The Last Of Us Season 2 Recruited One Of HBO's Biggest Directors For That Devastating Second Episode

This post contains major spoilers for "The Last of Us" season 2, episode 2.

The second season of "The Last of Us" just dropped its second episode, and HBO hired their own personal grim reaper to direct one of the most harrowing hours in recent TV memory. 

Fans of the Naughty Dog video game series knew this bombshell was coming, but under the direction of Mark Mylod, a man who's helmed episodes of "Game of Thrones" and "Succession" (among other shows on the premium network), it was particularly brutal to watch the events of this episode. Not only did we see a massive assault from a veritable army of infected, violent, and starving cordyceps zombies on the protected human settlement in Jackson, Wyoming, but this is the episode where Joel Miller, the story's ostensible hero played by Pedro Pascal, is brutally murdered by Abby, a new-this-season character played by Kaitlyn Dever.

There's no question this is the most viscerally upsetting episode of "The Last of Us" to date (which is saying something; the show's not exactly fun and breezy). So what's the significance of Mylod directing this particular installment? I referred to the director and producer as HBO's grim reaper, but he wasn't always a harbinger of death on the network's various shows. He actually started out with "Entourage" — which, you know, isn't his fault! We all make mistakes and even work crappy jobs. Eventually he moved on to "Game of Thrones," where he tended to direct episodes that set up major character beats rather than ones featuring big battles.

Beyond "Entourage," "The Affair," and both the UK and American versions of "Shameless," Mark Mylod rose to prominence as a director who could handle big episodes of TV dramas thanks to "Game of Thrones." Mylod started directing for David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' massively popular series in 2015 during the show's fifth season, helming the episodes "High Sparrow" and "Sons of the Harpy," which introduce the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) and his religious acolytes and, in the case of the latter episode, sees a key character death (Ian McElhinney's Ser Barristan Selmy, who's attacked and killed by a violent group known as, well, the Sons of the Harpy). Mylod returned for season 6 to direct "The Broken Man," which reveals that Rory McCann's Sandor Clegane is still alive, and the following episode "No One," where Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) leaves Braavos and her faceless assassin classes behind. Finally, in the show's penultimate seventh season, Mylod directed the second and third episodes, "Stormborn" and "The Queen's Justice," which bring Jon Snow (Kit Harington) to meet with would-be Queen of Westeros, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), setting off an enemies-to-lovers situation and building one of the show's biggest late-stage alliances.

The reason I'm going over Mylod's "Game of Thrones" credits like I'm a walking, typing IMDb page is to illustrate that none of Mylod's episodes of the series are particularly huge installments. In fact, a lot of them are simply installments that put the pieces into place for huge episodes that follow. With that in mind, you might be thinking that Mylod wouldn't be the obvious choice for the second episode of season 2 of "The Last of Us," which is one of the most important outings of the entire show thus far. That's where Mylod's work on "Succession" comes into play, though. After making his mark on "Game of Thrones," Mylod moved on to another prestige HBO drama ... and proved that he's the perfect person to direct hugely important episodes.

Mark Mylod worked on Jesse Armstrong's universally adored drama "Succession" as a producer for the entirety of the show's run, but he also directed some seriously pivotal episodes of the series. In fact, here's something really remarkable: Mylod directed all four of the season finales of "Succession," and if you've watched the show, you know full well that "Succession" really excelled at finales. He also directed the third episode of the fourth and final season, "Connor's Wedding," which is now infamous for featuring the surprise bombshell death of Roy family patriarch Logan (Brian Cox). Armstrong and Mylod worked together to create a masterpiece with this particular installment; Logan's unceremonious death happens offscreen as his children Shiv, Kendall, and Roman (Sarah Snook, Jeremy Strong, and Kieran Culkin) react in seemingly real time as Mylod carefully uses a static location and three extraordinarily powerful actors to create one of the most stunning hours of television in recent memory.

In between helming episodes of "Succession" like "All the Bells Say" and "Church and State," Mylod also directed the movie "The Menu," which proved that he can handle brutal violence with style and aplomb. This is all to say that, for the episode of "The Last of Us" that features Joel's brutal death, Mylod was a perfect choice, and viewers should start feeling just a little anxious when they see his name attached to major HBO episodes as a director.

New episodes of "The Last of Us" season 2 air on Sundays at 9 P.M. ET on Max and HBO.