The Last of Us Co-Showrunner Explains Why He Wanted Joel to Go to Therapy

The Last of Us season two premiere had story elements fans expected—tension, trauma, a time jump, infected-adjacent horrors, etc.—but it also featured the surprising sight of Joel (Pedro Pascal) getting some much-needed counseling from Gail, a therapist played by Catherine O’Hara.

According to a new interview in Variety, co-showrunner Craig Mazin originally wanted to explore that idea in season one of the hit HBO series, but ultimately there wasn’t enough room to fit it in. When season two was being mapped out, he decided to bring it back.

“In all closed economies, certain things would be valued more than others,” Mazin explained. “Let’s say you were good at fixing shoes—valuable. Let’s say you taught physics—probably not valuable anymore. What if you were a therapist? Extraordinarily valuable. Every single person has gone through a horror. There is no one who can say, ‘I’ve actually had a great time.’ I think that therapy is a fantastic mirror to say, not just, ‘Oh, what are you really thinking?’—I think therapy is best when you find out what people are refusing to talk about.”

That last bit propels Joel and Gail’s interactions; she’s mourning a great loss that she blames Joel for, even though she knows he had no choice in his actions. She brings it up as a way to draw him out—to get him to talk about the bloody choice he made to save Ellie (Bella Ramsey) at the end of season one. Their back-and-forth conversation is styled as “a shootout” of words, according to Mazin.

“I’ve sat in enough therapy sessions to know how things can turn on a dime, from laughing to crying to anger, because things are being exposed. I loved writing it. I loved shooting it. I loved editing it,” Mazin said. “It’s one of my favorite scenes so far among both seasons, in no small part, because I got to watch these two legends at the top of their game talk.”

New episodes of The Last of Us arrive Sundays on HBO and Max.

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