Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for The Last of Us, S2E2, “Through the Valley” (written by Craig Mazin and directed by Mark Mylod)
There are moments in television history that stand out because they were so shocking or so momentous that the scenes often transcended the show and became a part of a larger cultural conversation. Some of the first ones that come to mind are The Red Wedding from Game of Thrones, the kiss between Kirk and Uhura in Star Trek, “Who shot J.R.?” from Dallas, and the final scene of The Sopranos. These weren’t just moments in television. They were the zeitgeist for a short period of time.
What these moments, and many others, have in common is a combination of popularity and surprise that almost forced people to talk about them the next day, or immediately jump online to see how the world was reacting. The final moments of “Through the Valley,” the second episode in the second season of The Last of Us, have already and are likely to continue generating a similar reaction, but with a caveat. Perhaps never before has a moment in such a popular show been such a surprise to so many while being so anticipated by millions more.
The sudden death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) at the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), less than two episodes into this season, mirrors the second iteration of The Last of Us video game. About two hours into 20 hours of gameplay, Joel is killed. In this episode, some of the details are changed slightly from the game (such as where Joel is with Tommy) to the show (where Joel is with Dina (Isabela Merced)), but these are superficial and do not at all remove any of the shock factor that Crag Mazin and Neil Druckmann not only killed their leading man less than a third of the way through the second season, but also took someone who is perhaps the hottest actor in Hollywood right now off the board.
Now, I will be shocked, SHOCKED, if Pedro Pascal does not show up in future episodes in the form of a flashback. You don’t have someone like Pascal clutched in your fist, and let him slip through your fingers without first squeezing out every bit of possible juice you can. While many wondered why the first episode of this second season spent time establishing strains in various relationships that are not outlined in the game, it now looks like a brilliant decision, as we, the viewers, need that history and resolution, specifically between Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). The showrunners can now strategically give that story to us via flashbacks at the right moments throughout the season.
When Mazin and Druckmann needed a superstar to direct what will surely be the most shocking and most visionary episode of the season, they called in veteran director Mark Mylod. Mylod, who directed six episodes of Game of Thrones and 16 episodes of Succession, is no stranger to presenting these jaw-dropping moments to audiences. He won an Emmy award for directing “Connor’s Wedding,” an early episode in Season 4 of Succession that is infamous for another character’s death.
But as if tackling the death of hero Joel wasn’t enough for Mylod, Mazin and Druckmann gave him the extra credit problem of trying to visualize and create a large-scale infected attack on the town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming that leaves the community devastated, grieving, and suffering. This spectacle of a scene is not a part of The Last of Us: Part 2 video game, but was another stunning choice to parallel how the scale of something so massive and violent and bloody can only be matched in its impact by the loss of something so personal and intimate.
The moment that we see Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley) reuniting after the destruction of Jackson Hole at the hands of an army of underground infected is juxtaposed with Ellie lying with a bloody, dying Joel and it’s hard to differentiate between who suffered more, the girl who lost her father figure and savior or the leader of a town that saw hundreds of its citizens killed.
By way of brief recap, Abby and her team from the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) found where Joel was living after five years of searching for him after Joel killed Abby’s father in the hospital shootout at the end of Season 1. On a recon lookout mission just up the mountaintop from Jackson Hole, Abby gets lost, disoriented, and eventually surrounded by a pack of suddenly cunning infected who have learned to hide themselves among their dead in the snow.
Abby manages to elude them for a while, but in one of the show’s biggest coincidences (and perhaps the episode’s only nitpick), Joel and Dina just happen to be on patrol near where Abby is surrounded, and they save her and take her back to where her friends are where she promises guns and safety. That would prove to be the worst decision Joel ever made, because as soon as Abby discovers who he is, she shotgun-blasts him in the knee, tortures him, and then stabs him in the neck with a broken golf club right after Ellie arrives to help.
Ellie makes the same declaration to Abby that Abby made to her father’s grave in Episode 1. “I’m going to kill you!” And now we have our clear motivation (or reason for gameplay, to use the parlance) for the rest of the season. Why Abby would leave Ellie and Dina alive at that moment is beyond me, but she said something about a code she has where she doesn’t kill people who are unarmed or whatever.
But perhaps the most compelling part of the journey over the next five episodes of this season (and the game’s conclusion in Season 3) will not just be pure following Ellie on the path of revenge. It will be following Ellie on the road to redemption and forgiveness as she must carry the weight of Joel dying while their relationship was obviously fractured—she tells Jesse (Young Mazino) at the beginning of the episode that her and Joel have “complicated shit.”
This entire story in the game is wildly controversial. Joel dying early, the game player often taking the point of view of Abby in an attempt to make her more sympathetic, and Ellie launching on her own mission of revenge and retribution at such a young age have all been lightning rods for this game’s fans for years. As this moment makes its way into the culture over the next few days, the reactions will be fascinating to watch and to digest.
I’m interested not only in how this is all received, but also in how Mazin and Druckmann choose to manipulate story and plot in service of all that is still to come. While the first season of The Last of Us was a smash success and episodes like “Long, Long Time” and the finale “Look for the Light” became instant classics, this episode is the show’s moment. It’s the moment where this is likely to go from one of the most well-produced and well-written niche shows on television to something that leaves a permanent mark etched into the walls of television history.
