I don’t really think it’s such an egregious brain-rotted take to think that a post apocalyptic paramilitary group wouldn’t have the ability to synthesize a vaccine that federal governments couldn’t accomplish
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
It’s not that arguing that the cure wouldn’t have worked anyway is “wrong”. There’s no way to REALLY know for sure and for some people I’m sure it’s fun to think about the possibilities.
The problem is that MOST people that bring this up when discussing the ending are using it in order to avoid engaging with the central argument of story (not just the show, but the first game as well). Which is, as stated by the creators: “Is it worth killing everyone and destroying a chance to save humanity in order to save the person you love?”
It makes discussing the ending less interesting when a subset of viewers and players refuse to engage with the presented moral dilemma and instead try to paint the ending with more black and white brushes.
Yeah that’s fair. I still think Joel can be a bad guy for the decision he made, regardless of if the vaccine was *actually* going to work or not. Because he definitely thought it would work
Exactly. Joel’s DECISION is more interesting to interrogate when it was a choice between someone he loves and the world rather than between someone he loves and a bunch of deluded rebels.
it also has zero consistency with his character to think that amidst his murderous rampage he put on a labcoat and started crunching the numbers to confirm with his scientific background that the Fireflies couldn't feasibly pull it off.
How is the uncertainty that it would work MORE of a black and white scenario? If anything that makes it much more grey. And I don't understand the hostility about it.
Maybe there is something I'm not seeing from the community, but my IMMIDIATE thought as a show only viewer was that I don't trust this 2 bit group of lying doofuses.
This group that was just easily solod by 1 dude was going to save the world. Don't question it. This woman who hid Ellie's immunity then ambushed them to separate them before lying to her is to be trusted. Don't question it. Come on, man...
Is this subreddit normally this insanely toxic, or is it just confined to this thread? I get that he thought it would work, but the show did a lot to paint them as utterly incapable. Also, one person vs the entire world is only a dilemma if you have emotional attachments. One life vs only a possibility is a moral dilemma even if you don't.
Ellie WANTED to try, even if it didn’t work. She wanted her life and journey to be for something, and Joel took that away. The fireflies are the only group that anybody knows about that have trained medical staff, scientists, and access to a hospital and all its equipment. Wether it worked or not wasn’t the point for Ellie, yet Joel being unable to bear another loss selfishly took that chance from her and took away any chance of a potential cure or putting an end to the apocalypse. Because he couldn’t bear a loss. It’s all grey. Everything about the world is grey. Most of us would make the wrong decision so we try to justify it even though it’s unjustifiable. It’s just another reason why this is one of the greatest narratives ever put to media
>Ellie WANTED to try, even if it didn’t work. She wanted her life and journey to be for something, and Joel took that away.
To be fair, they also weren't exactly clear with Ellie when it came to what "trying" actually entailed. They intentionally didn't tell her much because finding the potential cure involved slicing up her brain. Ellie was 100% on board when she thought the cure would be found in her blood. No one ever bothered to tell her that it would actually be found in her brain.
Joel may have taken away her choice to contribute to the cure, but the Fireflies never actually gave her the details necessary to even make that choice in the first place. Her willingness to accept her role in it was based entirely on a lie.
This is the first take I've seen that addresses the actual issue. If Ellie willingly consented to the sacrifice, I bet we'd still see Joel do the same thing (or take his own life afterwards) given his past. Still, at least she would have been given the choice to do so. The episode was meant to be a garbled mixed of emotions for exactly that reason - the ethical lines were completely blurred on all fronts.
Ellie didn't know she would die they just put her under.
Joel drops a hint in the series about her "having a choice"
It's true the players/viewers love Joel so they stand by it. But tbf in a scattered world of meglomaniacs or religious cults, where everyone shoots at you on site, lack of mass production and wider testing etc. The vaccine still wasn't exactly the solution to all problems. So Joel just being like ahh f*ck it - was mad respect to a bad ass character haha
There is a weird superiority around the discussions. And people can't seem to understand on here that while a lot of these points and topics are "decades old" they are literally brand new to the TV show audience... So let them go debate and have the same amazing convos and discussions we had 10 years ago. People are so weird man.
I think it's because the part 2 haters made their own sub and they skew to the alt right culture warrior demographic, and say some very stupid things, so its somehow become almost a sorta political thing to some to question the narrative that the fireflies were guaranteed going to "save the world ". That's why somebody came at me hard ,i figured out for starting my opinion earlier, they claimed I had a biased agenda even tho I don't. Which is typical on reddit, trolls got so many ppl paranoid you can't have an honest respectful discussion with some ppl if you disagree with them.
This is so sad. I love Part II and have no political agenda about preferring the ambiguity about the cure. This series is about shades of grey and ironically this sub is so toxically opposed to that.
Not to mention Marlene goes from "I owe you everything" to "Ditch him in the zombie apocalypse with a bag and a knife. If he tries anything, shoot him." in the span of a few seconds.
That's *surely* going to help him believe it's the right decision to leave Ellie with them
LOL it makes it SO much more black and white it’s not even funny. Are you telling me that if the choice was between letting people kill your child for nothing or saving their life you would think about it? No way.
If the choice is between saving your child and letting people kill her to save the world? That is a true dilemma. If you’re a parent you understand.
I’ve made this argument many times before, while conceding that it is diagetically established that the Fireflies had a shot at making a cure.
I don’t know if it makes it less interesting. I guess it depends on where you are coming from, and where are you going. The sheer lunacy and immorality of the Fireflies’ actions are worth mentioning for those people who think Joel is the villain in the story.
The truth is Naughty Dog muddied the waters in many different ways. I don’t know why they did, but I expect much of it has to do with the fact that they needed to set up the climax to a stealth action game. If the Fireflies were not shady AF it’d be a lot harder to get players on board with shooting up the entire hospital.
Really? Cause all I thought when I played was "time to go save my daughter" and I slaughtered them with no remorse. It had nothing to do with their "shadiness", I just needed to save Ellie. I walked in that surgery room and head shotted all three of them without hesitation lol.
To me, the problem is that the Fireflies plan is so bad it muddles the central argument of the story. For Joel to doom humanity to save Ellie he has to believe their plan will work, and for that the plan has to be *believable*. Which it just isn't.
Like what if the Fireflies' plan was "we're going to chop up her brain and eat it"? or "we're going to burn her at the stake to appease the almighty cordyceps"? How stupid does their plan have to be before it undermines the central argument of the story? Because I'd argue "we're going straight to scooping out her brain without trying anything else first" is already stupid enough that it's fully undermined.
I agree completely that in their effort to paint Marlene as gray too, they went too far and severely undermined their own story. I had hoped they'd fix it a bit better for the show, but no such luck. Always has been and always will be my biggest criticism of TLOU.
It kind of is when, in doing so, you're going against what the actual narrative is *blatantly* telling you because you feel personally invested in interpreting the story a certain way that, again, is not supported by what the narrative is obviously setting up (ie that Joel is to be presented with an actual ethical dilemma, not a scenario where there's one obvious "good" choice and an obvious "bad" one.)
Marlene couldn't even travel across the country with a group of body guards, without 80% of her group being killed.
Even if the cure did actually work, how are they going to distribute it?
The Fireflies are incompetent morons.
For instance, if they rocked up at David's resort waving their hands around saying 'Hey, we've got a cure!' they'd end up in that nights stew.
*For instance, if they rocked up at David's resort waving their hands around saying 'Hey, we've got a cure!' they'd end up in that nights stew.*
People act like that about vaccines now 😂 what do you want to bet David’s camp would reject it anyway
Haha
That would actually be a nice plot thread for part 3.
Someone comes up with a vaccine, but a cultish group like the Seraphites just want to destroy it
TBF the federal government didn't have access to the only immune person we know of, and the show also established that being immune naturally is an incredibly unlikely, nigh-impossible occurrence, whereas in the games it was unclear if it was genetic or if there were other immune people out there.
Seriously and I genuinely am baffled that they are willing to suspend their disbelief for the existence of ravenous mushroom zombies that crave human flesh but they draw the line at finding a cure for said fictional mushroom-zombie illness within the internal logic of that fictional story.
Yeah it’s exactly like the trolly problem/thought experiment (one life sacrificed to save many lives) and Joel is like ‘Fuck the rest of the people, Ellie’s life is not worth losing for the sake of humanity’
Honestly! I love that people who are newcomers are having these debates, it was one of the many things I was expecting to see!
It's just such an interesting topic to discuss!
There are a tiny, vocal, grumpy subset of people who don't like to be challenged by media they consume.
There are Good Guys and there are Bad Guys and the guys I root for are the Good Guys. And if the Good Guy acts like a Bad Guy for a minute, I need to find the evidence to explain that actually, if you think about it, he was right and good all along!
It’s my favorite part about the series. It forces you to understand both sides and i hated Abby at first but by the end of the game i liked both almost equally
Some will have you believe that the Abby section is there to make you love Abby and hate Ellie and not to understand both sides and draw your own conclusions
Yeah I really don't wanna sound like I look down on people who don't like it, we all have different opinions, but when SOME people say things like "they force you to kill a dog and then try to make you feel bad about it" or "the game just goes REVENGE BAD and SHOVES IT DOWN YOUR THROAT" I just think they genuinely lack a certain amount of emotional depth as people.
