‘The Last of Us’ Creator Neil Druckmann on Directing Pedro Pascal’s Last Episode, That Pearl Jam Song and Catherine O’Hara’s ‘Beautiful’ Improvisation

SPOILER ALERT: This story covers significant plot points from “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 6, which aired on HBO and streamed on Max (which will soon be HBO Max again), as well as the video game “The Last of Us Part II,” which is accessible on the Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and pc\..

Executive producer and co-creator Neil Druckmann was unsure about which episode of the second season of “The Last of Us” he wanted to direct. Since he oversaw the action-packed Episode 2 of Season 1, which was written by co-creator Craig Mazin, he at least knew that this time, he should be involved in the episode’s creation. This only allowed Druckmann to write the penultimate episode or the season finale, which he co-wrote with Mazin and Halley Gross, who co-wrote “The Last of Us Part II,” a 2020 video game from Naughty Dog. There were strong selling points in every episode. While Episode 6 is a flashback that discusses how Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) became so distant from one another between the events of Seasons 1 and 2, the finale is just that—the finale.

In the end, Pascal sort of decided what Druckmann should do. Druckmann was asked to direct Episode 6 because it is his last complete episode of the series. According to Druckmann, “it just made sense.”. I’m looking forward to doing an action-free episode, which is practically the opposite of what I did the last time. I simply thought that this would be a worthwhile challenge. More importantly, Druckmann understood that Episode 6 “is what the story is all about.”. “.”.

The episode shows how Ellie and Joel, who are now fully integrated into the close-knit community of Jackson, Wyoming, have settled into a new, uncomfortable rhythm as adoptive father and daughter. It takes place on Ellie’s birthday over a series of years. Joel plans to make Ellie a cake and build her a new guitar for her fifteenth birthday, but his plans are derailed when Ellie purposefully burns the area of her arm where she was bitten by an infected person so that she can wear short sleeve shirts once more. Joel takes her to a long-forgotten natural history museum for her sixteenth birthday, which still has a lot of its exhibits in a largely intact state, such as the space capsule from the Apollo 15 moon landing, which is nearly identical to the video game’s most beloved scene.

But when Joel enters Ellie’s room on her seventeenth birthday while she is smoking marijuana and getting a tattoo from another girl, Kat (Noah Lamanna), over the burn scarring on her arm, their relationship starts to go south. Joel is enraged.

In other words, “all the teenage shit all at once,” he remarks. “Tattoos, drugs, sex, and experimenting — with girls?”.

With equal rage, Ellie responds, “It wasn’t sex.”. Furthermore, it wasn’t an experiment at all. “.”.

Joel’s lack of belief only makes Ellie more irate. He finally gives in to her demands and makes an effort to patch things up. She wants to move into the garage.

Two years later, on her 19th birthday, Ellie attempts to prepare herself to face Joel about what actually transpired five years prior at the conclusion of Season 1, when Joel killed nearly all of the Fireflies in a Salt Lake City hospital to prevent them from killing Ellie in order to find a treatment for the cordyceps infection, and then lied to Ellie about everything. Joel shows up before Ellie can speak, though, and takes her on her first patrol, where they run into Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), Jackson’s resident therapist Gail’s (Catherine O’Hara) weed-growing husband. Joel is required by law to kill Eugene immediately after he is bitten by an infected, but Eugene begs that he has enough time to return to town so that he and Gail can properly say goodbye. After Ellie coerces Joel into complying with Eugene’s request, he assures her that he won’t murder Eugene before they return after she leaves to fetch their horses.

Joel has lied again. He leads Eugene to a stunning lake and murders him because he knows there is little chance Eugene will return in time to save Ellie, Gail, and the rest of Jackson.

Joel also tells a lie to Gail when they return Eugene’s body. He says, “He wished he could say goodbye to you in person.”. “He ended it on his own because he was brave and not afraid. “”.

Ellie is furious and can’t stand it any longer. Declaring, “That’s not what happened,” she confronts a distraught Gail, who slaps Joel and implores him to leave.

Joel looks at Ellie and is astounded by her actions. “You swore,” she says, glaring at him. “.”.

After Ellie kisses Dina (Isabela Merced) at Jackson’s New Year’s Eve party, nine months later, the show returns to Joel’s porch the night before he passes away. To Ellie’s anger, Joel protects them from the town’s resident homophobe, as seen in the season premiere. In this episode, the two finally discuss what actually transpired at that Salt Lake City hospital after Ellie gets home from the party.

“This is the last chance I’ll give you,” Ellie says. We will stop if you lie to me once more. Joel confesses his crimes despite initially being unable to speak.

He sobs as he says, “It would have killed you to make a cure.”.

