The following story contains major spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 2, ‘Through the Valley’.

Well. If anyone was thinking The Last of Us was off to a slow start for its second season, uh, things certainly changed with episode 2, titled ‘Through the Valley’. The show is diving deep into the emotions at the core of the Jackson, Wyoming community, and the divide between Joel and Ellie has never been greater than it was at the start of the season. Emotions are high, danger is high, and nothing is really as easy as some seem to think.

And then things hit the fan. I mean really, really, hit the fan. The Cordyceps zombies arrived in full force, bringing a full-on World War Z style battle along with them (and a cool battle with between Tommy (Gabriel Luna), a bloater, and a flamethrower). Meanwhile, even more substantially, Abby and her group arrived just outside of Jackson – and that’s bad news for our heroes. Really bad news. If you didn’t sense that things were about to get bad, uh, what show are you watching? Things were about to get bad, and they certainly did.

Ironically, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) who had separated from her group into the cold, was about the get killed by the infected who had swarmed a metal fence… only to be saved by Joel (Pedro Pascal) and brought in by him and Dina (Isabela Merced). Despite Joel’s kindness, Abby’s thirst for vengeance won out; she led him to the ski lodge where her group was staying, and things only got worse from there.

By the time they all got back, Abby quickly revealed herself (after having Dina put to sleep via tranquilizers). She tells Joel that she’s the daughter of the Firefly doctor he killed (in the season 1 finale), and starts slowly but surely beating the life out of him, starting with a gunshot to the leg, and then a number of golf club shots to the body, and a bunch of several regular beatings. Eventually, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) arrives, but there’s nothing that can be done once she’s tackled to the ground. Joel is already beaten to a pulp and has barely anything left; Owen, Abby’s friend, tells her to get it done with. And so she does.

In one of the most shocking things you’ll see on TV, Joel is killed by Abby with a broken golf club stabbed through the neck. Ellie embraces his corpse after, devastated. The final shot of the episode finds Ellie, Dina, and Jesse (Young Mazino) dragging Joel’s body back to Jackson. It’s shocking, stunning, and totally unbelievable.

That didn’t just happen, did it?

Did Joel Really Just Die on The Last of Us?

We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but yes – Joel really died in The Last of Us. It’s not a dream sequence, it’s not a twist, it’s not any kind of conspiracy: Joel is really dead. And he died brutally and violently.

‘This story is about how we all deal with those moments that do confront us in life,’ co-creator Craig Mazin said in an after-episode feature produced by HBO. ‘We all think “I could deal with this much stuff.” And then life says, uh – and then we find out what we can put up with.”

Wild. Yes, wild! But this is how The Last of Us evolves into its next form, which pits Ellie and Abby in a cycle of revenge and vengeance against one another. And if this hurts – and believe us, it does – well, that’s the whole point.

‘I have nothing but respect for the level of investment that people have in a video game, or a television show, or movie, or book,’ Pedro Pascal said in the same after-episode feature. ‘I experience it myself. I’ve flung books across the room because it’s impact is so profound on me, and experiencing the story. I think if it is incredibly painful for people, that’s obviously a brilliant achievement of the storytelling.’

Players of The Last of Us Part II felt the same shock back when that game was released in June of 2020, a tragedy and sense of dread that only added to the viewers who were playing it during what was the very height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

You’d think it might be a possibility for The Last of Us, since Pedro Pascal’s performance as Joel was so acclaimed, and since he’s become such a massive star, that things could change and the show could fiddle with some things here and other things there and find a way to keep him in the picture. But the story of The Last of Us Part II game simply doesn’t allow that. The story is all about revenge, vengeance, and the back and forth between Ellie and Abby, and there was no way that the show could change that and still keep Joel alive.

‘I think some viewers will start seeing some parallels between Abby and Ellie,’ co-creator Neil Druckmann said in the after-episode feature. ‘Abby has lost her dad, and now, inadvertently, Abby has created those same nightmares for another character. This event will change all the characters we know forever, from this point on. Now this person that’s capable of such violence – this impulsive character – what’s going to happen to them next?’

Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.