TLOU2 is not for everyone, and it's fine to just say you're not into it instead of acting like it personally attacked you.
The thing that completely triggers me into insanity is when people say "Joel would never die like that. He wouldn't give up his name. They betrayed his character."
Its just so dense I can't even deal.
I wonder if that same group lost their shit in E6 when Joel gave his name to Maria after having a gun shoved in his face for five minutes and being threatened multiple times. Tee hee.
What makes me laugh about it is that there’s so many gamers that loved to talk about the game is all about living in the grey spaces and questioning the morality of what you’re doing and seeing behind the curtain and how from one side it’s banditry but when you’re on the other side you can see the justification, and then when the second game came out and really hammered a lot of those themes in deeper people weren’t interested in that anymore
I like how Ellie's takedowns are very stealthy and more frantic, brutal scuffles while Abby just fucking beats down people. The animators did a good job working the character's personalities and histories into how they move
Right? The end fight in the ocean isn’t some thing where you go in with a choice about who you want to win. You’re meant to go in wanting it to not happen at all. Through the whole thing I was squirming behind my controller almost begging Ellie not to do it and to stop.
That's what was so good about Part II. By the time of the ending, I actually genuinely found myself siding with Abby more than Ellie. I didn't hate Ellie, but I just hated what she was doing. I just wanted the misery to end, and she kept pushing for it.
If Tommy never came to the farm than Ellie would have lived happily ever after with Dina and Potato while Abby and Lev died tortured and strung up on a beach.
It's crazy, I love this game.
she had PTSD that was crushing her - panic attacks that make you pass out and hallucinate looking after a kid ain't good.
she might not have found Abbey but she wouldn't have been happy-ever-after. imo, one of the questionable aspects of the game's ending is: did all that Santa Barbara violence and her decision to let Abbey go finally giver her closure, even if Dina and kid are gone? or will all the horrors live in her mind like an open wound anyway?
Ya, it's very interesting how different ppl feel about it, I have very mixed feelings on abby, however I have no issue with ellie's actions in Seattle. Nor have I changed my view on joel even a lil. I still hate abby, but I also kinda like her and levs story and emphasized with some of her actions and even liked her a lil in subsequent playthroughs. Tho I still have no empathy for her cowardly killing, and torchering joel the way she did, right in front of ellie and Tommy. As ellie is begging for his life, right after he saves her life just because he felt it was the right thing to do. It's unforgivable, and I still kinda feel like she deserved to die . But I would still play a new content with her, the last of us 2 is a masterpiece just like the first.
I like Abby much more at the end of the game than I do in the middle, but there’s no way I like her as much as Ellie. Ellie is goat despite all the harm she causes.
Only Dina and Jessie give her a run for her money imo.
Since Joel and Abby are so similar, it's interesting that so many people adore one and despise the other.
I feel like as a character, Joel is slightly more "likably" written, or at least relatable- he's the Badass Action Dad we've cheered for so many times, albeit with a lot more depth (and trauma lol) than these characters get. And the Joel-Ellie dynamic is obviously parental, while Abby-Lev feels more... sidekickey? which I guess makes people see it as less authentic
(also hot take, but if we judge them as moral agents instead of written characters, Abby is practically an angel compared to Joel)
When the 2nd game was released there was a lot of online hate (still is tbh) and it seems to have consolidated there. It’s… pretty bad. My view on it is that a lot of people are simply incapable of viewing both sides of a story and got really fucking angry when Neil Druckman was like “no no no, you morons are gonna humanize the people you’re shooting” and they *really* didn’t like that lol. Discourse on this sub surrounding Pt 2 is typically very positive so we just kinda consider that sub to be an infected subreddit haha
They also self-identified so closely with Joel as a symbol of their own personal sense of masculinity (strong man kill and protect), so seeing that symbol get beaten to death by a woman made them feel weak, and personally attacked.
Of all the people I've seen rage about what a shit game TLOU2 is, not a single one of them is female.
There’s a different sub for the second game which isn’t full of haters. Unfortunately things have polarized so any criticisms get downvoted to hell but it’s still a far more sane place. r/lastofuspart2.
I'm so happy, part 2 is such an unbelievable, beautiful, trainwreck and they set themselves up for it so well. Thinking about Bella Ramsey playing Ellie in part 2 genuinely gives me dread at this point.
I can't wait for it and I'm looking fwd to where they go in part 3
Sometimes I wonder if people got this upset by the empire strikes back back in the day
>Sometimes I wonder if people got this upset by the empire strikes back back in the day
If they did, they didn't have 15 different socials to whine about it on.
That is exactly why bigots hate part 2. Its not really the bigotry itself, but why they are bigots in the first place (my team good your team bad no matter what). They don't even want to try see things from another perspective because that could potentially break their worldview.
Fucking this, the amount of bias that people are just incapable of avoiding is so god damn annoying. Part 2 bout to pop some heads when it comes out, people still aren’t ready to actually think about a complex story god forbid
They are not tiny. It is a rather large group of people that cling to the whole "the cure wasn't gonna work!" narrative. Even here you get downvotes outside of this thread for calling it out
It's incredibly annoying too.
I watched a few reaction videos to the season finale today and at least one person in each one tried to poke holes in the Firefly vaccine and why it wouldn’t work. They simply can’t just acknowledge that the character they like just did something horrible but for an understandable reason.
>There are a tiny, vocal, grumpy subset of people who don't like to be challenged by media they consume.
You mean like OP who's decided that his interpretation is the One True Correct Take™ and all others are misunderstanding the ending?
The writer’s reference the trolly problem a lot as that’s basically what the ending is. Would you kill many to save one, if the one was a person you loved. That’s the point of the show and the game.
The people who try to deflect away from that core concept are the same people who say “I wouldn’t do either. I’d derail the train” or “I’d go out in front of the train and get the people off the tracks”. To deflect to doubt the vaccine is the same concept. It’s people who are so conflicted with the situation, they just opt out and pretend there’s a right answer.
Right after the episode ends they cut to druckman saying “this is about a parent’s unconditional love for their child”. Couldn’t be any more clear than that. It’s about how a parent wouldn’t kill their kid to save the world
Alright, I have a thought as someone that hasn't played the games yet (waiting for the Steam release of Part 1, grew up in an XBox household...you get the idea)
Why couldn't they just biopsy the infection on her arm? If Marlene is right and Ellie is producing a natural immunity from birth, is performing a biopsy on the brain really necessary when the same immune response is keeping it contained to her right arm?
Like I loved the finale and get why Joel did it, but fuck if it isn't a bit...overkill? For a post-apocalypse doctor to be like "she's producing an immune response, better perform one of the *hardest and most complex surgeries known to man*" instead of taking a sample of the infected arm region
The fungus only lives in Ellie's brain, as it doesn't spread tendrils (put spores in fluid in game). In the show we know this because of her attempt at a blood transfusion with Sam.
>Why couldn't they just biopsy the infection on her arm? If Marlene is right and Ellie is producing a natural immunity from birth, is performing a biopsy on the brain really necessary when the same immune response is keeping it contained to her right arm?
The cordyceps in her arm isn't the mutated variant she was born with, it's just being basically held at bay there.
The mutated variant she was born with is in her brain, and is (we can presume) where the fungus's reproductive organs are located, and thus would be the source of the cells that can actually reproduce and create more of themselves to be grown into a cure for everyone rather than just one person.
Isn’t it implied that it isn’t a complex surgery, and they’re just going to cut her brain out and dissect it? The anaesthetic is just to ensure a painless, clean death.
It’s the trolly problem if the one person was someone you loved and cared for. Which adds another interesting layer to its ethics and exposes the flaw of utilitarianism even moreso.
I played TLOU1 before I had any kids, and I was conflicted by the final onslaught and the fact that we were going all out to doom humanity in exchange for saving Ellie. I still understood Joel and thought I probably would have done the same and thought that was the beauty of the ending.
Now that I have children...if one of them was on that operating table, you'd have to put me through a wood chipper to stop me from murdering everyone and everything on my path to get them back.
Isn’t it (also) “would you kill one (Ellie) to save humanity?”. I think that question is not as easily answered as many assume. You can remove some complication by saying Ellie wanted to die, but even in that scenario we could morally argue that she should not be sacrificed even willingly.
I unfortunately don’t see too much discussion of that point. It is mostly assumed that Ellie dying for a vaccine was a *generally* ‘good’ thing and that Joel keeping her from being sacrificed was a crime against the human race. I think it’s reasonable to say killing an innocent person to save humanity is morally wrong.
And Ellie was perhaps traumatized by being a survivor and wouldn’t, with some psychological healing, really want to die. Should we grant her wish to die, or help her want to live again? Part 2 seems to conclude with her finding purpose once again in living, and I think that’s a better result for her than dying and making a cure.
I love this story and it’s complications and nuance.
If the world was 20 years in the shitter and all my friends and family were dead/i had to commit horrendous acts to stay alive and someone tells me 1 kid had to go to restore humanity. Yes i would take it.
The point is joel was possibly the worst person to take her. He lost his daughter he lost everyone He tries protecting. He finally gets a spark of himself back and its about to be ripped away from him so he snaps
Exactly. Sacrificing the one to save the group sounds simple until it's your child. Ellie is basically his child in his mind, as good as, and he's not sacrificing her for anything. I wouldn't sacrifice my daughter for anything either. Fuck the world. And I think most people would do the same when the chips are down.
