Pedro Pascal was no doubt the main character of the first season of The Last of Us, and he was expected to come back as Joel for the second season. Fans who have played the games have debated how the series was going to tackle the adaptation when it came to Joel’s story, but as it turns out, they could be following the game beat-for-beat.
According to Daniel RPK (via @TheLastofUsNews), Pascal has already wrapped filming on the series—just two months after the series started production. This has lead fans to speculate that Pascal will barely be in the second season, and that’s why his time shooting for the series was so short.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Joel’s involvement could be shorter without having to adapt that scene. After all, Ellie and new character Abby are the main focus of the second game. It’s possible that all the moments with Joel are just short as compared to Ellie and Abby who have a lot of development to go through if we’re going to build up to the timeline of the games.
So far, The Last of Us has remained a gold standard when it comes to adapting games for series. Sonic the Hedgehog may be a box office gem, but TLOU was a critical darling when it came out, even being praised by fans for adding more to the source material and staying true to the core of the series.
With the second game being so divisive, we should expect the format of the story to be changed for television—but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
The Last of Us Season 2 is expected to premiere early 2025.
