Pedro Pascal wears an unidentified watch

"The Price" is the sixth episode of The Last of Us season two, and the one its co-creator Neil Druckmann directed himself. It aired on HBO in May 2025 and spends most of its runtime in flashback to the birthdays Joel Miller gave Ellie in their Jackson years. Pedro Pascal plays Joel. In this still he is lying back inside the cramped shell of an old Apollo command module, parked in the space wing of an abandoned museum, holding a cassette tape up to the light.

The tape is the present. On it is a recording of a real launch, the voice of NASA flight controller Jack King counting down to Apollo 11 on the morning of July 16, 1969, and the idea is for Ellie to climb into the capsule and listen as if she were the one lifting off. The sequence is taken almost shot for shot from The Last of Us Part II, where the museum is one of the most loved moments in the game.

On his left wrist, below the hand with the tape, is his watch. Sarah gave it to him before the outbreak, and its crystal cracked the night the world fell apart, so he has worn it broken ever since. The prop was made for the show rather than pulled from a catalogue: a field-and-pilot design with a black dial, a small seconds register at six, and an olive nylon strap, close enough to a genuine watch that Naughty Dog and PlayStation later licensed a limited replica through the brand MSTR. No maker's name sits on the dial, because the watch was invented and never carried one. In this frame the dial is turned away and lost in the amber light of the capsule, and only the dark strap and the edge of the metal case read clearly.

The watch was a birthday present from Sarah. In this scene Joel is the one giving the present.