Pedro Pascal’s Emotional One-Liner in The Last Of Us Came from His Own Heart

When it comes to emotional and traumatic storytelling, HBO’s The Last of Us has this concept down pat. Taken from Naughty Dog’s award-winning franchise, co-creators Mazin and Druckmann have taken the post-apocalyptic title in season one to heights that saw others, like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and Assassin’s Creed, fail miserably, but not only this, the series even went on to win several awards, including eight Primetime Emmy Awards, finally breaking what seems to be the dreaded gaming adaption curse in the process.

Packed with powerful and heartwrenching dialogue, Pascal took on the role of Joel and made it his own while still keeping the character we know and love intact. In what would be one of the show’s most emotional lines, showrunner Craig Mazin said that those words came entirely from Pascal himself and weren’t part of the script.

“That Was Something From Pedro Directly.”

Finding their favorite line in season one would be an unbelievably tough endeavor for any fan of HBO’s The Last of Us. Whether it was Bill’s moving words to Frank saying he wasn’t afraid until he showed up or Joel calling Ellie his “baby girl” after she survived that traumatic David scene, it’s fair to say that one piece of dialogue in particular reached into the belly of viewers and pulled at their guts.

Talking on “The Last of Us Podcast,” co-creators Mazin and Druckmann broke down episode 6’s ‘Kin’ where Joel finally opened up to his brother Tommy after arriving in Jackson. In the scene, Joel tells Tommy how much he cares about Ellie and his fear of losing her, which stems back to losing Sarah as well as the nightmares he has every night. Tommy asks him what the dreams are about, which Joel states, “I can’t remember. I just know that when I wake up, I’ve lost something. I’m failing in my sleep.”

This one-liner completely reframes Joel’s character for the rest of season one and also the depths that he has been suffering, giving some context as to why he did what he did at the end of the ninth episode. “That was obviously a hard monologue to write, but the [lines], ‘I have dreams … All I know is that when I wake up, I know I’ve lost something,'” Mazin says in the podcast “That was something from Pedro directly.”

“That notion that when you wake up you just have a feeling that you’ve lost something is so beautiful and it’s so confessional,” continues Mazin. “This is not all like something we saw from Joel in the game. This is different. This is sadder, I think. It’s a little more broken down, and it’s a little more upsetting.”

HBO’s The Last of Us season 2 has yet to get a release date, but with all fingers crossed, we should be watching the next set of traumatic events unfold in 2025, where we will see a bunch of new and exciting characters joining the show.

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