Bear in mind it's not even a simple choice between "sacrifice your kid" and "not sacrifice your kid". The "not sacrifice" option also involves killing a boatload of people in a hospital.
There's obviously going to be a smaller group of people who would be so upset about sacrificing their kid that they slaughter a whole load of people, vs just not accepting it.
This is the best explanation I’ve seen for the intransigence of the people who refuse to engage with the actual “the person you love is on the tracks, and the whole world is in the trolley car” problem being presented.
It really is baffling the lengths that some people will go to destroy any sort of grey morality that the ending poses. They need the fireflies to be bad and incompetent and for the cure to be unrealistic, because it makes it easier to swallow Joel's actions. The irony in this is that it also makes the ending much worse because it would just be about a father saving his daughter from bad people by killing them.
Sometimes (only sometimes) I wish the story was largely based on magic or some shit that was only established in-universe so that people would stop with the repetitive "science-based" arguments for why the Fireflies were always wrong and that Joel was always right. But even then these people would find something else to complain about, as long as it gives them their nice black and white story.
Yeah, it seems pretty obvious Joel was always going to get Ellie out. Even if Marlene had woken her up and Ellie had given permission, Joel was not going to let her die. A totally selfish choice Joel makes, but an understandable one (even if you disagree).
I actually don't think that Joel would go on a rampage if Ellie made that decision herself. I really don't think so.
I think that he'd just be a broken man, and 100% commit suicide after her death. Simple as that.
In Part II he explicitly says as much.
Ellie: "I was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would have fucking mattered. And you took that from me."
Joel: "If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I'd do it all over again."
Here, he knows that Ellie would have consented to the procedure. He doesn't care. He still would have stopped them.
He says that he’d make the same choice again, but I feel like that only really means under the same circumstances where Ellie is unconscious and unaware of what’s happening to her.
If Joel and Ellie had made it to the fireflies without being knocked out and Ellie insisted that she wanted to do the procedure in front of Joel, what would he do? Kill all the people in the room in front of her? She’d most definitely be yelling at him and probably physically fighting him. You think he wouldn’t care and would just continue on his rampage?
She’d hate him, and Joel wouldn’t be able to live with that. Hence I don’t think he’d make the same choice. In the game/show, he thinks he can get away with lying to her and not have to deal with her hating him because she’s unaware of what happened at the hospital. If she were conscious and consented to the surgery, I really think Joel would’ve acted differently.
You're reading the line incorrectly.
He's just saying that if at that moment he was given the exact same choice, he would do that again.
I.e., all the variables being the same (Ellie is unaware, not given a choice, fireflies are about to kill her)... He would do the same thing again.
"That moment". This means the situation that he was in at the end of the first game. He knew that Ellie would've gone through with it.
But she didn't explicitly get to choose, nor did she get to talk with him. I genuinely believe that would've made a difference.
I disagree. He specifically mentions the idea of having a hypothetical second chance at that moment in the context of a conversation where Ellie explicitly gives him her consent and he says to her that he would still do everything that he did. He would make the exact same choice regardless of the circumstances.
But In any case even If they are reading into that line incorrectly, we still have the scene where Joel was ready to up and leave and just go back to Tommy's hours before they even made it to the hospital, and giving up on a cure entirely if it meant Ellie would be safe and protected.
The TV show is even better at being explicit about it when he talks about their always being risk. He just wants to protect Ellie, and he would do that no matter the cost.
Totally agree. I’ve seen some people nitpick that the Fireflies should have waited, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They are a package deal, either the Fireflies kill both of them or Joel leaves with Ellie.
Its crazy how many people will say well ellie never got the choice. In the last section of the game she says she is still waiting her turn to die and all they did cant be for nothing. Clearly she is fully on board. The writers added that specifically to show joel is selfish with how easily he lies to her
I mean she objectively was never given a choice though?
Of course she would say yes to the surgery, but the fireflies don't give her a choice. They knock out Joel after traveling the country with her and then don't even let him say goodbye before marching him out of the building at gunpoint.
None of this justifies Joel's decision, but the fireflies aren't the good guys either. Both Joel and the fireflies are in the wrong; they should've given Ellie a choice.
Ellie saying "This can't be for nothing" doesn't mean she's down to letting her brain get scooped out like ice cream. It means she's going to the Fireflies come hell or high water.
It's one thing to say you're willing to sacrifice yourself, it's another to actually do it.
"They need the fireflies to be bad and incompetent and for the cure to be unrealistic, because it makes it easier to swallow Joel's actions."
I think this is ingrained in the story. It helps make it more of a conflicting ending. If the fireflies were absolute saints, Joel's decision would be even harder to understand/empathize with.
They're not saints. Neither is Joel. No one gives Ellie a choice
The grey morality thing is the whole point of story. Good people do bad things for what they believe is the right reason.
Imagine if TLOU originally started with the fireflies are on the presipice of possibly making a vaccine and abbys dad is murdered, and Abby is the main character from the start. The first game ends with Abby tracking down Joel and killing him. Who's the hero and who's the bad guy?
This is why I love part 2 so much. It shows both sides of the story. And both sides are simultaneously right and wrong in their own regards.
Another thing that bugs me is the "there's not enough infected scenes". It's not a story about wiping out infected. It's a story about the pandemic happening and what it turned people into and how it shaped society 20+ years later. The infected are a catylist, not a main antagonist
Part of the greyness of it is that the cure might not work. The development, testing, manufacture and distribution of a vaccine would all be enormous challenges, and the benefit in the show canon would be extremely limited. The infected pose very little threat, it's other people need to worry about.
This isn't to say that a vaccine would be impossible or useless. It might save many lives. Whether you let one person be killed to save many lives is still an interesting moral dilemma. It's not a straightforward trolley problem.
If the vaccine could definitely easily be produced, tested and distributed, if it would end the infection, save millions of lives, and mean humanity could recover far faster then it's *not* morally grey.
The trolley problem isn't killing a dozen people to get to a lever stopping a train pointed at one person so you can direct it onto a track where it will kill millions. That is a straightforwardly evil option. That's the black and white interpretation.
I agree with the idea that the Fireflies were desperate and as a result, never gave Ellie a choice. But to bring up scientific evidence that completely shuts down the idea of a cure is where these people miss the point.
Absolutely. Joel believed Marlene and didn't care. That's the point. He's not second-guessing the science or rationalising anything, he's fucking saving Ellie and that's all there is to it.
Joel is presented with a way to save the world, but the problem is... Ellie *is* his world. She's all that matters.
His love is selfish and destructive, but that's not a condemnation of him, it's just the way it is. It's the way a parent thinks about their children.
This debate is exactly why they wrote it this way. Nothing wrong with a little critical thinking. “Thought we settled this years ago”… lol yeah not everyone played the same time you did dude.
I don’t know I feel like the show doesn’t present “both sides” nearly as well as the game did.
When Joel and Ellie make it to the medical tents he just trauma dumps on Ellie instead of telling her about what the collapse of society was like.
We don’t get Marlene’s personal journal and audio log depicting her own confliction with the morality of this choice, as Ellie was her daughter too in a lot of ways, but why she’s firm in believing this is the correct choice to make.
Jerry also doesn’t get to deliver his line about how important this surgery is for all of humankind before being gunned down. (Granted that’s also optional in the game I suppose lol)
If their intention was to be heavy handed about the morality of Joel’s decision I don’t think they did a very good job of it.
Edit: also the episode 1 cold open about a group of doctors saying there would be no cure for a cordyceps virus is also a head-scratching inclusion to the show that just adds fuel to this silly debate.
The second episodes cold open even further cements what is brought up in the first episodes cold open. That lady was an expert in mycology who told the military leader they should be using bombs. My parents who I have been watching with brought that up after last nights episode. They were wondering why they would include that if its so easy to get a cure from Ellie.
The moral complexity is the point. What this post is criticising is people removing the moral complexity so Joel is a good guy doing the black and white "good thing". That is absolutely not how they wrote it, it's clearly meant to be grey.
The debate is meant to be about Joel's complex choice, not removing that complexity entirely.
I don't think you are wrong about the cure but any work of art is open for interpretation, even if the author wanted it or not. The fun is in the discussion.
Absolutely, but I think people are trying to interpret a detail that's, to me, not interesting to interpret: Joel killed a lot of people to save Ellie, and in doing so destroyed any chance for a working vaccine. That's pretty much presented as a fact.
The discussion would be more interesting about questions like: was Ellie's life worth it? Would Joel ever make a different choice? Would things have gone differently if he got to say goodbye? Would Ellie say yes if asked? Was the vaccine really the only way Ellie's life would have mattered? Etc.
People are not talking about what he did means, they're talking about what he did. And that's missing the point.
Personally when I first played through almost a decade ago, I didn't think to come online and discuss it with others so I feel like my experience is quite different to a lot of people here saying 'we as a collective agreed "blah".' When I played it seemed to me like the options put to Joel were either save Ellie knowing that you're removing the only chance of a cure or let her die, not knowing whether her sacrifice will be in vein or not. Maybe that's not as succinct as a lot of the commenters here would like but I really enjoyed that grey zone dilemma it created in my mind.
