If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the past two months, you’ve likely encountered Pedro Pascal fancams or thirst edits calling him the “internet’s daddy.” Here’s how we got there — and how it’s gotten out of hand
If you spent any time on the internet in the past two months, you likely encountered Pedro Pascal fancams or thirst edits — ranging from tweets calling The Last of Us star “daddy,” to TikToks using an audio clip from Shaggy’s “Hey Sexy Lady” to punctuate thirsty fan edits. Or maybe you saw the 47-year-old Chilean American actor appear in an ad for the oddball game Merge Mansion and wondered how he got there.
Whatever the case may be, here’s an accounting of why Pascal has been all over the internet lately — and how the fixation on his identity as “internet daddy” has gotten out of hand.Why has Pedro Pascal become so suddenly popular?
Though Pedro Pascal has been an actor playing leading roles, for years now — with credits that span Game of Thrones, The Mandolarian, and Narcos — his role as Joel in HBO Max’s adaptation The Last of Us has ushered his meteoric rise, both in the public eye, and in the eyes of thirsty fans.
Thirst for Pascal had already cropped up by the beginning of 2023. In January, on the red carpet, an Entertainment Tonight reporter asked him “You know you’re the daddy of the internet, right?” before showing him a tweet that a fan had penned about him being a “cool, slutty father” to which he responded, “I am your cool, slutty daddy.”
But The Last of Us was a flashpoint in his prominence, and his status as “internet daddy.” In the show, Pascal plays a (hot) character who many also considered to be a legitimately good dad. A GQ article pointed out that Pascal’s positive rapport with co-star Bella Ramsey, who is 19 years old, was a great contrast to leading men like Leonardo DiCaprio, who have a reputation for dating women that young. Part of Pascal’s rise as a sex symbol, ironically, might be because he seems like a genuinely good guy — and a genuinely good “daddy.”
Sure, Pascal’s role as Din Djarin in the current season of The Mandolarian is also prominent — but in that show, he’s helmeted up.
