The Last of Us Star Troy Baker Reveals New Scene Developing Joel's Backstory

The Last of Us star Troy Baker is about as deeply involved in the franchise as anyone can be at this point. 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 The Last of Us HBO series, which has yet to be revealed. However, while speaking to ComicBook.com and ET's The Last of 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 a wonderful exercise for an actor to come in with a backstory," Baker was explaining. "If it's not there on the page, then make something up, if it's necessary... There was a shoot that we did nobody knows about, I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, in between Part One and Part Two, where we were just kind of testing out some new tech, and so just Neil and I went down to a different stage than we shot on down in San Diego, and he was like, "I want to do a couple of scenes from this, because I don't really have anything written so far, but I have an idea of the scene for this. Are you comfortable just kind of running a scene by yourself?

 So there's a scene that we just kind of made up on the fly about Joel going into a bar. And so there are all of these backstory moments that we get to find out what happened; where's Sarah's mom? What happened to that relationship? What is the schism between he and Tommy?"

Will HBO's The Last of Us Reveal Joel's Mysterious Backstory?

In The Last of Us games, there is indeed a lot 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 past life is long gone. By the time jump of the second game, any opening up he might've done with those around him is done, and he's in a more quiet and mournful place. That all works for the games, as players don't need those expository details to inhabit and play as Joel – they only need to be keyed into sharing Joel's primary motivation: protecting Ellie (or vice versa).

The Last of Us HBO series is obviously a different story (as is often pointed out). Viewers have many questions that they feel need to be answered about characters, backstory, and lore. The Last of Us HBO creative team (Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann) knows that. As Baker pointed out, the show is not wasting the opportunity to expand on things the games didn't have to: 

"This is what the show has the ability to do...'Well, let's take a look at Joel's backstory, and let's learn more about that,' and there's a beautiful thing that happens, as you see now."