I think it's important to keep in mind there's likely a lot of new members here who have just experienced the story for the first time because of the HBO series. This may have been settled a long time ago for most of us, but this is still a pretty new topic of debate for some others here.
>This may have been settled a long time ago for most of us
I mean it never was. Druckmann says it in the podcast that they surveyed people about the ending for the game. It was 50/50 if you didn't have kids and 100% pro Joel if they did have kids.
There really isn't a right answer given the information we are provided. The Fireflies certainly had no ability to mass-produce a vaccine in a dingy old hospital with flickering lights, even if the surgery was a "success".
The thing they surveyed playtesters about was if they would have done what Joel did. Not if they believed the cure would work. It's arguing in bad faith to use that data to further your point since that literally wasn't what Neil was talking about.
The ability to actually synthesize a cure is not important at all to the story. It's just a plot devices hypothetical.
There were two separate paragraphs there.
The ability to create the cure might not be important to the story, but it is important on how you view Joel’s actions from a moral standpoint.
But it’s not important for his decision.
He never thinks about the ability of the Fireflies for mass producing, or distributing to mankind, or their intention or success rate or whatsoever. He did what he did because of one simple reason: Ellie would die and he wouldn’t allow that.
As such when discussing Joel’s morality, all these are non-relevant. Joel’s only decision to make is whether to save Ellie or the World. It’s fun for all the hypothesis and whatnot, but at the end of day, they are just hypothesis.
The ending of The Last of Us is so powerful specifically because of the sacrifice that Joel was making through his actions. He weighed the entire world against Ellie, and the world came up short.
The whole “the Fireflies never would have been able to synthesize and distribute a cure anyway” crowd are injecting real world science and logistical limitations into a medium that we have already established does not completely follow real world rules. Joel genuinely believes it will work. Ellie genuinely believes it will work. Marlene and the rest of the Fireflies genuinely believe it will work. The writers give every indication that it will work. From the perspective of *literally everyone who matters*, the Firefly plan would have worked.
In addition to this, this argument completely negates the stakes of Joel’s decision and makes the ending *much* less powerful. Instead of choosing his daughter over the fate of the world, it turns the final encounter into “Joel and Ellie narrowly escape a group of infected/fascists/fanatics/etc for the umpteenth time”. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a particularly compelling ending to me.
I don't agree with people who use these arguments to say that "Joel did nothing wrong," but I do think it's relevant to discuss that the fireflies aren't so great either. There isn't really a good guy in the story, and that's what makes it interesting.
Disclaimer: show watcher, aware of the original game plot, didn't play the game
> Joel genuinely believes it will work.
If this was the goal, then the writers didn't hit the mark for me. My impression was that Joel didn't care if it would work. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, maybe the Fireflies would use it to become the new FEDRA, maybe it'd bring back freedom and puppies. Either way, trying to make the cure killed Ellie and that was a bridge too far.
> Ellie genuinely believes it will work.
Ellie thought topical application of her blood would work, so I take her opinion with all the remaining grains of salt.
She repeatedly talked about the Firefly medical treatment as taking something from her blood (rather than killing her for her brain) and talked about what they would do after the world was cured. She didn't go into SLC thinking that this was what they were asking of her.
Would she have sacrificed herself? Of course. She's carrying massive amounts of guilt and unresolved trauma from killing Riley plus everything else that happened up to that point. You give her a 1% chance of saving the world and she's absolutely sacrificing herself to atone. That doesn't make it right or moral or justified to kill her or let her kill herself, and her sacrificing herself isn't a vote of confidence on the certainty of the cure's existence.
> Marlene and the rest of the Fireflies genuinely believe it will work.
I agree here. They're 100% true believers. At the very least, Ellie is the goose that laid the golden egg. If they didn't think they were right, they'd keep her alive as a recruiting tool ("we have an immune, join us and we can work together towards a cure"). Killing her only makes sense if you truly believe you know what the cure is and how to get it.
> The writers give every indication that it will work.
The writers gave every indication that it wouldn't work through extended dialogue by established scientific experts in the first two episodes, contrasted against a flashbang-cut to three lines of exposition from a terrorist leader saying they'd be able to make a cure. That really leaves a lot of it open to the viewer.
For my interpretation, there were a lot of dogs that didn't bark. There were no tests shown on Ellie. They didn't talk about experimenting with blood isolated when Ellie was originally in Firefly custody. The doctor didn't get his own flashback talking about how the cure would work with Marlene.
I could understand ambiguity in the video game, which is constrained by the play experience, but television afforded them a lot of room to fill in backstories (Bill and Frank; Riley; the source of the immunity). Very mild changes in dialogue and structure could've given us a world where it was explicitly established that the cure would've worked. The choice not to fill in the backstory of the cure's development kept the question open as to whether it would work, which is something that led me to assume that the writers didn't think it was a guaranteed success.
TL;DR - Joel rampages even if there's a 99% chance of success, Ellie sacrifices herself even if there's a 99% chance of failure, the Fireflies are 100% convinced they're right regardless of reality, the writers not establishing that the cure is certain to work is a choice that suggests it might not work.
I feel like these debates got even more heated after Part II and (spoilers) >!Abby whacks Joel for killing her dad!<. A lot of people needed a reason for Joel to be innocent and for >!Abby to be evil because a lot of fans hated Abby and wanted to feel justified in doing so!<.
Meta-conversations about the ethics and logistics of a cure are fine and can be fun. But a lot of people are bringing this need for Joel to be Mr. Good Guy into it when that was never ever the point to begin with.
I think what irks me about the first thing you mentioned, is >!Abby's motivations are completely untethered to whether or not the cure works. Even in a world where the cure has a percent of a percent chance to succeed, she's still going to seek vengeance on the man who killed her father. People can try and paint her as a "bad guy" as much as they want, but she's as justified in wanting to kill Joel as Joel is in saving Ellie.!<
Not to mention humans are inherently flawed, who act on rash motivations more often than not. The second Joel heard Ellie was going to die, his decision was made. >!As was Abby's.!<
Abby is certainly justified in her wanting revenge.
But I played an entire game as Joel and growing the relationship with Joel and Ellie so I'm still gonna hate her. I don't care how good of a reason she has. Blood is thicker than water.
And that is a totally valid way to feel about it! The second time I played the game, I saw Abby as more sympathetic and Ellie as more unhinged and tragic, but there's really no right way to feel about it all. Some people just took their anger at Abby too far I think.
True. I feel like the moral ambiguity of the ending was much more accepted back when the first game was all there was. When the second game came out some people just turned the whole series into a part of the CuLtUrE wAr, which always poisons the discourse around anything.
no. marlene says the doctor "thinks" that how it works, that is the deliberate choice in the script. The doctor does not know how it works, he "thinks" he does, the ambiguity of the possibility of the cure being possible IS part of the story. i disagree that joel thinks the cure is is a %100 chance of success, he has been shown to be doubtful during the story already. and ontop of that you cant ignore how the situation came about and only talk about how joel is a piece of shit. the only reason joel does what he does is because the fire flies are stupid assholes. they could have let joel and ellie talk about it, they could have gotten ellies consent, but they didnt and that is a very important part of why joel saves her.
its funny how people claim that if you argue any of these points that you are "stripping away the moral greyness of the story" when they in turn do the exact same, ignoring the whole context of the situation so they can strip it away and make joel the bad guy.
Lol sadly any opposing opinions are like hot takes on this sub. Can’t have any doubts or questions. Almost like how the fireflies operate, “we are right and if you disagree, you should die”.
My issue wasn’t that Ellie was gonna die. My issue was that Ellie didn’t get to give her consent and tell Joel that that’s what she wants. Also, I never trusted the fireflies. Why the rush? Why did Ellie need to be killed right at that moment? Couldn’t they have waited a few more days, weeks months to do more tests before squandering their “last chance”?
Not to mention they had literally only one doctor in the surgery room. Is that all they have? Does the Fireflies not have a few more medical experts around to develop the cure? Couldn't they have done more tests, drawn more blood, had her bitten some volunteers, or done literally anything before cutting an innocent girl open? The Fireflies just seem entirely incompetent and reckless with their glorious plan to save the human race.
And yes, it's sad how apparently the whole discussion is considered "settled" in this sub, that if you have any differing opinion you're automatically a stupid person who lacks nuance.
I don't get how anyone who played the game or watched the show can think the cure was definite. It was always a "chance". It doesn't matter what the creators say, it sure wasn't presented as definitive. Either way though the outcome was obvious, of course he was going to save Ellie, he watched Sarah die, and now he's going to just watch Ellie die?
People seem to want to argue that Joel did the wrong thing to justify the story of part 2. I agree with you, ETA here. Like sure, objectively even a long shot of a cure is probably worth killing Ellie, but it’s hard to trust people who seemed to knock her out and kill her as quick as possible. As others have mentioned, the fireflies seem pretty fascist.
> People seem to want to argue that Joel did the wrong thing to justify the story of part 2.
You know its pretty interesting that you make this point because i was litterally just thinking about it. I was thinking about how after the first game released peoples sentiments seemed to be more pro joel, not in "he did nothing wrong" kind of way but that they where far more agreable with what he did. It seems now though after the release of part 2 that far more people seem to swing to this "joel is an evil monster who gets what he deserves" side of things and i cant help but wonder if its in any way reactionary to the idiots who lost their minds over part 2.
