Conception and writing .|alt=Craig Mazin smiling "Through the Valley" was written by
The Last of Us series co-creator
Craig Mazin and directed by
Mark Mylod. Mazin had wanted Mylod to work on
the first season, but he was busy directing
Succession. After Mylod mentioned wanting to work with Mazin during a panel, Mazin sent him the episode's script, which Mylod read and found irresistible. He previously directed the
Game of Thrones episode "
The Broken Man", which marked the first acting role for
Bella Ramsey (who portrays Ellie).
Deadline published Mazin's script in June 2025, considering it among the year's best drama episodes. In
The Last of Us Part II (2020), the game on which the second season is based, Joel is paired with Tommy on patrol and Ellie is paired with Dina; Joel was paired with Dina in the episode to show their relationship (as they do not interact in the game) and to more closely connect her with Joel's death. Keeping Dina separate from Ellie also made their ongoing relationship more ambiguous. Mazin felt it gave another reason for Joel not to defend himself against Abby, as doing so risked Dina's life. Ramsey found it added an element of resentment for Ellie, as Joel's final day was spent with Dina instead of her. Pairing Ellie with Jesse also allowed focus on their relationship. Mazin learned of Joel's death during the
development of Part II, before he began writing the show's first season. He felt it was the correct narrative decision and did not wish to remove it from the series, reasoning that its brutality was an effective consequence of Joel's actions. The writers spent a long time deciding which episode should depict Joel's death, and after briefly considering delaying it to later in the season, they decided against it. Mazin felt that plotting it in the season's second episode was appropriate after witnessing Joel and Ellie's strained relationship in
the first.
Neil Druckmann, the series co-creator who wrote and co-directed the games, thought it should occur early in the season, to parallel when its story begins in earnest; he believed plotting it later would feel like they "were kind of dragging [their] feet". Mazin also considered the real implications of leaving Joel's death until later in the season, understanding that viewers who had played the game would constantly be aware that it had not yet occurred, and he did not want to feel like the writers were "toying with everybody". Mylod was more nervous about filming Joel's death than the action scenes due to its impact and his desire to do justice to the game's performances. Druckmann felt depicting its brutality allowed viewers to understand the characters' mindsets and their subsequent decisions, though it was reduced slightly from the game due to the realism of live action. Mazin and Mylod spent a long time discussing what level of violence to depict, believing it was necessary to justify Abby's actions while also being restrained enough to avoid glorifying it. The brutality was initially intended to be more subtle but Mylod thought avoiding showing Joel's death felt "coy" and like they "were ducking out". Mazin thought showing Abby's fists hitting Joel's face "would have been gratuitous and sort of
action movie-ish", not reflective of the scene's true sadness and reprehensibility, while Mylod "wanted to avoid overt torture". In the game, Abby kills Joel with a final blow of the golf club, but Mazin felt this could not reasonably be achieved in the episode, instead seeking realism in the violence. Ellie's crawl towards Joel was present in Mazin's first draft of the script, reflecting her need to be with him. Mazin wrote unspoken dialogue in his scripts in
italics to allow the actors to understand the characters' motivations; when Joel attempts to move after Ellie pleads with him to get up—in contrast to the game—the script clarified that he was aware of her presence and sought to act for her: {{bq| And now he hears her. We see it happen. He's barely conscious, but her voice will always cut through.
Ellie... Ellie: Fucking get up... GET UP! ''I will try for you. I would do anything for you. That's why I'm here. That's why this is happening.''
I will try. Abby walks slowly toward him.
Ellie: Get up... get up... Joel tries with every ounce of strength he has left. But all it means is that his head lifts slightly... his trembling hand reaches out... ...and then he collapses again. The writers felt the lack of a
player character allowed the series to show attacks on Jackson that are not depicted in the game. Druckmann appreciated the depiction of the infected's scale, which is implied in the games and first season but rarely demonstrated. The writers' familiarity with the show's production allowed for more action sequences, through which they maintained connections to character development. Mazin felt relationships like Tommy and Maria's increased the stakes, making it feel like more than "just a fight". Druckmann thought the inclusion of the siege added more ongoing conflict for the characters as they are dealing with more losses than just Joel, and Mazin felt the characters' loss of stability and safety in Jackson was palpable. Tommy's use of a flamethrower against the bloater is a reference to a weapon in the games and reflected the fear Mazin felt during gameplay. The battle originally featured two or three bloaters but was trimmed to one in post-production. The sequence with the frozen infected was expanded upon from the same scene in the game, whereas other sequences such as Abby being chased by the horde and saved by Joel were adapted more faithfully.
