It wasn’t the last of Joel.
Pedro Pascal returns to “The Last of Us” in the promo for the sixth episode, airing this Sunday.
This comes after the second episode of Season 2 brutally murdered his character, Joel.
This aligns with what series co-creator Craig Mazin shared with The Post. Mazin mentioned that despite Joel’s death, Joel and Ellie “spend quite a bit of time together in this season…more than people might think.”
He’s not coming back as a zombie or a ghost – the episode will show flashbacks of his time with Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in between Seasons 1 and 2.
Originating from a well-known video game, “The Last of Us” unfolds in a dystopian future where society has collapsed, zombie-like creatures roam, and a rugged smuggler named Joel develops a father/daughter-like bond with the young girl Ellie.
In the second episode of Season 2, Joel was killed by the new Season 2 character, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).
He had previously killed Abby’s father during his efforts to protect Ellie. So, Abby killed Joel as revenge.
After Joel saved her life, she viciously beat him nearly to death with a golf club and then stabbed him in the neck while Ellie watched, crying.
Ironically, Abby’s act of killing Joel in retaliation for her father’s death compelled Ellie into a similar path of vengeance. Ellie has been tracking down Abby with the intent to kill her to avenge Joel.
There was a five-year time jump from Season 1 to Season 2, as Ellie was 14 in Season 1 and is now 19.
The preview of the sixth episode shows the time in between, when Joel and Ellie were still a family.
A scene in the trailer shows the duo walking in the woods holding guns, as he tells her, “Remember what I taught you.”
Mazin exclusively told The Post that Joel’s death was similar to when Ned Stark (Sean Bean) got killed on “Game of Thrones.”
“If you look at ‘Game of Thrones,’ like everybody, I was so shocked when Ned Stark got his head chopped off. I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
“That incident never goes away,” he added.
Joel’s death was similar to Ned’s because Ned’s “character is there, over everything from that first season [of ‘Game of Thrones’], all the way to the final moments of the last one – because that informs everything. It changes everyone, and people keep coming back to that story over and over.”
“The Last of Us” airs Sundays (9 p.m.) on HBO and Max.
