How did Joel get his scar in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us?’

In HBO Max’s The Last of Us, we follow protagonist Joel as he comes face to face with death on a regular basis. If he’s not busy dealing with hordes of enraged infected, he’s fighting off other humans, the true villains of the series. The world of both the TV show and the 2013 game of the same name is cruel and even if one manages to escape infection, it’s impossible to remain unscathed.

It’s been over two decades since the Cordyceps fungus mutated to infect humans in 2003, and in that time period, Joel has become a battle-scarred survivor. In the debut episode, we first meet Joel as an athletically-built building contractor. While he could take care of himself in a fight, he wasn’t the hardened man we see later on in the episode. The Joel we know now has been emotionally and physically wounded but has continued fighting, despite some terrible losses.

While watching the show, viewers may notice Joel has a prominent scar on his face. In the most recent episode, the show gives a short answer about the scar, but is it the whole truth?

How did Joel get his scar?

In HBO Max’s The Last of Us, Joel has noticeable facial scarring. While hiking to Bill and Frank’s home, Ellie asks Joel how he got his scar, and Joel tells her someone tried to shoot him but missed. We’re never explicitly told who shot at Joel, but we have a couple of theories.

A Reddit thread from 2017 deduces a reason for Joel’s scar, and while not official, we think this is the most likely explanation. In the game’s prologue and the show’s pilot, Joel and his daughter, Sarah, encounter a soldier with instructions to kill them both. When the soldier fires his rifle, Joel dodges the shot and survives but ultimately loses his daughter in the chaos. In their post, the Reddit user links pictures of Joel before and after encountering the solider. In the after photos, Joel distinctly has blood on his nose exactly where the scar would later appear, leading us to believe the bullet grazed him.

This matches what he told Ellie and gives the scar an appropriately tragic explanation. Joel will always be haunted by losing his daughter, but now he has a physical representation of that pain and just a glimpse of his face in the mirror will bring up those memories.

Oddly enough, Pedro Pascal, who plays Joel in the show, actually has a scar on his nose from an on-set accident. In a report from Insider, Pascal confessed he walked into a piece of plywood on the set of The Mandalorian and required seven stitches on his nose. While we think it’s unlikely the casting department chose Pascal based off his scarring, it’s a cool coincidence nonetheless.