The Creators of ‘The Last of Us’ Welcome the Backlash

The show explores a parent-child dynamic between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his proxy daughter, Ellie (Bella Ramsey).

This article contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” season 2, episode 6.

Not long after killing off a popular main character, HBO’s “The Last of Us” resurrected him. Sunday’s episode of the post-apocalyptic thriller was a quiet excavation of the emotional history between Pedro Pascal’s Joel and his proxy daughter, Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey.

Told in flashbacks, the episode features several of Ellie’s birthdays, celebrated in ways that reveal Joel’s devotion (leading a trip to a forgotten science museum, refurbishing a guitar for her) and Ellie’s increasing teen rebellion (getting a tattoo, moving out of their house). It culminates with an emotional scene from their final night together, on a porch, talking around a lie that Joel told Ellie about saving her life.

These flashbacks put a microscope on the themes of the show and the videogame it’s based on, which explore cycles of human violence and the sometimes destructive extremes parents go to when trying to protect their kids.

The episode is also another example of the television show’s malleable relationship with its source material. It features scenes replicated from the game, including images of the overgrown museum Joel and Ellie visit, plus new scenes made for the show. In one, Joel kills a character (Eugene, played by guest star Joe Pantoliano) who’s been bitten by an infected mutant, then Joel lies about it to Eugene’s wife, Gail (Catherine O’Hara).

The episode was written by Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross, writers of the game “The Last of Us Part II,” along with Druckmann’s fellow showrunner on the TV series, Craig Mazin. Druckmann directed it. Below, Druckmann and Gross talk about adapting games for TV, justifying violence and parenting through a plague.

Neil, why was this the one episode you directed this season?

Druckmann: There were a bunch of reasons. But at the core of this episode is this porch scene. And that really gets into everything we’ve done before, everything we will eventually do. So if I’m going to do one episode, let me do this one. This one has no action. It’s pure drama.

What did you want to accomplish with the episode’s flashbacks and emphasis on a father-daughter relationship?

Druckmann: On one hand, it’s about the difficulty of being a single parent, trying to raise a kid who is very rash, and can get a tattoo, smoke weed and hook up all on the same day—and do it in this post-apocalyptic world. Then there’s this other layer: Their relationship now is based on a lie. Eventually they probably would’ve gotten past all that because of how much they love each other. But they were robbed of that by Abby [Joel’s killer]. And that sets everything in motion going forward if you understand Ellie’s psychology in this episode.

Neil Druckmann’s and Halley Gross’s video game inspired the HBO show.

What did you two and Craig struggle with in the writing of this episode?

Gross: There were two things. We knew we wanted to do this kind of bottle episode between Joel and Ellie but had to figure out how to string those beats together in a way that felt cohesive. We ultimately landed on this idea of using birthdays as this theme of progression.

The other thing was this confrontation that Joel has with Eugene. We went around and around that scene, trying to figure out how to find the beauty and the pain and the themes within that scene. You have so little time with Eugene, so every line, every gesture has to count. Craig did the last pass on that scene, and that line of Eugene’s, “I need her last words”—to me that inversion said everything. This is a story about relationships and humanity and how we care for each other.

Why did you open the episode by going further back to Joel and Tommy’s childhood? Their dad, played by the great Tony Dalton, tries to explain this cycle of violence that’s been passed down from his own father.

Druckmann: We wanted to show that not only is there violence and trauma that gets passed along from generation to generation, there’s also this idea of improvement, of hope. As a parent myself, I try to not repeat the mistakes that my parents have made. But I found that in doing so, I have made different mistakes. I have slightly better tools than my parents did back then, and I try to impart my kids with that. So hopefully, they will do a better job than I have.

Joel lies about killing Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), who’s been bitten by an infected mutant.

Neil, you grew up in Israel, and you’ve said that the game’s themes are inspired by that experience. How did making the show help you sort through the emotions you associate with your homeland and its war?

