Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts on the Page (Drama) features standout drama series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention.
In adapting The Last of Us Part II game for HBO with fellow co-creator Neil Druckmann, Craig Mazin knew he had to break one of the cardinal rules of television: Never kill your lead (especially not when they are a complex and utterly compelling character played by Pedro Pascal).
The Last of Us Season 2, which takes place about five years after the events of Season 1, puts a target on Joel’s (Pascal) back from the very beginning. The premiere opens by introducing audiences to Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), who is hellbent on seeking revenge against Joel for his murder spree at that Salt Lake City hospital in the Season 1 finale. But, even as viewers watch Abby and her crew plot, it’s difficult to think that they might be successful. Surely, there’s a way out. Surely, Joel will stay alive.
Episode 2, titled “Through The Valley,” unfolds at a rapid pace as a snow storm falls over Jackson City, leaving everyone separated and vulnerable. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Jesse (Young Mazino) are out on patrol, none the wiser to the fact that Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced) are trying to escape both the deadly cold and a horde of Infected. By the time that Ellie and Jesse get the radio call that Joel and Dina are missing, it’s already too late. They’ve encountered Abby. She’s brought them back to her crew’s lodge under the guise of seeking shelter. She is going to take a shotgun to Joel’s knees, and she is going to brutally torture him before delivering a killing blow.
Joel’s death is just about as unthinkable for the audience as it is for Ellie, making it quite easy to get on board, at least at first, with her desire for vengeance that fuels the remainder of the season.
The episode, written by Mazin and directed by Succession‘s Mark Mylod, stays true to its source material with Joel’s shocking death while adding another layer of heartbreak that is not in the game. As Joel is being tortured, the horde of Infected breaches the walls of Jackson, endangering Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and his family and leaving the town in shambles.
Here is the script for “Through The Valley” with an introduction from Mazin where he explains how he coped with the herculean tasks of both killing Joel and leveling Jackson, which he describes as akin to taking “a wrecking ball” to the beloved world that he and co-creator Neil Druckmann had built in Season 1.
Craig Mazin
Michael Buckner for Deadline
Everyone talks about screenwriting as an act of world building.
That’s probably for the best. Because as it turns out, it’s a much harder task to burn everything down. This is the script— “Through The Valley”— that swung through The Last of Us like a wrecking ball, breaking just about every television rule we have.
If you’re going to kill someone, don’t kill the lead. Don’t kill the big star. Don’t change protagonists. Don’t permanently cut storylines off. And for the love of God, do not do any of that in episode … two?
Except real life doesn’t care about the normal pattern of televised dramas, nor does death obey a calendar. And that shattering feeling … the feeling of being robbed, of something essential ripped from your heart … it always comes out of rhythm, a day too soon, a year too soon, a lifetime too soon …
There are moments we’ll experience that are a million times more brutal than watching a story on television, and maybe some have already come for you. They will come again. And when they do, they will knock you down from out of nowhere.Like a shotgun to the knees.
They’ve come for me too. And that’s what spun around in my head as I took everything we had built — buildings, locations, characters, relationships, an entire show — and knocked it down from out of nowhere. If there’s a higher calling to any of this, it’s that we can provide people a chance to experience a dramatic loss before the real ones arrive.
And on the night this episode first aired in April, millions of people experienced a dramatic loss together.
I don’t know if these stories prepare us. I don’t know if they protect us. All I know is that we seem to need a chance to lose ourselves in the darkness with an absolute guarantee that the episode will end … and still the show goes on.A comforting thought.
Thank you for watching our show and reading this script. And also … I’m sorry.
Craig Mazin
The Last Of Us‘ first season garnered 24 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series and Writing for a Drama Series for Mazin’s Episode 3 script, “Long, Long Time.” The show also landed WGA Award nominations for Drama Series and New Series, winning the latter.
Read the “Through the Valley” script here:
