[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 1.]
The Last of Us is back and setting up plenty of mysteries to uncover as Season 2 introduced the character Gail (Catherine O’Hara), Jackson’s resident therapist.
The role created for the series brings some fresh life into the storylines introduced in the game The Last of Us Part II upon which the show is based, but as she tries helping Joel (Pedro Pascal) cope with Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) coldness towards him, she’s combating her own anger towards the figure fans have come to know and love.
As Gail reveals in the Season 2 premiere, Joel shot and killed her husband, Eugene (who is played in the show by Joe Pantoliano). While viewers haven’t met the character onscreen this season, his death looms large over Joel and Gail’s charged session. But who was Eugene?
We know that Gail is celebrating her first birthday without him for the first time in 41 years, meaning they were together for quite a while. And his death couldn’t have been so unforgivable that Gail is able to withstand sharing the same space as Joel, but it had to have been bad enough to make her lash out.
-“The idea of Gail as this therapist came before we tied her back to Eugene,” Neil Druckmann revealed in the premiere episode’s aftershow featurette. “Eugene is this character that we feel his presence, but he’s already dead by the time we hear about him in the video game. So it felt like that was a character ripe to exploit in some way on this show.”
In the game, Eugene is a patrolman who formerly worked with the Fireflies and died of old age. While it’s clear that he didn’t die of old age with Joel killing him, it remains to be seen whether or not the other information about Eugene from the game will be true onscreen.
As mentioned above, it’s clearly a sore subject with Gail, and the birthday mention reveals that Eugene’s death only occurred within the span of the past year, leaving emotions raw. “She’s lost her patience with him, and I think the alcohol’s given her a little more nerve,” O’Hara said of Gail’s demeanor toward Joel in their premiere episode session. “She’s mad and she’s been holding it in, I guess, in some other sessions, but what’s the point? Let it out.”
Only time will tell what happened to Eugene, but we have a sneaking suspicion we’ll learn more as Season 2 unfolds. What do you think happened to Gail’s husband that caused Joel to shoot him? Sound off in the comments section below, and stay tuned to find out.
The Last of UsSeason 2, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and Max
