The Last of Us is well into its long-awaited second season, more than halfway through its seven-episode run. The story this season is based on the 2020 Naughty Dog video game The Last of Us Part II, and introduces new characters, including Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby, Catherine O’Hara’s Gail, Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac, and Isabela Merced’s Dina.
But there was a short surprise cameo appearance in Season 2, Episode 4, “Day One,” that no one saw coming. It drives the story forward through an important flashback. And the actor chosen to play this character was a brilliant choice, precisely because he’s one of the last actors anyone would ever suspect to be part of the show.
Who Is Josh Peck’s Character in ‘The Last of Us’?
Josh Peck, who rose to fame on the Nickelodeon kids’ series Drake & Josh, was instantly recognizable to fans. He is a FEDRA soldier, and a rather obnoxious one, at that, who appears in a flashback scene from 11 years prior to the current events.
Set in the Seattle quarantine zone in 2018, FEDRA soldiers, including Peck’s character, are traveling to their next destination. Janowicz, Peck’s character’s name, talks to his fellow soldiers using foul language, telling them a story about “voters.” This is the derogatory name they have given Seattle citizens who lost their rights, a way to mock them. The story has to do with how he came across three men disseminating religious pamphlets. Janowicz calls the angry Greenberg, apparently a FEDRA soldier with a reputation for being cruel, to provide back-up for the situation he was trying to diffuse.
He laughs as he discusses how, when he told Greenberg that he caught them “disseminating,” the man misinterprets this term with a vulgar connotation. Greenberg smacks the voter’s head against his wall so hard that his teeth come out, blood pouring everywhere. Another of the men asks Janowicz if he’s going to explain the definition of the word to Greenberg so he understands that they weren’t doing what he thinks they were doing. But Janowicz laughs it off and watches as this man, who tries to explain, has his head bashed, too.
In a twist, however, Janowicz is killed shortly after when his commanding sergeant, Isaac Dixon (Wright), betrays him and all but one of the other soldiers, a man named Burton (Ben Ahlers). Dixon, who expresses his distaste for how they are speaking about people and their use of the term “voters,” meets with a mysterious woman. He shakes her hand to signify they are now working together, then eliminates his men by locking them all in the vehicle with active hand grenades, which blow them to bits.
What It All Means
The moment marks Dixon’s defection from FEDRA to now work with the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), a militia group for which fans of the video game know he eventually becomes the leader. The scene was designed to set up the enemies that Ellie (Bella Ramsay) and Dina (Merced) will eventually cross paths with on their journey to find Abby and avenge Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) death.
The idea was also to showcase how, at one point in time, FEDRA officers started to turn on one another, believing that what they were setting out to accomplish, or at least the way they were doing it, wasn’t working. Showrunner Craig Mazin said on the official companion podcast to the series, which is hosted by Troy Baker, who originally played Joel in the game, that the sequence was “inspired by a moment you have where you’re wandering around in the game.” There’s a blown-up truck with people inside it that suggests some type of uprising. This event provides a backstory of how one of those events could have happened.
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Why Peck Was Chosen For the Role
The choice of having Peck in this role, an actor with a squeaky-clean image on screen, was an interesting one. Seeing how Janowicz was mocking the way they mistreat innocent citizens, he clearly wasn’t a good guy. Since this is the antithesis of most of the characters Peck has played in his career to date, it makes the scene and its casting even more impactful. Could an apocalyptic situation like this one turn even the most level-headed, kind-hearted people into sadistic killers with no regard for human life?
Posting on his Instagram account after the episode aired, Peck says it was a tough secret to keep. “It was an honor to play a small part in one of my favorite shows, with one of my favorite actors ever,” he advises in a post with an image of him standing with Wright.
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As a role to show both Peck’s range and the devastation of the world and the decline in human decency, his casting did the trick. Seeing and recognizing Peck was a delight to fans who had no idea he was going to appear on the show. Those who have loved him for decades also probably dropped their jaws when hearing him speak in a way he never has on camera.
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