The sixth episode of The Last of Us season two delivered a standout moment as Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) explored an abandoned museum, a sequence faithfully adapted from The Last of Us Part II. While the episode captures the emotional core of the game, eagle-eyed fans have discovered that HBO actually filmed an entire segment that was ultimately left on the cutting room floor.
The Missing Birthday Celebration
In the source material, the museum visit serves as a tribute to Ellie’s 16th birthday. Knowing her fascination with space and dinosaurs, Joel takes her to a museum featuring both. The game allows players to explore a massive dinosaur exhibit on the lower floor before moving upstairs to a space travel exhibit. The highlight—a deeply poignant moment—occurs when Ellie boards a spacecraft and listens to a pre-apocalyptic NASA launch recording, briefly imagining a life beyond the ruins of their world.
Dinosaur Exhibits Filmed But Never Aired
The television adaptation condensed this narrative, focusing primarily on the space exhibit where Joel and Ellie play-act as astronauts. Consequently, the show omitted the dinosaur floor, where players could originally watch Ellie rattle off facts and place a hat on a skeleton. However, evidence from the episode’s behind-the-scenes featurette confirms that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey did, in fact, film scenes on a meticulously detailed dinosaur set, complete with the series’ signature post-apocalyptic grit and overgrowth.
Will the Deleted Scenes Surface?
The revelation that the footage exists has left fans clamoring for its release. The prospect of seeing Ramsey’s Ellie place a hat on Pascal’s Joel—a moment of levity amidst the show’s trademark heartache—is a high priority for the community. Viewers are now looking toward future home media releases, such as a potential season two box set, for a glimpse at these lost segments. As the season approaches its finale, it remains clear that HBO’s multi-season approach to The Last of Us Part II leaves plenty of room for such character-driven moments to eventually see the light of day.
