The Last of Us Season 2 Trailer Points to New Joel Scenes Not From the Game

This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 1 and plot details from the early portions of The Last of Us Part II game (but no major spoilers).

Just as The Last of Us Part II begins with Joel confessing his deeds in Salt Lake City to his brother, Tommy, the latest trailer for HBO’s adaptation of the game begins with Joel (Pedro Pascal) similarly prepared to talk about what he did, only this time it’s with Catherine O’Hara’s yet-to-be-named character. Setting her timer and sitting in an armchair across from Joel, O’Hara seems to be playing a therapist, indicating that the show has potentially added more moments with Joel that we don’t get to see in the game, as the story is primarily told from Ellie and Abby’s perspective.

Unless the show has reworked a previously existing character into Jackson’s resident therapist, O’Hara’s character is an entirely new addition created for the show – just as Melanie Lynskey’s Kathleen was in season 1 – and a welcome one, at that. There’s no doubt that living in a post-apocalyptic world is rife with trauma that people need to unpack, even living in a place as relatively utopian as Jackson. Joel especially has an immense amount of trauma to deal with, the heaviest of which being the death of his daughter, Sarah, at the start of the Cordyceps outbreak. This loss has heavily influenced Joel’s life for the last decade and is at the core of his decision to save Ellie’s life despite the cost of losing a potential cure for Cordyceps and having to murder a bunch of people.

In the game, the scene where he confesses to Tommy serves not only as a flashback to remind the player how the previous game ended, but also reminds us of the carnage that Joel left behind in his quest to be Ellie’s savior. His intentions may have been good, but the game is very careful about not portraying Joel as some sort of vigilante or hero in this instance.

Adding scenes with this therapist to the show gives us even more space to empathize with Joel as well as understand that he’s not infallible or beyond facing consequences, internally or externally, for what he did. No matter where you stand on his choices in Salt Lake City, empathy is arguably the biggest lesson of The Last of Us Part II, and it’s clear that the show has taken this to heart.

It’s hard to talk about why the addition of these scenes and giving Joel the opportunity to open up to a therapist is important to the story without divulging spoilers for The Last of Us Part II, but if you know, you know. Joel’s story in the game is ultimately determined by his actions from the previous game, so getting to see more of how he shoulders the aftermath of that and how it affects his relationship with Ellie is important to see.

How the show will depict Joel’s story in full has yet to be determined, but seeing more of Pedro Pascal in this role is always a good thing. This trailer makes it pretty clear that season 2 of The Last of Us is not only keeping, but seems to be expanding on, the emotional core of the game, and it will be interesting to see how the show decides to tell this story of love, loss, and revenge.

The Last of Us season 2 is set to premiere in 2025 on HBO.

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