The Last of Us is just an episode away from wrapping up the first season. Over the course of eight episodes, the series recreated some of the iconic moments from the games beat by beat as well as creating whole new stories for fans' delight. Episode after episode the social media platforms were full of moments that were brought to life as Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey owned it with their performances.
One such moment came at the end of the recent episode “When We are in Need,” when Ellie saves herself from the cannibalistic cult leader, David. It’s when Joel finds her outside the restaurant, he comforts a devastated Ellie by telling her, “It’s okay baby girl,” as they hug. Fans were moved to see Joel finally coming out of his hardened shell and calling Ellie what he used to call his daughter Sarah. In a new featurette Troy Baker, who voiced Joel in the original series and played James in the episode tells, “Baby girl” is a very important thing in the story of The Last of Us. And it was all kind of an accident.”
"Baby Girl" is the Hallmark of Joel's Healing
He shares that it was conceived during the making of the games “as Joel carries up Sarah to go to bed and he puts her in the bed, and he just says, “good night, baby girl.” Further, sharing his experience he tells, “And that’s just a thing about growing up in Texas. ‘Baby girl’ is just something that you say.” He said that the creator of games and co-creator of the series, Neil Druckmann was taken with the phrase, asking, “’what did you just say?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know good night?’ and he goes ‘No, no. What’d you call her?’ I was like, ‘Baby girl.’ He goes, ‘That. That is what Joel is going to call Ellie.’”
Of the moment when Joel comforts Ellie in the show Baker says, “for that to culminate in this moment of trauma with Ellie, and for Joel to desperately try to connect with Ellie, and something within him just organically resorts to calling her “baby girl.” That, to me, is one of the biggest hallmarks of Joel’s healing.” In the opening shots of the series, we see that Joel lost his daughter Sarah the night of the outbreak and never really recovered from it. So, to see him going extremely violent in search of Ellie to comfort her with tender words brought a cathartic experience not only for the character but for fans as well.
The finale of The Last of Us will drop on March 12. You can check out the featurette below: