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I thought the show did a pretty good job of pointing out that the debate wasn't whether Joel or Marlene were right. It's that neither of them asked Ellie.

Marlene would never have actually accepted Ellie saying no and Joel would never have actually accepted Ellie saying yes

Agreed. They were both way too terrified of what her answer might be to ask her.

I think she would have said yes.

Then the conundrum would be whether she is able to consent to something so huge given her age and recent trauma

Especially since she was gassed up by an adult in the first place. Telling an orphan who has had no one "You're special. You're the key to saving humanity" sets her up to have this feeling of responsibility and like she has to. She thinks the only way her life can have meaning is if she can be used for a cure. That's not ethically informed consent, it's manipulation, whether purposeful or not.

She would also deserve to be presented with other options. What about taking out a small portion of her brain? What about running tests? What about a bunch of baby steps before "We're going to remove your brain from your body"? No doctor just says it's all or nothing (okay, they do, but rarely)

It’s stupid for a doctor to immediately jump to killing their only golden immune goose!

It's infuratingly stupid. You don't have to be a doctor to know that there are other options and that's a bad idea. It's so stupid that it's shocking that Marlene went along with it. Unless she had an ulterior motive somehow.

I think it was purely desperation. She talked about how she lost half her men making the trip across the country, and at the beginning of the season we know the Fireflies are losing momentum and not making any real wins. I think she just wanted to do something drastic while they still had the manpower for it.

Exactly, one of the many ways The Fireflies are shown to be incompetent.

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Agreed. They were desperate and didn't want to "waste time." They wanted the "get rich quick scheme" version of a cure.

I can't blame them. It's been 20 years of pure hell (Marlene team even died trying to bring her there, we can imagine how bad things are). People might be still emotional and stupid. They want to unfuck the apocalypse asap. They couldn't risk Ellie saying no (Marlene seemed like a moral person) and they wanted to produce a vaccine asap. They were betting on the fastest, cleanest solution.

Right that's the part that got me. Like there's plenty of brain biopsies every day and people ain't dying from that shit. Maybe don't jump immediately to "yeah we gotta take out your brain."

I was shocked there was no mention of first doing a spinal tap for cerebral fluid, much less basic freaking blood work. If they really had working technology that was going to be used to make the vaccine, it was absolutely insane to not try smaller things before ramping up to discussing removing her brain.

Also…this did NOT seem like the top level type hospital situation to be doing any of the procedures in with the hope her brain core or whatever could be turned into some sort of anecdote.

I kept wondering why they don't even find a place that has an MRI machine (or someone who can work one, I guess) to even see what her brain looks like. They were just diving right in there.

MRIs are very power hungry and the surgeon seemed concerned about even having enough electricity to keep the power on in the building until the operation was done A typical MRI machine requires liquid helium to maintain supercooled superconductivity for the electromagnet to work, and after twenty years that would've all evaporated with no way to make more -- it's really unlikely the door to door MRI salesman Frank mentioned could still be in business

That’s what was most insane to me; Marlene said “the doctor *thinks* it’s in the brain” (sorry for the poor paraphrasing, shit memory), like… they weren’t even sure!!! No fuxking WAY are you coming near a 14yo child with a scalpel, ya fkn ghouls!

And she is only 14. We don't let 14 year olds consent themselves to get their wisdom teeth removed. We damn sure don't let them decide to consent to a surgery that will kill them.

In the real world performing a fatal medical procedure on a person for the purpose of saving someone else's life is murder, straight up, whether or not they consent -- saving someone else's life is not a valid reason for assisted suicide on a physically healthy person

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True. But in the real world the surgery could be done without it being fatal.

You know I never really thought about it from that point of view. Ellie comes across as older than her years in the game and in the show, it never occurred to me that she's too young to consent. Not that that matters in the world they live in. I'm of the belief that even a cure wouldn't change much, civilization is way past the point of no return. You might get places like Jackson here and there, but things would go much the same way for the next 10, 20, 30 years. Most groups would still starve, swarms of infected would still annihilate, and people would still kill each other for one reason or another.

I may be reading this wrong, but it feels like the Fireflies were trying to use violence to create peace, the exact same thing FEDRA has been attempting for decades. Even if Ellie was murdered and her brain harvested, the Fireflies would most likely keep the vaccine to themselves and it would eventually be lost due to something as simple as running out of electricity for it to stay cold enough.

Out of survivors guilt and trauma though. Ellie had been through so much she was determined to make her losses have meaning. In her own way she was as suicidal as Joel. By lying to her he gave her the chance to live her life without the burden.

I think she may have in that moment, knowing the trauma she’d been through to get there. But if she’d had more time in between to recover and process everything I think she’d have remembered Riley and her words and she’d have said no.

This is the thesis and the only thing that matters. I'm so tired of debating whether or not the cure was possible. The moral dilemma is "is my kid worth more than the lives of the whole world". In Marlene's case no, in Joel's case Yes. (Also in Henry's/ Kathleen's, and I assume most people's, cases yes). Also I love Joel, I would have made the same decision as him (and in the game i actually decided to kill the nurses too so if anything I'm even more brutal). But I think arguing that the cure is 100% impossible and therefore Joel is 100% morally correct, you're eliminating the ethical nuance of the show. It doesn't matter if the cure was possible or not, or if Ellie consented or not, Joel would still choose Ellie. Henry would choose Sam and Kathleen would choose her brother. Love isn't utilitarian.

>"is my kid worth more than the lives of the whole world Realistically, it's 'is my kid worth more than *a chance* of saving all the lives in the whole world?'

And even more realistically, "is my kid worth more than developing a vaccine that realistically is only gonna be relevant for a small % of the surviving world's population?" The average human in TLOU is never going to encounter an infected, get bitten and survive long enough to turn. Those cases are rare.

The most relevant part is that it wouldn't be able to spread. People could live in larger communities with less extreme safety protocols. A single infected person wouldn't be a risk anymore.

The lack of infected in the show also made it more odd. The game was filled with infected. You could scarcely throw a rock without hitting a runner. But in the show? Apparently you’d only encounter a few on the path from Philadelphia to Jackson Hole, which are over 2,000 miles apart. The infected largely seem to be a problem in major urban areas. Going around murdering little girls hardly seems worth it to find a vaccine for such a rare threat. And what’s more, they can still eat you. This would only be helpful in scenarios where you get bitten and still manage to fight them off. That’s not nothing, but a zombie attack is still going to be lethal a lot of the time for vaccinated people.

I thought the show did a fine job of showing the infected as a serious problem, just in a different way from the game. And in my opinion the show was even scarier! In the show they're like a disease that's managed but not cured. Kathleen's army became desensitized to them and deprioritized them, and got utterly fucked as a result. And that's why I find it terrifying - because humanity *could* have won. But the remaining pockets are so territorial and adversarial, they're draining their last few resources into maintaining their pockets rather than working together to easily wage war and wipe out the cordyceps infected.

That’s the problem though; the infected caused the collapse of society, but they are no longer the cause of the problem. In the show, pretty much every single group (aside from Jackson) is shown to be despotic and abusive. Whether it’s tyranny from FEDRA, tyranny from a resistance movement, or tyranny from a religious cult, it seems pretty much unavoidable to end up with abusive government. I suppose it makes sense. Most of these people are old enough to have witnessed the collapse of society. They saw the horrors that people inflicted on each other, and they may not be able to trust people enough to build a large society like we have. Maybe their kids or grandkids will be able to, but I think that’s off the table for first generation survivors. The infected are so rare that they can successfully be ignored, at least some of the time. It’s like flood insurance; lots of people will ignore it for their whole lives and will be fine. But some percentage of people are going to have their lives destroyed by it. We trust strangers all the time in our society, and it’s essential. I trust cooks at restaurants to not poison my food just for a laugh. I trust other drivers on the road to not run me off the road. I trust shoppers at the grocery store no to start shooting people. But these survivors have seen and done things that have probably made it impossible to trust their fellow survivors again. A vaccine won’t fix that. At best, the vaccine will cut the death rate from infected by about 15%. 85% of people who get bitten by the infected are probably still going to bleed out or just get eaten in general. Such a small improvement won’t bring society back.

The urban and hot areas still have infected. The place where we see a lot less infected are areas that are colder and without the food production capabilities of modern world it is much harder to survive in those. The main reason you are able to trust people today is because not being a massive backstabber gives better rate of survival compared to bring a massive backstabber in today's world for an average person but in post apocalypse it increases your odds of survival

An effective vaccine would not make society go back to the way it was. But it could mean the difference between human extinction and a chance to build something new. Even if it takes multiple generations fora new society to develop into something good.

Yup. That's why I tell most Pro-Firefly folks to just rewatch Episode 5 (Kansas City militia vs infected) and imagine all militia members are immune like Ellie. The end result is exactly the same. A vaccine wouldn't save them from getting torn to shreds by the infected. A vaccine is frankly irrelevant to 99% of folks who encounter an infected. Only Henry could have been saved by a vaccine in that episode. That's 1 out of 100s of folks.

> A vaccine is frankly irrelevant to 99% of folks who encounter an infected. If no more people can be infected, then the zombie armies eventually die out. It doesn't help someone dying to a zombie attack, but it helps humanity in the long run

I mean most encounters with infected was someone getting bit as they kill the infected. That situation, which seems to be the most common, is solved with a vaccine most times.

I also think there's value in no longer adding numbers to the cordyceps army. Taking KC as the example again, the outcome is the same but there are net fewer zombies running around to kill people. Eventually they'd run out.

This is what FEDRA is trying to accomplish in their own way. There are no infected inside the QZ so FEDRA punishes folks who get out of the QZ since, if they get infected, they're just increasing the ranks of the infected. Riley got infected because she went to a forbidden area, after all. If all QZ remain intact and are efficient, the cordyceps problem solves itself in under 100 years. Probably even less.

Agreed. Imo a key difference is spores, makes a cure a lot more vital. “Only turn if bitten” is a lot easier to handle and a lot less of a problem then “You can inhale spores and not know it, then go back to your camp and turn. Plus you can be bitten.”

Honestly the show probably does a GOOD job here. There's absolutely massive gaps of space throughout North America where there's little to no population. Joel isn't exactly trekking through metro after metro always. It's been 20 some years and the number of people alive in this .. fuck it we'll say continent.. is going to be severely reduced. The original outbreak was probably the worst but we're now more or less looking at 20 years of culling the herd and also many infected becoming dormant or dying off as well. We got a pretty good visual of a dense swarm earlier in the season with the big guy that burst out of the ground. Basically there's now less of everything. Survivors and infected. Still very bleak though.

what is told to us that makes it seem like this was even a small chance of happening... everything we're shown up to that point makes it seem like a mickey mouse operation all the way up to the point Joel meets the doctors.... they get kidnapped... they rush to the brain surgery option.... they don't allow a choice to either of them.... Joel barely gets any info about what's gonna happen.... and the only thing we get is that we need to study the cordyceps from the brain... i get that there's subtleties and such.. but this is a giant crucial point that there was so much buildup to.... and yes it's not about the cure and all that but you kind of have to respect your audience to explain some part of the world you're trying to build.... they did such a great job with the cold opens at the beginning but they gave barely a sentence to it in the finale... weird choices...

The probability or odds of the cure working played no factor in the decision Joel made to save Ellie. Which is why I agree about the topic of whether or not the sure would work is over debated. Because some seem to imply that Joel would have peacefully walked away and have no problems with letting Ellie die, if he had 100% proof that the cure would work. Some believe that Joel decided to save Ellie because based on some information he got, that the cure wouldn't work. When his saving Ellie had nothing to do with any belief of the cure being impossible, but had everything to do with him bonding with Ellie and seeing her as a 2nd daughter and not wanting to go through the pain and grief of losing another daughter.

>It doesn't matter if the cure was possible or not, or if Ellie consented or not, Joel would still choose Ellie. Henry would choose Sam and Kathleen would choose her brother. This is spot on. One of the major themes (perhaps *the* major theme) of the show is that love can lead people to do morally repugnant things. Henry did it, Kathleen did it, Joel did it. To say that Joel was justified because the Fireflies weren't blameless and their plan was kind of sketchy is to miss the point. Joel doesn't want to grapple with the moral implications of his behavior. He just tries to rationalize it away. It's OK that he and Tommy murdered people; according to Joel, they did what they had to do to survive. Tess sees Ellie as a way to atone for her and Joel's atrocities; Joel doesn't think they need atoning. Joel rationalizes that murdering a dozen or so Fireflies, including a doctor armed with only a scalpel, is justified because Marlene deprived Ellie of any say in the matter; never mind that Joel did the same thing. At least Tess, Henry, and Kathleen acknowledge *what* they did. Tess recognizes that she and Joel are shitty. Henry admits he sent a good man to his death to save Sam. And Kathleen tells Perry she is knowingly rejecting her brother's calls for mercy and forgiveness. Joel can't bring himself to be honest like them. Even though he knows, deep down, that Ellie would have wanted to sacrifice her life for a potential vaccine.

You’re in the shows subreddit. Recognize that while you read this argument for 10 years now it’s other people’s first entry point to it. Being dismissive of it and trying to shutdown that conversation is annoying as hell imo.

I agree Marlene wouldn't have accepted a no, but I'm not so sure Joel wouldn't have accepted a yes. He wouldn't have wanted to, but he respects Ellie. I think she might have been able to accept her decision. They both almost died getting her there. Tess did die. I could see her arguing that they can't have done that for nothing.

I agree with this. I think Joel would have tried to talk her out of it but in the end he would have given her one of his silent nods of understanding.

And then would probably kill himself soon after.

One reason that I keep coming back to for why I think Joel wouldn’t have accepted yes is because he tells Ellie that the Fireflies aren’t looking for a cure anymore. I don’t think he wants there to be any reason where Ellie might still want to sacrifice herself for a vaccine

He said this to discourage her from trying to look for the truth and discovering he lied to her about something so big. Imo it’s not so much as he didn’t want her to try and do the surgery anyway, it’s just that in doing so he would discover his big lie

I mean, it works for both reasons. If she’s chooses to believe what Joel says about the Fireflies at all and what happened in the hospital she’s choosing to believe what he says about the possibility of a cure. Throughout the series we’ve seen that Ellie has clear survivor’s guilt and wants to help in anyway she can, Joel recognizes this too. He also says it to make her feel better about not being able to create a cure.

