She’s just a video game character, folks.
That seems to be the message Pedro Pascal is sending The Last of Us fans, with a new Instagram post that doubles as a plea not to harass Kaitlyn Dever, because of who she plays on the show.
Shortly after Sunday night’s shocking episode aired, Pascal posted a photo of himself with Dever, captioned “Blizzard Buddies.”
It’s a sweet photo of the co-stars—but also a shrewd way to protect Dever from furious fans who might be tempted to troll or even threaten her, which is what happened to the actress who voiced Dever’s role in the Last of Us video games.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
In Sunday’s’s episode of The Last of Us, Joel (Pascal) dies, meeting his end at the hands of Abby (Dever), the daughter of one of the Firefly doctors who Joel executed to save Ellie (Bella Ramsay) in the finale of the first season. Abby wants revenge, and she gets it by luring Joel into a trap, where she shoots him in the leg and then beats him to death with a golf club.
It’s a brutal and horrifying scene to watch, leaving viewers shocked and bereft. However, fans of the game were decidedly less surprised that many audience members, as they’ve known Joel was going to die since the The Last of Us Part II game came out in 2020.
At the time, Joel’s death sparked a huge wave of controversy, enraging game players who felt betrayed by “Naughty Dog,” the game’s developer, for killing off the character they spent hours embodying during the first part of the game. They then turned their ire towards actress Laura Bailey, who voiced Abby.
In the documentary Grounded II: The Making of The Last of Us Part II, Bailey tearfully recounted her experience dealing with harassment and death threats from gamers.
Laura Bailey talks about how people threaten her new born son when The Last of us part 2 launched. Man this breaks my heart 😞 pic.twitter.com/R5zfShzlhF
— Pyo 5️⃣ (@mrpyo1) February 2, 2024
“The really hardcore death threats got passed along [to the proper channels],” Bailey explained. “They were threatening my son who was born during all of it… it was rough, really rough. It taught me to keep a distance.”
Given the harassment campaign gamers waged against Bailey, it seems everyone involved in the show want to prevent the same thing from happening to Dever.
In his Instagram post, Pascal tagged Dever and wrote, “Thank you, scene partner. You little miracle.”
In the comment section of the photo, people guessed that Pascal was trying to dissuade viewers from bullying Dever because of his character’s death.
“I know you posted this so there won’t be any hate for Kaitlin after episode 2 because you’re such a sweetheart! And don’t worry, we love her,” one fan commented.
And in case the message wasn’t clear enough, people also began to remind others in the comment section to not bully Dever like the gamers did to Bailey.
“I just hope nobody bullies Kaitlyn, she’s an actress, not the character. Laura Bailey went through hell in 2020. Kaitlyn is an incredible actress, and she plays Abby beautifully.”
However, it seems like some people weren’t quite ready to for the message to sink in, commenting things like: “HOW DARE YOU POST THIS AFTER THE S*** WE WENT THRU” and “HIS BODY AINT EVEN COLD YET.”
It may be infuriating that Abby killed Joel in the way she did, but Pascal’s post is a good reminder that, in the end, she is still a fictional character.
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