Casting and characters {{Multiple image |align=right |direction=horizontal |total_width=300
Pedro Pascal, who portrays Joel, was aware of the character's death when he first accepted the role. He felt unchanged while filming until his gory makeup and prosthetics were applied, which he felt "killed the vibe completely as soon as anyone set their eyes on me" out of grief. Mazin was not concerned about losing Pascal's popularity in his departure from the series, noting that the world and story are "the star". Pascal bonded with
Kaitlyn Dever, who portrays Abby; he found their close relationship ironic considering their characters' conflict but felt it made them closer. Dever struggled to watch Joel and Ellie's emotional scene during filming. Ramsey felt sick and cried while reading the script—a first for them. They prepared for Joel's death scene by treating it as ordinary, listening to the
Buckwheat Boyz's "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" on a loop until seconds before each
take to offset the darkness and exhaustion. They felt like they were experiencing the events for the first time alongside Ellie, recalling "it just all came out" during filming but finding it generally easier to perform than other moments as they knew "exactly what that scene needs to be". Ramsey performed the sequence around six times. They immediately smiled after each take to "snap out of it", and felt an "exhausted satisfaction and catharsis" after filming was completed. Ramsey performed 13 takes reacting to Joel's death. Mazin felt Ellie begging Joel to "get up" was imitative of the audience who felt the same. As Ellie looks upon Joel after he is killed, the script describes her face as "etched in pain... all at once a frightened, sobbing child and a terrible, vindictive monster".
Gabriel Luna, who portrays Tommy, anticipated the Jackson assault sequence since reading the script, comparing it to
Game of Throness "
Battle of the Bastards". With
Rutina Wesley, who portrays Maria, he underwent firearms and stunt training, including with recreations of guns used in the game such as Tommy's
M1 Garand. Luna practiced with a flamethrower for several minutes the day before filming; he later had recurring visions of flaming figures running towards him, which he suspected was due to trauma. He ensured he had his friend, stuntman Ty Provost, present on set to help him with stunts. Luna was bothered by Tommy's incapacitation during Joel's death in the game, and later became concerned about Tommy's absence in the episode; he felt reassured when Mazin sent him a large text outlining his plans for Tommy's story, including the Jackson battle. He wanted viewers to fear that Tommy would die during the episode. Druckmann felt Tommy's goals shift throughout the story: from protecting Jackson to saving Maria, who, alongside his son, he cares about the most. Wesley felt the two characters were "anchors for each other". Costume designer Ann Foley was inspired by a 1980s
Marlboro advertisement with Tommy's outfit, which Luna found unique from the games. The dead body of Abby's father was intentionally shown in
the first-season finale due to its relevance in the second season, particularly in Abby's dream sequence. Dever wanted the character's grief and loss to be reflected in her eyes, considering her "a very broken human being". She felt that Abby did not achieve what she sought after killing Joel, still feeling the heartbreak with added guilt; Mazin considered Abby "unsatisfied" and felt she "was not in control of herself" during the scene. Dever found Joel's death "heartbreaking", as a viewer of the first season. The scene was her first in the series; filming occurred a few weeks after her mother's death and three days after the funeral. Though Pascal and
Isabela Merced both had other filming obligations, the production schedule was overhauled to fit Dever's needs and she selected the day to film Joel's death, asking for minimal crew. She was unable to prepare for scenes in her usual manner—including missing her final costume fitting and hair and makeup tests—which she thought benefited the character by feeling more natural, and the collaborative effort of the crew made it "one of the greatest experiences [she has] ever had as an actor". Mazin wrote a monologue for Abby which was not present in the game, prompted by the revelation of Abby's motivations earlier in the series than in the game. Mylod felt Dever "would just give everything", even during takes not focused on Abby, which he called his "dream as the director". Mylod spoke to the actors as a group, which Dever compared to "a sports team" and felt created a supportive atmosphere.
