Pedro Pascal Breaks His Silence on Joel’s Death in ‘The Last of Us’: ‘It Was Dreamlike and Devastating’

Pedro Pascal is finally opening up about the heartbreaking exit of his The Last of Us character, Joel Miller — and it’s clear he’s still struggling to let go.

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pascal admitted he remains “in active denial” about Joel’s brutal death, despite filming the devastating scene over a year ago. “I realize this more and more as I get older,” Pascal, 50, confessed. “I find myself slipping into denial that anything is over. I know that I’m forever bonded to so many members of the experience… but never will under the circumstances of playing Joel on The Last of Us.”

Pascal said he made a conscious choice to avoid thinking too much about the show after filming his final scenes, simply to protect his emotional wellbeing. “I was always sidestepping how I really felt, that in a big way my experience was coming to an end on the show,” he revealed. “It was very sad. I had such a physical manifestation, a violent mirror of how sad it was for Joel to die. To be honest, it was quite dreamlike.”

Sunday’s landmark episode, titled “Through the Valley,” showed Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) finally taking her revenge on Joel. In an unflinching sequence, Abby shot Joel in the leg, bludgeoned him with a golf club, and ultimately stabbed him fatally in the neck — all while Ellie (Bella Ramsey) watched helplessly.

Pascal had known from the moment he signed onto the series that Joel’s death was inevitable. “It was just a matter of how and when,” he said. But even knowing it didn’t soften the blow — especially when filming the haunting final moments, where Joel tries and fails to lift his hand toward Ellie as she screams for him to get up.

“I have no idea if it’s captured on camera, but [there’s] a subtle sense that Joel can hear her in the last breath of life that he has left in him,” Pascal shared. “He can hear her calling for him and hear that she’s in danger and wants to help her and is unable to lift even a finger to do so. I remember playing that, and that was really devastating.”

The Last of Us continues to air new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO, with Bella Ramsey’s Ellie now fully stepping into the brutal world without her surrogate father.