Spoiler warning for the final episode 2 of season 2.
HBO has dropped a detailed behind the scenes video exploring the creation of our final season 2, episode 2. You can see it above. Featureette glamorously sees the enormous efforts behind Jackson’s Siege, a brand new action sequence created specifically for the series.
Expand the world with a brutal new battle
The massive siege was not part of the last US Part II game. It was a creative addition to the series. “We thought we had an opportunity to create more sense of vulnerability. It wasn’t just Joel and Ellie who were in trouble. Everyone was in trouble,” co-creator Craig Mazin said in the video.
Director Mark Mylod, who boarded after acclaimed work on Game of Thrones and inheritance, described “the Battle of Jackson took place over weeks,” calling it “one of the highlights” of his career. He said he “feeled awake every day, fearing something was ruined or something hadn’t been achieved.
Jackson itself was expanded with a newly built set of towns, giving the team a huge playground for confusion. “I didn’t actually get a note saying they were building an entire town for season 2,” MyLod laughed.
Fighting Photography: Flames, Bloody Agents, Practical Chaos
The battle was divided into three escalating parts. It’s the first defense using flamethrowers and rolling oil bombs, a full-fledged street battle, and the final desperate conflict between Tommy and fertilizer.
Production brought out all the stops, combining practical effects with digital magic. Real flamethrowers, snow machines and dozens of prosthetic-covered stunt performers filled the set. “It was a set piece that fell off the roof, lit up by fire, flies around, fight each other, dozens of stunt people, dozens of stunt people finish every set piece of the show,” says co-creator Neil Druckman.
Gabriel Luna, who plays Tommy, finds herself on the frontline wielding a flamethrower in one of the most tragic moments of the sequence. In our Screen Realm interview, Luna admitted that the experience left a mark. “My wife was like, ‘Yeah, baby, I think you might be traumatized.’ ”
The VFX team led by supervisor Alex Wang was layered digitally, which infected hundreds of people. “The expectation for this kind of range is that it is seamless,” Wang says. “You’re immersed in the way our visual effects are invisible.”
One outstanding moment was that the team built a fireproof rig and safely filmed it along with actual flames, like a “fire-resistant rickshaw.” Mylod describes the shots of a flamethrower fighting a horde as “really scary in the best way.”
Devastating radioactive fallout
Jackson’s siege was not the only important, heartbreaking turn of events that provided this episode. While Chaos unfolds, Joel (Pedro Pascal) encounters his tragic fate and is murdered by Abby (Katelyn Dever).
As Mazin points out, this episode isn’t just about physical survival. “This episode is really about loss. Clearly, it’s Joel’s loss that makes a lot of sense to the character and the audience, but it’s also the loss of Jackson’s majority.”
Even in a world that is struggling to rebuild, our last people will never allow that character, or their audience.
HBO
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