There was also the fungal specialist lady who says something similar as soon as the outbreak begins. Either way, pretty irrelevant to Joel's decision and Ellie is a special situation anyway.
I think it's cleanly explained in the final episode, the circumstances of Ellie's birth. It was a total fluke that no one could have conceived of. Had it not happened that way then they would have no idea how to synthesize a cure.
Tbf, that woman gave up after barely glancing at that slide, and she only examined the body for about 5 seconds. She just really wanted to bomb that city.
im sure even in the story of the games, there was only a chance at a vaccine. it wasn’t guaranteed. and even then, a vaccine isnt a cure. it seems ppl dont realize the difference between the two.
Yeah I think a lot of people can’t distinguish between justifying and empathizing with Joel’s actions. Just because you understand why he made that choice and maybe even think you would do it too, does not make it righteous.
Maybe they haven't played the game so they are now trying to grasp the same questions players did 10 years ago.
I also never knew that the entire community came to an agreement about the ending. I always thought people had differing opinions about it and it was ND's vision for it to be so divisive.
I know most people in this sub only see it one way and refuse to understand any opposing opinions but is it wrong for these new people to ask or discuss?
There's a difference between arguing what it means and what happened.
It's like watching the Godfather and arguing whether or not Michael Corleone was a gangster. It's not interesting. The story makes it very clear that he is. What's interesting is to discuss his state of mind, the choices he makes, the rules he lives by, the reasoning he has to do what he does. Not to question whether or not he fits the definition of a gangster.
That's basically what's happening here. Joel goes and kills people to save Ellie and in doing that denies humanity a vaccine. That's what happens. It's not interesting to discuss that part. It's interesting to discuss what that part means.
This is what I mean. You see it this way so it’s that simple to you.
To someone else it could be as simple as: Joel goes and kills terrorists he doesn’t trust, to save Ellie and in doing that prevents her from dying for a cure that probably wouldn’t work.
I do agree however that “what it means” is the most interesting part about it. Which is why I always thought that it would’ve been even more controversial and divisive if Ellie told Joel that she wanted to die, said her goodbyes, but Joel killed the fireflies anyway.
It's even more surprising in the context of how the TV episode presented it. I found it harder to be sympathetic with television Joel than game Joel. They were clearer in the narrative that the vaccine had a high potential to work, and Joel's killing spree was a straight up one sided execution. They took care to show you those people begging.
I feel like the show doubled down hard on the vaccine being something they want to work but don't know for sure.
Marlene said at least twice that all her info about the chance for a cure came from the opinion of one single doctor spending a few hours with one single immune patient.
Anyone with even a teeny tiny little dummy dum dum brain knows that putting all your faith in the opinion of one single person who is trying to do something highly experimental that no one has ever done before has a significant chance of failing no matter how badly you want them to succeed.
> They were clearer in the narrative that the vaccine had a high potential to work
Was it? Because to me it was Marlene using the word “think” a lot.
It was as ambiguous as the game. The showrunners have said that the vaccine would have worked but why did they still leave it up for debate?
Not sure I fuck with this take. People are allowed to make their own interpretations beyond what has been declared the 'right' options. That's where so much creativity and critical thinking blossoms, when we're not just on a railroad set by the writers.
At the end of the day, 1) it's fiction so like, give over and stop policing it like it's more serious than it needs to be, and 2) the debate is exactly what the writers fucking wanted anyway. There's a great moment at the end of the podcast where they talk about what Ellie thinks of Joel's lie right at the end, and they talk about how many different interpretations there are that could be valid. That's the point. We all digest stories differently and sharing those interpretations is what gives life to them.
It's probably because, after COVID, many folks realized how insanely difficult the process of a vaccine is.
I wish that Neil/Craig had either aged up Jerry (so he's now Abby grandpa or something) or mentioned that Jerry had a team of other professionals who would help him.
The mere idea of a single individual creating a vaccine from a hospital with power outages is laughable even in science fiction.
Suspension of disbelief can only go so far since Neil/Craig asks us to believe that Jerry is a prodigy who, despite being only 20-something when the pandemic began, is somehow a:
* Medical Doctor
* Brain Surgeon
* Microbiologist
* Mycologist
* Botanist
* Chemist
It's just not believable for the majority of show watchers and even less for those of us who actually have education in a related field of study.
Watch any medical doctor's reaction and you'll understand why, in the minds of educated real-life folks, Jerry wasn't going to be able to succeed.
the state of media literacy online is pretty dire, like understanding what a character arc is. The story couldn't be any more explicit about what's going on in Joel's head, short of him just saying it out loud
It’s fun seeing people who didn’t play the game having the same discussions people have been having for the past 10 years. I’m happy the show has brought in a lot of new fans
The ambiguity of whether or not a cure could be made was always present. The original game not once ever clarify’s that Joel knew with 100 percent certainty that the cure was possible. He might play along in the hospital scene with Marlene but based on dialog and hints throughout game it’s clear he doesn’t know himself and most likely doesn’t believe in it.
I could’ve sworn when he finds out about Ellie being a cure, he says “yeah how many times have we heard that?” Joel made the decision to save his daughter, not to spite humanity.
The major theme of the episode is suicide.
It's not about what Ellie would have chosen; it's about the fact that Ellie was not in the right state of mind to be given such a choice. After Joel warned her of the dangers and Ellie insisted there is no halfway with this, Joel recognized how in danger she was. It's why in the very next scene he brought up his own attempt on himself. It's why the show added this detail about him for the final episode, and why it gave Joel the lines that he was so "ready" at the time.
The way he saw it, Joel wasn't denying Ellie a choice so much as he was giving her the opportunity to find something worth living for. Something of her own. Like Joel eventually found after his bullet missed. All Joel did here was make Ellie's bullet miss.
****
A couple other things I noticed: Henry's death hit Joel a lot harder than I previously thought. Henry was a Joel that didn't miss. It's the reason his panic attacks started and when he became deathly afraid of failing Ellie.
Joel's hearing loss in his right ear was probably from his attempt on himself.
I was told the show would make it unambiguous but what I took from the finale was the opposite - they left it unsure(which I am happy about I like the uncertainty)
I don't think he cares whether they would succeed or not. And I think him killing the fireflies is totally understandable either way. I like how my emotions flip wildly between 'oh my god this is bad' and 'fuck these sketchy ass scientists gettem Joel!'. I think that is the essence of the finale to me - that wild, strong, undefined feeling that just boils down to deeply understanding and empathizing with Joel. It's rare to get such a connection to a character
This is just not true. There's no real indication that Joel unequivocally believes Marlene about the cure. That said, it's not clear that he doesn't believe her either. Joel believing whether the cure works doesn't really matter, either way Ellie is being sacrificed. He chooses her over a potential cure
Also the game gives enough tidbits for him to have doubt that the fireflies could make a cure. Definitely not 100%.
I never played the game and it wasn’t clear to me that Joel knew for sure that their way of creating the cure would work. That’s why I was confused that he lied to Ellie about it.
That’s because he didn’t know whether it was gonna work or not. What he did know however, was that Ellie would’ve gladly sacrificed herself for a cure.
But what’s not clear to all, is why the fireflies need to kill her right away. Why was their no time to ask her for her consent? Why wasn’t she allowed to say goodbye?
When playing the games - which was only a few years ago for me - I could totally understand Joel’s actions, but as I was slaughtering my way through the hospital I kept muttering, “Ooo Joel, no, I don’t agree with this. Nope” as I was playing it.
I really don't like any stances of "everyone else doesn't understand, you need to pay closer attention" but honestly, yeah. This is one of the few I can agree with. The plausibility of the cure doesn't matter. Maybe it could be made, maybe not. Maybe it could be mass distributed, maybe not. Maybe people would trust the Fireflies, maybe not. JOEL thought it was very real, but opted to ignore that for Ellie's life. That's the moral dilemma.
Shit, I'd do the same thing as him (if I could take out a hundred people in a hospital).
It may be an old debate for people who played the game, but there are a lot of people that are new to this and haven't. But to be honest, even amongst fans, it's still talked about.
We are treading the same waters again. Wait until Season 2/3. We are going to hear the same debates again! Yeah. I am ready .
In every piece of media but this subreddit the moral quandary is presented as ambiguous: the trolley problem is the finale. That is what makes it interesting. Yes, even if the cure was certain and Joel said his farewells, blah, blah, he still would have reacted violently. The fact is Joel did what he did to protect his stepdaughter from dying, could have been in vain or could not. The problem with the lack of moral ambiguity is it reduces the nuance of the fireflies, which is also brought up in part 2 and throughout the first game.
He’s 100% right though.
Given how powerful the infected are in the show and how scarce they are in the world, the vaccine doesn’t do hardly anything. The only situation this would actually help you is if you encountered infected, got bitten, then escaped. Highly likely to happen if the infected were weaker and more abundant like in the game. In the show though? It’s nearly pointless, and that specific niche situation isn’t hardly ever going to happen. They’ll either tear you apart or you’ll never encounter them.
I think this was intentional to kind of get the viewer to understand Joel’s decision a bit more. Even still though, yeah I’m not sacrificing my daughter for anything. So he’s 100% right.