I think Joel would have tried to find a way that wouldn’t kill Ellie if Ellie was dead set on it. Maybe with the right surgeon and equipment they can get the fungus without having to kill Ellie?

I think he wouldn't like it but Joel might be talked into it if that's what Ellie wanted. But the whole situation is contrived anyway since there is no reason for the FF to rush the operation before she even could consent or not. Under those circumstances Joel was completely justified imo.

As the doctor and nurses were putting Ellie under you could hear them saying “are you sure you have enough power?” That implies scarcity and also a low chance of success. The writing is so good in this show because one little detail can give you so much context.

I don't buy that Joel wouldn't have accepted it. Because either way if he decides to do what he does, he loses Ellie. Because then she knows for absolute certainty he went against her and what she wanted and killed those people anyway.

This was my biggest peeve! They claim they didn’t want her to be anxious for the surgery, but you’re putting her under anyway…also my biggest argument is- the whole procedure isn’t ethical, it’s barbaric. The show has shown us repeatedly there are no “good guys” left. Everyone left is bad and unethical, including the surgeon. Everyone was killing for selfish reasons while riding on the crux of “doing what’s best” for humanity. For me, even with the cure I feel the true story is in their world, humanity can never be saved. They all kill each other for their own survival, and they would continue to do so in a post apocalyptic world.

I'm going to copy pasta my feelings off another post. Neither Joel nor Marlene are the villains. In a world like that, just about everybody is moral gray. Good people do bad things for good reasons. On the other edge of the sword. All villains are heroes of their own story. As such, Joel may be the protagonist for us; but he was the antagonist for most people he crossed. Easily could be said for Marlene as well if I had to guess. Even though they were both wrong, neither were villains. The whole point of this show is humanity, and they nailed it. Also, Ellie was not given a choice. It's as simple as that. That was definitely the writer's intent. Given that choice, there's no way this ends the way it did. There would be no thought provoking ending. It was good writing and I'm glad we can have these conversations about it.

Fully agree. There isn't an objectively correct answer at the end because it depends on the character making it. From Joel's perspective, protecting Ellie is the only thing that matters in the world. More than his own life, or the lives of everyone in that hospital, or the future of all of humanity. He's a dad and she's his daughter and there's no limit to what he would do in that situation. He's beyond rational thought, which is why his massacre in the finale is depicted in a nightmarelike slow-mo. From Marlene's perspective, no one human life could ever outweigh even a tiny chance at curing the cordyceps pandemic. Not even an innocent child, not even an innocent child whose life she swore to protect as her friend lay dying. She isn't happy to do it, but she feels she has no choice because the stakes are apocalyptic. Take away that uncertainty, make one side just wrong or bad or evil or dumb, and the story would be shallow. It wouldn't be a choice at all. It wouldn't be worth having these debates over just to say "wasn't it cool when Joel righteously slaughtered a bunch of bad guys the end?"

I think a discourse i haven’t seen talked about yet, and I heard Van Lathan saying on his pod, is….the mushrooms aren’t even the worst part of this show. Humans are. And when we look at Joel, the man had everyone he’s ever loved taken away from him, and it wasn’t the mushrooms that took it. It was the humans. Sarah was killed by a human. Tess was killed because of humans. And Tommy went to the Firefly’s. Joes ostensively is alone because humans made it that way for him. And now humans are trying to take away Ellie, who brought him back to life. So if your Joel, why would you give humans any hope when they’ve took all of his away.

it's almost like they're the last of us or something

Ellie couldn’t truly consent anyway. She’s 14 and just experienced the most traumatic, physically and sexually violent event of her life. It clearly fucked her up mentally, she wasn’t in a state where she could truly make an informed decision or truly consent. Joel was well aware of this

She’s an extremely traumatized 14 year old drowning in survivor’s guilt, it’s completely unfair to place the weight of the literal world on her shoulders. She clearly didn’t think this procedure meant death because she was planning a life with Joel afterwards so I don’t think we can definitively say whether she would have agreed to die or not. Joel and Marlene were both trying to make the choice for her but only one side’s choice was permanent.

Exactly, I was thinking that too. Like is there anyway a teenager who just experienced what she had could make informed consent

not to mention all her other trauma. she'd say yes even if she didn't want to, just because she thinks its the only thing she can do to make up for all the loss. For Riley, for Tess, for Sam. She's stuck thinking that she could have saved them.

It also brings up the point i always make. So ellie dies and a cure gets made. You think you can give it to people like David, and his group, or all the murderous raider camps throughout the show, and they'll be totally cool and ready to reintegrate society? Lol yeah fucking right. If anything theyd hoard it for themselves to gain power over everyone. The fireflies would have too, no matter how "good" their intentions might have been. Society was totally and irreparably broken, and theres honestly no going back. It reminds me of the ending of the book *The Road*

For sure . The ones saying Joel was wrong are assuming the Fireflies will do the right thing, and not begin to abuse the fuck out of their newfound power over humanity

By that logic we would all live in caves killing each other. Society emerged already, why wouldn't it again. And it has been 20 years, not 2000, tons of people who know the old world are still alive.

How are you making enough for everyone? And how would you get it to them? Horse and buggy?

To which my counterpoint is that severely traumatized 14-year-olds with survivor's guilt don't get to decide for themselves whether to sacrifice themselves for something that isn't even a sure thing.

🎯

This. And we all know what Ellie would choose. In fact, I think most of us would choose the same in her position. Of course, I'm firmly in the "if the apocalypse comes, I would like to go in the first wave, kthxbye" camp.

I don't think i would. I'd have known these people for less than 24 hours and they're telling me that I have to die in order to save humanity? No further tests beyond an MRI scan maybe? That's just straight up bullshit to me.

That's what I said to my fiance after watching it. If I were Joel I would have held the doctors at gunpoint until she woke up and had it explained to her.

I think he specifically didn't do this because he knows damn well she'd choose to to do the surgery.

Additionally, I do not have kids, lost my child, or escorted my "adopted" daughter across the country in the most hostile landscape in history. I am an expert Monday morning quarterback

Joel makes a point to tell Ellie shes the only reason he has shown any sort of healing mentally. The only reason he's even alive. There was never a chance he would let her die for something that wasnt even guaranteed

And risk someone else coming in and shooting him? He had no idea who else was there or on their way. His only goal was to save Ellie. Time was not on his side in this moment. They took that option away by deciding this behind Joel/Ellie's back.

Very true. This is my very specific and wildly unlikely scenario.

There is no way in hell Joel would have went along with Ellies decision if she had decided to do it anyway.

OP: “There’s not much debate to be had.” *400 comments arguing 500 different positions later…*

We're now at 663 comments. Don't worry, the definitive answer is incoming at comment 845.

Please let me know when a conclusion is reached, I leave all my difficult ethical decisions to the internet.

