HBO Showrunner and episode director Neil Druckmann, writer Halley Gross, and actor Joe Pantoliano go behind the scenes of season 2's "The Price." The creators unpack the arrival of Tony Dalton as Javier Miller, Joel and Tommy's dad. Pantoliano calls his debut as Eugene "the most challenging work I've had in a long time as an actor." Warning: This article contains spoilers fromThe Last of Usseason 2, episode 6, "The Price." How do you best get a TV audience to miss Joel? That was the question the creators ofThe Last of Ussought to answer when mapping out the later episodes of season 2, following the tragic execution ofPedro Pascal's beloved character. 2020'sThe Last of Us Part II, the video game that serves as the inspiration, kept Joel a part of the action by interspersing flashback sequences throughout the main storyline to show the moments that led to his fraught relationship with Ellie in the present. "When we were breaking the season, we were having quite a bit of a conversation around how we handle the flashbacks, whether to spread them out or consolidate them," Neil Druckmann, a showrunner on HBO'sThe Last of Usand a co-creator of the games who directed the flashback episode, "The Price," comments toEntertainment Weekly. "Ultimately, we felt that it would have more impact for the show to consolidate them into a bottle episode, having you miss Joel. Viewers will have several weeks where they miss him. You're going on this journey with Ellie and then missing him in the way that the characters would be missing him." HBO The game hones in on five moments throughout the history of Ellie and Joel's relationship: first when Joel gifts Ellie a guitar and performs "Future Days" by Pearl Jam; then when he takes Ellie to an abandoned museum for her birthday; then when Tommy teaches Ellie how to handle a sniper rifer before she goes on patrol with Joel; then when they revisit the Fireflies hospital, where Joel finally confesses to Ellie what really happened there; and lastly an intimate porch moment that contains the hope of reconciliation. Druckmann, fellow showrunnerCraig Mazin, and Halley Gross, who worked with Druckmann as a writer on both the games and season 2 — all three having penned season 2's "The Price" together — chose to adapt some of these flashbacks, while adding in new ones that players never experienced in the source material. "Atthe end of episode 5, we are haunted by this piece of information [Ellie] gives to Nora [Tati Gabrielle]: 'I know who Joel is,'" Gross says. "Based on the end of season 1, there is this unspoken thing that's happening. We don't have the context that she knows anything. So it's now this opportunity to see a much more holistic version of Ellie that puts you, as a viewer, in alignment with what is going to propel her toward what I like to call more of her villain era. You need to understand that this deep, deep, deep love that she has, this feeling of loss that we are all feeling is so loud, is so resonant that she's going to become a person that we — and she — will be horrified by." Liane Hentscher/HBO For the first time in either the video games or the show,The Last of Usfans get to meet Joel and Tommy's dad, Javier Miller. Tony Dalton (Daredevil: Born Again), who stars inIntergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, the new game Druckmann is working on at his studio Naughty Dog, portrays Javier, a local cop back in Austin, Texas, in the episode's first flashback. "Tony Dalton was my first choice," Druckmann says of casting this figure. "I just loved his performance so much inBetter Call Saul. I jokingly refer to him as the most charming, threatening man I've ever seen on television." It wasThe Last of Us, in fact, that led to Dalton's casting in the next game. "It was such a pleasure working with him that when we had this role to fill inIntergalactic, he immediately came to mind and I just offered it to him on the spot," Druckmann adds. The idea of introducing Javier came out of conversations around Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). In the same ways that Joel is now a part of Ellie, the team asked themselves how Joel got his programming. Viewers learn a lot about the Miller family in this opening sequence. A younger Joel (played by Andrew Diaz, who was inWe Can Be Heroeswith Pascal) sits down with his father. He expects a beating because he beat up a drug dealer in defense of Tommy (David Miranda), but Javier instead offers his son a beer. "What Joel has done now is different," Druckmann points out. "[Joel] used violence to protect his tribe, to protect Tommy. Now it's almost like there's something for them to relate to and they connect on