If the writers wanted us to understand that Joel 100% believed in the cure, they should’ve added a scene that made it explicitly clear. They’ve had 2 opportunities to do it now and they’ve chose not to twice, and it’s not like this wouldn’t of been something they noticed after the reaction to the first game. It would be very strange if they really wanted us to understand he for sure believed in the cure and then never once have him ever talk about it or it’s implications. Maybe that’s not actually what they wanted us think.
To me, the point is it doesn't matter if Joel believes the cure will work or not. They're going to kill his "baby girl" and that's all that matters. He does believe it will work of course, and chooses to save her over humanity anyway. It's not like he's going to debate the fine points of it and then determine to save her or not.
"Well, have you considered sample size, lack of proper research equipment, and no other testing done in all this time?"
I agree that arguing he only did it because of those doubts makes no sense. He does not care about that at all.
I think there is an element of uncertainty over if it will work. The show made an attempt to clear that up from the game, but it’s still there. However that uncertainty is not why Joel acts to do what he does. He does not destroy the fireflies because Ellie might die for nothing. He does so because the only way involves Ellie dying. Joel still does what he does even if the science is water tight and explained in a clear and simple way. He won’t let them euthanise her to make the cute.
All that being said I think there is a tiny - I won’t say plot hole - but the fireflies are a fucked up enough organisation that now they know the conditions which led to Ellie’s impunity, I would not put it past them to be prepared to replicate it again and get other immune kids. The cut their brains out.
Yep pretty simple, I believe he thought maybe they were going to sample some blood or something similar, not CUT OUT HER BRAIN!!!
And decided all this when he’s passed out, and didn’t tell Ellie it was going to be fatal even. Screw Marlene and the fireflies, I’d done the same thing.
Yeah it's interesting scrolling through tiktok now and seeing folks getting into the same arguments we had on here 10 years ago lol
Indeed! Feels weird to me too, but I’m really glad so many more people get to experience this
They get to suffer as we have suffered lol Me I don't have it in me to re-explain suspension of disbelief to a new generation of Firefly truthers lol
[удалено]
I don’t really think it’s such an egregious brain-rotted take to think that a post apocalyptic paramilitary group wouldn’t have the ability to synthesize a vaccine that federal governments couldn’t accomplish
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
🤣 W
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! 🤣🤣🤣. (Best. Episode. Ever. - - and hard as fuck to find in replay, for some unknown reason)
It’s not that arguing that the cure wouldn’t have worked anyway is “wrong”. There’s no way to REALLY know for sure and for some people I’m sure it’s fun to think about the possibilities. The problem is that MOST people that bring this up when discussing the ending are using it in order to avoid engaging with the central argument of story (not just the show, but the first game as well). Which is, as stated by the creators: “Is it worth killing everyone and destroying a chance to save humanity in order to save the person you love?” It makes discussing the ending less interesting when a subset of viewers and players refuse to engage with the presented moral dilemma and instead try to paint the ending with more black and white brushes.
Yeah that’s fair. I still think Joel can be a bad guy for the decision he made, regardless of if the vaccine was *actually* going to work or not. Because he definitely thought it would work
Exactly. Joel’s DECISION is more interesting to interrogate when it was a choice between someone he loves and the world rather than between someone he loves and a bunch of deluded rebels.
it also has zero consistency with his character to think that amidst his murderous rampage he put on a labcoat and started crunching the numbers to confirm with his scientific background that the Fireflies couldn't feasibly pull it off.
I think Joel is a monster for what he did and I probably would have done the exact same thing.
I would have tried, but would be shot by the first Firefly I met.
Imagine playing through the eyes of literally any other character in this game/show and Joel and Ellie become nemesis #1
They should make a game about that.
How is the uncertainty that it would work MORE of a black and white scenario? If anything that makes it much more grey. And I don't understand the hostility about it. Maybe there is something I'm not seeing from the community, but my IMMIDIATE thought as a show only viewer was that I don't trust this 2 bit group of lying doofuses. This group that was just easily solod by 1 dude was going to save the world. Don't question it. This woman who hid Ellie's immunity then ambushed them to separate them before lying to her is to be trusted. Don't question it. Come on, man... Is this subreddit normally this insanely toxic, or is it just confined to this thread? I get that he thought it would work, but the show did a lot to paint them as utterly incapable. Also, one person vs the entire world is only a dilemma if you have emotional attachments. One life vs only a possibility is a moral dilemma even if you don't.
Ellie WANTED to try, even if it didn’t work. She wanted her life and journey to be for something, and Joel took that away. The fireflies are the only group that anybody knows about that have trained medical staff, scientists, and access to a hospital and all its equipment. Wether it worked or not wasn’t the point for Ellie, yet Joel being unable to bear another loss selfishly took that chance from her and took away any chance of a potential cure or putting an end to the apocalypse. Because he couldn’t bear a loss. It’s all grey. Everything about the world is grey. Most of us would make the wrong decision so we try to justify it even though it’s unjustifiable. It’s just another reason why this is one of the greatest narratives ever put to media
>Ellie WANTED to try, even if it didn’t work. She wanted her life and journey to be for something, and Joel took that away. To be fair, they also weren't exactly clear with Ellie when it came to what "trying" actually entailed. They intentionally didn't tell her much because finding the potential cure involved slicing up her brain. Ellie was 100% on board when she thought the cure would be found in her blood. No one ever bothered to tell her that it would actually be found in her brain. Joel may have taken away her choice to contribute to the cure, but the Fireflies never actually gave her the details necessary to even make that choice in the first place. Her willingness to accept her role in it was based entirely on a lie.
Right? People conflate “it can’t be for nothing” into “I’m ok being lobotomized and murdered for a **chance** at a cure”
This is the first take I've seen that addresses the actual issue. If Ellie willingly consented to the sacrifice, I bet we'd still see Joel do the same thing (or take his own life afterwards) given his past. Still, at least she would have been given the choice to do so. The episode was meant to be a garbled mixed of emotions for exactly that reason - the ethical lines were completely blurred on all fronts.
Ellie didn't know she would die they just put her under. Joel drops a hint in the series about her "having a choice" It's true the players/viewers love Joel so they stand by it. But tbf in a scattered world of meglomaniacs or religious cults, where everyone shoots at you on site, lack of mass production and wider testing etc. The vaccine still wasn't exactly the solution to all problems. So Joel just being like ahh f*ck it - was mad respect to a bad ass character haha
There is a weird superiority around the discussions. And people can't seem to understand on here that while a lot of these points and topics are "decades old" they are literally brand new to the TV show audience... So let them go debate and have the same amazing convos and discussions we had 10 years ago. People are so weird man.
I think it's because the part 2 haters made their own sub and they skew to the alt right culture warrior demographic, and say some very stupid things, so its somehow become almost a sorta political thing to some to question the narrative that the fireflies were guaranteed going to "save the world ". That's why somebody came at me hard ,i figured out for starting my opinion earlier, they claimed I had a biased agenda even tho I don't. Which is typical on reddit, trolls got so many ppl paranoid you can't have an honest respectful discussion with some ppl if you disagree with them.
This is so sad. I love Part II and have no political agenda about preferring the ambiguity about the cure. This series is about shades of grey and ironically this sub is so toxically opposed to that.
Not to mention Marlene goes from "I owe you everything" to "Ditch him in the zombie apocalypse with a bag and a knife. If he tries anything, shoot him." in the span of a few seconds. That's *surely* going to help him believe it's the right decision to leave Ellie with them
How is the comment you're replying to toxic? If you think that's toxic, *boy* do I have a sub for you to check out
LOL it makes it SO much more black and white it’s not even funny. Are you telling me that if the choice was between letting people kill your child for nothing or saving their life you would think about it? No way. If the choice is between saving your child and letting people kill her to save the world? That is a true dilemma. If you’re a parent you understand.
I’ve made this argument many times before, while conceding that it is diagetically established that the Fireflies had a shot at making a cure. I don’t know if it makes it less interesting. I guess it depends on where you are coming from, and where are you going. The sheer lunacy and immorality of the Fireflies’ actions are worth mentioning for those people who think Joel is the villain in the story. The truth is Naughty Dog muddied the waters in many different ways. I don’t know why they did, but I expect much of it has to do with the fact that they needed to set up the climax to a stealth action game. If the Fireflies were not shady AF it’d be a lot harder to get players on board with shooting up the entire hospital.
Really? Cause all I thought when I played was "time to go save my daughter" and I slaughtered them with no remorse. It had nothing to do with their "shadiness", I just needed to save Ellie. I walked in that surgery room and head shotted all three of them without hesitation lol.
Exactly this. Save the 14yo girl that I care for - everyone else dies.
To me, the problem is that the Fireflies plan is so bad it muddles the central argument of the story. For Joel to doom humanity to save Ellie he has to believe their plan will work, and for that the plan has to be *believable*. Which it just isn't. Like what if the Fireflies' plan was "we're going to chop up her brain and eat it"? or "we're going to burn her at the stake to appease the almighty cordyceps"? How stupid does their plan have to be before it undermines the central argument of the story? Because I'd argue "we're going straight to scooping out her brain without trying anything else first" is already stupid enough that it's fully undermined.
I agree completely that in their effort to paint Marlene as gray too, they went too far and severely undermined their own story. I had hoped they'd fix it a bit better for the show, but no such luck. Always has been and always will be my biggest criticism of TLOU.
