So, Apparently We Have To Talk About Pedro Pascal

Let’s talk about Pedro Pascal. The man is everywhere on social media. "The Internet’s Daddy," they like to call him. Which, by the way, used to be a title you earned by starting a family and holding down a job. Now you just need a square jaw and a moral crisis in a prestige streaming drama.

Pascal has become the patron saint of our current media obsession: a man with kind eyes, an ambiguous past, and a closet full of weird flannel. He has been crowned “neurodivergent-coded,” “trauma-coded,” “anxious in a sexy way,” and other things that sound like they came from a Buzzfeed quiz written by a therapist on mushrooms.

And Pascal has leaned into this affirmatively. He has spoken about anxiety, about grounding techniques, and about being overwhelmed by public attention. But now fans are running with this narrative like it’s an "Ending Explained" video on YouTube talking about a post-credit scene from the most recent Marvel movie.

Suddenly, every red carpet photo becomes forensic evidence in the case of “Pedro Pascal Is Emotionally Complex And Therefore Must Be Broken In A Way That Makes Me Feel Seen.”

I think we all know, deep down, that this is not really about Pascal. It’s about us and our ritualization of various algorithm. We no longer see the world as it is, rather we rewrite the world as we want it to be. In the beginning, it may have started with fans watching The Mandalorian for the plot and a dude in Boba Fett armor. But that soon evolved into watching it for a chance to emotionally project onto daddy Pascal. Maybe "Baby Yoda" had far more symbolic significance than we first realized.

Jokes aside, Pascal is good at what he does. So good, in fact, that his fans turned his off-stage social awkwardness into a liturgy. On X, Pascal fans have made it a study to analyze every hand-to-heart laugh and every protective-arm-around-his-co-star moment on the red carpet. People do this as a replacement for catechism and to create their own sacred moments. This is what inevitably happens when you've replaced God with...well, pretty much anything that isn't God. Fans haven't just turned Pascal into a celebrity; they've made him a saint. A handsome, sweater-wearing, spacefaring saint of selective vulnerability.

Now here is the part where I talk about performance. And, yes, I know my essays often talk about performance. Usually, I talk about it in a way that evokes a kind of self-aware cynicism. Indeed, people are fake, and it is all very cringe. But there is always something more going on. The fact is, we do perform. Every day in almost every way. And a performance, whether we like it or not, is a kind of worship.

We perform in a variety of ways as a means of maintaining a sense of harmony. We do this to maintain our dignity or to hide our shame. When enough people do it in sync, this becomes a ritual. Sometimes we call it a trend. Sometimes we call it activism. But it is all, essentially a liturgy. Religion is built into us. It is as natural as breathing. The truth is, we have long since traded the church pew for a social media feed. And our saints? They look like Pedro Pascal: soft-spoken, mysterious, handsome, and vaguely haunted.

Holiness doesn’t come from virtue anymore. It comes from recognizability. From playing the part of someone who feels important to others. Stick the landing on that performance, and the public will do the rest. They will build you a theology. They will write your scripture. They will baptize your merch in the waters of brand loyalty. And when you mess up, don’t worry, there’s always room for a redemption arc.

That’s what we do now. We rewrite people. We make them fit into our home-spun narratives. And it doesn’t matter if Pedro is a decent human being or not. If the algorithm recognizes your pain, congratulations, you’re in! It doesn’t matter if the pain is real, exaggerated, or pasted together from X posts or YouTube videos. If Pedro can perform it, his fans will reward it, not with healing, of course, but with attention.

Here’s another thing worth taking home: why is it that most of the attention Pascal receives comes in the form of assigning him a laundry list of psychological baggage, explaining away his every behavior? We've come to think that suffering equals virtue. That being a victim makes you automatically right. True enough, victimhood does drive us to compassion. But that’s what the Christian gospel gave the world. Before Jesus, if something terrible happened to you, it was probably your fault. But after Jesus? Suddenly, the poor mattered. The beaten mattered. Suffering wasn’t shameful anymore; it became sacred.

But it didn’t stop there. Suffering eventually became a symbol of today's conquest.

Because Jesus didn’t posture. He was a victim. He was unjustly condemned, beaten, and mocked, and none of it was performative. No thread, no fundraiser, no protest. He made no defense at His trial. He bore every lash and every insult, all the way to death. And He didn’t just suffer in vain, He overcame. In that moment, He disarmed all powers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them (Col. 2:15).

In our modern era, many recognize this power and have made it their own, twisting it. It's what we call the "antichrist." It is Christ's power used in mockery. So if someone is caught in what appears to be sinful behavior (like Pedro Pascal fondling his co-stars) note the responses. “Oh, he’s just working through unresolved trauma.” Sure. Just like my hero, Anakin Skywalker.

Again, jokes aside, here’s what I’m saying: pain doesn’t make you a good person nor should it excuse bad behavior. But the reason everyone thinks it does (and why Pascal fans endlessly psychoanalyze his every move) is because culture runs on Christian capital. Echoes of Christ's teaching are ingrained within us, including his conquering sin and death on the cross.

And the funny thing is, this phenomenon is one of the strongest cases for Christianity. Because if Christ didn’t exist, why would so many non-believers keep trying to grift the power of the cross?

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