‘The Last of Us’ Episode 6: Pedro Pascal’s Powerhouse Performance

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of The Last of Us, “Kin.”

Late in “Kin,” Joel passes the time on a long ride by explaining the rules of football to Ellie. “So, basically, just moving in one direction?” she asks. “Basically,” he acknowledges. “But violent.” This could perhaps be viewed as a metaphor for The Last of Us, which at times is extremely straightforward, but exciting and crafted at a high level. The series is, of course, much more complicated and versatile than that, as demonstrated by the stark contrast between last week’s episode and this one. Where “Endure and Survive” was full of mayhem, spectacle, and despair, “Kin” is quiet and contemplative, heavy on character and so light on action until the end that we don’t even see any infected. It’s remarkable how easily this show can jump from Bill and Frank’s love story to the dark Kansas City two-parter to this calm, very Station Eleven-esque look at Joel and Ellie’s relationship, and at the possibilities of finding peace even in a post-apocalyptic world.

We pick up three months after the deaths of Kathleen, Sam, Henry, and the rest of the Kansas City group. It is the dead of winter, and our heroes have stumbled across an older Native couple — played by the great character actor Graham Greene and Northern Exposure alum Elaine Miles — who have managed to carve out a life for themselves in a cabin in the middle of nowhere that few people or infected ever come across.

This is a teaser for what’s to come when Joel and Ellie finally cross paths with Joel’s brother Tommy, who has found a home, friends, and family in what was once the Wild West tourist trap in Jackson, Wyoming. The sibling reunion is the first of this episode’s many showcases for Pedro Pascal’s ability to convey so much with that superhumanly expressive face of his(*). Joel has allowed himself very little happiness in the 20 years since his daughter died, but my goodness is he happy and relieved to find Tommy.

(*) And also a reminder of how bizarre it is that his other big TV role at the moment goes out of its way to keep him from using his greatest strength as an actor. 

It turns out that Tommy is not only safe, but thriving, as Jackson has been turned into a secure and peaceful community with power and other amenities of the before times(*). Tommy has a partner, Maria (played by Rutina Wesley from Queen Sugar and True Blood), and they are expecting a baby. This happy news unfortunately brings Joel’s never-ending grief back up to the surface, because talk of children inevitably pulls him right back to the moment when he watched Sarah’s death. But everyone grieves in their own way, and we learn in time that Maria has been able to get on with living even though her three-year-old son Kevin died two days after Sarah.

(*) At one point, Ellie finds all of the local kids rapt as they watch Richard Dreyfuss’ Oscar-winning performance in The Goodbye Girl. It’s a movie not particularly aimed at a young audience, even if one of its three main characters is a 10-year-old girl. But as we’ve seen so many times with Ellie, any glimpse of the world that used to be is fascinating for the children who have grown up since 2003. (It’s also not hard to imagine that the townsfolk have largely exhausted their supply of all-ages DVDs by this point, and are playing whatever’s left over.)  

Ellie’s conversation with Maria is the first she’s heard of Joel having (and then losing) a daughter. It comes right as Joel is beginning to grapple with two conflicting feelings: that he has begun to feel protective of Ellie in the way he once felt about his own daughter, and that he fears that age, injury, and PTSD have weakened him too much to be her proper guardian.

Ordinarily in this kind of story, where the protagonists find a post-apocalyptic paradise, the whole place inevitably gets destroyed. But Jackson is doing as fine at the end of “Kin” as it was when Joel and Ellie first arrived. Instead, the threat is to the relationship of the two leads, as his fear of opening up to her instead makes her think she’s being abandoned by him. Even after he confesses the truth, she’s not having it, pointing out that he’s the only important person in her life who’s never died or left her — until now, it seems.

Pascal is a marvel throughout the whole episode. For most of the Kansas City detour, Joel was presented as an unflappable killer and protector, but here Pascal lets his guard down to show how much this has worn on the character, and how terrified Joel is of failing his young charge. And when she finally convinces him to continue on with her and let Tommy stay with Maria, his fears are somewhat proven right. The Fireflies have abandoned the university where Joel was meant to bring Ellie, and instead they run across a group of armed men. In the melee, Joel briefly appears to be the superman he wants to be for Ellie, snapping the neck of one of his attackers. But in the process, his stomach gets impaled by the shard of a baseball bat, and the episode ends with a panicked Ellie tending to his wound and pleading for him to get up.

Earlier, when they leave Jackson, something has fundamentally changed in their relationship. They are friendlier, and he is more willing to act and speak in a paternal manner to her. He has spent the past 20 years rooted to the spot where he watched his daughter bleed out, and he has finally allowed himself to move on and care for another teenage girl. But the end of the episode finds his position reversed. Now he’s the one on the ground with a terrible wound to the midsection, and his surrogate daughter is the one hoping against hope that he can survive.

It’s a harrowing end to what had previously been a laid-back hour that had a warmth belying the snow all around our heroes. That The Last of Us can do both within the same episode, and have it feel all of a piece, is among its most impressive traits.

From Rolling Stone US.