‘The Last of Us’ EP Neil Druckmann on Pedro Pascal’s ‘Homecoming’ in Episode 6: ‘It Felt Nostalgic for Everybody’

Note: This story contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 6.

For audiences who were left devastated by the loss of Joel early in “The Last of Us” Season 2, Sunday night’s flashback episode gave fans just what they’ve been missing: more of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey’s dynamic.

Episode 6 finally answers the season-long question of what happened to Joel and Ellie in the five years following the events of Season 1. Co-creator and executive producer Neil Druckmann, who served as director of the penultimate episode, revealed that Pascal took a break between filming of Episodes 2 and 6.

“It felt nostalgic for everybody. We all miss Pedro. It felt like a homecoming of the guy that was our star in the first season and that is now here again. It felt very special in that way,” Druckmann told TheWrap. “It also felt special because the core of what the story is about is this relationship. You’re digging in deep and now we’re at the heart of it. So as a director, I felt extremely nervous because I knew how important this material was. I know it was in the game and I was nervous directing it for the game. And now to do it again, I just really wanted to do it justice for the game and for the show.”

In addition to expanding upon the source material with the return of Cat, introduction of Gail’s husband Eugene and Joel and Tommy’s father, Druckmann and co-executive producer Halley Gross recreate key moments from the game, such as Joel serenading Ellie with a rendition of Pearl Jam’s “If I Were to Lose You,” Ellie’s space capsule birthday gift and their heart-to-heart on Joel’s porch after his altercation with Seth at the New Year’s Eve dance from the Season 2 premiere.

“We had to reshoot that whole dance sequence. It almost felt like what I imagined Roberts Zemeckis went through when they shot ‘Back to the Future 2’ because on one monitor I had the original dance that Craig [Mazin] directed in Episode 1 and on the other monitor I had what we’re doing right now and I’m trying to match it all but now you’re seeing it from Joel’s perspective,” he said. “Except for a few exceptions, this is a Joel point of view episode. You’re seeing the entire relationship from his point of view.”

Druckmann admitted he was most nervous for the filming of the porch scene, where Joel reveals the truth to Ellie about what happened at the Firefly hospital.

“There was so much prep already to get to that moment. And I pulled Pedro and Bella aside and just told them how important the scene is to me, to Halley, to Craig, everybody working on the show but also the games and everybody that’s played the games. I didn’t want to create a stressful situation, I just wanted to say, ‘We’re all rooting for you.’ And then it was really just getting out of the way,” he said.

“It was a really special thing to witness, it was one of the highlights of my career,” he added.

Read on for the Druckmann and Gross’ full conversation unpacking the episode.

This episode packs an emotional gut punch. What conversations went into the decision to make the penultimate episode of the season this big flashback? Did you guys discuss moving the episode earlier?

Druckmann: In the game, we had a flashback structure where once Ellie goes on this journey, we showed her relationship with Joel multiple times and revealed more of this mystery of how much Ellie knew and how did their relationship deteriorate, because we see them at the beginning of the season and they’re at a different state. So we knew we wanted to visit that early on.

We felt like it’d be better to consolidate a lot of those ideas into one episode. This moment in time where we knew viewers would be missing Joel in the same way that Ellie is. We specifically chose Episode 6 because we wanted to come in where Ellie is at her lowest. Up until this point, Ellie and Dina have made it to the TV station, they ended up killing a couple of guys in there and it doesn’t hit them. We realize it’s not the same Ellie we saw from Season 1 that was horrified when she shot a single person. Now, Ellie has been hardened and believes in many ways she’s like Joel.

She believed that when she gets to Nora, she could do what Joel would have done, whatever it takes, whatever amount of violence, whatever amount of horror she must commit to achieve her goals, which is to find Abby. And as we’ll find out going forward, maybe Ellie is not exactly like Joel. Therefore it was important at this moment in time to come back as a reminder of this whole journey. What is it about? It’s about this relationship between these two characters that love each other so much.

How did you land on the right structural balance between some of the newer scenes that expanded upon the source material, such as meeting Joel and Tommy’s father and Joel’s reaction to Cat and Ellie smoking weed and making out, with some of the iconic flashback sequences, like the guitar scene, the museum space capsule scene and porch scene?

Gross: There’s a really deep theme in this episode that gets echoed a few times, but really lands in the porch sequence that is about doing better. So it was really important to have an opportunity to show Joel facing down a situation where his patterning and his experience would dictate he’s going to behave a certain way. And you see his instinct, his non-thinking monkey mind, moving in a certain direction. And then you get to see him stop and become a bigger person and grow. So it’s allowing him to live his thesis of maybe you will do a little bit better. And it’s opening for us a possibility that that is the example Ellie has received and now it’s going to be setting that question up going forward: Is Ellie capable of being that more evolved version of herself that she saw Joel be?

Druckmann: And to add to that, some of it is just inherent of that age when you’re an older teen and you’re seeking independence and you could see Joel really struggle with that, because he has such a savior complex. He thinks he could fix and control anything and everything in Ellie’s life and you see him bouncing back and forth throughout this episode. Even when we see Ellie with Cat, you see Joel’s anger come out and maybe it’s not dissimilar from his dad’s anger when he and Tommy were misbehaving and buying drugs. And then he tries to correct it and he’s trying to give her space. And then the Eugene thing happens and he again lies to her to protect her. Now, maybe that’s the right thing, maybe that’s the wrong thing. That’s open to interpretation for Ellie. It’s absolutely the wrong thing. And the last thing he does to course correct that, the last kind of gift he can give to her is to be fully honest with her about what happened.

