The last of us star Troy Baker is about as closely involved with the franchise as anyone can be right now. Baker was the actor who brought the character of Joel Miller to life in The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II; Baker also plays a minor role in it The last of us HBO series, which has yet to be revealed. However, while speaking to ComicBook.com and ET’s The last pods show, Baker actually revealed a flashback scene he filmed as Joel, which never made it into the games:

New The last of us Joel Scene Revealed:

“I think it’s great practice for an actor to come up with a backstory,” Baker explained. “If it’s not on the page, make something up, if you need to… There was a shoot that no one knows about, I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, between Part One and Part Two, where we were just trying out some new technology, and so Neil and I went to a different stage than we shot in San Diego, and he was like, “I want to do a few scenes of this, because I haven’t really wrote something, but I have an idea of ​​the scene for this. Are you comfortable running a scene alone?

So there’s this scene we just made up about Joel going into a bar. And so there are all these backstory moments where we find out what happened; where is sarah’s mother? What happened to that relationship? What’s the schism between him and Tommy?”

Will HBOs The last of us Reveal Joel’s mysterious backstory?

In The last of us games, there is indeed much of Joel’s backstory that is simply not revealed to the player. By the time the game takes place, Joel is a grizzled and guarded older man, whose former life is long gone. By the time jump of the second game, every opening he’s done with those around him has been done and he’s in a quieter and sadder place. That all works for the games, as players don’t need those explanatory details to live and play like Joel – they just need to be keyed in to share Joel’s primary motivation: to protect Ellie (or vice versa).

The last of us HBO series are obviously a different story (as often pointed out). Viewers have many questions they feel need answering about characters, backstory, and lore. The last of us The creative team at HBO (Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann) knows that. As Baker pointed out, the show doesn’t waste the chance to expand on things the games didn’t have to:

“This is what the show can do… ‘Well, let’s look at Joel’s backstory, and let’s learn more about that,’ and something beautiful happens, as you see now.”