Young Mazino accepted Jesse’s ‘The Last of Us’ finale moment: ‘I’m ready’

This text incorporates spoilers from The Final of Us season 2 finale, “Convergence.”

It may be troublesome to inform when Younger Mazino is wiped. The 33-year-old Beef standout usually exudes laidback, no-fuss vibes, whether or not it’s on stage in entrance of tons of at Austin’s SXSW or paired together with his extra energetic costar Isabela Merced throughout the onslaught of press interviews for The Final of Us. However belief when Mazino says in mid Could that he’s “crawling on my hands and knees to the finish line.”

He Zooms in from New York, the place he simply wrapped the final leg of his promo tour for the HBO drama, during which he performs Jesse, Bella Ramsey’s onscreen bestie who surprises her in Seattle whereas on her revenge mission. Mazino appeared the night time earlier than on The Tonight Present, the place he dazzled host Jimmy Fallon together with his guitar taking part in and maybe let slip an excessive amount of details about the state of Pedro Pascal’s Joel. However, what can he say? “I’m not good with spoilers,” he tells Leisure Weekly.

As destiny would have it, it’s the tail finish of those media rounds which can be probably the most important for his character, Jesse. Within the season 2 finale, because it seems as if he satisfied Ellie (Ramsey) to surrender her suicide mission and head again residence to Jackson with him, Dina (Merced), and Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) arrives…and she or he’s pissed.

Somebody has been killing off her associates one after the other, and she or he’s shocked to study it’s the very woman she spared after brutally executing Joel in entrance of her. Ellie and Jesse burst by means of the theater doorways, and bam! Earlier than they absolutely see Abby holding Tommy hostage, she shoots Jesse lifeless within the face — the newest casualty in an extended path of lifeless our bodies.

Mazino absolutely accepted his character’s destiny earlier than his first assembly with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. He performed a pace run of PlayStation’s The Final of Us Half II (2020) proper up till Jesse’s loss of life. “Then I put the controller down and I was like, ‘I’m ready,’” he says. “This is what I needed.”

The actor now extra appreciates an earlier piece of foreshadowing. In episode 2, as Jesse and Ellie share Eugene’s weed stash within the 7-Eleven, he feedback on the previous Firefly, “F—in’ shame. Guy makes it through war, end up going out like that. Whaddya gonna do? Couldn’t be saved.”

“It’s like a weird premonition,” he remarks of that second. “Nobody’s safe. It’s just very cut and dry. You get shot sometimes. You don’t do your CQB properly in a panic and boom! Your life is over. That’s very realistic, and it happens all the time in real life.”

Although it occurs so rapidly, that fall Mazino takes is technically a stunt and required particular choreography. Jesse is lifeless earlier than he hits the bottom, so he needed to hit the bottom like a rag doll whereas additionally touchdown purposefully in the identical spot for continuity. He needed to do it himself, even throughout reshoots the place he wasn’t essentially required for the pictures. “That scene is so important,” he says. “That’s another heartstring that gets severed by Abby, and Ellie registers that. I wanted Ellie to have the best performance by being there and for her to be able to connect to that instead of the stunt doubles or a non-human figure.”

Nonetheless, it was taxing in methods you do not usually take into consideration. “The first 10 times you fall, it’s fine,” he notes, “but by the 15th, 20th you kind of feel the compounding effects of dropping to the ground like that.”

It isn’t clear whether or not Mazino’s Jesse will return, although avid gamers predict it. The Final of Us Half II, launched on the PlayStation 4 in 2020, allowed gamers to expertise the story first as Ellie earlier than shifting again in time to inform the identical sequence of occasions however from Abby’s perspective. The season 2 ending’s flashback signifies season 3 will probably be taking the same strategy, which means lots of the characters that died already will come again in varied capacities.

Mazino, once more, references the spoiler leak on his Tonight Present interview as to why Mazin and Druckmann have not given him the complete plan but for season 3. “For good reason, they’ve been cryptic about it,” he feedback, “but I think at one point [Mazin] told me Jesse and Tommy, they’re going to f— s— up, or something along the lines of that. That’s all I know. We’re going to f— s— up, apparently.”

Within the occasion Jesse stays a part of this persevering with story, there’s a lot left to unpack with the character. “When you catch him in episode 5, he’s already gone through some s—,” Mazino continues. “There’s no jokes, there’s no levity, he’s not happy, he’s not looking at anything half full. He’s in compartmentalize [mode], survive, kill anyone in the way. It’s just pure objective. He’s not that guy that was just poking fun at Ellie after the New Year’s Eve party.”

Mazino acknowledges the shift that happens after the loss of life of Joel and the contaminated assault on Jackson. He was an individual who regarded on the glass as half full and actively tried to assist his neighborhood rebuild. Mazino references a deleted season 2 scene during which Ellie makes a joke about how Jesse turned the youngest member to function the council. It happens within the context of episode 3 throughout the coaching session in Ellie’s storage.

“She’s like, ‘I heard you got on the council…Why? Because you’re sucking dick,’ or ‘You’re such a suck up’ or something,” Mazino remembers. “He’s like, ‘No, because one of the council members got shot and died. So that’s why I’m there.’ It was so funny when we shot that.”

After episode 3, one thing adjustments. Jesse’s family members, Ellie and Dina, snuck off on what’s successfully a suicide mission. He is offended. He not understands their motives however acknowledges issues have gone manner off script. After which when he goes after them to assist, he loses his life simply on the time he learns he will be a dad.

Mazino is a little bit of an existentialist. “In this world, and in life in general, people tend to have such an inflated sense of importance in the face of the universe and the void, but in reality, we’re dust. We’re just grains of sand in the desert,” he says. “So as tragic as it is, it’s such a fact of life. Not to make it banal, but, yeah, it’s so sad as someone who cares for Jesse, for him to do all the right things. You follow all the rules and you do the right things and your life can end just like that. You never see the child that you birth and you never find that love again.”

He is additionally very conscious of “the commotion on the internet” round this season of the sequence. Many followers of the video games expressed criticism of how the creators tailored sure occasions, from the revelation of Abby because the daughter of the physician Joel killed in season 1 to Ellie’s less-intense demeanor than what’s depicted within the supply materials.

Join Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV information, unique first seems to be, recaps, critiques, interviews together with your favourite stars, and extra.

“People have their gripes or whatever, but I just implore that people watch it holistically from start to finish,” Mazino remarks. “It all kind of ties in. It’s intertwined. It requires some media literacy, not just cookie-cutter linear stuff, but it all sweeps into this one epic thing. The more you let it sit — I was talking to Isabela about this last night — it ages like wine right now. What you might see are crushed grapes, but you give it some time and you find that it ages well.”

Whatever the criticisms, this position marks one other spectacular notch up on Mazino’s ascending profession, although he additionally approaches that traction as realistically as he approaches his character. He is an individual who gave up his full time job to pursue appearing, just for a worldwide pandemic to upend these plans. He landed Beef after the COVID-19 lockdowns ended, however then the actor and author strikes introduced Hollywood to a standstill, pausing manufacturing of The Final of Us.

“At this point, I’m much more wary about the ebbs and flows of the industry,” he feedback. “Finding work, The Last of Us or Beef, is not guaranteed. And knowing how rare an opportunity like these things are, I’ve learned to really practice gratitude and cherish the experiences and the commonality between both shows.”

Mazino nonetheless seems like that, even within the face of such a prolonged promo tour. “I truly believe that it would be so difficult to have to do a world press tour, premiere thing if it wasn’t something I was proud to be a part of,” he provides. Nonetheless, he is able to take pleasure in a while off: “I’ll find some pockets, yeah.”