Pedro Pascal, the nerdy dad: from The Mandalorian to The Last of Us

Pedro Pascal, the nerdy dad

The father figure of Pedro Pascal is a fundamental part of the story of The Last of Us , the new HBO series of which you can find our review here. If, on the other hand, you want to recover the PS5 video game, you can buy it here. Over the years, Pedro Pascal has shown that he can play different types of characters, from the mysterious Mandalorian of The Mandalorian to the charming Oberyn Martell of Game of Thrones. And yet, the interpretation of characters who, although not really parents, suddenly find themselves having to play this difficult role seems to be particularly in his heart. Which almost seems ironic, bearing in mind that Pedro Pascal has no children. And his private life reveals other points of contact with his Mando and Joel.

Pedro Pascal, the nerdy dad: from The Mandalorian  to The Last of Us

Early life by Pedro Pascal are quite turbulent and characterized by forced exoduses, just like Joel, although, of course, for different reasons. Pedro Pascal was born in Chile, but his family, to escape the dictatorial regime of Augusto Pinochet, found refuge first in Denmark and then in the United States, where he spent his youth in California and, later, in New York, where he studied acting.



We can therefore find points of contact between the nomadic nature of the Mandalorians and the movements of the young Pedro Pascal, a characteristic that is also common to Joel, an ordinary man who suddenly finds himself catapulted into a hostile post-apocalyptic world in which there is a real place to call “home”; moreover, Joel will be forced to embark on a long journey to accompany the young Ellie to her destination.

Those who personally know Pedro Pascal of The Last of Us describe him as an empathetic person with a kind manners. The features of his face and his physicality, then, are different from other father figures who are often represented as physically perfect, but perhaps it is precisely this aspect of his so "lived" that gives him that particular sense of protection that he manages to convey when plays father figures.

Another characteristic of his interpretations of these particular roles is the complex set of emotions that characterizes them: for example, both in The Mandalorian and in The Last of Us the characters played by Pascal experience conflicting situations and feelings, which his acting skills manage to communicate even when we cannot see his face. His are therefore not standardized heroic figures, but original and multifaceted interpretations that aim to represent the whole vast range of feelings that his characters experience.



Photo: ©Disney Just because we rarely see Mando's face, Pedro Pascal's incredible acting skills make these moments even more memorable: when he shows his face to IG-11, in the first season, the anticipation of that moment, his initial hesitation and his great expressiveness make the scene intense, touching. Then, in the seventh episode of the second season, we can see the tension, apprehension and sincere concern for Grogu's fate on his face, while the scene that closes the second season shows us a moved Mando: on the one hand, he knows that the he will miss him very much, but on the other hand he knows that the best choice for him is to entrust him to the care of Luke Skywalker, in order to complete his training and eventually become a Jedi master.

Certainly, the fact that in The Last of Us we can also appreciate the facial expressions of Pedro Pascal (who almost always wears a helmet in The Mandalorian ) has contributed greatly to his recent rise to prominence as a father figure. This is a situation that the actor tackles with a certain irony: in the video below, Pedro Pascal claims that he is able to play dads in such a convincing way, despite not having children, because

being a dad is a state of mind.

"Daddy is a state of mind" #PedroPascal pic.twitter.com/hujzC0zLRM

— B€at mu®d∆ (@beatmurda) January 12, 2023



Fundamental to the development of the "paternal sense" in his characters are those who play the role of his "adopted children": both Grogu and Ellie manage to open a breach in the hearts, respectively, of Mando and Joel , being two individuals so small and defenseless as to trigger the desire to protect them.

Mando and Joel, however, embark on their path to fatherhood in different ways, precisely based on their previous personal experiences. the Mandalorians, for reasons related to their culture and their beliefs, are inclined to welcome the little foundlings, which is the basis of Mando's initial choice to protect Grogu, to whom he will end up becoming attached anyway.

For as for Joel, the paternal feeling is already part of him, even if it is a feeling that he has forgotten for a long, too long time… Joel saw his daughter Sarah die before his eyes in the initial moments of the cordyceps infection, while they were trying an escape route. When he sees Ellie, he initially seems cold to her, but only because he fears feeling again the way he felt for her Sarah. Because he couldn't bear to lose a daughter again.

But Pedro Pascal also played two other father figures: the aforementioned Oberyn Martell and Agent Whyskey in Kingsman 2. The eight bastard daughters of Oberyn Martell, the Sand Snakes, can consider themselves lucky not to be legitimate children: their natural father has taken good care of them and they are well liked in their native country, Dorne. However, Oberyn is not protective of them, also because the Sand Snakes have been well trained in combat. Furthermore, he is not a single father, on the contrary: he is married and has had several mistresses, from whose relationships his bastard daughters were born.

Still different is the story of Jack Daniels, aka Kingsman's agent Whiskey 2, a man whose ability to be a father has been brutally stripped away. Jack and his partner were about to have a baby, but while the woman was shopping, two drug addicts broke into the shop to carry out a robbery; in the ensuing firefight, both the woman and the child in her womb lost their lives. This event marked Jack Daniels forever and led him to choose to do anything to fight drug trafficking. A man with a dramatic past, like Joel, who however failed to sublimate the loss of his son who, on the contrary, profoundly influenced his choices and his personality, throughout his life.

Dads interpreted by Pedro Pascal are men who seem tough, immovable, strong and self-confident who, however, rediscover their most genuinely human emotions by gradually opening their hearts to sincere affection for someone to protect. At any cost.