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The Last of Us<\/em><\/a> season 2 is in full swing, but there are some lingering questions about Joel Miller\u2019s (Pedro Pascal<\/strong>) fate.<\/p>\n The Last of Us spoilers below.<\/em><\/p>\n The HBO show\u2019s highly anticipated second season premiered<\/a> on Sunday, April 13, with Abby (Kaitlyn Dever<\/strong>) promising to \u201cslowly\u201d kill Joel after his hospital massacre of the Fireflies. Her rather violent way of thinking seems to hint at Joel\u2019s fate before the season comes to an end.<\/p>\n Still, the show\u2019s cocreator Craig Mazin<\/strong> isn\u2019t offering any hint as to what could possibly in store for the characters or the show\u2019s many avid fans.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody who has a central role in a story and drives a central relationship of the story will always permeate everything,\u201d he said during a Monday, April 14, appearance of the \u201cHappy Sad Confused\u201d podcast<\/a>, when asked about the possibility that Joel might not survive season 2. \u201cIn a show where people are constantly appearing and dying, every death needs to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Mazin continued, \u201cThe way it matters is not what it does to us at home. The way it matters is what it does to the people who survive it inside that story and how it drives them.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, if Mazin plans to stick to the video game\u2019s story, Joel will die \u2014 it\u2019s just a matter of when.<\/p>\n For the uninitiated, when The Last of Us Part II<\/em> video game was released in 2020, players watched Abby get her revenge on Joel for the murder of her father (the Firefly surgeon he killed at the end of the first game) by beating him to death.<\/p>\n In terms of the show, Mazin has stayed pretty ambiguous about what\u2019s happening with Pascal\u2019s version of Joel \u2014 although fans are prepared for the possibility he won\u2019t make it out of the series alive.<\/p>\n