Getting the brutal inciting incident right will be key to making The Last of Us Part II’s challenging story work in The Last of Us season 2, and a lot of details from the scene in the game are crucial to making the audience feel how they’re supposed to feel. Right at the beginning of The Last of Us Part II, Joel is beaten to death by the daughter of the Firefly surgeon he killed in the first game. Ellie walks in a few minutes too late to save him and she’s irreparably traumatized by what she’s forced to witness.

The rest of the story is a grisly quest for revenge, so it’s important to set the stage right with Joel’s death scene. The Last of Us season 2 will begin to tackle the gargantuan narrative of Part II, and that’ll start with the gruesome inciting incident that sets off the Seattle saga. There are many key details in the composition of this scene from the game that the TV show should maintain in its live-action adaptation.

10Joel’s Acceptance Of His Grim Fate

When Abby blasts Joel in the leg with a shotgun and has her friends pin him against the wall, he doesn’t beg for his life; he accepts his grim fate. Joel knew that ever since the Firefly massacre, he’s been living on borrowed time. He knew that it was only a matter of time before some scorned ex-Fireflies – or one of his many other enemies – came to kill him. And when those ex-Fireflies finally have him pinned down, he’s not scared; he’s ready.

He takes all the triumph out of Abby’s revenge. When he realizes what’s going on, he tells her, “Why don’t you say whatever speech you got rehearsed, and get this over with.” This is perfectly in line with Joel’s character and gives him a tiny semblance of agency in his horrific death scene.

9The Long-Take Filming Style

From the moment Abby’s friends invite Joel and Tommy into their mansion to the moment Abby starts beating Joel to death, there isn’t a single cut. The whole scene is shot in one continuous take, with the camera swooping around the room and capturing every horrifying thing that happens. It catches the looks on Abby’s friends’ faces when Joel and Tommy introduce themselves, it catches Joel’s concern as he notices these looks, and it catches Mel’s stunned reaction when Abby tells her to tourniquet Joel’s leg so she can drag out his death.

When The Last of Us season 2 recreates this scene, it should repeat the game’s ingenious long-take filming style. The unbroken tracking shot creates an unnerving sense of immersion that makes the scene feel more real. It puts the audience right in that basement with them.

8The “Y’all Act Like You’ve Heard Of Us…” Reveal

After Joel and Tommy bring Abby to the mansion with a horde on their tail, Abby’s friends assume that they’re a pair of strangers she encountered who saved her from the horde. That is what happened, at least initially, but the dynamic changed significantly when Joel and Tommy revealed their names. As they come into the mansion and Tommy introduces himself and Joel, the Salt Lake crew’s friendliness subtly turns into hostility.

Joel notices this change and cautiously says, “Y’all act like you’ve heard of us or something,” at which point Abby quips, “That’s ‘cause they have,” before shooting him with a shotgun. This is an appropriately shocking reveal of Abby and her friends’ real reason for coming to Jackson. It transforms this sigh-of-relief moment into a tense, violent confrontation at the drop of a dime.

7Abby’s Vengeful Rage (Followed By Confusion & Emptiness After The Fact)

When Abby first confronts Joel, she’s absolutely furious and determined to make his death as torturous as she can. She feels wholeheartedly that if she can torture Joel to death, it’ll make her feel better about the similarly brutal (but much quicker) way that Joel killed her father. And while she’s beating him with the golf club, she still believes that.

But once the deed is done and Joel is finally dead, Abby realizes that it doesn’t make her feel any better (the same realization that Ellie will face before the game is over). She feels confused that the revenge she’s sought for four years didn’t solve anything. She feels empty, because not only is her dad still dead; now, she’s become every bit the cold-blooded murderer that Joel is. Kaitlyn Dever needs to really capture Abby’s emotional journey when she plays this scene in The Last of Us season 2.

6The Uncompromising Brutality Of The Violence

At the beginning of the story, the purpose of this scene is to make the audience feel just as angry and devastated and grief-stricken as Ellie. The audience is supposed to want revenge against Abby just as strongly as Ellie does. In the game, a big part of creating that feeling is the uncompromising brutality of the violence. Abby doesn’t just kill Joel; she wants to make his death as long and painful as possible.

