Maybe, if you’ve been following the career of Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal, you’ve noticed something. Some similarity in two of his highest-profile roles. His dad-like relationships in both The Mandalorian (in which he looks after young master Grogu) and the upcoming HBO series The Last of Us (in which he looks after young survivor Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey).
Pascal gets it. In fact, he gets that he’s part of a long line of similar fictional relationship. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he says, “You start to recognize a thread between your characters that you didn’t necessarily look for, but got cast in. … I’ll play as many dads as I can get.”
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And those dad characters, culturally speaking, go back a lot further than The Mandalorian‘s 2019 debut. Pascal observes:
“As I [got familiar with the game], I noticed there are so many things I’ve seen that visually or thematically reference The Last of Us. Like [the 2017 X-Men movie] Logan. And yes, the trope has been used in so many different ways — you can go back to [the manga series] Lone Wolf and Cub, you can go to Paper Moon. But as far as Mandalorian and The Last of Us existing in close proximity, for me, it’s the best double-dipping I could possibly imagine.”
The Hollywood Reporter piece digs into how The Last of Us came about, from the partnership of game creator Neil Druckmann and showrunner Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) to the challenges of casting Ellie to the very distant origins of the game (George Romero makes a cameo in its backstory!) to the pressing question of whether Pascal’s beard is up to snuff.
Reassuringly, perhaps—given HBO’s track record with adaptations that run beyond their source material—the series creators say “We have no plans to tell any stories beyond adapting the games.” The first season will cover the first game—what comes next is not yet determined, though Mazin and Druckmann seem to suggest that the second game may also make it to the screen.
The Last of Us premieres on January 15th on HBO.