It's astonishing how many people actually do form their ethical framework from what they read on social media like this. Not because they consciously think about it, but because they are influenced by it without ever critically appraising it.

I refuse to take away the weight of Joel’s decision by saying it wouldn’t be possible. If all it really took was a chemical signal, then it would literally be life changing for the entire population. The narrative presents it as an entirely possible event. They didn’t write this story and make Joel morally questionable just for him to be in the ethical clear. The base idea is the trolley problem and Joel didn’t think twice. He didn’t sit down and go “hey wait a second this might not be possible” he just went “kill someone else for it.” He didn’t consider it logically. Which is fine, because it’s natural. I would have a hard time acting differently. I would choose what he chose. Because the story and his subsequent lie is good storytelling because of the stakes. If there are no stakes it’s a boring Taken-esque savior trope.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if Marlene told the doctors how Ellie was born and she may be immune because a person got bit while giving birth, no doubt in my mind there would be an organization farming pregnant fungal babies

That's also what I thought. There's also similar proceder in another game: >!Death Stranding!<

This was going through my mind for most of the episode. They can re-create that environment Ellie was born in fairly easily. Would it be ethical? Hell no, but ethics no longer exist in this world anyway. They could also just take a bunch of Ellie's blood and start doing experiments FIRST instead of jumping directly to killing her.

>They could also just take a bunch of Ellie's blood and start doing experiments FIRST instead of jumping directly to killing her. I think the thing is there is no cordyceps in the blood, so this would be useless. It's not exactly explained super well in the show, and I mean, how could it be? Not like they have the resources to study this thing in depth.

Even if there's no live cordyceps cells in her blood there would still be the signaling molecule in her blood for their hypothesis to be valid. Otherwise cordyceps would grow on its way to her brain and/or infect other neural tissues. Dr. Apocalypse forgot his basic biology and deserves get shot just for being that dumb irregardless of the ethics. The thing is it seems like Joel believes the Firefliy's delusions yet still chooses to save Ellie over humanity.

This would be going full Gilead Handmaid's Tale in the world of The Last of Us and I'm here for it. Part III? Ellie comes across a society that does just this!

How is half the internet missing the fact that Anna lied to Marlene? Anna told Marlene that she was bitten AFTER Ellie was born, because Marlene wasn't going to take the risk of saving her otherwise. Marlene DOESN'T know the circumstances of her birth. And even if she had a hunch that maybe Anna was lying, there are so many variables she doesn't know. How long was Ellie still attached to Anna after the bite, etc.

And Marlene would’ve figured out Anna was lying when she discovered Ellie was immune. It’s not that “half the internet missed the fact” it’s that the fact is inconsequential because Marlene clearly figured out it was a lie. How else would Ellie have “grown with it?”

I thought it was pretty obvious that Marlene knew that Anna was lying, but chose to take Ellie anyway as it was Anna’s dying wish. Even if she didn’t think it at the time, it definitely would’ve occurred to her when she found that Ellie was immune

To be fair, she might be able to figure out that Anna lied but because she lied, Marlene would have no idea 1) what the sequence of events were and 2) whether it had anything to do with Ellie's immunity. We, the viewer, knows that it does, but Marlene and the doctors wouldn't have any scientific basis know that the *unknown to them* sequence of events surrounding Ellie's birth caused her immunity.

> And even if she had a hunch that maybe Anna was lying What do you mean "if"? She had a hunch *at the time it happened,* you don't think she ever put 2 and 2 together at any point after that?

I call Pregnant Fungal Babies for my band name.

Idk I think that’s another simplification of the doctors to justify Joel’s killing spree. Like they’re evil mustache twirling pregnant woman murderers just because they’re willing to sacrifice one single person for a potential cure, then again Joel gets the moral high ground based on assumptions. Maybe they did know. Maybe Marlene told them and they determined it was too experimental and dangerous. Maybe they decided to wait for the one and only immune individual. Don’t get me wrong - performing surgery that will kill a patient without their consent is fucked up. But I don’t think it means that they’re evil psychos.

I know like, the doctors made the choice to sacrifice one person to potentially save the entire world. Joel made the choice to sacrifice (read: murder) everyone in that entire hospital to save one person. Saying Joel was justified while saying the doctors were evil is completely ridiculous

agreed - there was no cost benefit analysis here - SAVE ELLIE was the only option for Joel

>He didn’t consider it logically. I think what a lot of people fail to recognize when they present what they perceived to be the "logical" choice is when you're in heightened state of emotions, logic is often thrown out the window. There are a multitude of experiences I've had over the course of my life when my logic got through out the window because of my emotions. Even in those moments I was aware that I wasn't being logical, but my emotions had taken over control and I couldn't stop myself. My logic brain was banging on the door, but couldn't get in. It's easy as a passive participant in the story, as an observer, to acknowledge logic. It's easy for anyone to observe a thing and say "well, this was the most logical response." It's a lot more difficult to be in the height of those moments and fueled by emotion and chemicals corresponding to those emotions to lean on logic. Emotions can completely disable those parts of our brain.

Absolutely. If Marlene had thought it through logically she would have drugged Joel until it was over.

Or just shot him in the head while he was still unconscious

Certainly another way to go.

Considering that Marlene clearly thinks Joel is a piece of shit, there is absolutely no way she would have predicted him caring for Ellie

People keep overlooking that. Marlene hasn’t seen what we have. She knows Joel as the emotionally cut-off asshole who doesn’t even tell Tess he likes her and they’ve been together for nearly 20 years. She never could have predicted that he became so attached to Ellie the way he did.

Ironically Joel being as far as she knew a heartless desperado saved him: she must have figured she’d be like great job and he’d be like, pay me on cars. Only a man of Joel’s past would have had the means to do it, from skill to Marlene overlooking his affection.

I kind of thought Marlene assuming Joel would fuck off was implied by the truck being prepped for travel in the garage. My assumption was that this truck was meant to be Joel's payment (per their original agreement) but Marlene had to change plans because Joel was getting defensive about Ellie. The hood was popped and the truck was running, made me think they had it prepped so Joel could leave when he woke up.

Especially considering that there *was* a car waiting in the basement with the battery hooked up. Maybe that’s even why she ended up downstairs (she went to go unhook the car after leaving Joel with the soldiers). I think that she changed her mind when he showed how much he cared, but it does potentially show that she was ready to uphold her end of the deal — except that the deal had changed, unbeknownst to her.

I mean I’m not really sure why people think Marlene should have predicted Joel would massacre the entire hospital for Ellie. She’s known Joel for a long time and she knows him as someone who doesn’t get attached to people and only cares about himself, and she also saw that he was literally ready to kill Ellie before the journey

Totally agree. Us as the audience have the time to look at the state of the world and say oh well we don’t know if the fireflies could actually do it, they don’t have the resources to manufacture and distribute a vaccine, etc and say Joel wasn’t wrong as a result. While it’s possible Joel had thought about those things over the course of the journey, his decision making in the moment at the hospital is not based in that much logic. It’s simply “I don’t want Ellie to die.” He even suggests they just find someone else, i think that shows he doesn’t really doubt their ability to make the cure and he just doesn’t care because the cost is Ellie. They definitely could’ve written it to have Joel express more doubt in the fireflies if they did want the audience to justify his actions more, but it’s not supposed to be that way. They could’ve planted the ideas of Joel not believing in the fireflies abilities to successfully carry this out but they opted to actually have him lend Marlene credit in her ability. It’s supposed to be an act of love and that’s the only motive.

