In times of mass ineptitude, the collective longing for trustworthy competence can perhaps best be summarised by the internet's current and insatiable thirst for Pedro Pascal. Wingspan of a crested eagle and the bashful smile of a man pretending not to notice everyone flirting with him, Pascal can currently be seen on HBO's The Last of Us – most recently, saving Ellie (Bella Ramsay) from a swarm of zombies using little more than a rusty rifle in episode 5 – and being called daddy all over Twitter.
Like a dam bursting, I noticed the Pascal daddy thirst on my feed slowly and then all at once. The hunger for clips of the 47-year-old Chilean-American actor hosting Saturday Night Live – complete with its very own daddy fantasy sketch – last weekend. The proclamations of a new dawn of dadcore as he wore a pair of New Balance trainers in Mountain Teal (peak dad, that). The tweet where a video of Pascal saying "I am your cool, slutty daddy" has been edited to look as though it's being held up to the heavens by the Pope. The interview, which may well have started it all, where he told the camera: “Daddy is a state of mind, you know what I'm saying? I'm your daddy.”
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As the Guardian reports the return of the MILF is on the horizon, the DILF is also having something of a moment, at least for those worthy of carrying the mantle. The Oscar Isaac Zaddy era reigned supreme after his heart-wrenching performance in 2021 series Scenes from a Marriage, as well as the more heart-wrenching still knitwear he wore on the series. During the most recent season of The White Lotus, my friends (online, offline) all started coming to terms with the fact that Michael Imperioli was the new internet daddy. By the time his Architectural Digest house tour hit YouTube nobody else stood a chance.
Now there is Pedro Pascal, playing a kind, capable man both on The Last of Us and on your For You Page. Pascal's benevolent daddy status was fully secured this week after a tweet pointed out that the actor and his 19-year-old co-star Bella Ramsey had the same age difference as Leonardo Di Caprio and his rumoured new girlfriend Eden Polani. Presented almost without comment, the image drove home what it is about Pascal that makes him the perfect internet daddy for 2023: he just feels like a good guy.
Pascal has played his share of grizzly alphas on the likes of Narcos, Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian, slowly chipping away at the limited emotional spectrum we've typically seen big dudes bring to the screen. If the current Twitter question is to ask for a good male acting performance that doesn't involve yelling, then a good answer is Pedro Pascal on The Last of Us. As Joel his sensitivities are front and centre as he treks through the grief of losing his own daughter. The protector of Ramsey's Ellie, his emotional sensitivity may be camouflaged by the grizzly brawn of Elk Tracker leather boots and heavy-duty flannel shirts, but is always lurking under the surface.
In an interview with GQ, The Last of Us costume designer Cynthia Ann Summers spoke about how the clothes on the show had been all about durability. “If we really get to the bottom of it, what's gonna survive? What's gonna last?” said Summers. “It's going to be workwear. Denim has been around for centuries in a sense, and it's been a global staple of our lives.” Pascal, with his reflective eyes and baseball-glove hands, feels like the human version of a pair of jeans built to endure the apocalypse. In any case, he seems at the very least like someone who might take some of the hard work of surviving the end of days off your hands. A daddy 'til the end indeed.
