What The Daddy Trope Says About Us

Happy Father's Day! As I stated in Queer Cinema Catchup’s monthly video essay, the internet has defined Pedro Pascal as Daddy, reaching a particular fever pitch when the first season of The Last of Us aired back in 2023. Watch any of Pascal’s interesting, hilarious, and warm interviews and you'll probably understand the reaction. I am particularly fond of the moment from Vanity Fair's lie detector test when Pascal admits he follows a Pedro Pascal fan account and looks at it when he's feeling down. That said, I'm interested in why the particular role of Joel from The Last of Us has informed people's desire for this man, and I strongly believe it has something to do with his relationship to the other central character of the series, Ellie. In fact, I contend that Joel and Ellie captivate audiences because they evoke a classic storytelling trope we can use as a kind of litmus test for what our culture values in the here and now.

Within the world of the show, Ellie starts off as nothing more than cargo. Joel needs to transport her to the rebel group, The Fireflies, for some unknown reason. As the season and the journey continue, however, Ellie becomes the substitute daughter for whom Joel would do anything. As I talked about in another video essay, Joel lets his love for Ellie justify the worst of human crimes when he finds out the reason why The Fireflies want Ellie. Immune to the zombie threat, Ellie can help the ‘good guys’ of the show by undergoing a surgery that would kill her but generate a cure. Joel murders everyone involved to save Ellie, even though Ellie would prefer to serve a greater purpose no matter the cost.

In season two, when he finally admits what he has done for and to Ellie, Joel says he would do it all again because he loves Ellie in a way she can't understand, as, it's then implied, a parent loves a child. This father-daughter bond strikes me as interesting within the context of the desire and fan culture surrounding Pascal, as well as among other “daddies” in our media landscape. Most recently, I'm thinking of Noah Wyle as Dr. Robby in the tv series The Pitt, who is also getting a fair amount of attention online at the moment. At that same time, I am interested in this bond in light of the fact that Ellie is a an explicitly and narratively consequential queer character.

To begin examining that interest, let’s go back a bit. Our interest in surrogate father-daughter bonds isn't new. Some might argue that the queer coding of the female characters in that dynamic isn't new either. In other words, echoes of Joel and Ellie’s bond exist in other older male and young female tomboyish pairings in film and television. Think True Grit, a film that's been made twice – once in 2010, and once in 1969 – that was also based on a 1968 novel. True Grit tells the tale of a 14-year-old girl hiring a man to avenge the murder of her own father. Crucially, the 14-year-old girl, Mattie, has, well, grit. She's not some little girl but a force in her own right who sets out to get an adult coded-masculine goal of revenge accomplished. Mattie’s far from the only example of a gender-defying, young girl counterpart to an older, gruff man. Examples range from Moses and Addie in 1973's Paper Moon; Leon and Mathilda from 1994's The Professional; Creasy and Pita in 2004’s Man on Fire; Erik and Hanna in 2011's Hanna; Logan and Wolverine from 2017's Logan.

I admittedly haven't seen all of these films, but there seems to be something about the young, female characters in these narratives that sets them apart. They're precocious, emotionally complex, and mature. Tough, special in some way that makes them a worthy companion for the gruff, older, often damaged, reticent, and violent male protector by their side. Together they face high stakes and morally gray circumstances, developing a bond that is deep and resonant for audiences in the process. Such a bond seems especially resonant for female audiences who are drawn to the interesting blend of danger and tenderness, harm and protection found in the men in question, yet that blend is only found because of the characters’ connections to the othered, queer-coded, or just plain queer little girls.

The bond is not sexualized or about romance, but it is a powerful elixir that can stir our desires. Perhaps this archetype of sorts is fundamental to our storytelling. Analogous comparisons abound in great literature, including the stand-apart female heroines Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett and their older, closed off, difficult male counterparts Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy. There’s also the explicitly or implied paternal bonds explored by George Elliot in Silas Marner or Shakespeare in The Tempest, King Lear, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice. We could even argue that these are templates for the kinds of pop romance books that may or may not be flooding your booktok. In short, the mentor-slash-ward or guardian-slash-orphan dynamic is one we can find many places. Thus, we should not be surprised Pedro Pascal has taken off as an internet boyfriend. There’s longstanding cultural and narrative precedent for these kinds of men in our stories, priming us to respond in exactly this way. A tale as old as time: daddies or father figures with a penchant for violence in service of queer-coded, orphan girls; something we as humans seem to enjoy writing about and reacting to through the years.

