Why THE LAST OF US Packed All the Joel Flashbacks Into Episode 6: “It Was Nice That the Viewers Could Really Miss This Character”
The Last of Us Season 2 hasn’t followed the video game beat-for-beat, and one major shift fans noticed was how the show handled Joel’s flashbacks. Instead of spacing them throughout the season like the game did, the series drops them all into a single, emotionally loaded Episode 6.
In the original Last of Us Part II video game, flashbacks to Joel and Ellie’s relationship are sprinkled across the story, giving players a slow drip of emotional context while they navigate Ellie’s journey.
But in the show, we get all six flashbacks ranging from Joel’s childhood in 1983 to several key moments with Ellie at different ages in one concentrated episode. According to showrunner Neil Druckmann, who also directed the episode, this was the best move for the adaptation. He said:
“In the game, when you are experiencing one of those flashbacks that are spread out throughout much more, they’re not all consolidated like this – for example, the museum one, whereas in the show it’s a few minutes long, in the game, it could be close to an hour if you’re exploring every different nook and cranny.
“You are Ellie, and you’re there with Joel, and they have lots of conversations that you could get into that headspace. You get in the flow state, and you’re experiencing this thing with the two of them.”
But TV is a different medium, and Druckmann pointed out how spacing out those moments might’ve actually diluted their emotional punch. He explained:
“I think if we were to take, let’s say, the scenes that we wrote for this episode, and spread them out over the season, a few things would happen that I think would have a negative effect.
“There’s one, I don’t know if they would land, because they’re relatively short. And two, you might not be missing Joel enough if we started spreading them throughout the episodes.
“We felt like for the show, we would get a lot more impact if we brought them all together and you could see them side by side and feel the deterioration of that relationship.”
That absence is something viewers have been feeling since Joel’s brutal death at the hands of Abby back in Episode 2. The three episodes since have shifted fully to Ellie and Dina’s hunt for revenge across Seattle, leaving Joel’s presence hanging like a ghost.
Druckmann was also mindful of the show’s structure, and how easily it could fall into a repetitive rhythm.
“I also had concerns that the episodes would turn into a bit of a template. It’d be like, ‘Okay, what’s the Joel flashback this week?’ So, it was nice that the characters and the viewers could really miss this character, and then we get in the whole bunch for one last time.”
It’s a storytelling gamble that seems to have paid off. Episode 6 hits like a gut punch because Joel isn’t just revisited, he’s remembered, mourned, and recontextualized. And just like Ellie, we’re left missing him all over again.