Druckmann: Good stories can map on to reality and let you find some truth that might be harder to tease out in the complex world that we live in. Stories allow you to remove some of the variables to find the deeper truth in the world we live in.

In season 1, it’s about these two characters, and they’ll do anything to protect one another. Now what happens when you expand that feeling to a larger group? You find that in trying to protect your tribe, you might be losing the greater humanity that exists out there. When people feel so strongly about protecting their own, they rationalize and justify atrocities to other people. How dare they do that to us? But it’s OK for us to do it to them.

It’s been eye-opening to follow the online discussion of the show, a lot of which has become really hostile. You also went through a version of that with the second installment of the game. What does a creator do when the biggest fans of their work turn into the most aggressive enemies?

Druckmann: It’s a gift and a curse. Once you make something that is so popular, with millions of people engaging with it, you’re going to get every reaction under the sun. To this day, people are arguing about the ending of the game we put out five years ago. To me, it’s awesome because when I started in the game industry, we didn’t talk about games in this way. And it was always my hope that we could elevate the medium. There’s some mean-spirited stuff out there. That sucks. You just need to have thick skin and understand that this is part of the contract you’re making with your audience by putting these things out into the world.

Why did you have Joel tell another big lie, this time about the way Eugene died?

Gross: That came from Joel doing what Joel does, which is protect the community, right? He’s protecting Gail, the best way he knows how, but it’s not ethically what Ellie would agree with. She sees him do what she suspected him of doing, and she’s not going to make that easy for him.

Is the point of this that lying is part of being a parent?

Druckmann: Yes it is. A lot of the inspiration for game one was certain white lies my parents told me that have stuck with me for years. I’m still dealing with the fallout from that. Now I have a better understanding of their motivations, but the truth would have been much better for me. Now, in trying to not repeat my parents’ mistakes, and being very, very honest with my kids, I’ve made different mistakes. In those instances, a lie would have been better.

‘At the core of this episode is this porch scene,’ said Neil Druckmann.

We don’t see Joel shoot Eugene. Why make that choice when the audience sees Joel’s death depicted in brutal detail on screen?

Druckmann: With Joel dying, it was important to show the brutality because if Ellie is going to go on this suicide mission to Seattle to find these people, you have to get into her mindset. They didn’t just kill Joel, they tortured him in front of her.

In contrast, with the Eugene death, you don’t even hear the gunshot. It was important to make that moment as beautiful as possible because it’s a different point of view. We’re with Joel in that moment, and he’s trying to give Eugene the best exit he can under the constraints.

But Ellie only sees Eugene dead on the ground. That contrast is important, because it means Joel lied to her and then the whole scene flips.

Going back to Joel’s death, it’s canon in the game, so it’s inevitable in the TV show. But much of the TV audience didn’t realize that. What did you do to prevent nongamers from turning against the show?

Gross: When I signed on to work on the game, I was super intrigued by Neil’s plan for Joel’s death because it immediately puts you in alignment with Ellie’s rage. As Ellie loses her soul on this journey, you want to be standing in lockstep with her. So, seeing the brutal loss of Joel allows you to say, Yeah, go make them pay.

And then we as writers get to play with that. Are you sure? Are you sure? As each encounter becomes harder and harder ethically. As Neil said earlier, so much of this is about the cyclical nature of violence and what it takes to stop it. So to set that top spinning, we have to come up with a motivation that will enrage, that would enrage anybody.

Druckmann: Look, at the core of your question is this tension between art and business. When we were making the game, we could have played it safe by telling another Joel and Ellie adventure. But I felt I would be doing a disservice to the original story that I’m trying to tell. We knew for a fact that certain people that loved the first game would hate the second game. And it still felt like the right thing to do.

Ultimately, that proved to be correct. “The Last of Us Part II” was financially successful and made Sony [parent company of video game maker Naughty Dog] a lot of money. I’m glad about that because it allows me as an artist to be able to do it again.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.