Music {{Multiple image |align=right |direction=horizontal |total_width=300 The episode ends with a cover of
Shawn James's song "
Through the Valley" performed by
Ashley Johnson, who portrayed Ellie in the games and Ellie's mother
Anna in the series. Johnson's cover was previously featured in the second game and its marketing; the one featured in the episode is a blend of her original performance and a new recording, which adds a softer version of the second verse to better fit the scenes. Streams of Johnson's original cover increased by 1,005% on
Spotify in the United States after the episode aired. Mazin felt its usage reflected Anna's love for Ellie during the scene wherein Ellie mourns Joel, essentially placing both of Ellie's parents within the sequence. He found some lyrics represented the episode's events—while Jackson may be saved, souls have been damned—and others reflected an unachievable desire for its characters: Composers
Gustavo Santaolalla and
David Fleming respectively worked on the series's character-driven and action-driven score. They wanted the episode's music to reflect the inevitability of its events without overplaying them, continually building up until Joel's death. Fleming approached the Jackson attack by de-tuning
banjos and
cellos, which were featured in previous episodes, and used larger drums and
brass instruments. He broke the sequence in two, with the first focusing on the town's militaristic preparation and the second on the horde's overwhelming nature. Fleming wanted Abby's infected chase sequence to feel dramatic but not overshadow the Jackson attack; he worked closely with Mazin, attempting several versions to ensure it felt unique from other infected encounters. Fleming and Santaolalla scored Abby to match her anger, pain, and trauma akin to Ellie's, rather than as a traditional antagonist. For Joel's death scene, Santaolalla reused several themes to create an "emotional peak" while diverting to new cues with established instruments like the
ronroco, keeping "the aesthetics of the music with not only the themes, but the instrumentation and the rawness". The scene's music underwent several changes, originally being more active and continuous; Santaolalla did not want it to sound
melodramatic, and Mazin sought more silence, wanting to create infrequent larger moments that felt more active, adding shock and making viewers feel closer to the characters akin to a game rather than passively viewing. They settled on using one of Santaolalla's tracks when Abby talks about her father's death, which they found effective.
Filming {{Multiple image |total_width=250 |direction=vertical The episode was filmed over a month and a half, beginning in February 2024. Joel's death was filmed on March 7 in a house in
Mission, British Columbia, avoiding the use of
blue screens. Pascal was delayed a day when poor weather rerouted his flight. It was scheduled in the first week of production, adding extra pressure for cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt. Mazin and Mylod spent hours determining each character's positioning; Mylod and Goldschmidt focused on Abby's friends' faces instead of the violence. Mel's crying was improvised by actress
Ariela Barer. The ski lodge scenes were filmed over four days; of the two focused on Joel's death, one primarily involved Ellie's scenes. The sequence was designed to keep physical distance between Joel and Ellie; they are connected only through
over-the-shoulder shots. Mazin considered Joel's death prosthetics the season's most important. Pascal was
3D scanned to allow prosthetics designer Barrie Gower to craft with his measurements in mind, especially as Pascal's left eye would be closed. Once Ellie enters the scene, the camera shifts to her perspective. Mylod cried during one take due to Ramsey's performance "transcending" acting, feeling connected to Ellie's pain as a parent himself. Some takes featured Manny spitting on Joel's corpse as he does in the game, but this was cut in favor of a better overall take. Goldschmidt filmed a
crane shot of Ellie with Joel's dead body to allow viewers to understand the room's space and feel the moment's isolation and emptiness. While most of the scene was framed near the actors, Mylod wanted the final shot to depart from the visual style in a "final, judgmental" way. Jackson scenes were filmed in Mission,
Fort Langley, and
Langley. The four-block town was built on a parking lot in Vancouver, measuring and featuring 45 partly constructed buildings; many housed different production crews, such as the
visual effects team in the
Starbucks store. To demonstrate its growth, materials used in Jackson's
first-season depiction were not reused. The action sequence was filmed over almost four weeks, including around two-and-a-half weeks and five days of
second unit photography. Mylod and Goldschmidt
storyboarded the action on set before it was completed by production designer Don Macauley and his team, adding necessary elements to assist production like
fireproofing on buildings and
catwalks for cast and crew. Macauley illustrated each part of the battle on set to help the production team. Executive producers Jacqueline Lesko and Cecil O'Connor led the teams responsible for the action scenes, which included 30–40
stunt performers—who attended a
boot camp to familiarize themselves with the roles—and around 100
