‘The Unbearable Weight of (Pedro Pascal’s) Massive Talent’

The Chilean-American actor, who has starred in numerous TV shows and movies with subjects all across the board throughout his career, has recently been experiencing yet another peak in his career that I am just overjoyed to see. While his acting style is not necessarily anything outstanding, he’s still a pleasure to watch no matter what kind of media he’s in. 

While it may seem that Pascal is in pretty much everything nowadays, which is, well, true, the world wasn’t always constantly in awe of him. So how exactly did he go from acting in more underground films to having his own “Saturday Night Live” segment?

Pascal’s career really took off while he starred in the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones” as well as the Netflix series “Narcos” alongside his sister, Lux Pascal. Lux Pascal is gorgeous, by the way, but I have to unfortunately admit I haven’t gotten around to watching either “GoT” or “Narcos”. I just keep putting “GoT” off because it looks so long. 

The two of them quickly gained popularity, and ever since, Pedro himself has been starring in numerous movies and shows. 

When Pascal starred in “Wonder Woman” (2017), I honestly jumped when I saw him without a mustache, but people must’ve liked his role, because he returned in “Wonder Woman 1984” (2020) three years later. I can’t really judge, because frankly, those two movies looked extremely cheesy, and no amount of Pedro Pascal can mask that for me, unfortunately. 

Shortly after his “WW1984” appearance, Pascal played another supporting role of Marcus Moreno in the Netflix original movie “We Can Be Heroes” (2020). This honestly just looked like a cheap rip-off of “Spy Kids” and “The Thundermans”, so I didn’t bother watching this, either. 

Pascal took a short break with major appearances for a bit, until he made an appearance in “The Book of Boba Fett” (2022) as his iconic character The Mandalorian. While his character was only in three episodes, Pascal and Temuera Morrison worked great together, and if they do end up renewing “Boba Fett” for another season, I’d love to see The Mandalorian return. Because he’s just awesome and my dad loves his voice.

In the same year, I went to the movies with my best friend and his older sister, and if I remember correctly, we were going to watch “Elvis” (2022). Great movie as well, but I’m not here to talk about Austin Butler (whether in a positive or complaining-about-his-accent sense, take your pick). We were waiting for the movie to start, watching the trailers as usual, and then suddenly one starts, and Nicholas Cage’s horrifying face pops up. 

I’m like, woah, trigger warning: Nicholas Cage next time, then I’m like, okay, Cage did great in “National Treasure” (2004). This looks good.

Then Pedro Pascal shows up too!

And by now, I was already enjoying the trailer for this movie, which would soon be revealed to be titled “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” (2022). Like, this movie looked hilarious. 

Really, it just looked ridiculous, and I think that’s why it seemed so funny to me. I’m obsessed with seemingly low-budget movies that just have the most random selection of A-list actors, but they make it work somehow (see also: “Marriage Story” (2019)).

Another movie along these lines that Pascal also conveniently starred in “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (2017). Somehow this movie managed to grab Taron Egerton, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Colin Firth, and of course, Pedro himself. I’ve seen clips of “Kingsman” on TikTok, and clearly this movie did well enough to earn a mention by Pascal of the ‘fancams’ that people have been making of him on one of his “Saturday Night Live” skits earlier this year.

Pascal’s most recent two works have been “The Mandalorian” (2019-) and “The Last of Us” (2023-), both of which I have been enamored with at some point. 

Let’s talk “Mandalorian” first—while I have seen all of the “Star Wars” movies except “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018), because I just can’t stand Donald Glover for the life of me (don’t even ask me why, because I couldn’t even tell you the answer to that), I was never the biggest fan of any of them. I just like telling people my favorite is “The Phantom Menace” (2008) because I just sound cooler that way.

Anyways.

My dad and I decided to start watching “The Mandalorian” regardless, because we had heard good things about it and needed something to watch. We both liked the character of Boba Fett in the “Star Wars” originals, and my dad would always tell me how he had an action figure of him back in the 80s. Good times that I wish I was a part of.

So I went into this show expecting it to be mediocre, but boy, it was not.

Pascal does an absolutely amazing job in this spin-off series, and I could not imagine anyone else portraying the titular character. The voice he puts on, the body language he adopts, all of it was just absolutely perfect for the mood of the show. Not to mention every (two) time(s) Mando takes his helmet off in the entire show, which made audiences gasp as if they had no idea who played him. But deep down, we all knew, this is the way.

While “The Mandalorian” is still airing, and the third season just came out this March, Pascal’s newest video-game-adaptation-turned-TV-series HBO’s “The Last of Us” became a smash hit almost overnight. The 2014 PlayStation 4 game was almost equally as successful, and fans were overjoyed to see Pedro Pascal would be playing the main character of a game that had won Game of the Year for its sequel in 2020. 

While Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie in HBO’s version of the show, does a fantastic job (and I’m sure I’ll write about this later), we need to talk about Pascal’s portrayal of Joel Miller.

At first, fans were tentative about seeing a Chilean actor playing a seemingly American character, Pascal quickly proved them wrong, along with many other characters in the show that are of different races than their game counterparts. Pascal’s rough-and-tumble personality that he puts along, as well as his signature “Mandalorian” voice he puts on with a twinge of country accent make for an incredible character. For someone who has never played “The Last of Us” games, but intended to even before the show came out, this show makes me want to play them even more. I can safely say this is one of Pascal’s roles that really shows his flexibility and range as an actor.

Some of Pascal’s upcoming movies and TV series, according to IMDb, are “Tropico”, “Strange Way of Life”, “My Dentist’s Murder Trial”, “Freaky Tales”, and “The Uninvited”. Whatever “My Dentist’s Murder Trial” is sounds so incredibly lame, but it also supposedly has David Harbour in it, so maybe we’ll end up with another “Kingsman” situation. 

I mean, I can only hope that Pascal continues to star in more films that showcase his inexplicable talent, and if he doesn’t, then…