The Last of Us season 2 has revealed the origin of Joel's watch, and it attaches even more significance to it. Spoilers for the latest episode follow.
Episode 6 was full of flashbacks, but one took us back a bit further than the others. The episode opens in 1983, when Joel and Tommy are teenagers. Joel is trying to cover for Tommy so he doesn't get in trouble with their dad, and this results in Joel and his dad having a conversation at their kitchen table.
As one eagle-eyed fan pointed out on Reddit, their father is wearing the watch that his late daughter Sarah fixes and gifts to him in the very first episode of the show, and that Joel continues to wear throughout the series. "Looks like it really is a family heirloom," another fan pointed out.
During the flashback, Joel's father tells his son about the violence he experienced from his own dad and says that if Joel ever has kids of his own, he hopes he does a slightly better job than he has. In the final flashback of the episode, when Ellie confronts Joel on the porch on New Year's Eve about what really went down with the Fireflies at the end of season 1, Joel says a very similar thing to her.
"That hits way too hard, I wonder if Joel forgave him in that last monologue," someone else commented, while one viewer proposed another connection between father and son. "I was trying to see if the revolver on the dad’s hip was the one he used and Ellie now uses, but I couldn’t get a good look," they wrote. "I’m just gonna headcanon it as a yes."
As another commenter pointed out, Joel's revolver is looted from a random dead body in the video game. "In the show it's his original revolver the whole time, which attaches more meaning to it (and even more if it was his dad's too)."
The Last of Us season 2 airs weekly on HBO and Max in the US and Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK. Stay up to date with our The Last of Us season 2 release schedule or, for more on the show, check out our spoiler-free The Last of Us season 2 review.
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