Joel Miller, meet Prince Oberyn Martell. You two have a lot to discuss.
Death is not some mysterious, final journey for Pedro Pascal. It’s something that comes for many of the characters he’s played on projects over the years, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Equalizer 2, and Kingsman: The Golden Circle — to name just a few.
“I get killed a lot,” Pascal tells Entertainment Weekly in a comically matter-of-fact tone. “I like to die.”
His latest death comes courtesy of The Last of Us season 2. EW’s latest cover story dives deep into the making of the episode in which Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), a former Firefly and the daughter of the doctor Joel so callously shot in the previous season, gets her revenge by killing Pascal’s latest character with a golf club.
This isn’t even the first time one of Pascal’s characters has died on an HBO show! In a group interview with his The Last of Us costars Dever and Bella Ramsey (Ellie), he compares the death of Joel to his past onscreen deaths, including Prince Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones season 4.
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“I think this is the best one,” he says. “No, it’s in competition, I think, with Game of Thrones. It has to be. I love the golf club. I’m going to start golf.”
“You going to bridge the gap in this relationship and make it right?” Dever responds in jest.
In the video interview, Pascal says he knew Joel was going to die before showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann offered him in the part ahead of season 1. “It was part of the deal. “They’re like, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to die’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll take it!'” he jokes.
“I just think that the series is based on very specific source material,” he adds, “and so that was always a part of the presentation of the idea that we would go all in on season 1, shoot for 11-12 months in Alberta, and then it would take a totally different shape the second season. And this is why it was like that.”
Watch the full video interview with Pascal, Ramsey, and Dever above. Get more insights into that Last of Us season 2 moment in EW’s latest cover story.
