Major spoilers ahead for The Last of Us season 2
Well, it finally happened. On Sunday, April 20, The Last of Us season 2 featured Joel Miller's tragic death at the hands of Abby Anderson. The scene plays out very similar to what happened in The Last of Us Part II. Gamers have known this moment was coming.
Even viewers unfamiliar with the games probably had an inkling because it would be hard to avoid this particular spoiler. But the actual episode is even more brutal than anyone anticipated. All of the actors involved, particularly Pedro Pascal as Joel, Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, and Bella Ramsey as Ellie—who is forced to watch her father figure die in front of her without being able to assist—delivered phenomenal performances in the scene.
Joel's death calls to mind another notable death that occurred in a popular horror TV show. I'm referring to The Walking Dead season 7 when Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) bludgeons Glenn (Steven Yeun) to death with his trademark weapon, a barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat he named Lucille.
The tragedy of Glenn Rhee
Like in Joel's case, Glenn's death has been heavily foreshadowed already because it happened just like it did in the show in the original comic book series. The series also killed off Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), but it's Glenn's death that broke viewers' hearts. He was one of the most beloved characters on the show since its inception, and seeing him die so viscerally was shocking.
That said, I think The Last of Us executed Joel's death in a far more meaningful way than The Walking Dead with Glenn. Joel's death has a real purpose and is the primary motivating factor for the second game's storyline. It's critical to the tale the writers are telling and could not have been avoided.
On the other hand, Glenn's death was almost entirely orchestrated for shock value. Though Glenn died in the comic books, there was no real reason it had to be him in the series, which had already heavily changed things from the source material. What made it even worse is that the death scene itself was queued up during the season 6 finale, forcing fans to wait months to find out who Negan had actually killed.
The Last of Us can learn from The Walking Dead's mistakes
That finale has long been considered one of the worst cliffhangers of all time, a lazy way for the writers to build suspense and drag out a death that had already been teased all season long. Perhaps the worst element of Glenn's death is that not too long after, The Walking Dead universe introduced a new series featuring Glenn's wife, Maggie (Lauren Cohan), teaming up with Glenn's murderer in The Walking Dead: Dead City.
Maggie even uses Lucille, the very weapon that killed her husband! Regardless of how much time has passed or the effort to create a meaningful connection between Maggie and Negan, it still feels like the series did a disservice to Glenn's character and Yeun's work on the show.
The Last of Us has a chance to make a much more meaningful story arc out of Joel's death, an element that critics heavily praised in the second game and will likely be beautifully orchestrated in the series as we see the fallout happen across the rest of seasons 2 and 3.