The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 has perhaps one of the most profoundly upsetting endings in HBO history. This is The Last of Us‘s version of when Ned Stark (Sean Bean) was beheaded in Game of Thrones (or even when the Freys massacred the Starks and their allies at the Red Wedding). The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 ends with a death so shocking, so monumental, and so early on in a season…well, we can’t believe it’s really real. Can it be true? Did The Last of Us really just kill off one of its biggest and most compelling stars? Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2, now streaming on MAX
Did The Last of Us really just kill off Joel (Pedro Pascal)?!? The Last of Us Season 2 opened with the few Fireflies who managed to survive Joel’s Season 1 rampage vowing to hunt him down and kill him in revenge. Leader Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) literally promises to do it “slowly,” so he suffers as long as possible. Last week’s episode ended with the reveal that now, five years later, Abby and her friends Manny (Danny Ramirez), Mel (Ariela Barer), Nora (Tati Gabrielle), and Owen (Spencer Lord) have tracked Joel to Jackson, Wyoming. The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 reveals what happens next and it’s carnage.
So how exactly do Abby and Joel cross paths? How does Joel die? And is Joel really dead? Here’s everything you need to know about the end of The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 — including the state of the besieged Jackson.
Yes, Joel is really dead. Abby 100% murdered him in a sequence that wasn’t exactly like the same scene in The Last of Us II video game, but comes pretty darn close. In The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2, a perfectly-timed storm descends upon our characters. While Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and wife Maria (Rutina Wesley) make sure to keep Jackson on alert thanks to rumors of super smart Infected known as “Stalkers,” no one is prepared for what’s about to hit. Both Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Jesse (Young Mazino) are on separate scouting runs when the storm falls and comms go down.
As if they’ve been waiting for this moment, the Infected launch an all-out assault on the settlement that turns into one of the most bombastic scenes of siege warfare on TV since Game of Thrones gave us “The Battle of Winterfell.” While this is going on, Abby has left the cushy lodge where she and her friends are staying, only to get lost in the storm. She falls into what’s essentially a nest of Infected. They hunt her and nearly kill her, but it is Joel who saves her. When Abby realizes just who her savior is, she lures him and Dina to the lodge.
Because Dina is an “innocent” in the eyes of the Fireflies, who now identify themselves with as members of something called “WLF,” she is knocked out while Abby gets to work on Joel. In a sequence that very neatly echoes the video game — apart from the fact that it’s Tommy who is rendered unconscious, not Dina — Abby first shoots Joel in the leg. Then she asks her friends to tourniquet the wound. She wants to prolong his suffering, after all. After a tense showdown, Abby begins to beat Joel nearly to death with a golf club she finds.
It’s at this point that Ellie has followed tracks to the lodge, in the hopes of finding Joel and Dina. She is immediately neutralized by Abby’s gang, who batter her badly when she tries to fight them. While Ellie lies crumbled on the floor, she and Joel look at each other. She begs him to get up, but he’s too far gone. Abby finishes the job by stabbing Joel with the broken golf stick…all in front of Ellie. The former Fireflies leave the scene, even as Ellie swears to kill them all. Joel is very much dead.
So Joel is dead, but what about Jackson? Does the settlement manage to survive the brutal onslaught of an Infected army? Almost, but no! Under the leadership of Tommy and Maria, the settlement manages to fight off the invading hoards. That said, the Infected not only overwhelm the outer walls, but they also kill many in the town. Tommy is able to nobly fend off one Bloater with a combination of ammo, literal firepower, and sheer luck. However, at the end of the episode, Jackson still stands. Tommy and Maria live.
In the second episode of “The Last of Us” Season 2, which aired on Sunday, April 20, 2025, the Emmy winning HBO drama did its darkest and most shocking move yet: it killed its main character and biggest star, Joel (Pedro Pascal). During a pre-season interview with The Post, co-creator Craig Mazin compared it to when Ned Stark (Sean Bean) got killed on “Game of Thrones.” “If you look at ‘Game of Thrones,’ like everybody, I was so shocked when Ned Stark got his head chopped off. I couldn’t believe it,” Mazin exclusively told The Post. “That incident never goes away,” he added, hinting that Joel’s presence will continue to be felt on the show in a similar way.
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 (Pascal) has formed a pseudo father/daughter relationship with teen girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Joel was killed by the new Season 2 character, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). He had previously killed Abby’s father during his efforts to protect Ellie. So, Abby killed Joel as revenge. After Joel saved her life, she stabbed him in the neck while Ellie watched, crying.
For this reason, Abby is a polarizing character. When asked if Mazin and his co-creator Neil Druckmann took any measures to ensure that viewers wouldn’t dislike Abby, Mazin said, “People will and won’t like things. That’s fine. Neil and I didn’t really want to do anything to, say, address feedback as much as reinforce that character in this medium, which requires some different things.” He explained that in the video game, people play as Abby, “so you connect to her right away, because you are her. You’re trying to keep yourself alive along with her, as you’re moving her around.”
Mazin added, “Well, that’s not the case for us in the show. So, right off the bat, we thought it was important for people to know, who is she? What does she want? What happened to her?” When asked if he was concerned about losing the show’s big star in Pascal, Mazin told The Post, “I am a huge ‘Game of Thrones’ fan. And I always felt like the star of ‘Game of Thrones’ was ‘Game of Thrones.’ And so many characters came in, and so many characters died. And, if you watched our first season, my God, people were dying left and right. Some people died within 20 minutes.”
He explained that in his view, “The story, the world– that is the star.” But, Mazin also teased that despite Joel’s death, he and Ellie “spend quite a bit of time together in this season…more than people might think.” Season 2 of “The Last of Us” picked up five years after the events of Season 1. So this indicates that Pascal could continue to be on the show, if there are flashbacks to that five-year period between seasons.
Since the relationship between Joel and Ellie was the heart of the show in Season 1, when asked what the heart of the show is after Joel is gone, Mazin said, “still the relationship between Joel and Ellie…it [is] the kind of thing that is present throughout everything. Even when they’re not together onscreen… the things that happened with them in this season ripple out and echo forth across everything.” He said that it shows in Ramsey’s performance, where he could tell that for Pascal’s absence, “the missing was real.”
Joel’s death may not come as a surprise to many viewers, since it also happened in the hit video game that the show is based on. It’s one of pop-culture’s widely known open secrets. “For me and for Neil, we’re not so concerned about people knowing something. Or, something coming to pass in the show that happened in the game, and people going, ‘Oh, well, yeah, I knew about that,'” Mazin explained. “Because we’re not really a mystery; this isn’t a whodunit. What this show is about are relationships.”
The Emmy-winning “Chernobyl” writer and producer added, “And so the question is, ‘How are we going to experience any event that happens in the show through a relationship? What does it mean for these people going forward?’ Not just for this season. Assuming things go well, for some seasons to come.”
The Last of Us has already been renewed for a Season 3. When asked how many seasons he sees the show continuing for – especially considering the loss of Pascal– Mazin said, “We certainly know where it ends, and we know it does end. So this is not meant to be, ‘and now in the 12th season of ‘The Last of Us.’ That’s not happening. So, depending on how it lands, [there will be] one more season for sure … but perhaps one more, beyond that.”