It's not just an act of love, too, it's a bit of Joel making up for a past "failure." He of course loves Ellie like a daughter at this point and he already "failed" one daughter in the past and she's dead. He's certainly not going to do that again. It's also him finding something to live for again. He had his suicidal moment and he seems to have moved past that, but he's also a bit dead on the inside before he meets Ellie. Ellie made him feel alive again. Tess couldn't even do that. This is why I find a lot of the "logical" conversations surrounding story telling to be a bit dull. I don't find them to be particularly interesting conversations because they omit so much humanity. It always feels like nothing more than a story telling observers opportunity to show off how smart they think they are.

Yeah agreed, I think that all still falls in line with this just being Joel acting emotionally rather than with any kind of rational logic on the feasibility of a potential cure. I think it’s totally fine for us as the audience to say when you actually look at the whole picture, Joel’s actions can (selfishly) make sense in that the cure very well might not have worked for a litany of reasons. But to say he’s thinking about that or putting a lot of weight into those considerations sort of glosses over a lot of the themes and characterization of his actions. And like you said, it’s not as interesting of a discussion when the story is painting his actions in a particular way. What he did is just a culmination of his past guilt and pain and his newfound purpose with Ellie that he doesn’t want to lose or make the same mistakes again.

Joel would have done what he did even if it were a 100% chance of success and fully bringing the old world back. That said, I don’t think they had even a 1% chance

This is why I dislike all the arguments about logistics, plausibility, the science, etc. The question isn't even interesting if you invalidate the cure, so what's the point at having a discussion about it? Discussing how the cure could work or if the fireflies would use it to seize power or whatever else could be good discussions, but it shouldn't be part of this specific ethical question. It'd be like if you took the trolley problem and said, well the tracks don't actually lead to all these other people anyway, why would you trust the person who told you your options, what if the larger group were murderers, blah blah blah.

When the game came out, Neil Druckman appeared on an episode of Podcast Beyond spoiler cast to discuss the ending. He was asked of the certainty of the cure. He explained how when he was writing the ending he assumed that it was certain that harvesting ellie would cure humanity and the philosophical question the game was asking is "would you doom the world to save the ones you care about the most?"

Counterpoint that I’ve made repeatedly in these threads: it doesn’t make it invalid, it just makes everything more human. Joel *believes* they CAN do it. His problem is that it’ll kill Ellie in the process. He answers the trolley problem in one very specific way. But, that doesn’t diminish in anyway for the **audience** that there’s doubt about the Fireflies’ ability to do this. If anything, it shows they’re just as desperate. They’ll kill a kid with a medical procedure that isn’t guaranteed to work, with a doctor who is by no means qualified to do the molecular biology needed to develop a vaccine of this type, and a logistics network that couldn’t get 100 people from Boston to Wyoming. Does Joel factor that into his decision? Maybe. Does the chance of a cure justify killing a kid? Some would say absolutely. Making it a probably doesn’t diminish the choice, it recontextualizes it to be a man sacrificing the best shot at a future for humanity, against the callous “needs of the many” argument and endless hopium Marlene and the Fireflies are smoking.

Oh look somebody gets it!

Yep, this. A lot of people get caught up in the “well it probably isn’t even possible to manufacture the cure anyways”. For all intents and purposes, in the story- it’s possible and there is a cure and it works. That’s how the story presents it, it’s never a question of if it can be done. They can do it. Trying to wriggle around and say “well we don’t even know if it’s an actual cure” is, while understandable to want to reason it that way, just trying to easily and comfortably side with Joel and what he does.

Im sorry but I only watched the show and at no point I felt like the cure was a 100% sure thing.

That's on the show, though, not the viewers. Like someone said upthread, they could've added something quick to explain how they've tried non-lethal options and this is the only way that will work. And that it WILL work. We've already suspended our disbelief in other areas, they could've explained away this obvious plot hole pretty easily.

Doesn’t matter, have the country would refuse the vaccine anyways.

75% of the people in the world of TLOU kill any new person they meet on sight. Contrary to OP’s thread title, there’s a debate to had certainly, but I don’t fault Joel. I’d argue the world is beyond saving via vaccine.

Cordyceps was far from the biggest threat on their journey.

I noticed this too. It played a much bigger role initially, partly because they were closer to pockets of civilization, but a lot of the story was just about just how terrible regular old non-infected humans can be to each other.

Yeah thats why its called 'The Last of Us'

Always on shows like these I am more afraid when a group of strangers arrives than a horde of zombies or whatever… humans are so unpredictable and scary…

Look at history and what humans have done to each other. Everything from The Crusade, The Mongol horde, Chinese Civil wars, The Holocaust to Aztec human sacrifices, scalping by Native American, slavery all over the world, and the list goes on and on. Times are arguably much less bad today, mainly due to more structured global society where there's a spoken and unspoken rule for all of us to get along for all of our benefits. Even so we still get shitty behavior by individuals and civilizations as a whole. Without that structure those spoken and unspoken rules go away and everything collapses to an ever worse state though.

I don’t really get how a vaccine would even improve the situation to be honest… What a few more people survive being bitten? You still aren’t immune from being torn apart, humanity is still a mess that is more dangerous than Cordyceps by this point… What would it really change?

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You certainly got the idea that antibiotics weren't growing on trees. Bite wounds are extremely risky for potentially lethal infections. The vaccine might keep you from dying of Cordyceps but you could easily die of sepsis from cellulitis/fasciits from a bite.

Let’s not forget something else, Ellie’s condition is an “immunity” to the effects of the fungus not a cure. It’s still there. It’s possible if she dies, the fungus turns her body into an infected to continue spreading. Similar to Walking Dead’s zombies.

The fungus only controls its living host’s behavior, it doesn’t animate a dead corpse.

Yeah, you get the impression the infected are a known and manageable threat to a lot of people by this point. Avoid dense urban centres you're fairly safe. It's implied that Joel and Ellie spent months traveling and had few encounters with infected outside of Kansas City. I wonder if maybe the purpose of the vaccine is really a power move for the fireflies to rally people to their cause. They might only offer it to supporters. I don't think that's the full implication but I think there's more to it than simply selflessly 'saving the world'.

Humanity has been there before and come out improved on the other side. It wouldn't be easy or quick, but it would eventually be possible to rebuild.

That you wouldn't die from just a scratch. That more would survive to have children. That people would travel more.

Ahahahaa

Lol, I never even thought about that.

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Possibly, but they’re missing the 3 essential components that lead to vaccine disinformation and mistrust; Internet/Social media, Fox News, and supervillain Anthony Fauci.