this level." In the subsequent sequences, you see how this "programming" — a word Druckmann returns to often — plays into the growing pains of Joel and Ellie's relationship. Sometimes there's a literal passing down of something from parent to child, like when we learn Joel's watch once belonged to his father, or when Joel gifts Ellie a bespoke guitar he built from scratch. "What the dad ultimately says is, 'I think I've done the right things, but I'm not entirely sure. I just know that I did things better than my dad, who beat me even worse,'" Druckmann says, paraphrasing the dialogue. "His insecurity about that stays with Joel, as well. Joel's doing the best he can with the tools that are in front of him, but he loves Ellie unconditionally. I've definitely felt this becoming a parent. I try not to repeat my parents' mistake. In doing so, you often make new mistakes with your kids, but you try to instill them with better tools so they'll be better human beings going forward. That is hopefully what we captured, both the negatives and the positives of the power of parenting." Liane Hentscher/HBO The first of multiple time jumps to follow Papa Miller brings us to Ellie's 15th birthday in Jackson, when Joel surprises her with the custom-made "gee-tar." Though a slightly different context than the game, the moment sees Joel performing an acoustic cover of Pearl Jam's "Future Days." Troy Baker, who originated the role of Joel, beginning with 2013'sThe Last of Us, came equipped with a musical background. Pascal doesn't have such experience, though he brought different colors to his iteration. "I don't want to speak too much for Pedro other than to say he was really nervous," Druckmann points out. "I think he really wanted to do this moment justice." The showrunner says they initially picked another song for this particular flashback — "Future Days," he notes, is "anachronistic with the timeline of the show — but ultimately they kept coming back to it, saying, "This has too much emotional truth." Druckmann appreciated the difficult position Pascal was in, now performing this song that has become so meaningful to fans of the game after Baker. "Pedro wanted to find his own version of it," he says. "He really wanted this kind of Johnny Cash, almost like he's speaking it. It has such a different quality than what Troy did, and I love that. It's as beautiful as what Troy did, but in this totally other way." Liane Hentscher/HBO Some of the other flashbacks incorporatedeleted material from the game, but not in straightforward ways. For instance, one such scene, released as a "Lost Level" on 2023's remastered edition ofThe Last of Us Part II, expanded upon the Jackson party sequence. Ellie walks through the town's streets during the festivities and has a run-in with Kat, her ex-girlfriend, played on the series by Noah Lamanna. "They were already broken up at that point, but they would talk about their relationship," Druckmann describes of that material. "That was a big loss in the studio," Gross adds. "We were like, 'R.I.P. Kat. We're not going to see Kat.' And now we get to see Kat." Episode 6 mines this deleted moment by depicting Kat as the one to give Ellie her moth tattoo, which in a practical sense is used to further cover up her scar from the infected bite, but more personally symbolizes this idea of death. "Halley worked a lot on Kat," Druckmann says. HBO Another piece of deleted material involved Esther, a woman Joel dated in Jackson between the events of the first and second video games. Joel and Ellie go out on patrol together, they find Esther around the electric water dam and are forced to kill her after she was bitten, Druckmann recalls. "Ellie had to reconcile with the pain of watching this incredibly selfless, tough woman who really brought joy to Joel's life and watching Joel have to reconcile that loss and then feeling the guilt," Gross says. This scenario was repurposed for the character of Eugene on HBO'sThe Last of Us. In the game, we don't even see Eugene apart from a stray photograph.The SopranosandThe MatrixstarJoe Pantolianonow plays this figure in his final hours. "The truth is, it was the most challenging work I've had in a long time as an actor," Pantoliano says in a separate interview. "I used to have a teacher that would say, under any circumstances that a human is put into, anything is possible. So the desperation of the immediacy — the limited time that my character has and the urgency in which I need to tell my wife how I feel — knowing that I'm going to the gallows, it was really interesting." HBO The Last of Uswas technically a reunion for Pantoliano and Pascal. "Joey Pants," as he's affectionately