Seriously, I don’t mean to over-egg this, but we are talking about one of the more spoilery episodes in the recent history of prestige TV, so if you are not fully up to date with The Last of Us you really should leave. I’ll chuck a photo of Pedro Pascal’s face below. Once you scroll past it, all the spoilers will flow. All of them. Consider this the final warning. Right, so. We brutalised Pedro’s face with a golf club. One of the more upsetting and abrupt deaths, of a TV protagonist, since early Game of Thrones. You are going to hear a lot of comparisons to that show’s famous Red Wedding, but the more fitting parallel is the execution of Ned Stark towards the end of Thrones’ first season. In the same vein, this is the character we thought was the anchor of The Last of Us. And within the space of – what, two or three scenes? – he’s gone. Naaaaah, you think. Something will happen at the last minute to save him. Aaaany second now. But it doesn’t. This twist sparked what was, quite frankly, an unhinged reaction from loud elements of the fan base when it happened in the game, upon which this season of The Last of Us is based. And I’m putting it politely there. People lost their damn minds. The spittle-flecked abuse directed at lead writer Neil Druckmann (who is co-showrunner here with Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin) and actress Laura Bailey (who played Abby in the game) was up there with folks’ response to The Last Jedi as a moment of – how do I put this? Indignity for nerd culture. Grown men were throwing tantrums. They were firing off furious Reddit posts like a toddler biffing toys out of his pram. I don’t expect a television audience to react in quite the same way, though comparing the two will be fascinating, as a social experiment of sorts. I am here to argue that you should persist with the show, even if you were mainly watching it because you were a fan of Pascal. I’m also here to applaud the writers of this story for having the guts to do something brave and interesting. It would have been so bloody easy, after the success of the original The Last of Us, for Druckmann and his co-writers to go down the route of fan service. To serve up more of Joel and Ellie as a loveable, bickering odd couple adventuring in the post-apocalypse. That story could have been really good, by the way. But it also would have been safe. What we got instead was bold, and unyielding, and purposeful, and so much more valuable. The source material for this season of TV (and the next, whenever it drops) is harrowing and beautiful in equal measure. It is a story about trauma, and about forgiveness, particularly self-forgiveness, which will resonate so, so effectively if you fight through the red mist and let it. You have not seen the last of Pedro Pascal; it’s hardly a spoiler to confirm there will be flashbacks involving him. You saw evidence of that in the trailers. More importantly, Joel’s presence continues to be felt in this story long after his death. I am going to have to wait until the very last plot point has aired to give you my complete, unrestricted view on this story’s themes, which may well be incompatible with yours. It is, in fact, quite incompatible with Druckmann’s, insofar as I understand his view. That is part of the fun here – a complex narrative is always open to conflicting interpretations. All I’ll say, for now, for those of you who’ve been punched in the gut by Joel’s death is: I came out of the game feeling genuinely optimistic. And also feeling that, even in his absence, Joel’s influence was an indispensable part of the story. Any of you, who have lost a person you loved, will know they linger beyond their mortal days. And that is definitely the case here. Keep watching. Twitter: @SamClench