Since its first season, HBO’s The Final of Us has proven a canny knack for artistic casting, inserting beloved TV actors in novel conditions in its zombie-adjacent world. Season 1’s “Lengthy, Lengthy Time” is commonly held up because the high-water mark for the sequence, casting Parks and Rec’s Nick Offerman and The White Lotus‘ Murray Bartlett as two males who discover love after the apocalypse. The presence of their recognizable faces helped audiences emotionally join with their characters in just one episode.
Season 2 has been a bit lighter on these sorts of strikes, however episode six, “The Worth,” used some intelligent casting to make a long-teased dying much more heartbreaking. The thriller of what occurred to Gail’s (Catherine O’Hara) husband Eugene had been brewing all season, and “The Worth” lastly gave viewers a solution. Whereas this scene would doubtless have been upsetting it doesn’t matter what, it hit dwelling even more durable because of the casting of Joe Pantoliano.
Season 2’s Eugene Thriller
(The next incorporates spoilers for The Final of Us Season 2, Episode 6)
Eugene’s destiny was alluded to all the best way again in Season 2’s first episode, when Gail has a remedy session with Joel (Pedro Pascal). Gail reveals her anger at Joel for killing Eugene, despite the fact that she acknowledges he had no alternative within the matter. Viewers can surmise that an infection was most definitely the trigger, however the particulars weren’t made completely clear. What was abundantly clear was that Gail was unable to forgive Joel, whatever the circumstances.
Eugene is remembered fondly by the group of Jackson Gap even 5 years after his dying, and “The Worth” lastly reveals precisely what occurred. Whereas out on patrol, Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) get phrase of one other group warding off the contaminated and go to assist. By the point they arrive, they discover Eugene alone within the woods, with a chunk mark on his stomach. Eugene pleads to have the ability to return to Jackson Gap to say goodbye to Gail, and Joel reluctantly agrees.
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Or at the least, that is what he tells Ellie. As a substitute of taking Eugene again to city, Joel leads him to a lake, the place he gives to share any final phrases earlier than placing him down. Eugene continues to plead, however ultimately relents, and Joel shoots him. Once they return to city, Joel lies to Gail, telling her Eugene was courageous about it and ended issues on his personal phrases, however Ellie does not let him get away with it. Joel rapidly reneging on his phrase to Ellie provides extra gas to her nagging issues that he won’t have been trustworthy together with her about what occurred on the Firefly hospital 5 years earlier.
Eugene is hardly stoic or noble within the face of dying, and his bare have to see his spouse one final time makes the scene emotionally devastating, whilst audiences have hardly spent any time with the character. Pantoliano’s terribly shifting efficiency does quite a lot of the heavy lifting.
Why Pantoliano’s Casting Works So Effectively
Pantoliano hasn’t been appearing as a lot lately, however he is nonetheless a recognizable face for longtime HBO viewers, largely because of his function as Ralph “Ralphie” Cifaretto in Seasons 3 and 4 of The Sopranos. Ralphie was one of the loathsome characters Sopranos creator David Chase and his fellow writers ever created; a merciless, venal bully who used his standing as a mob captain to insulate himself from his unhealthy conduct. Clearly, just about all of the characters on The Sopranos did that to at least one extent or one other, however Ralphie crossed strains even the others refused to cross.
Pantoliano performed Ralphie to the hilt, and it is a testomony to his abilities as an actor that the character made for one of the memorable antagonists of the sequence. Within the ’90s and ’00s, Pantoliano had a knack for enjoying unhealthy guys, making indelible heel turns in motion pictures like 1999’s The Matrix and 2000’s Memento. His casting as Eugene supplies a fast nostalgia hit for viewers who grew up together with his onscreen presence, which rapidly helps to determine an emotional connection to the character.
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Past the nostalgia issue, Pantoliano’s casting works in a method that is not completely not like O’Hara’s, subverting the viewer’s expectations concerning the sorts of characters he is most well-known for enjoying. Whereas O’Hara’s expertise in comedy makes her dramatic flip as Gail that rather more highly effective, Pantoliano’s memorable unhealthy man roles make his way more tender flip as Eugene stunning. Primarily based on the actor’s most well-known roles, viewers may assume Eugene’s going to be sarcastic or defiant as much as the tip, however this seems to be very a lot not the case.
In an interview with Leisure Weekly, sequence co-creator and episode director Neil Druckmann talked about how Pantoliano introduced an sudden dimension to Eugene. Whereas the script initially leaned extra into darkish humor for his dying scene, Pantoliano determined to go in a extra pitiable course, making him regress and act nearly childlike in his ultimate moments. It is a small element that speaks to Pantoliano’s talent as an actor, that somebody so good at enjoying characters an viewers likes to hate can even make a one-scene function so gutting.