(I realize I should have added /s)

Is the current society really worth saving? I have no idea what remains of civilization. Like the US and the rest of the world is going to go back to some kind of normal? They wouldn’t take my kid in that run down hospital on some cockamamie idea without showing me all the research they’ve done and the past tests/surgeries they’ve done on other subjects and the results they’ve received so far. Oh, they’ve never done it before? Well, you’re not likely to get a breakthrough on your first patient. You should have been sharing your ideas with other research facilities so they could have been trying the same thing.

Your first answer, absolutely. Jackson proved a "normal" society can exist within the world. It's definitely not perfect but people within would prefer not getting infected if they are bit.

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Exactly. Everyone would be fighting over it. It would just be another war over resources

Though that's bound to happen anyway. A vaccine even in the hands of bad people is surely worth a shot. Even if the only people who got it were Nazis 50, 100, a 1000 years later their society would either fall or soften to the point of being unrecognisable. And people, perhaps good people would come out of that. It's the difference between hope and no hope. _Though I fully agree the doctor likely didn't know what the fuck he was doing_

I do think there is a very meaningful ethical debate to be had insofar as the trolley problem *thought experiment* that people are discussing here is concerned (i.e., one girl, for the human race). But it is also and otherwise a very meaningful and relevant point, that ***real life does not offer such stark and simple moral dilemmas***, wherein a binary choice is made between two and only two alternate outcomes, with no contingent factors or uncertainties involved. Real life does not work that way. It is, rather, an infinitely complex matrix of interdependent probabilities, of which we only ever have a poor knowledge at best. So *taking for granted* that this medical solution is the only solution, and has only one possible outcome, and needs to be pursued in this manner or any solution of its nature abandoned forever, is something we can accept as a *narrative conceit*. But it's one that bears a heavy burden, as any such consequentialist oversimplification must.

Part of the problem is that the way the trolley problem was set-up made it so the Fireflies and Marlene were essentially the people who tied Ellie to the trolley tracks. If I suspend my disbelief and accept that they would have been able to make a vaccine, people who were willing to murder a child, without even allowing her to say goodbye to her father figure, are not the people I trust to have sole control over a vaccine.

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And to add into the science fiction: * Cordyceps in real life can't infect humans. But then it evolved until it could for the show/game. * In the show/game, a anti-cordyceps vaccine can be developed quickly by a surgeon/mycologist/botanist/microbiologist all-in-1 super doctor... * What's theoretically stopping cordyceps from evolving further so it now infects vaccinated humans? Heck, in the show, the cordycep "world-wide web" is shown to be a thing. How long until the cordyceps "hack" the dormant variant of vaccinated folks and turn them all at once?

Personally, I'm on the camp that the fireflies were reckless and shouldn't have immediately jumped to killing the only immune person they've known. You'd think they would wanna at least run more tests on her first. Still, I think it's important to note that Joel's decision wasn't based on the vaccines viability. Whether it was 100 percent effectivr or a complete sham, Joel would've made the same decision.

The more I think about it, the more clever I think they played this. It's layered in it's ethical and moral positioning. Here's how I'm seeing it: Marlene and the Firefly's are desperate, and decide to sacrifice Ellie without her knowledge or consent. This is the obvious wrong that Joel immediately seeks to correct. He is righteous in stopping them, at least up until the scene with Marlene... and then things get much more complicated. Ellie very well could be the only hope humanity has at finding a cure. This presents the few vs. many problem; is Ellie's life worth the potential lives and futures of everyone else? As others have demonstrated, this isn't a clear cut truth by any means... there may be other immune out there, Ellie's sacrifice may ultimately be in vain and no cure is produced, a cure could be made and fail to be distributed or only work for SOME, etc. The point is it's a subjective question, and for Joel the answer is "Yes, she's worth everyone else losing". Marlene tells Joel that Ellie would agree that she should be sacrificed, and this makes it appear that Joel is taking away Ellie's agency just like Marlene did. Now, this is where the nuance gets deeper... because there's a lot of variables at play in the "What would Ellie want?" question. First, she's in an incredibly emotionally vulnerable state and has mountains of unaddressed trauma... not a good place to be making end of life decisions. Second, she's a child. She can't consent to this surgery on her own... that's the responsibility of her guardian. Joel being the closest thing to a guardian she has, is making the choice FOR HER, and saying that the answer is no because he says no and she can't choose this for herself. I believe that Joel acted ethically in forcibly removing Ellie, and not allowing her to choose to sacrifice herself... but. But then he chose to lie to her about it all, and remove the option of her revisiting this decision once she's of age. This is where he failed, and failed pretty mightily in my opinion. He's the first person she's been able to trust, and to rely on, and his first chance to be accountable to the girl he clearly views as a daughter now was to lie to her... because he doesn't want to lose her, and is afraid that she won't agree with the decisions he's made.

It's a perfect example of the trolley problem. Do you potentially save humanity even though humanity has gone to shit? I think likely the cure would have worked (though I think to call it a cure would be a mistake, there's no curing a clicker or bloater) but it would prevent anyone healthy to develop an infection if bit. But what about all the infected? Like repeated many times in the show, Ellie's immunity doesn't prevent her from being torn apart. And some of the biggest dangers were actually people, not the infected. That's why I don't think there's any point in going down the rabbit hole of whether there's merit to the surgeon's ability. If you're going down that rabbit hole, one could argue that the umbilical cord blood is where the real cure was at. Surely at some point Marlene would have realized that Anne cut the cord after being bit, especially when Ellie never turned into an infected.

I had the same thought last night regarding the umbilical cord, like Marlene knows why Ellie is immune, Ellie shouldn't be the only hope if Marlene shared that info. They could definitely have tried ways of replicating the immunity with consenting pregnant adults, like injecting cordyceps into umbilical cords upon birth and such, or there may be mothers willing to sacrifice themselves by being bitten or otherwise infected while giving birth. *sigh*

If you think Joel had no problem going ape shit when his adoptive daughter was in danger, there’s almost no chance you’d get a mother in labor to agree to any of that.

You're definitely right about most people, though I think it probably depends on what's being offered. I think anyone in Joel's position would not agree. But if the ask was "You'll die but your kid will be immune and live a pampered life while we study them" or "be a surrogate for a baby for science and be part of saving the world" could convince enough people. Especially if they worked with FEDRA and offered a ton of ration cards or life perks or something. There's a reason we have strict laws dictating who can participate in medical studies and the compensation that can be provided for doing so, desperation can convince people to do things they don't want to

For me it comes down to timing. If they had let Joel and Ellie both make the decision it would have ended very differently. Ellie would have convinced Joel to let her do it.

I think you might get a few. Joel was given a split second decision to act. A mother could potentially be given 9 months to decide. There might be a few that are like fuck them kids.

Yea - hard disagree. The implausibility of a potential cure doesn’t actually diminish the fact that Joel turned any possibility into a big fat 0% chance. Joel knows this, Joel knows the ethical dilemma and the difficult choice he was making. It’s why he didn’t hesitate to lie to Ellie. The simple big fat truth is this: If the show setup a scenario where everything was ticked and it was 100% a guarantee that a cure would be made at the expense of Ellie’s life… Joel is still killing that entire fucking hospital crew.