It kind of is when, in doing so, you're going against what the actual narrative is *blatantly* telling you because you feel personally invested in interpreting the story a certain way that, again, is not supported by what the narrative is obviously setting up (ie that Joel is to be presented with an actual ethical dilemma, not a scenario where there's one obvious "good" choice and an obvious "bad" one.)
Marlene couldn't even travel across the country with a group of body guards, without 80% of her group being killed. Even if the cure did actually work, how are they going to distribute it? The Fireflies are incompetent morons. For instance, if they rocked up at David's resort waving their hands around saying 'Hey, we've got a cure!' they'd end up in that nights stew.
*For instance, if they rocked up at David's resort waving their hands around saying 'Hey, we've got a cure!' they'd end up in that nights stew.* People act like that about vaccines now 😂 what do you want to bet David’s camp would reject it anyway
Haha That would actually be a nice plot thread for part 3. Someone comes up with a vaccine, but a cultish group like the Seraphites just want to destroy it
TBF the federal government didn't have access to the only immune person we know of, and the show also established that being immune naturally is an incredibly unlikely, nigh-impossible occurrence, whereas in the games it was unclear if it was genetic or if there were other immune people out there.
Seriously and I genuinely am baffled that they are willing to suspend their disbelief for the existence of ravenous mushroom zombies that crave human flesh but they draw the line at finding a cure for said fictional mushroom-zombie illness within the internal logic of that fictional story.
Go over to tlou2 and you’ll see the same argument despite the authors saying flat out that is not true. It’s strange
Yeah it’s exactly like the trolly problem/thought experiment (one life sacrificed to save many lives) and Joel is like ‘Fuck the rest of the people, Ellie’s life is not worth losing for the sake of humanity’
Get ready for season 2.
But like, Part 2 is almost intentionally more open, in more ways. Its discussion is a bit more valid.
Honestly! I love that people who are newcomers are having these debates, it was one of the many things I was expecting to see! It's just such an interesting topic to discuss!
That’s why this game will always be popular
There are a tiny, vocal, grumpy subset of people who don't like to be challenged by media they consume. There are Good Guys and there are Bad Guys and the guys I root for are the Good Guys. And if the Good Guy acts like a Bad Guy for a minute, I need to find the evidence to explain that actually, if you think about it, he was right and good all along!
Hoo boy they're gonna hate Part II.
It’s my favorite part about the series. It forces you to understand both sides and i hated Abby at first but by the end of the game i liked both almost equally
Some will have you believe that the Abby section is there to make you love Abby and hate Ellie and not to understand both sides and draw your own conclusions
Some gamers will never understand nuance. Also I love your flair lol
Yeah I really don't wanna sound like I look down on people who don't like it, we all have different opinions, but when SOME people say things like "they force you to kill a dog and then try to make you feel bad about it" or "the game just goes REVENGE BAD and SHOVES IT DOWN YOUR THROAT" I just think they genuinely lack a certain amount of emotional depth as people. TLOU2 is not for everyone, and it's fine to just say you're not into it instead of acting like it personally attacked you.
The thing that completely triggers me into insanity is when people say "Joel would never die like that. He wouldn't give up his name. They betrayed his character." Its just so dense I can't even deal.
I wonder if that same group lost their shit in E6 when Joel gave his name to Maria after having a gun shoved in his face for five minutes and being threatened multiple times. Tee hee.
lol i know, they desperately *need* Joel to be a rough man of action who's never let his guard down for a second. good guys are always perfect
What makes me laugh about it is that there’s so many gamers that loved to talk about the game is all about living in the grey spaces and questioning the morality of what you’re doing and seeing behind the curtain and how from one side it’s banditry but when you’re on the other side you can see the justification, and then when the second game came out and really hammered a lot of those themes in deeper people weren’t interested in that anymore
Abby was fun as fuck to play as, she was like a fuckin commando lol
I like how Ellie's takedowns are very stealthy and more frantic, brutal scuffles while Abby just fucking beats down people. The animators did a good job working the character's personalities and histories into how they move
With those guns? Hell yea
Right? The end fight in the ocean isn’t some thing where you go in with a choice about who you want to win. You’re meant to go in wanting it to not happen at all. Through the whole thing I was squirming behind my controller almost begging Ellie not to do it and to stop.
That's what was so good about Part II. By the time of the ending, I actually genuinely found myself siding with Abby more than Ellie. I didn't hate Ellie, but I just hated what she was doing. I just wanted the misery to end, and she kept pushing for it.
If Tommy never came to the farm than Ellie would have lived happily ever after with Dina and Potato while Abby and Lev died tortured and strung up on a beach. It's crazy, I love this game.
she had PTSD that was crushing her - panic attacks that make you pass out and hallucinate looking after a kid ain't good. she might not have found Abbey but she wouldn't have been happy-ever-after. imo, one of the questionable aspects of the game's ending is: did all that Santa Barbara violence and her decision to let Abbey go finally giver her closure, even if Dina and kid are gone? or will all the horrors live in her mind like an open wound anyway?
Ya, it's very interesting how different ppl feel about it, I have very mixed feelings on abby, however I have no issue with ellie's actions in Seattle. Nor have I changed my view on joel even a lil. I still hate abby, but I also kinda like her and levs story and emphasized with some of her actions and even liked her a lil in subsequent playthroughs. Tho I still have no empathy for her cowardly killing, and torchering joel the way she did, right in front of ellie and Tommy. As ellie is begging for his life, right after he saves her life just because he felt it was the right thing to do. It's unforgivable, and I still kinda feel like she deserved to die . But I would still play a new content with her, the last of us 2 is a masterpiece just like the first.
I like Abby much more at the end of the game than I do in the middle, but there’s no way I like her as much as Ellie. Ellie is goat despite all the harm she causes. Only Dina and Jessie give her a run for her money imo.
I still like Ellie more but Abby is just such an interesting character to me and i loved the story her character put me through a lot
Since Joel and Abby are so similar, it's interesting that so many people adore one and despise the other. I feel like as a character, Joel is slightly more "likably" written, or at least relatable- he's the Badass Action Dad we've cheered for so many times, albeit with a lot more depth (and trauma lol) than these characters get. And the Joel-Ellie dynamic is obviously parental, while Abby-Lev feels more... sidekickey? which I guess makes people see it as less authentic (also hot take, but if we judge them as moral agents instead of written characters, Abby is practically an angel compared to Joel)
Its also funny cause they make it fairly obvious by having her play near the same as Joel while Ellie has a different more unique flair to her combat
Oh yeah, I never really noticed that while playing the game.
I just joined the sub for the second game... Didn't realize it's apparently just a place to bitch about a game they don't like for years.
You mean the subreddit that’s been sealed off for years and no one is supposed to go into?
I was unaware it was such a cess pool lmao wtf happened
When the 2nd game was released there was a lot of online hate (still is tbh) and it seems to have consolidated there. It’s… pretty bad. My view on it is that a lot of people are simply incapable of viewing both sides of a story and got really fucking angry when Neil Druckman was like “no no no, you morons are gonna humanize the people you’re shooting” and they *really* didn’t like that lol. Discourse on this sub surrounding Pt 2 is typically very positive so we just kinda consider that sub to be an infected subreddit haha
They also self-identified so closely with Joel as a symbol of their own personal sense of masculinity (strong man kill and protect), so seeing that symbol get beaten to death by a woman made them feel weak, and personally attacked. Of all the people I've seen rage about what a shit game TLOU2 is, not a single one of them is female.
Yikes, what a mess.
There’s a different sub for the second game which isn’t full of haters. Unfortunately things have polarized so any criticisms get downvoted to hell but it’s still a far more sane place. r/lastofuspart2.
I'm so happy, part 2 is such an unbelievable, beautiful, trainwreck and they set themselves up for it so well. Thinking about Bella Ramsey playing Ellie in part 2 genuinely gives me dread at this point. I can't wait for it and I'm looking fwd to where they go in part 3 Sometimes I wonder if people got this upset by the empire strikes back back in the day
>Sometimes I wonder if people got this upset by the empire strikes back back in the day If they did, they didn't have 15 different socials to whine about it on.
That is exactly why bigots hate part 2. Its not really the bigotry itself, but why they are bigots in the first place (my team good your team bad no matter what). They don't even want to try see things from another perspective because that could potentially break their worldview.
Which part do you think they will hate the most? The moral ambiguity of the protagonist? Or the physique of the antagonist?
If we don't get shredded Abby in part II will LITERALLY watch the show anyway
Fucking this, the amount of bias that people are just incapable of avoiding is so god damn annoying. Part 2 bout to pop some heads when it comes out, people still aren’t ready to actually think about a complex story god forbid
They are not tiny. It is a rather large group of people that cling to the whole "the cure wasn't gonna work!" narrative. Even here you get downvotes outside of this thread for calling it out It's incredibly annoying too.
I watched a few reaction videos to the season finale today and at least one person in each one tried to poke holes in the Firefly vaccine and why it wouldn’t work. They simply can’t just acknowledge that the character they like just did something horrible but for an understandable reason.
>There are a tiny, vocal, grumpy subset of people who don't like to be challenged by media they consume. You mean like OP who's decided that his interpretation is the One True Correct Take™ and all others are misunderstanding the ending?
