The Last of Us: How Joel’s Death Differs From the Video Game

The Last of Us video game players know that Tommy Miller was supposed to be present for (spoiler alert) his brother Joel Miller’s death scene — but this was not reflected in the HBO series.

Gabriel Luna’s Tommy was protecting the Jackson, Wyoming, compound from a hoard of Infected while Pedro Pascal’s Joel was meeting an untimely death at the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).

“The truth is, back when we were doing the first season, I talked to [showrunner] Craig [Mazin] and [game creator] Neil [Druckmann] about it,” Luna, 42, told Esquire in an interview published on Sunday, April 20.

The actor had a lot of thoughts about Tommy’s involvement in Joel’s death.

“Would Tommy be that careless to reveal Joel’s identity? As a seasoned veteran, somebody who had to protect this city and keep it safe, would he be so trusting of strangers?” Luna wondered. “And then to walk into this ambush and be knocked out for that moment, unable to use any of his strength and skills to protect his brother, it always pinged in my mind — I wouldn’t say false, but I don’t know if Tommy would have been that trusting to walk into that trap.”

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He added, “Craig turned to me and he’s like, ‘Don’t worry, I have an idea.’ Before the strike, he was starting to break the stories. He sent me this Bible-long text about where Tommy is and what he’s doing instead. And it floored me.”

In The Last of Us Part II — the video game released in 2020 — Tommy is on patrol with Joel when they get kidnapped by Abby and her crew. Tommy goes unconscious after getting hit in the head before Joel’s death.

Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us showed Joel on patrol with Ellie’s bestie Dina (Isabela Merced) when they save Abby from a hoard of Infected. Upon hearing Joel’s name, Abby formulates a plan to bring him to the abandoned lodge where she’s staying with her crew. They sedate Dina before killing Joel.

“The idea there would be this role reversal where it would be Dina rather than Tommy, that works for her to be there,” Luna said. “Somebody who still loves Joel and sees him as family and would be devastated when this all goes down.”

The “massive” group of Infected Tommy fights in Jackson was not in The Last of Us game, so they had the opportunity to make it memorable — especially with director Mark Mylod on board.

“We’re in the lineage of amazing, blockbuster-movie-quality battle scenes,” Luna continued. “We were already referencing ‘Battle of the Bastards’ from Game of Thrones as inspiration for what we were doing.”

New episodes of The Last of Us premiere on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.