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It doesn't matter if you knew about it beforehand or not – Joel's death in The Last of Us season 2 is absolutely heartbreaking. And it could have been even more shocking, but director Mark Mylod wanted to "avoid overt torture" when portraying such a pivotal moment for the story.
"I don't have much interest in showing violence itself," he explained in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where he opened up about the challenges of directing episode 2, titled Through the Valley.
"But what motivated Abby to a place where she was doling such extraordinary violence – that is endlessly fascinating. So after establishing the brutality and, hopefully, exploring some of the context to why this young person was driven to such extraordinary violence and cruelty, I wanted to keep most of it off screen – and Craig [Mazin] was very much on the same page," he added.
In the scene, we see Abby (played by Kaitlyn Dever) shooting Joel (played by Pedro Pascal) in the knee before she repeatedly punches him in the face and hits him hard with a golf club. A lot of that extreme violence is featured on screen, but we get some time to breathe when the scene cuts to show Ellie's (played by Bella Ramsey) arrival.
"What was important to me was to do my best to deliver those extraordinary words on the page and to do that moment justice. That becomes about working with the actors and, in this case, protecting and supporting Kaitlyn and Bella who both had to go to make themselves incredibly vulnerable.
"A lot of this is blind instinct. It has to do with hopefully having an empathetic connection with the cast to feel when is the right time to really push for that Zen state. We always know when we're there because I can't speak after the take, or I'm just simply in tears."
Mylod said he wasn't expecting to get emotional while filming the scene, because he had been preparing for it for months, but Bella Ramsey's performance made him cry on set. "Bella took it to a level where I was just destroyed. I can't help connect on some level, as a parent, to seeing a young person in such pain when the performance is that good. It's kind of difficult in the room to disassociate from that and think 'it's just acting' because it was transcending that."
For the director, the "scariest" and "most satisfying" thing in the episode is "that closeup on Bella" when she realizes Joel is dead. "That will stay with me forever – and hopefully with some of the audience, as well."
The Last of Us season 2 is releasing episodes every week on HBO, so check out our The Last of Us season 2 release schedule to keep up to date.
