Why ‘The Last of Us’ Sent Joel to Therapy in Season 2

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 1.

As a hardened survivor in the fictional apocalypse of “The Last of Us” over the last 25 years, Joel has been carrying a lot of emotional baggage, from the loss of his daughter Sarah and partner Tess to the rift in his relationship with Ellie, following the violence he inflicted on the Fireflies to pull her out of a surgery to make a vaccine.

While Season 2 finds him in therapy, opening up to Gail (Catherine O’Hara) about the latter proves to be a challenge. The therapy concept was actually a pitch from showrunner Craig Mazin that he and co-creator Neil Druckmann originally began discussing back in Season 1.

“I love asking annoying questions and some of them were about just the economy of the way the QZ worked in Boston. And we started exploring ‘Well, what are jobs that are valuable in the post-apocalypse?’ Because if you’re, I don’t know, a hedge fund guy, you’re useless in the apocalypse. But if you can fix a shoe, you’re doing all right,” Mazin said. “It occurred to me that therapists would have a lot of work. Everybody has been traumatized, everybody has gone through the end of the world and a lot of people have lost people close to them. So it seemed like a very barterable skill.”

“I’m so glad that we saved it for this one, because we had a chance to situate this character inside of Jackson, which meant we could do more with her over more episodes, and give ourselves a chance to see what Joel thinks his problem is, or at least what he hopes his problem is, and to also see what he is willing to not even say to the person that is there to help him,” Mazin added. “Digging into that scene was just a joy and having Pedro Pascal and Catherine O’Hara together at the top of their games was just a dream.” 

During Joel’s session in Episode 1, viewers learn that Joel killed Gail’s husband, Eugene, a character mentioned in the games but who will be portrayed for the first time by Joe Pantoliana.

“One of the things that I like to do is go through the source material and find things that I remember evoking interest in me. And in this case, there was a character named Eugene in the second game that we never meet. He’s not married to anybody, as far as we know. He’s this kind of eccentric character that other characters kind of reminisce fondly about, and I thought it would be fun to figure out how to maybe bring him into this world,” Mazin said.

“We knew that we wanted Catherine O’Hara’s character to have a complication. It shouldn’t be as simple as I’m your therapist. This is a very small community and what happens when you as a doctor are here to help somebody that has hurt you?” He continued. “And then we were like, ‘Hey, what if that’s Eugene? And how would that actually enhance what was there in the source material?”

When asked on the Unwrapped podcast about working with Pascal, O’Hara said he’s “just dreamy” and “everything you want him to be.”

“[Pedro’s] the kind of guy that makes you feel like, ‘I could call him anytime I want!’ He’ll text pictures or whatever. He’s just so loose and open and lovely. And Bella’s amazing,” she added. “Both of them are just — how they rise above their material. They keep their heads somehow separate from the dark, dark material they’re in every day. This second season, from what I’ve seen is (gulps) all I can tell you. They keep their sense of humor between takes. They’re just loose and open and playful. And then action is called, and they’re just so deeply into it, then cut, “Yeah, so anyway!” You know, just very, very cool. It’s fun to go in. It’s so well established and it’s so well run, and everybody was very nice to me and everybody wants to hear about it, because it’s such a hot show. It’s such a great show.”

Druckmann said O’Hara was at the top of a very short list of people who they wanted to portray Gail.

“We were so ecstatic when she said yes, because we’re such huge fans, and to put her in this, maybe more of a dramatic role than you usually see with her, there’s some really juicy scenes,” he teased. “You’ve seen one of them in Episode 1, but you haven’t seen the last of Captain O’Hara.”

In addition to being “intricately involved” in Joel’s story in Season 2, Mazin and Druckmann teased more “juicy scenes” for Gail, including a session with Ellie.

“All I’ll say is this, does Ellie seem like the kind of person that would willingly go to therapy? No. But would you be interested in seeing how that person might interact with somebody like Gail? Maybe. So let’s see how it goes,” Mazin said.

“The Last of Us” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.

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