The loss of Pedro Pascal in Season 2 has hurt in more ways than one: The last of US
The online backlash against the casting of Ramsey to play Ellie, the young teenager who’s immune to the Cordyceps infection that has devastated the world, and who becomes like a daughter to Pedro Pascal’s grizzled survivor Joel, has been mounting for years.
You can, if you first perform certain spells to defend against the accumulation of bad karma, tour corners of Reddit that are dedicated entirely to mocking Ramsey’s performance.
These people hate the actor’s face, body, and entire existence; for them, the show’s second season has been a bonanza of fodder for cruel memes.
Is it possible to mount a strong argument against the now-Joel-free version of HBO’s The Last of Us without being mean to Bella Ramsey?
Joel dies in Episode 2, as anyone who had played the game (or who, like me, marched right past spoiler warnings to consume TLoU content) knew he would.
In this season’s premiere, which aired in April, we see that Joel and Ellie, who were close when we last saw them, have become at odds at some point over the five-year time jump, and are barely speaking.
The script drops clues about Ellie’s uncertainty over what happened at the end of Season 1, in Salt Lake City, where Joel murdered a whole bunch of Firefly resistance fighters and a doctor to ensure an unconscious Ellie’s safety, and then lied to her about it. Then, of course, Joel’s death.
