because you’re gonna turn away from me,” an emotional Joel replies.
With tears in his eyes, Joel adds, “But if somehow I have a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again.”
Ellie tells him that’s because he’s “selfish,” and Joel replies that it’s, “because I love you.”
He explains that he loves her, “In a way you can’t understand…maybe you never will.”
But, he says, if the day comes in the future when Ellie has a child and feels that type of love, “well then…I hope you do a little better than me.”
After that emotional confession, Ellie tells Joel: “I don’t think I can forgive you for this. But I would like to try.”
Tragically, she never got the chance. That conversation happened shortly before Joel’s death.
In the second episode of Season 2, Joel was killed by the new Season 2 character, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).
He had previously slain Abby’s father during his killing spree to protect Ellie.
So, Abby killed Joel as revenge. She viciously beat him nearly to death with a golf club and then stabbed him in the neck – all while a crying Ellie watched.
Ironically, since Abby slayed Joel as revenge for him killing her dad, this has pushed Ellie into a similar revenge journey.
The end of the episode catches up to Ellie in the present day, continuing her search for Abby and quest to avenge Joel.