Why was it important to explore Joel’s relationship with his father in the opening minutes of the episode?

Druckmann: A lot of our conversations have been the stories about parent and child and unconditional love, but also what you pass on to your children, that some of it could be trauma and violence and the wrong things, and some of it can be this positivity and hope. That each person as a parent, you do the best you can with the tools that you have in front of you, and then you pass that knowledge on to your kid and you hope that they will do better than you. Every parent has that internally to them. And as we were talking about that, the idea came up like, “Well, what if we went backwards in time? Where did Joel get a lot of his thinking, his programming?”

It was interesting not just to show a father where there’s a drunk guy that comes and beats their kids and he’s all bad. He’s someone that’s complicated, that struggles and he’s doing the best he can and he knows he might be getting it wrong. It was important to show that vulnerability, but also this connection that’s, again, not that similar from what Joel has with Ellie, which is violence. Joel got in a fight to protect Tommy and Joel is expecting that that’s going to get him in trouble, because every time he’s done something like that in the past that has gotten him in trouble. But this time is different, because this time it was done to protect the family, the tribe, and that’s where the dad’s like, “Maybe now you understand why I’ve done what I’ve done. Because I’ve hurt people to protect you guys, sometimes I’ve hurt you guys to protect you.” And that just felt really fascinating to explore the psychology of all these characters and to say, ‘Okay, what from that has lasted throughout this entire journey,’ and maybe you have a better understanding of why Joel has done what he’s done to protect Ellie.

When we finally meet Eugene, we learn that he’s been bitten. He wants to have one last moment to reunite with Gail and Joel won’t let him. Why won’t he let him go back and why was that situation the breaking point in the tension between Joel and Ellie that we’ve been witnessing up until this point?

Gross: I think Joel is inherently a protector. And when it doesn’t come to his own kid, he’s a man who thinks about the greater good, and you see that in the first episode of the season where he’s talking about protecting the people of his community. There’s this hierarchy of Joel’s values of who he’s willing to protect. And in this instance, it is “I have to protect the town, I have to protect my people. I am not going to be responsible for this going wrong. This is not worth the risk.” But Ellie obviously, sees it deeply, deeply differently.

Druckmann: It’s not dissimilar from the lie in Season 1. He’s lying to her to protect her from this moment. He knows he’s got to do the really hard thing. He’s not enjoying it. He hates it. He likes Eugene, everybody likes Eugene. But he also knows bringing him back would be dangerous. If Gail comes out and he turns, who knows what could happen? That’s why they have those rules. That’s why he cannot go back.

It reminds me that I’m sure we’ve all thought about similar stuff like this. When I was young and it was time to put down our dog. My dad went and did it himself and he lied to me about it, and it was meant to protect me, and at the time that really hurt me. In time, I understood what he was doing, and maybe in time, Ellie understands what Joel was doing and maybe that’s what the porch scene is about.

The episode ends with the porch scene we’ve been talking about, which is combined with a separate scene from the game where Joel finally tells Ellie the truth about what happened. Why did you decide to combine those two flashbacks into a single scene and why is Ellie so willing, after everything that’s happened to her, to make things work with Joel?

Druckmann: So much of the game is exploration and finding items and reading documents. That’s not going to make for very compelling TV. So we were like, ‘OK, how do we make this intimate? How do we come back and make it about relationships with almost like a chessboard of all the characters we’ve set up?” And we knew we wanted this Eugene mystery to unravel here. We worked on so many drafts and so many iterations and finally it unlocked for us. We’re like, ‘Oh, it’s this lie. What if he lies to her?’ And then everything just kind of fell into place. It felt like, just through seeing that lie again, Ellie would know she doesn’t need to read a document. She doesn’t need to see proof from the hospital about exactly what happened or didn’t happen, it’s just in his lie and this is a confirmation for her.

It was interesting to combine those two scenes. It actually became very natural. And then there was an additional part of that scene that wasn’t in the game, which is the conversation about his father. This idea that as a parent — and Joel I think exemplifies that to the nth degree — you’re willing to take on all the pain to protect your kids. So much pain that he’s willing to lose his relationship with Ellie if it means he’s protected her and all he can do is hope that in doing so, he’s left her with a better life. And maybe one day when she has her own kid, she will do even better than him. And I think at that moment, Ellie sees all those sacrifices and she sees everything that he’s done and even though she doesn’t quite forgive him, in that moment, she wants to move towards that.

Gross: What you’re seeing throughout the course of the episode is all the reasons that this relationship is worth fighting for. Joel makes difficult choices, but you also see he’s trying to grow for her. He’s trying to be a better father, he’s going to therapy, he’s willing to do all that it takes and nobody’s perfect.

And so Ellie’s love for him runs so so deep that she is able to — even though she is resentful of the choices he has made — see him holistically. And there is something worth fighting for in that relationship and that’s also a fight she’s willing to go for. And unfortunately for her, that realization comes after years of awkwardness and estrangement, and just when she thinks, ‘Okay, we’re turning this corner and I’m going to try and have more authentic relationship with this father figure,’ Abby comes in and takes that out from underneath her, and that builds this resentment of the time I lost, the time I could have had. The moments that were ruined by the misery between us don’t get a chance to be made whole.

“The Last of Us” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streams on Max.