Even so, The Last of Us version of the mentor-slash-ward or guardian-slash-orphan is a product of its time and its narrative specifics. In the Last of Us, Pascal is violent, emotionally damaged, and reserved. Pedro Pascal, the man as he presents himself on the press circuit, however, seems to exude a very different gentle, emotionally available persona. This suggests to me we're in a moment that looks at masculinity in a necessarily bifurcated kind of way. Without getting too bogged down in the depressing details, an older, more toxic and aggressive conception of masculinity reigns on our political stage, yet fan culture seems obsessed with softer men who embrace qualities like vulnerability that many might associate with the feminine.

Earlier, I brought up Noah Wyle’s character, Dr. Robby from The Pitt, a new medical drama. Within the world of that show, Dr. Robby is a leader not just by virtue of his job heading an ER staff but also because of his connection to his own emotions. We several times see him bring the doctors and other staff members together to process loss or difficult moments over the course of the show's first season. Interestingly, the first season covers the entire shift on a particularly dark day for Dr. Robby: the anniversary of the death of his own mentor during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the day continues, many characters notice something off with Dr. Robby. He’s harsher, occasionally dismissive or unkind, and, towards the latter half of the season, too invested in saving someone with a connection to his personal life during a moment when resources are sorely needed by the ER. This all culminates with Dr. Robby having a breakdown in the very room where his mentor once died. He's ultimately found and comforted by a younger, also somewhat soft male doctor, Dr. Whitaker. Nonetheless, the soft, emotionally in tune version of Dr. Robby prevails. At the end of the show, Dr. Robby tells his coworkers to cry, saying it's just grief leaving the body.

I think this show has popped off and Dr. Robby has become another of the internet’s boyfriends because they're speaking to an untapped need in audiences during this toxic masculine moment in our world. We want a guy who can access his emotions, even if he sometimes struggles with said emotions and falls prey to a closing off or a lashing out that can be coded as masculine. In fact, I think Dr. Robby’s rise during a second Trump presidency perfectly mirrors the rise of another emotionally open, yet incredibly strong character Jack Pearson of This is Us during the first Trump presidency.

With that in mind, let’s go back to The Last of Us and look at the young, female part of the equation. Ellie’s a textually rather than coded-as-queer character, which may be a first for this trope. As with Pascal and Joel, we can look at Ellie's place in pop culture and at our broader cultural realities to draw conclusions about where we are in this current moment. It's no secret that the queer part of The Last of Us has drawn praise and interest, as well as criticism and disdain from fans, viewers, and the culture at large. The actor playing Ellie, Bella Ramsey, has specifically received criticism for their physical appearance and acting, which we have to consider in light of Bella Ramsey’s queer and non-binary identity. A connection potentially exists between the vitriol and that identity; we can even point to the review bombing of the second series by those who disliked Ellie’s queer romance storyline as evidence of that connection. Plus, Joel's character dies in the second episode, putting the rest of the story on the shoulders of an explicitly young queer girl sans her mentor-slash-guardian. Couple all of that with the fact that LGBTQ characters on TV are down 36% according to GLAAD’s annual report and the cancellation of many queer-focused, female-driven shows like High School or A League of their Own, and one could conclude we’re in a bit of a different moment than the one in which Pascal’s Joel took off.

In short, I’d argue that The Last of Us and its take on the pseudo father-daughter trope arrived at just the right time for its and Pedro Pascal’s popularity. A time when peak TV and the explosion of queer content associated with its heyday had crested just prior to the second Trump age. Where we could still fall in love with the softness of Pedro Pascal and cheer for the queer episodes of season one, not knowing the fallout that was to come from Joel’s death and Ellie’s solo-protagonist and queer-driven narrative in season two during a second Trump term. Perhaps this tells us media is still all about the men; the way in which they subvert our expectations of masculinity, even as they're emblematic of them. That queer or queer-coded girls matter only insofar as they relate to their male counterparts. That said, each new iteration of an old trope offers an opportunity for more expansive, human storytelling that reflects what we care about today just as much as what mattered to us in the past. Pascal’s gentleness and Ellie’s queerness speak to something new in the daddy trope, no matter how much it relies on what came before and how much cultural backlash may come.