extras in prosthetics. A limited amount of stunts could be afforded each day, requiring additional digital enhancement. Gower spoke with Mazin and Druckmann about changing the appearance of some infected to reflect the colder weather, making them look frostbitten. The prosthetics team worked on about 20 to 30 performers each day for
close-up shots, focusing on those who would appear on camera, while Foley's team had almost 600 costume fittings for the episode, running three units (Alberta, Jackson, and snow scenes). The bloater stuntman,
Glenn Ennis, was required to use
cooling pads and a cooling tent before being hit with the flamethrower, which he performed around 12–14 times; Mylod thought they "almost gave him
hypothermia". Several additional scenes, including more explosions of the infected, were filmed but cut from the final episode. Goldschmidt found Mazin's writing assisted in crafting visuals, and often referenced the game. She filmed the battle on the wall with three cameras, increasing to five when the horde enters Jackson. Concerned about the battle's lighting, she initially intended to cover the sets in
silk, inspired by
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), but was limited by time and budget constraints, instead opting for
construction cranes with large sheets of
blackout to remove sunlight from the characters. Drawing from her work on
House of the Dragon, Goldschmidt used Creamsource Vortex 8 when lighting the Jackson and lodge scenes. Production moved to
Alberta for sixteen days from March 18, including in
Exshaw and
Fortress Mountain Resort. Goldschmidt appreciated the resort staff's experience, as the location is often used for productions. Filming occurring during a
blizzard at Fortress Mountain and in
Whistler, during the scene in which Abby is chased by infected. The latter excluded some crew members (including the sound department) to avoid the risk of an
avalanche. One scene only allowed around 10–15 people on the mountain, each wearing avalanche trackers, who had to climb with ropes to reach the mountaintop; Goldschmidt felt it was worth the result. The scene of Abby being crushed by infected was shot using a
Ronin 4D moving on a
Filmotechnic Technoscope F27
camera crane on the ground, instead of the series's usual
Alexa 35 camera. Dever was worried she would fall and be trampled by the crowd. The infected horde was digitally enhanced from around 20–30 stunt performers to hundreds of creatures, with many using
ragdoll simulation to "jiggle" akin to a concert. Mazin and Macauley conceived the alley standoff between Tommy and the bloater after main production took place. A set was constructed in April on a private property at Minaty Bay in
Britannia Beach; filming occurred four months after principal photography, across five days—June 5, 7, 12, 13, and July 2—with smoke and flame pyrotechnics. Luna described the set as "labyrinthian, claustrophobic".
Visual effects Eleven visual effects teams worked on the episode, including Clear Angle Studios,
DNEG, Important Looking Pirates,
Rise FX,
Storm Studios, and
Wētā FX. The episode used more than 600 visual effects shots, almost 200 more than the first-season episode "
Endure and Survive". Visual effects supervisor Alex Wang was "gobsmacked" when reading the script due to its scope; he felt Mazin wanted the action sequence to be like
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towerss
Battle of Helm's Deep. Mylod and
first assistant director Dan Miller worked with Wang and Michael Cozens to create
previsualization for the full action sequence. Mylod felt his experiences directing
Game of Thrones prepared him for the physical production and visual effects. Visual effects supervisor Nick Epstein felt the visual clarity of Jackson in the daytime—as opposed the night setting of "Endure and Survive"—meant the effects had "nowhere to hide", with a higher "technical bar" than the first season. Animation supervisor Dennis Yoo found the increased crowd sizes was an added difficulty; around 400 unique infected were created digitally, with some wide shots featuring almost a thousand. Epstein felt the variation between each creature added "a sort of masked humanity", implying they each "have their own story". The distant infected were animated using
Massive, with the pathing system adapted to match the unpredictable movement, while the horde chasing Abby was simulated using
Autodesk Maya's Ragdoll
plugin. Other software used included
Houdini for animation,
ZBrush for sculpting, and
Foundry's Katana, Mari, and
Nuke for lighting, texturing, and
compositing, respectively. Wētā FX worked on the infected. Every creature was created from scans of around 30 stunt actors with prosthetics, augmented with different clothing, hair, and fungus patterns to provide variations. Some performers forwent prosthetics—called "level-zero infected"—to allow the visual effects team to add more
computer-generated imagery (CGI). Epstein faced difficulty in making their movement and collisions feel realistic, including with dead bodies, which consisted of several individual models, rather than one large one. Mazin wanted the creatures to interact to make their movement appear organic. Yoo captured additional performances with several actors, requiring many iterations to ensure their movements fit with different-sized characters and avoid performers who "run really silly" and "start looking like
