Pedro Pascal Is In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, See Who He Played

Before he became The Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal had a role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can see what that looked like here.

By Doug Norrie | Updated

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Pedro Pascal has seen a major star turn in recent years. He’s currently headlining one of the more talked-about series on all of streaming, doing some of it in relative anonymity. He’s also set to lead another show soon enough, one that could be among HBO Max’s biggest offerings ever. And though he really came on the scene for a shorter stint on Game of Thrones, most people don’t know that Pedro Pascal actually, at one point, appeared in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. It was one of his first credited roles, back before he was a household name. 

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode was from all the way back in 1999, and it was his sixth-ever credited role. At the time, he was going by the name Pedro Balmaceda which is a variation on the name he was given at birth: Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal. The episode was “The Freshman” which was the premiere of Season 4 for the series. Pascal played the role of Eddie in the episode, a guy that Buffy meets in her first days of college as a freshman at UC Sunnydale. At first, the two seem to bond in and around the idea of being overwhelmed by the first days of the college experience. 

But in the episode, it doesn’t take long for things to take a vampiric turn, and Eddie (Pedro Pascal) is abducted by a group of night walking bloodsuckers led by Sunday, the big vampire name on campus. He is quickly turned and it’s made to look like he had just left college because he couldn’t take the whole experience. This kind of abduction is just a cover for the vampire crowd, something they’ve been employing for some time. Of course, Buffy figures it out and has to put Eddie down before it’s all said and done. 

It would be a few years later, in 2006 that Pedro Pascal would start going by this name in his credits and from there the work really picked up. He had roles in shows like The Good Wife and made some rounds on the Mentalists and Law & Orders of the television universe. The biggest break came in the role of Oberyn Martell in HBO’s Game of Thrones. He was excellent as the confident and suave Martell who meets an ugly demise because of his hubris. 

Of course, these days Pedro Pascal is Din Djarin on Disney+’s The Mandalorian. Considering he plays almost the entirety of the role behind the Beskar helmet, it’s amazing the actor is still able to bring heart and emotion to the part. It’s just one of the reasons the series has been able to help translate the landscape of Star Wars offerings, helping to usher in the series format for the franchise. 

And next up, Pedro Pascal is set to star in Last of Us, adapted from the popular video game. He’ll be navigating a post-apocalyptic world and this could be one of the next big series on HBO. He’s come a long way since Buffy the Vampire Slayer.