Pedro Pascal’s Joel might not like puns, but Din Djarin sure does

It seems like season three of The Mandalorian did a good job of subtly differentiating Din Djarin from Joel from The Last of Us, which was probably necessary given Pedro Pascal’s love for playing father figures.

While there might be a minority of viewers who might question what makes Joel and Mando different from each other, considering that both of them are protectors of younger wards, eventually becoming their unofficial dads, Lucasfilm managed to add something in season three’s script that may be small, but is enough to show that the two characters are different.

Chapter 17 of The Mandalorian, titled ‘The Apostate,’ showed that Din Djarin has a way with words. During his first attempt to revive IG-11, the Droid defaulted to its original programming from season one and tried to kill Grogu. Mando and his friends had to make the difficult choice to terminate the droid before anyone could get hurt. One of Greef Karga’s droids managed to stop IG-11 by dropping a bust of Karga on IG’s head, which Mando commented on, saying, “That’s using your head.”

What The Mandalorian has done to differentiate Pascal’s popular dad roles was remind us that one of them is a pun-master. If you recall, Joel in The Last of Us showed that he isn’t fond of wordplay as seen in episode four when he failed to laugh at Ellie’s puns from “No Pun Intended, Volume Too.” In fact, he once beat Ellie to the punchline while the two were camping in a forest before they arrived in Kansas City.

While it’s not a lot and is just one piece of dialogue, it just comes to show that despite both of them being protectors, The Mandalorian is much more “pun” to be around.