Monty Python". He was concerned about the dogs' movement and fur looking unrealistic. The team spent a day scanning and photographing the dogs, which was Epstein's favorite day on set. Around 21 simulations were present in the shot of the horde emerging from the snow, with several iterations undergone to match Mazin's "very specific vision", such as the rotation of the clicker's head as it rises; Mazin compared the sequence to an
ant hive. The front of the Jackson set featured "one of the biggest green screens [Epstein had] ever seen"; the landscape shot was created entirely digitally based on photographs of
Kananaskis Country. The unpredictable weather on set prompted the creation of a compositing-based weather control system for a more consistent appearance. , with several changes from
its first-season variant such as its increased size.|alt=A video showing the development of visual effects design, starting with a man in a motion-capture suit and ending with a large zombie-like creature, surrounded by dozens of other running creatures. Wētā FX and Important Looking Pirates worked on the bloater sequence. While the bloater in "Endure and Survive" was initially performed practically before being replaced with CGI, Wang and his team created the bloater in "Through the Valley" with CGI first to better understand its design for usage in 60 shots. Its physique was based on those of
bodybuilders. The team added genitalia to the bloater, not wanting it to appear like a
Ken doll; Epstein felt they "spent way too much time talking about that", particularly in how the genitals move. Adam Basil, who worked on "Endure and Survive", returned to portray the bloater, while Ike Hamon returned to perform its movements through
performance capture; the visual effects team were inspired by animals like
alligators, which generally have slow movement but gain speed when cornered or attacking. Wang felt the bloater's motion was its most important element. Several first-season textures required changes due to lighting differences; the
texture painter who worked on the first season's bloater was asked to "about double" the texturing for the episode. Some alterations were made to the bloater: its head shape was changed and tendril sprouts added, based on
photogrammetry of real fungus like
Laetiporus, photographed by assets supervisor Pascal Raimbault; blue and purple colors were chosen and
frost added to reflect the frigid environment; and it was made about 10% larger and more imposing, to immediately reflect its strength in comparison to the rest of the horde. Its natural armor was enhanced from the first season, used to show bullet damage without being destroyed entirely. Wang used
Part IIs gameplay as a guide to animating the bloater being burned. Several animations were tested; Wang wanted the audience to see the flame broaching the creature's multiple layers to make its death believable. The team researched several burning textures, such as marshmallows and
macro photography of plastic; they found tomato the most appropriate due to its rippling and juice.
Editing Timothy A. Good edited "Through the Valley". He began working on the episode in late February 2024 and the final mix was completed over a year later. He received more filming material than usual: 24 days of main production (three hours per day) and more than 30 days of second unit. Early edits cut between the Jackson battle and lodge scenes, but Good felt audiences cared more for the character-focused drama of the latter, prompting the Jackson scenes to be shuffled to earlier in the episode. The 17-minute battle sequence was trimmed to 11 minutes to focus on the main action and avoid lowering the stakes by showing infected deaths too early. Good wanted the scene to "apply maximum pressure" to its primary characters, Tommy and Maria. Good considered Joel's death the most challenging scene to edit, particularly due to the pressure caused by its importance and the anxiety it would place on viewers. To better understand the most important elements, he re-edited the scene five times before presenting it to Mylod and Mazin; the latter recommended adding more violence from Ellie's perspective and a pause before Joel's death. The series typically avoids showing violence, as was true in Good's original cut which avoided showing Joel's death, but Mazin found it more shocking. Good did not want Abby to be sympathetic in his early cuts. When Abby first hears Joel's name, Good cut from a
wide shot to a close-up of Abby's face to show the impact "as almost like a gut punch". Ellie's approach to the lodge was edited with quick cuts to keep the scene moving but long enough to show her perspective; Good wanted audiences to feel Ellie's rage when she enters the room. Mylod filmed the actors in different ways, prompting Good to try and choose the most effective approach; he blended several versions to demonstrate Ellie's changing emotions throughout the scene, from commanding to quiet to angry. Mylod filmed entire scenes from different perspectives, like Joel's death from the viewpoint of one of Abby's crew, providing more footage for Good to cut to and allowing him to construct new story moments, such as Owen instructing Manny to let Ellie live. The audio of Joel telling Abby to "just do it already" was from a different take than shown in the episode. In a change from the usual process, Good edited the closing sequence to match the music, which forced him to shorten the scene between Tommy and Maria; he limited it to the most important element, showing Maria comforting a broken Tommy. Good requested the sound of Joel's body dragged across the snow to allow viewers to feel his presence. == Reception ==