[This article contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of “The Last of Us.”]
Viewers still stunned or shaking from the brutal twist in Sunday’s episode of “The Last of Us” may find it no surprise that the same scene fueled an online backlash when it unfolded in a video game five years ago.
Fans of The Last of Us Part I (2013) came to its sequel eager to continue playing as Joel, the smuggler escorting a teenage girl, Ellie, who appears immune to a fungal zombie apocalypse. They had spent hours studying his hangdog face and listening to his reassuringly gruff lines. So when, early into The Last of Us Part II (2020), Joel is unceremoniously murdered by Abby, the daughter of a doctor he killed at the end of the previous game, players lashed out by review bombing the sequel.
Although critics largely adored both Last of Us games, some players were furious by the narrative shift, angrily attacking the creators in online reviews. Without Joel’s steady, unflappable presence, the sequel is bereft of his particularly violent brand of protection. It may sit within Joel’s shadow, but it remains a story committed to Ellie’s journey — her struggles, her successes and her grisly failures.
Looking back on the series, I must admit I was also dismayed at Joel’s untimely demise. But my protest comes from a different place than those who were simply resistant to change or too immature to accept a pair of playable female characters. (The review bombing was also rooted in homophobic angst after the game’s trailer showed Ellie kissing another woman.) I mourned not Joel himself, but the mountain of possibilities he took with him.
The first game ends on a heart-wrenching moment of sorrowful ambiguity. Joel (voiced by Troy Baker in the game and played by Pedro Pascal in the television show) has just done something monstrous. He has murdered an entire hospital wing full of doctors and resistance fighters, supposedly on Ellie’s behalf. Joel saves Ellie (Ashley Johnson/Bella Ramsey) from a surgery that would have killed her at the cost of dozens of lives and, potentially, the future of the species.
When Ellie wakes up and asks what happened, Joel lies. He tells her that the doctors gave up on the procedure, a pitiful and flimsy pretext.
The last shot of the game is a close-up of Ellie’s face. Subtle plays around her eyes signify her dawning understanding that this man, the closest thing in her life to a father figure, is being dishonest. In this short moment she must grow years. She must, as all children inevitably must, understand that her guardian is fallible and can act out of blind self-interest. She must, as the screen fades slowly to black, learn how to live with this.
It’s a powerful and a nuanced moment, one of the best in the history of video games. We’ve just spent dozens of hours playing as Joel, killing and maiming as Joel, ostensibly to save a girl who — as we now understand — never wanted or needed our saving.
As a video game protagonist, as the one with all the power, it’s only natural to act rashly and selfishly, to see only enemies in those who stand in our way. The game’s conclusion puts this form of shortsightedness in stark relief. It forces us to sit with our previous actions, which are supposedly taken for our survival but contribute to our own destruction.
The sequel could have pushed even further into this ethically ambiguous territory. We could have expanded on Joel’s decision and the ramifications it had for his relationship with Ellie. Instead, Joel dies and the story shifts immediately into one about trauma, revenge and endless cycles of violence.
There are flashback scenes throughout Part II that go some way toward explaining what happened between Joel and Ellie. But they feel like a sideshow to the game’s main concern: Ellie’s trauma over witnessing Joel’s death and her devastating response. As a result, the sequel recapitulates the same themes of self-destructive violence covered by the original.
It continues to be a story about someone getting dragged down by an inhuman world and becoming inhuman themselves.
The Last of Us Part II misses the heart of the first game: the tenderness that developed between Joel and Ellie, the halting and careful growth of their relationship, the strengthening of their bonds.
I wanted Joel to have the time to process his decision, to properly face its repercussions. I wanted Ellie to have time to react to the lie, to speak to Joel about it, to come to an understanding of why it happened. Not in flashbacks, but in real time.
By moving on and focusing on pain, we lost the chance to explore what the series has to say about love and relationships. Ellie’s nascent romance never has a chance to fully bloom. We don’t just lose Joel when he dies. We lose a large part of what made Ellie special and what made a video game feel richly layered and memorable.
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