nicknamed, optioned a play with director and producer Sam Weisman about 25 years ago. They set up a reading and Pascal, then just a child, was part of it. "I didn't even remember him," Pantoliano recalls. "I was introduced on the set [ofThe Last of Us], and they said this is Bella and Pedro. Pedro started hugging and kissing me, and I'm like, 'Oh my God. I don't know who this guy is.' Then he said two words that opened up the floodgates to the memory." According to Druckmann, the script for this sequence initially leaned into gallows humor for Eugene, presented in the game as a pothead. "On the days when we were shooting, that humor just felt wrong," the showrunner says. "Joey made this really beautiful choice none of us expected. As he's getting closer and closer to his death, he starts regressing and becoming like a child. He's just crying for help, and he needs Gale to protect him. I just love where he took it. It was very surprising. And now, I can't imagine it being any other way." A small detail in the scene is the crack in Eugene's glasses, which visually mimics the crack on Joel's watch face. "I'll tell you how nerdy I was about that crack," Druckmann says. "The props department came to me and they're like, 'Do you want a crack?' I said yes. Then they're like, 'What do you want the crack to look like?' ... I'm such a big fan of the gameHalf-Life, and their symbol is a lambda. They cracked it like a lambda, and now whenever I watch it, I think aboutHalf-Life." HBO The Eugene pieces of the show proved to be challenging beyond the material. What Druckmann calls "a Biblical level of bugs" threatened to derail the shoot. Production scouted areas around a particular lake in Canada for more than a month. They found a spot, accessible by about a 20-minute hike, during the spring when the lake was still largely frozen. They had a month to prepare the location before filming began. "Every day, part of the crew would go out there to break the ice and the snow so it would melt faster," Druckmann explains. "Not only that, they had to build a road to bring all the equipment, the actors, the crew." When the time came to shoot, the ice melted, but they didn't account for all the bugs that would breed and hatch around the standing water. "Our crew members had these bee outfits on with the screens," Pantoliano remembers. "We weren't going to be able to shoot there. They weren't bugs that bit but people were inhaling them." "Maybe we'll put giant fans to move all the bugs away. Doesn't work," Druckmann says. "We can't shoot there. Now what do we do?" The VFX team ended up scanning the environment for another location nearby and then rebuilt the setup to shoot on a different day. "The fact that we made it all work, and it is as beautiful as it is, just speaks to how insane and talented this crew is," Druckmann remarks. HBO Sign up forEntertainment Weekly's free daily newsletterto get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more. According to Gross, they always knew "the meat of the episode" was going to be the porch scene, which combined elements from two flashbacks in the game into one intense moment: Joel finally confesses to Ellie that he lied about what happened with the Fireflies, and Ellie, though emotionally wounded beyond repair, leaves the door open for forgiveness. "That scene changes the entire context of their relationship, and it changes the entire context of why Ellie is doing what she's doing," Gross explains. "Up until [episode 5], we truly believe that they were semi-estranged at the moment of his death. What we realize is, for the first time, they get to see each other clearly as grownups, as family." The trio of writers worked in reverse. They set this porch scene as the climactic release of the episode and built all the other flashbacks — including the arrival of Joel's dad, the bit with Kat, and the heart-wrenching sequence with Eugene — from there. "Hopefully, as a viewer," Druckmann adds, "you understand this is what Abby took away from them. They would've moved towards forgiving each other because they love each other unconditionally, and they never fully got that moment.... There's also something happening under the surface. This goes back to the conversation they had at the end of season 1; Joel tells her, no matter what, you find something to fight for. And here she has found something to fight for, but is it really the thing that Joel would've wanted her to fight for, which is justice for his death, or would he have wanted something more positive for her?" HBO will releaseThe Last of Usseason 2 finale next Sunday, May 25, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly
