As Joel returns to ‘The Last of Us,' cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt explains what went into killing him off
During the first season of The Last of Us in 2023, cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt was merely one of the show's fans. 'I definitely felt really invested in the characters, and I was very curious about where the story could go next,' she tells Gold Derby.
It didn't take long for Goldschmidt to find out after she was approached to join the series for Season 2 alongside returning cinematographer Ksenia Sereda. 'I'm not a game player, so I hadn't played The Last of Us Part II. However, I watched as much as I could on YouTube, and I read what everybody thought of it,' she says. 'For the for the game to take its two main characters, and essentially kill one of them in the early stages of the game, thus making it the story be about these sort of two sworn enemies — and that, as you play the game, and you play each of them, it gets confusing for the game player to see who's in the right and who's in the wrong — that really fascinated me.'
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Based on the video-game franchise, The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as, respectively, Joel and Ellie, two broken-hearted loners who form a surrogate father-daughter bond against the backdrop of a fungal apocalypse that has left the human race in tatters. In Season 1, Joel and Ellie (who is immune) travel across the country to find a group of rebel fighters known as the Fireflies, who may have figured out how to stop the Cordyceps outbreak that has turned those infected with the fungus into mutated creatures. However, once it becomes apparent that the cure will result in Ellie's death, Joel kills several Fireflies, including the doctor who would perform surgery on Ellie. He then lies to Ellie about what he's done.
Season 2 picks up five years later, with the doctor's daughter, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), out for revenge. She gets it in the season's second episode, 'Through the Valley,' where Abby and her cohort capture Joel by happenstance during a massive snowstorm, and she beats him to death in front of Ellie. The shocking twist left viewers stunned, and its reverberations have been felt for the remainder of the season, as Ellie and her girlfriend Dina (Isabela Merced) traveled to Seattle to find Abby to get their revenge.
Goldschmidt shot multiple episodes in Season 2, including Joel's death in 'Through the Valley.' An Emmy nominee previously for HBO's House of the Dragon, the acclaimed cinematographer was given little time before jumping into the deep end of the series. 'One thing that I like to tell people about Joe's death scene is that that was in our first week of shooting,' she tells Gold Derby.
Directed by Emmy winner Mark Mylod (Succession), 'Through the Valley' was immediately flagged by critics as one of the most ambitious television episodes on HBO since the heyday of Game of Thrones. In addition to Joel's death, the episode also features a massive attack on Joel and Ellie's home city of Jackson, Wyo., by a horde of infected. The scale of the episode has been compared to the Game of Thrones classic 'Battle of the Bastards,' which won multiple Emmys in 2016, including for its writing and directing.
'Not only did we have this episode with this crazy moment of Joel's death, but this crazy moment was right at the start of the shoot, right before we could really get into a good rhythm with the crew and the cast as well,' she says. 'So, that was very daunting. However, Mark is obviously an incredibly experienced director and really in-tune with the actors, and he prioritizes their performances over everything else. I wanted that as well.'
For Goldschmidt, one of the biggest challenges was immediately apparent. The ski chalet where Abby kills Joel was a real location in Vancouver.
'The location had two-story high windows that are all south facing, which means the sun is just constantly coming into that room from a different angle every second of the day,' she explains. 'But it's not supposed to be sunny because there's a massive snowstorm outside during the show events. We got maybe one day of clouds. So it wasn't the right weather at all. But I wanted to create this protected scenario for Mark and the actors so that we didn't have to shoot in any particular order for the daylight and could do turnarounds quickly. To do that, I basically treated this interior space like an exterior space because these massive windows made it so open to the elements.'
Goldschmidt says she convinced producers and co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann to place massive blackout curtains on construction cranes outside – a request typically made for day exteriors that she needed to apply to the interiors. They happily obliged.
'So then we could move much more quickly,' she adds. 'Because I turned it into a studio.'
Joel's brutal murder plays out mainly in the same fashion as it does in the video game, with Ellie coming into the space just before Abby deals the show's complicated hero a death blow. Unlike the video game, however, which cuts to black as Ellie is knocked unconscious following Joel's death, the show allows the audience to experience the tragic aftermath. An injured Ellie crawls over to Joel's dead body and cuddles up next to him; the camera perspective shifts to a God's eye perspective from above to survey the trauma.
'We were in this real space that actually did have this incredible height to it,' Goldschmidt says. 'As we were going through the scenes and the shots and the way the coverage would work, I knew we weren't going to be taking in that space ever, and I knew we were just going to be with the characters and crawling on the floor and feeling what they were feeling. So Mark and I were sitting around wondering if we ever wanted to show off this space, and what would be the right emotional moment to do it.'
Goldschmidt suggested the shot above Joel and Ellie to give the audience a breather after the intensity of the scene.
'We realized not only did that feel emotionally right, but it also was a great segue into the montage that was basically going to close out the episode,' she says. 'So the montage was scripted, but it was just one of those things where we were inspired by the real location and looking to take advantage of that. I'm really proud and happy of that shot, and happy to see all of our intentions with that shot work.'
While Joel is dead on the show, viewers will see him again on Sunday's episode, a flashback to the five years between the end of Season 1 and the start of Season 2. Goldschmidt, who also shot episodes four and the upcoming Season 2 finale, will likely be watching.
'Visually speaking, it's such a rich, wonderful post-apocalyptic world,' she says of the show. 'So I was really excited about that and really excited to work with the team.'
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