This text accommodates spoilers for “The Value,” the penultimate episode of season 2 of “The Final of Us.” Cease studying proper now if you have not watched it — spoilers lie forward!
It feels inconceivable to think about a world the place Joel Miller, the unique protagonist of the 2013 online game “The Final of Us” and the 2023 HBO tv adaptation (performed by Troy Miller and Pedro Pascal, respectively), remains to be alive. What I imply by that is that, in each the sport and present, Joel form of has to die to drive the narrative for his surrogate daughter Ellie, portrayed by Ashley Johnson within the authentic video games and Bella Ramsey within the present. Based on recreation creator and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann, although, there is a world the place Joel possibly survives. Nonetheless, as he defined to Alan Sepinwall for Rolling Stone, he and his co-showrunner Craig Mazin in the end determined in opposition to Joel surviving a vengeful assault from Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever).
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“Sure, as a result of we talk about the whole lot,” Druckmann instructed Sepinwall when the latter requested in the event that they thought of saving each Abby and Joel’s loss of life for a later season. “We even mentioned what if we did not kill Joel, simply to interrogate it. As a result of the whole lot must be on the desk. Every little thing must be interrogated to ensure we’re making the most effective decisions for this model of the story. We even mentioned, may we inform this different story, may we delay this second? However the extra we mentioned it, the extra it simply felt incorrect. It felt like we might solely be doing it for enterprise causes, to keep up this sense that folks have for longer. However there wasn’t a narrative there to inspire it. The inciting incident, the origin of this story is Joel’s loss of life. Any inciting incident, you need to get to it as quickly as doable. What motivates this whole journey that Ellie goes on begins with Joel.”
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So, as Sepinwall requested, what got here out of a dialogue about not killing Joel? Did Druckmann recall any specifics? “I do not, as a result of that was a really brief dialog that did not have any affect on us,” Druckmann clarified. “As a result of we knew we have been exploring one thing that, you realize, we’re not going to get a lot out of this, and we did not.”
Pedro Pascal needed to come again to shoot Joel’s flashback scenes … and shutting out his time on The Final of Us was exhausting
Neil Druckmann stepped into the director’s chair for “The Value” — marking his second time doing so on “The Final of Us” after the season 1 episode “The Contaminated” — and as he instructed Alan Sepinwall, the present’s creatives did not shoot any of Joel’s flashback scenes earlier than filming his on-screen loss of life, that means that Pedro Pascal did must return to the set of the sequence to reprise his position one final time. “We shot out Pedro for episode [2], then he went to work on a distinct venture,” Druckmann revealed. When Sepinwall requested if it felt totally different when Pascal got here again, his reply was measured:
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“Sure, though within the day-to-day, you would not really feel it. However positively, as we have been getting nearer to the tip, you may really feel this parting of the methods coming. After which the final day, particularly, it received actually emotional after we completed the final shot and we frolicked for some time and simply hugged it out and chatted and reminisced.”
Not solely that, however Druckmann additionally knew full nicely that the ultimate go-around with Joel and Ellie within the tv sequence — who’re portrayed so fantastically by each Pascal and Bella Ramsey, two actors with obvious and apparent real-life chemistry and a candy relationship as nicely — can be actually tough, due to the work they’d already put into their roles. “I knew due to their chemistry, due to what they introduced, how painful this may be,” Druckmann stated, talking to the truth that Pascal’s Joel and Ramsey’s Ellie have received over audiences the world over.
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“And it wanted to be painful to inform this story,” he continued. “In the event that they did not have chemistry, I might have been anxious about how we inform this story. So for me, it was extra of a query of, that story may be full, that story can stay by itself. That is how we made the primary recreation. However we put in sure adjustments and tweaks prepping for the following story if we received the possibility to inform it. And fortunately, the present was profitable to such a level that HBO was, with open arms, excited to have us proceed to inform the story.”
Filming the ultimate scene between Joel and Ellie was extremely lovely, in response to Neil Druckmann
Clearly, Joel does die (at Abby’s palms in season 2, episode 2, “By way of the Valley”), and that is why we solely see him through flashback in “The Value,” residing via a number of of Ellie’s earlier birthdays and charting the ups and downs of their relationship. Neil Druckmann stated that filming this episode with each Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey was at all times intense, significantly due to the real-life affection between the 2 and their shared understanding of Joel and Ellie (and their relationship).
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“It is such a pleasure. They’re so gifted,” Druckmann gushed. “They now perceive these characters a lot. I am in such a novel place, as a result of I’ve lived with these characters and these scenes for thus lengthy, and to get to revisit them in these scenes that imply a lot to followers, but additionally to me personally … I used to be very nervous. I needed to ensure I did it justice for not solely the present, however simply ‘The Final of Us’ as an entire, and what the players are going to anticipate from these sequences coming off the sport. Within the second, I used to be so pleasantly shocked by what they have been placing in entrance of the digital camera.”
Plus, as Druckmann identified, working exterior of motion-capture — which was used for the “Final of Us” video games — allowed for a sure stage of emotionality. “There’s sure moments in live-action the place you may have pleased accidents, like you possibly can’t plan for one thing,” he stated earlier than revealing a touching second between Ramsey and Pascal that occurred organically in a scene the place Joel brings Ellie to an deserted area museum for her birthday. “After they’re within the area capsule, and Joel is asking Ellie how he did, and then you definately see he has this simply lovely smile on his face, and he turns, and also you see the glint of a tear in his wrinkles. You do not see him cry; simply that. We could not plan for that, and the truth that we caught it, I am like, it is simply … you simply catch these lovely moments which are simply there, after which they’re gone. That’s the great thing about live-action.”
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The season 2 finale of “The Final of Us” airs on Might 25, 2025, at 9 P.M. on HBO Max and HBO.
