The new trailer for HBO’s The Last of Us series adaptation showed everyone what I always knew to be true: Pedro Pascal IS Joel Miller. From the start, there have been angry and gross people on Twitter (mainly male fans of the original game) who hated the idea of Pascal as Joel. Why? Because he’s not who they dreamt up for the role and also probably because Pascal is Chilean. They won’t say it out loud, but it is obvious, when they have no real reason behind their upset, that it is because they’ve decided to “other” Pascal.
The hatred has been constant. If anything new came out, they’d yell about the casting and say he wasn’t their Joel Miller, but then the new trailer came out, and I am not kidding when I tell you that the minute it started, with Pascal’s back in focus, I thought, “Oh my god, that’s Joel,” and knew there was no turning back.
I never had any doubt in my mind about him in the role. I love his work and have seen the majority of it and know just how talented Pedro Pascal is. He is a master of playing tortured characters, and someone like Joel Miller has a lot of layers to him that Pascal has shown time and time again in his work. So it was a perfect role for him to take on, opposite Bella Ramsey as Ellie Williams.
But there is just something about this trailer that won’t leave me alone. I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about how perfect Pascal is in this role, and it is all thanks to how he physically embodies Joel in the trailer.
What are the haters going to complain about now?
It truly is making me feel so smug because I knew he was going to be good, but this trailer showed the world how he embodied Joel, and now it’s hilarious to watch those who were angry for whatever warped reason try to find new reasons to be mad. I know you can’t judge an entire performance on a trailer, but if he was instantly the Joel from the game within this trailer (which is less than two minutes), then I can only imagine how good he’s going to be in the show overall.
Like I said, the minute I saw that back and the way he was moving, I gasped because it felt like I was watching the Joel from the game moving through life. Seeing him look to Ellie and take her in? Express his fear with Sarah? Try to figure out what’s going on? All of that came across so beautifully in this look at the series and is a perfect companion to the game.
I know those who hated the casting of Pascal will never admit to him being perfect in the role because that would mean that they’d have to admit to themselves that they were wrong in the first place. But god, this trailer should have actual fans of the game excited because at the end of the day, that is Joel Miller and Pedro Pascal is going to be so good (as is Bella Ramsey), and I can’t wait.
(featured image: HBO)