“Then I was meant to die!” Ellie exclaims, also in tears. I would have had a purpose, and you took that away from me.

Joel is crying now, accepting the results of his decisions, but he has no regrets. “I would start over if I had a second chance right then and there,” he says. “Because I adore you.”. as you are unable to comprehend. “.”.

There’s a long silence. According to Ellie, “I don’t think I can forgive you for this.”. But I’d like to give it a shot. “.”.

The timing of this amazing scene between Joel and Ellie is startling for anyone who has played “The Last of Us Part II,” as it occurs near the end of the game, after much more has happened for all of the characters. Druckmann gave Variety an explanation of why he, Mazin, and Gross decided to make that scene so high in the show. Additionally, he talked about how they came up with the new scenes involving Joel and Ellie on her birthdays, how he felt when he saw real-life versions of game locations, and what transpired when O’Hara didn’t agree with his direction for the scene where Gail slaps Joel.

How did you choose which new scenes—such as Joel actually building the guitar or Ellie burning her arm—you wanted to include in the development of Joel and Ellie’s relationship?

We wanted Ellie to conclusively learn that Joel had lied in this episode. We played the game quite differently, with her making the long journey back to the hospital and locating the necessary paperwork. It seemed as though we would be exaggerating the dangers of the real world in contrast to the game. However, I’m not sure if studying documents and exploring that area would make for an engaging TV drama. The show’s engine differs slightly from an interactive experience’s engine. Thus, that eventually resulted in the entire Eugene sequence.

We had a lot more ideas for the show than what was ultimately used because we were spending more time in Jackson than in the game. However, each of those was evaluated using the desired arc as a guide, where they begin in a far better position. Even though they’re making an effort to put the lie behind them, it still affects them and their relationship. You feel like you’re pushing them apart with every step. We needed that above all else in order to drill that home in each sequence.

What led you to believe that Joel initially found it difficult to accept Ellie’s sexual orientation?

Joel, who is unaware of it, mistook Ellie’s friendship with Jesse for something more during the game’s opening dialogue. That was something Halley wrote, I think, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember. We truly intended to leave that alone and then go one step further. During the game, he discovers that Ellie is gay after she kisses Dina on the dance floor. Here, it seemed like there was a chance to further illustrate Ellie’s development into a teenager in Jackson and to further exacerbate their relationship through that miscommunication. Show growth, forgiveness, and movement as well; you could sense Joel’s sincere efforts.

He’s not quite right. Although he is [parenting] a teenager at this age for the first time, he is making an effort to grant Ellie all of her desires. He allows her to move into the garage even though he doesn’t want her to. He is enraged by her getting this tattoo and using drugs. After examining her tattoo, he remarks, “This looks better than the one I did on the guitar.”. He is attempting. He finally gives in when she requests to go on patrols. He gives her almost anything she requests, but it’s never enough because their conflict ultimately stems from more than one of those things.

Joel plays the Pearl Jam song “Future Days” in the game and sings it when he hands Ellie his guitar. When the pandemic begins in the game, that song was released in 2013, but it begins in the show in 2003. Given that the song was never written, I must wonder how Joel could have known it.

Well, I don’t know when it was written. That would be best to ask Eddie Vedder. It did, however, become public knowledge in 2013, and it is out of date because it shouldn’t be in our modern world. Originally, a different song would have been used when we were creating this episode. We simply had the impression that we were not giving this timeline of events and the availability of items the proper priority while we were investigating it. We obviously have some leeway because we are not in the same timeline as our universe. That song also seemed really significant. We took a different approach since it was in the game and has a lot of meaning for both fans and me personally. We ultimately didn’t care about the thing we believed to be important, and the song’s emotional truth outweighed the timeline truth of our reality.

It’s the last scene in the game, so it’s like the emotional reward you get for finishing, so I was astonished to see that you included Ellie and Joel’s last conversation in this episode. Was that a difficult choice to make?

No. I knew that scene needed to be in the game when we were developing it. Where it goes, I had no idea. For every flashback, that was the case. We were still rearranging those flashbacks fairly late in the game’s development. For the first time, I gave the period between seasons some serious thought when I spoke with Craig about it. There are a lot of setups and payoffs in writing, and we would have set up some things that would pay off years later. Craig was able to persuade me that waiting another few years for Season 3 to air—or possibly even Season 4, depending on where all the events fall and how many seasons we have—would be too long, especially since this season is so heavily focused on Ellie’s journey and the emotional truth of what did she know and what didn’t she know.