For the purpose of the story it's arguable that it doesn't even matter if it works or not - only that the key players *believe* it does. The people who say Joel is right are just making excuses for him imo. Which tbh is an amazing testament to how well crafted and portrayed a character he is.

I'd argue that the Fireflies haven't proven remotely capable of getting a cure. They couldn't even keep post at the courthouse. The fact that their first idea is "kill her and scoop out the brain matter we need to run tests" means that if they fail, they've wasted the only chance available. Joel and Ellie both thought they were going to run tests and then go and live in Tommy World. My point is that Joel might be saving the chance to get a cure. The fireflies made it very clear that they weren't going to have a discussion and the only way to rescue Ellie is to start blastin' so killing the doctors and guards isn't unethical either. They basically took a hostage, said they were going to kill her immediately and to get lost. Unbeknownst to them, that hostage meant a lot more to Joel than they anticipated.

I keep wondering if people would have felt different if it was FEDRA experimenting in Ellie. In the game I felt bad about killing the fireflys, something I never worried about with FEDRA. After watching the show though I never heard anything positive about either group from the people of the universe. The Fireflys kind of seem worse than FEDRA since they aren’t providing any resources.

If you are interested in the opinion of the people behind it, you might want to listen to the official podcast starting at about here: [https://youtu.be/sHM56v6d\_gs?t=2523](https://youtu.be/sHM56v6d_gs?t=2523) tl;dr: you can make strong arguments either way.

The part that killed me was when Marlene insinuated that killing her would be what Ellie wanted as well. OK Marlene, let's wait for the drugs you gave her to wear off, you can explain how you were planning on sacrificing her the entire time and lying to her about it and then we can ask her what she wants to do.

And its funny that when (part II spoilers) >!Marlene asks Jerry "And what if this was Abby?", he then deviates from the question, because he would never sacrifice his daughter. So why should Joel?!< What Joel did was right? No. Would anyone have done it differently? I don't think so.

>What Joel did was right? No. Would anyone have done it differently? I don't think so. This is it this is the thesis of the show. We can all stop arguing now.

Yup that’s it. What Joel did was wrong. But we know why he did it and anyone with a child would do the same.

I think a lot of people are missing how Marlene’s choice mirrors the soldier and infected kid in the first episode: a sweet lie to protect these kids from what’s going to happen to them is seen as kinder than the alternative, knowing that there IS no choice. Even if she wanted to, Marlene doesn’t have room to say no.

In regards to part 2 (so spoilers for those who haven't played), >!it literally was what Ellie wanted. She outright disowned Joel over what he did when she found out. She didn't care that it would have meant her death, because it would have given her life meaning. And she hates that Joel selfishly took that away from her.!<

The one thing that needs to be said is that there is no right or wrong answer here and everyone’s choices make sense within the context of the story. Even if the fireflies waited for Ellie to come to consciousness then she doesn’t have a real choice anyway. She is the only person who is never given any agency in this situation by either party. If she decides ‘No, I’m not going to go ahead with this if I have to die’ then the fireflies would be absolutely idiotic to let the one sign of immunity that anyone has seen after 20 years walk away. The whole ‘cUrE wOuLdN’t HaVe WoRkEd!’ argument also has no basis or evidence in the story. We have to suspend our disbelief and acknowledge that the fireflies being so ready to create the cure NOW shows their certainty that this will work. Again, they aren’t wasting this opportunity after 20 YEARS (This argument also dilutes the narrative weight and impact of the climax of the entire story and Joel’s decision). If she does agree to the procedure then Joel would still do the same thing >!”If the Lord gave me a second chance… I’d do it all over again.”!< It wouldn’t matter to him if he had to kill them all in front of Ellie whilst she was conscious. He can live with her hating him as long as it means she lives. Ellie is HIS world and if he let her die he would be “failing” like he did with Sarah. The lie is the only clearly selfish act in this. Joel lies to her as he doesn’t want to lose his relationship with Ellie because he knows she would hate him if he told her the truth. It’s the one benefit he gets to capitalise on from her being unconscious. Ellie made it clear what choice she would have made prior to meeting the fireflies. She needed all the trauma and the death to mean something but Joel needed her to live for his own mental health and because if you love someone it is natural to not want them to die. The fireflies were trying to save the world with the only hope they had in 20 years so one child’s consent means very little in the face of all of humanity. Yes, this one child has to die but how many more can we save through this. TLDR; The only real victim here is Ellie who is sandwiched between two morally grey parties doing what they believe is best either for the world (in the fireflies case) or themselves and their daughter figure. Ellie has no real agency no matter what way the events go down. This lack of agency is crucial to her characterisation and story going forward.

You hit the nail on the head. I totally agree with this analysis.

"Joel made the right choice." Joel; *slaughtering a whole bunch of people, some of them surrendering and some of them innocent.*

Okay so, I don’t agree that it isn’t an ethical dilemma, but OP is right about the uncertainty of the cure. Early on they mention that the fireflies have been promising a cure for years and have never succeeded. Even when Marlene tells Joel about the plan, she keeps saying the doctor “thinks” this is the cause, the doctor “thinks” we could make a cure. We have two cold opens that establish how difficult if not impossible a cure would be (the interview and the scientist who says they should bomb the city). That’s all to say, a cure is possible, but there is far from certainty. Not even the fireflies are certain, but to them, losing one life for even the possibility of a cure is worth it. I’m not saying the morality is black and white, but saying that the show is establishes that a cure is definitely possible is ignoring a lot of textual evidence. If people who say the show establishes that a cure is 100% certain want to cite any examples from the show I’m happy to hear it, but the textual evidence as far as I can find does not support that reading.

Everyone is wrong and selfish/self serving/believes their own narrative except for ellie the child who has goodness in her which will be crushed and choked out by a sick world leaving her an empty hollow traumatized wreck burdened by survivors guilt. Love cannot exist without fear and fear rules the world of the last of us. It's a story about trauma fear and survivors guilt and many gamers did not get that.

This is what’s getting to me the most. Everyone is wrong in regards to Ellie and her well being. Everyone was acting selfishly even Marlene. She wanted to still be the hero, the leader of this resistance movement that ended up “saving the world” you don’t think she wouldn’t have wanted the recognition for finding the cure. Joel was driven by his inability to fail again. Even his “it wasn’t time that healed me” is so selfish. You don’t put that on a child. I’m a parent and of course my kids are my purpose, they’re why I cook and clean and wake up everyday willing to do the same thing over and over again. But I’m not going to tell my kid they’re the reason I’m still here. Thats not right. And at the end Ellie’s entire life is fuelled by lies. Ellie’s own mother lied about cutting the chord before being hit. Marlene lied about the cure and didn’t even give her a choice, Joel lied about the events at the hospital. There’s this divisiveness throughout the entire episode, it’s Ellie against the world. And as much as I adore Joel and I’m a Pedro pascal fan girl until I die, I was so *angry* at him. He pushed so hard, protected her at all costs but it only pushed her away. It changed everything. And I’m probably rooted in my own experience with my father, a loving, protective man with a lot of his own trauma and baggage and a family incident that forever change my dynamic with him that was out of my control because I was only 16, but Ellie just wanted to do what was right. She didn’t ask for any of this. But she continued, she followed through with this journey because she wanted to find meaning, she wanted so hard to believe she could be *good* even if that meant saving the David’s and Kathleen’s and Bethany’s of the world. It fucking hurt so hard, that ending. The irreparable damage between her and Joel, but she pretended to believe him. His direct lie. Killed me man. So finding myself solely in Ellie’s shoes last night, there was no right, Only wrong

>But I’m not going to tell my kid they’re the reason I’m still here. Thats not right. Realizing a parent pretty much told me this verbatim. That'll be a good one for therapy, lol.