If there’s one thing HBO excels at, it’s shocking violence. Just look at the “Red Wedding” from Game of Thrones or any of Tony’s murders in The Sopranos. HBO has delivered some of the most violent scenes in TV history. The HBO team will surely nail the brutality of Joel’s death scene; they might even make it more horrifying in the adaptation.

5The Salt Lake Crew’s Mixed Feelings About The Way Abby Does It

The rest of Abby’s group, dubbed the Salt Lake crew (who have all been cast for The Last of Us season 2), all want Joel dead just as much as she does. But as the scene goes on, they’re shown to have mixed feelings about the way Abby chooses to kill him. As a battle-hardened soldier, Manny is delighted that Joel meets such a gruesome end. But as a medic with a sense of empathy, Mel is deeply disturbed by Abby’s request to tourniquet Joel’s leg so she can drag out his demise for as long as possible.

Jordan wants to kill Ellie and Tommy to tie up loose ends, but Owen argues that if they don’t let them live, then they’ll be just as bad as Joel. In Abby’s section of the game, it becomes clear that Joel’s murder has broken up the group, because they all feel differently about how it went down. That needs to be established in the death scene itself.

4Ellie’s Desperate Pleas For Joel To Get Up

When Ellie comes into the room and sees Joel being beaten to death, there are a few moments of intensity as she tries to fight back and gets held down. She angrily tells Abby that she’s going to die and demands to be let go. But after she’s calmed down and the reality of the situation has set in, a heartbroken Ellie just pleads with Joel to get up. He’s been beaten so viciously that it’s not even clear if he can hear her, but she keeps telling him to get up.

This moment of silence in between golf club beatings, with Ellie desperately telling Joel to get up, is arguably the most tearjerking moment in the entire scene. All the other intensity fades away for a few seconds as the scene focuses solely on Joel and Ellie. Bella Ramsey needs to recapture the desperation in Ashley Johnson’s voice.

3The Sparing Imagery Of Joel’s Beaten Body

The death scene in The Last of Us Part II includes a few horrific images of Joel lying on the ground, beaten and blood-soaked, that are tough to unsee. It’s important to show Joel’s beaten body in the final moments of his life, as this is the image that will haunt Ellie for the rest of the story. Even after she tries to give up on her quest for vengeance and live a normal life, it’s not long before that disturbing image reappears in her head.

But crucially, the game uses this image sparingly. The cuts to Joel’s bloated, beaten cadaver are brief; they just give the audience a sense of the horror that Ellie is witnessing without getting too gratuitous. The TV show needs to show a similar restraint in its depiction of Joel’s death.

2The Sound Design Right After The Final Death Blow

When Owen tells Abby to finish killing Joel so they can get out of there before Jackson’s troops catch them, Ellie begs her to stop. But Abby ignores her, swings the golf club one last time, and Joel is finally put out of his misery. As Ellie cries out, “NOOO!!!,” the sound design fades to a high-pitched ringing sound. The rest of the Salt Lake crew’s dialogue – which will be revealed later when the scene is shown from Abby’s perspective – is lost in this ringing.

This sound design leaves Ellie alone with her grief and devastation. She’s so heartbroken by losing Joel that she can’t concentrate on anything that happens next. This moment is so powerful that it needs to be included in The Last of Us season 2’s live-action recreation of Joel’s death scene.

1The Unceremonious Death

Above all, the point of this scene is that Joel’s death isn’t ceremonious. He doesn’t go out in a blaze of glory. He doesn’t sacrifice himself to save Ellie. He just helps out the wrong stranger, wanders into the wrong party, and gets brutally murdered. In the game, that unceremonious tone is maintained from the moment Abby shoots Joel in the leg to the moment she delivers the final death blow with the golf club.

Pedro Pascal’s Joel from the TV show has been characterized as much softer and more sensitive than Troy Baker’s hard-edged Joel from the video games. This sensitivity might make Joel’s death in The Last of Us season 2 even more heartbreaking than it was in the game. But it shouldn’t be made any more glorious or heroic, because that would miss the point.