We talked about it and wrestled with it for a whole day. “Let’s play it through,” is how I operate when someone makes a suggestion like that. We play it out and discuss not just this season but also the seasons to come, and then we ask ourselves if it makes sense. If it does, we accept it. I simply assume that it is correct. If the response is no, we either return to the game’s original state or continue juggling it until we figure out another way to solve it.

I suppose this has an impact on your thoughts about how the show will conclude now.

[Prolonged pause] You’re right.

How did you go about directing the scene in which Joel tells Gail a falsehood that makes Ellie realize that he lied about what transpired in the hospital?

We had numerous iterations of what that sequence should be about, and we knew we had this Eugene mystery. There were much smaller versions and versions with all of this fighting, shooting, and action. From me to Hallie to Craig, and back again, it went like this. Until we discovered that he had lied to her about killing Eugene, it didn’t feel right for a while. When it came to thinking, “Oh, this is how she’ll know,” everything just fell into place. It seemed like such a dramatic approach to her problem-solving.

I appreciate that he was being very thoughtful when he shot that scene, even if no one knew the lie. You could sometimes buy the argument that the lie is better than the truth, right? But for Ellie, it wasn’t because of everything that has happened before, because she saw that he had betrayed her trust. Would you want to tell Gail that he wanted to see her, almost in this pitiful way, and I still had to put him down, because those are the rules, and that’s the way to keep you safe? More than just this particular instance, it meant that Ellie had to justify Riley’s death, Tess’s death, Henry’s death, Sam’s death, and all the other deaths that occurred along the way in order for the story to have a happy ending. This was the survival guilt that she had experienced since Season 1. She realizes almost immediately that nothing positive came of it. Although she feels that way about it, it’s not totally accurate. Therefore, it was only crucial that it be truly shocking and that all of the actors were aware of the truth going into it.

Allow me to simply extol Catherine O’Hara.

Would you please?

It was one of my favorite moments as a director. Joel is supposed to back off a few steps in embarrassment after she slaps him in the scene. We were having trouble with it. It seemed phony. It seemed practiced. For that brief period at first, there were no lines of conversation. “I think we need to do something else here,” I told Catherine. I’m not sure what. What if, say, his closeness to this body is somehow desecrating it now that you are aware of the truth? You could yell at him to leave if you so choose. “Oh, I’m not so sure,” she responds. I appreciate how beautiful it is that there is no dialogue. I’m like, “Just give it a try, please.”. We’ll return to the previous version if it doesn’t work. However, I always enjoy trying new things and coming up with novel ideas. I then asked her to shout for her to leave. That should encourage Pedro [to back off], I reasoned. Rather, she nearly took the opposite action. It was really lovely. She withdraws [to herself], begins to cry, and uses a very quiet voice to plead with him to leave. Oh my God, that is so much better than what I had requested. She took what I asked for, transformed it into something else, and it’s better as a result. It’s one of those lovely moments of cooperation. You see that in the episode.

In relation to Gail, we never see her with Eugene in real life. Have you given any thought to illustrating their relationship?

We never did. Early on, we discussed the tragedy of that. “Should there be a picture of the two of them in their home?” we asked during our discussion of Episode 1. “No, just the shoes.”. The sole impression you get is that his shoes are next to hers. The parts where we trust you, the audience, to bridge the gap are sometimes my favorite parts of storytelling. You can imagine them smoking marijuana together and engaging in other activities, but we felt that footage wasn’t necessary for this story.

The entire scene at the museum, right down to the quality of the mist in the air, looks exactly like it does in the game. How did it feel to enter a tangible, real-world area that you had previously only ever imagined as pixels?

I’m at a loss for words to express this emotion. It seems so unreal. The reason I become so emotional on these sets is beyond me. Hallie, my game co-writer and the other co-writer on this episode of the show, was with me when I first arrived on set at Joel’s house. We say, “Look at this dining room!” Maria converses with Ellie and Dina in this room in the game, and it looks exactly the same. It was the feeling of every set.

I had two guests from Naughty Dog on the day we were filming this, specifically from this [museum] set: Alison Mori, my studio partner, and Arne Meyer, our heads of communication. They saw a segment from the dinosaur museum that we ultimately cut out of the show. “Come with me,” I say, and we proceed down a starry, dark hallway before arriving at the space capsule. “Look at this,” I say. Although I’m sentimental, I’ve been watching it develop. Both of their eyes are wet when I look at them. It is now possible to stand in it, enter it, and touch it—something we have worked so hard to perfect in digital form using pixels on a flat screen. Every button functions properly. The seats have actual seats. Sitting in them causes them to creak. We felt as though we entered the game. Knowing that the amazing team I worked with treated the source material with such respect is such a wonderful feeling. We were literally brought to tears by it.

This is a shortened and edited version of the interview.