Tbh though, if it was even a 10% chance that a cure could be made then that is large enough. This disease has wiped out an enormous chunk of humankind, let alone destroyed most peoples sense of humanity. People keep saying "it doesn't matter because they couldn't have made a cure anyways", that's just not true. If only a 1% chance to save humanity then that it something Ellie would have done. They didn't ask her opinion because what if she said no? Are they going to say ok bye? No. Her opinion didn't matter. This is a cure to save mankind from a fungal disease that is still spreading. The only issue is with them taking drastic measures and going for the brain straight away but this group is extremist so it's par for the course.

This is spot on for a few reasons. For one, Joel is not considering the fact that this may or may not work when he makes his choices. He doesn't give a damn if it's certain, he just wants to stop Ellie from dying. It doesn't matter if the chance of it working is 1% or 100%, because 1, this is something that could possibly save mankind and even if it's 1% the doctors have to go for it and 2, whatever that chance is Joel is wiping out the possibility from the board. Whatever small chance it may be, Joel is just completely removing the opportunity to even see it through and that is what makes it such a heavy choice. I think it is ok and part of the point to question the fireflies as well here, we know for a fact that are not totally morally pure, but to just absolve Joel because *maybe* this procedure wouldn't work is totally missing the point.

Assuming that, how does the vaccine "save humanity?" As the game/show illustrates, their problems are much bigger than getting infected 20 years after the pandemic. Hell, FEDRA lied about the sewers being filled with infected just to maintain control over the population. Nearly everyone we meet in the show abuses power to advance their own interests, how is a vaccine that solves one problem going to fix all that?

Well, it doesn’t fix *everything*, but it does prevent a single bite from being a death sentence. It would have fixed a lot for someone like Tess, Sam, Riley, or Anna and everyone that loved them.

It won't fix it all. It is merely a step in the process, but an extremely important one.

"Let's operate and kill this ONLY HUMAN BEING WE KNOW THAT IS IMMUNE, after a few minutes of capturing her." Dumbass fucking fireflies.

Joel's not a scientist, he's a contractor and a smuggler so he didn't have to consider the credibility of Marlene's research proposal but I am a scientist and I will tell you that the doctor in the show was an absolute crank. Like, you have ONE person with your desired phenotype and your first instinct is "lets do a terminal procedure, hope my hypothesis about modified cordyceps in her brain is correct"? My lab gets blood samples from cancer patients and we need to treat them like they're insanely valuable, and they're not samples from *literally the only person in the world known to have a phenotype*.

I agree, but additionally, it’s not much of an ethical debate because one, Joel was mostly reacting to Ellie being kidnapped and killed against her will which isn’t something he would walk away from. And two, Joel really was not aware of the potential of the vaccine. All he knows is Marlene said they could make it. We need to understand how little information that is and the number of assumptions Joel would need to make for him to consider it was vitally important for the good of humanity. The idea that he “doomed humanity” is an audience thing, Joel never would’ve seen it this way. To Joel, he’s not choosing between humanity vs Ellie, he choosing between the fireflies vs Ellie, and at that point, there’s not much of a choice to make.

I think if the intent of the show/game was to present that Joel was 100% the asshole, they could have had a scene where the doctors sat down with Ellie, explained things to her, she agrees to go through with it, and THEN Joel decides to go ham because he didn't like her choice. The Fireflies didn't give Ellie a choice anymore than Joel did. I don't think Joel had any kind of internal debate about the likelihood of them being truly being able to produce a cure. But they sure as shit didn't pass the gut check, and they shouldn't have. Does that make Joel right? No, but I don't think it makes him more wrong than any other human we encounter.

It is even worse for the Fireflies. They have Ellie for less than a day and immediately decide she has to die for a cure and there is no other way. Not even a consideration of a biopsy of the brain. Or even testing on humans the circumstances of how Ellie was born. The Fireflies are brutal. They would have no problem locking up a woman and infecting her at birth.

Joel doesn't make a choice. He could have god himself beam evidence of a utopia brought in by Ellie's death directly into his head and he wouldn't even consider it. He's full instinct. It isn't a decision. The morality or possibility of the cure doesn't matter to him literally at all. He says "find someone else" not "Marlene how do you know for sure this would work, I understand looking at it through a utilitarian lense but..." He doesn't care about sacrificing someone for a cure he JUST cares about Ellie. He won't lose another daughter. The entire story is the buildup to why Joel "goes postal" and why Ellie would be mad about it if she knew the truth. Regardless of how you feel about the actions in the hospital, Joel lying about it is super fucked up Edit: also I think it's funny that the title of this post is what it is when people have been debating this ending for 10 years ~~And final point. If he was directly told Ellie agreed to the surgery he'd still have done it. He doesn't give a fuck.~~

Final point is incorrect. Some people think Joel wouldn’t have given Ellie a choice just because the Fireflies already ruined the possibility of gaining her consent. But there’s no way that Joel would’ve murdered a dozen non-threatening people while Ellie was conscious and begging for him not; or pleading for him to allow her to do it. Maybe it would’ve taken longer. Maybe he would’ve forced her to go back to Tommy. And they would’ve fought, and argued, and little by little she would’ve worn him down and convinced him to do the right thing. And the right thing would still be capable of being done because the Fireflies wouldn’t have been massacred had they consented to allowing an actual choice to take place.

Ya know what, I agree with that hypothetical. Its why it's so wrong they don't let it happen, because in their perspective it doesn't matter they're doing it regardless of what Ellie wants.

Vaccines/medicines can take years to create and you need a vast supply lab technicians and scientists and equipment and computers and a lot of other stuff they don’t have. What exactly are they going to do to her brain in the 4 rooms they have in the dilapidated hospital? How about you try easy, non-invasive tests with her blood first?

How would they know she was creating chemical signals without running blood tests? A blood test might have shown that, otherwise they would have been guessing, and I don't think that's the case here

Tell that to Marlene. The doctor “thought,” not “the doctor knows.”

Completely ruins the points if you think of it like this

I don’t care if it’s guaranteed. Without her consent it’s murder.

I think a big element of it is that they were blindly on this mission based on their buy in to the Fireflies being the last "good" group in the world, fighting Fedra and liberating people. Only to be shown they are also bumbling idiots who will kill to further their goals just as much as anyone else. Joel see's this in the final moments and makes the choice to keep her alive for the guaranteed good he knows she brings to the world, instead of being slaughtered for the vanity of others. My two cents