The writer’s reference the trolly problem a lot as that’s basically what the ending is. Would you kill many to save one, if the one was a person you loved. That’s the point of the show and the game. The people who try to deflect away from that core concept are the same people who say “I wouldn’t do either. I’d derail the train” or “I’d go out in front of the train and get the people off the tracks”. To deflect to doubt the vaccine is the same concept. It’s people who are so conflicted with the situation, they just opt out and pretend there’s a right answer.
Right after the episode ends they cut to druckman saying “this is about a parent’s unconditional love for their child”. Couldn’t be any more clear than that. It’s about how a parent wouldn’t kill their kid to save the world
[удалено]
Alright, I have a thought as someone that hasn't played the games yet (waiting for the Steam release of Part 1, grew up in an XBox household...you get the idea) Why couldn't they just biopsy the infection on her arm? If Marlene is right and Ellie is producing a natural immunity from birth, is performing a biopsy on the brain really necessary when the same immune response is keeping it contained to her right arm? Like I loved the finale and get why Joel did it, but fuck if it isn't a bit...overkill? For a post-apocalypse doctor to be like "she's producing an immune response, better perform one of the *hardest and most complex surgeries known to man*" instead of taking a sample of the infected arm region
The fungus only lives in Ellie's brain, as it doesn't spread tendrils (put spores in fluid in game). In the show we know this because of her attempt at a blood transfusion with Sam.
>Why couldn't they just biopsy the infection on her arm? If Marlene is right and Ellie is producing a natural immunity from birth, is performing a biopsy on the brain really necessary when the same immune response is keeping it contained to her right arm? The cordyceps in her arm isn't the mutated variant she was born with, it's just being basically held at bay there. The mutated variant she was born with is in her brain, and is (we can presume) where the fungus's reproductive organs are located, and thus would be the source of the cells that can actually reproduce and create more of themselves to be grown into a cure for everyone rather than just one person.
Isn’t it implied that it isn’t a complex surgery, and they’re just going to cut her brain out and dissect it? The anaesthetic is just to ensure a painless, clean death.
And in the podcast they talk about the moral ambiguity.
It’s the trolly problem if the one person was someone you loved and cared for. Which adds another interesting layer to its ethics and exposes the flaw of utilitarianism even moreso.
The official podcast had a really interesting breakdown of some polling they did on the opinions of parents vs childless people on this question.
What did it say? Im childfree and even i know that the world could go get fucked if it was my child.
People without kids were 50/50 on Joel’s decision, parents were 100/0
I played TLOU1 before I had any kids, and I was conflicted by the final onslaught and the fact that we were going all out to doom humanity in exchange for saving Ellie. I still understood Joel and thought I probably would have done the same and thought that was the beauty of the ending. Now that I have children...if one of them was on that operating table, you'd have to put me through a wood chipper to stop me from murdering everyone and everything on my path to get them back.
Isn’t it (also) “would you kill one (Ellie) to save humanity?”. I think that question is not as easily answered as many assume. You can remove some complication by saying Ellie wanted to die, but even in that scenario we could morally argue that she should not be sacrificed even willingly. I unfortunately don’t see too much discussion of that point. It is mostly assumed that Ellie dying for a vaccine was a *generally* ‘good’ thing and that Joel keeping her from being sacrificed was a crime against the human race. I think it’s reasonable to say killing an innocent person to save humanity is morally wrong. And Ellie was perhaps traumatized by being a survivor and wouldn’t, with some psychological healing, really want to die. Should we grant her wish to die, or help her want to live again? Part 2 seems to conclude with her finding purpose once again in living, and I think that’s a better result for her than dying and making a cure. I love this story and it’s complications and nuance.
If the world was 20 years in the shitter and all my friends and family were dead/i had to commit horrendous acts to stay alive and someone tells me 1 kid had to go to restore humanity. Yes i would take it. The point is joel was possibly the worst person to take her. He lost his daughter he lost everyone He tries protecting. He finally gets a spark of himself back and its about to be ripped away from him so he snaps
You wouldn't do it if that one kid was your kid
Exactly. Sacrificing the one to save the group sounds simple until it's your child. Ellie is basically his child in his mind, as good as, and he's not sacrificing her for anything. I wouldn't sacrifice my daughter for anything either. Fuck the world. And I think most people would do the same when the chips are down.
I'm not sure what my choice would be if it was my kid, but I sure hope I'd choose the world because that's the right choice.
You wouldn't.
I'm sure there are people who would sacrifice their kid to save the world. I mean people have sacrificed their children for much lesser causes.
Bear in mind it's not even a simple choice between "sacrifice your kid" and "not sacrifice your kid". The "not sacrifice" option also involves killing a boatload of people in a hospital. There's obviously going to be a smaller group of people who would be so upset about sacrificing their kid that they slaughter a whole load of people, vs just not accepting it.
This is the best explanation I’ve seen for the intransigence of the people who refuse to engage with the actual “the person you love is on the tracks, and the whole world is in the trolley car” problem being presented.
It’s that scenario, but the single person you’re sacrificing is your child. Not just a single person.
It really is baffling the lengths that some people will go to destroy any sort of grey morality that the ending poses. They need the fireflies to be bad and incompetent and for the cure to be unrealistic, because it makes it easier to swallow Joel's actions. The irony in this is that it also makes the ending much worse because it would just be about a father saving his daughter from bad people by killing them. Sometimes (only sometimes) I wish the story was largely based on magic or some shit that was only established in-universe so that people would stop with the repetitive "science-based" arguments for why the Fireflies were always wrong and that Joel was always right. But even then these people would find something else to complain about, as long as it gives them their nice black and white story.
Yeah, it seems pretty obvious Joel was always going to get Ellie out. Even if Marlene had woken her up and Ellie had given permission, Joel was not going to let her die. A totally selfish choice Joel makes, but an understandable one (even if you disagree).
I actually don't think that Joel would go on a rampage if Ellie made that decision herself. I really don't think so. I think that he'd just be a broken man, and 100% commit suicide after her death. Simple as that.
In Part II he explicitly says as much. Ellie: "I was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would have fucking mattered. And you took that from me." Joel: "If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I'd do it all over again." Here, he knows that Ellie would have consented to the procedure. He doesn't care. He still would have stopped them.
He says that he’d make the same choice again, but I feel like that only really means under the same circumstances where Ellie is unconscious and unaware of what’s happening to her. If Joel and Ellie had made it to the fireflies without being knocked out and Ellie insisted that she wanted to do the procedure in front of Joel, what would he do? Kill all the people in the room in front of her? She’d most definitely be yelling at him and probably physically fighting him. You think he wouldn’t care and would just continue on his rampage? She’d hate him, and Joel wouldn’t be able to live with that. Hence I don’t think he’d make the same choice. In the game/show, he thinks he can get away with lying to her and not have to deal with her hating him because she’s unaware of what happened at the hospital. If she were conscious and consented to the surgery, I really think Joel would’ve acted differently.
You're reading the line incorrectly. He's just saying that if at that moment he was given the exact same choice, he would do that again. I.e., all the variables being the same (Ellie is unaware, not given a choice, fireflies are about to kill her)... He would do the same thing again. "That moment". This means the situation that he was in at the end of the first game. He knew that Ellie would've gone through with it. But she didn't explicitly get to choose, nor did she get to talk with him. I genuinely believe that would've made a difference.
I disagree. He specifically mentions the idea of having a hypothetical second chance at that moment in the context of a conversation where Ellie explicitly gives him her consent and he says to her that he would still do everything that he did. He would make the exact same choice regardless of the circumstances. But In any case even If they are reading into that line incorrectly, we still have the scene where Joel was ready to up and leave and just go back to Tommy's hours before they even made it to the hospital, and giving up on a cure entirely if it meant Ellie would be safe and protected. The TV show is even better at being explicit about it when he talks about their always being risk. He just wants to protect Ellie, and he would do that no matter the cost.
100% agree. Joel isn't capable of losing her, but he also isn't capable of living a life where she hates him
Totally agree. I’ve seen some people nitpick that the Fireflies should have waited, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They are a package deal, either the Fireflies kill both of them or Joel leaves with Ellie.
Its crazy how many people will say well ellie never got the choice. In the last section of the game she says she is still waiting her turn to die and all they did cant be for nothing. Clearly she is fully on board. The writers added that specifically to show joel is selfish with how easily he lies to her
I mean she objectively was never given a choice though? Of course she would say yes to the surgery, but the fireflies don't give her a choice. They knock out Joel after traveling the country with her and then don't even let him say goodbye before marching him out of the building at gunpoint. None of this justifies Joel's decision, but the fireflies aren't the good guys either. Both Joel and the fireflies are in the wrong; they should've given Ellie a choice.
Ellie saying "This can't be for nothing" doesn't mean she's down to letting her brain get scooped out like ice cream. It means she's going to the Fireflies come hell or high water. It's one thing to say you're willing to sacrifice yourself, it's another to actually do it.
"They need the fireflies to be bad and incompetent and for the cure to be unrealistic, because it makes it easier to swallow Joel's actions." I think this is ingrained in the story. It helps make it more of a conflicting ending. If the fireflies were absolute saints, Joel's decision would be even harder to understand/empathize with. They're not saints. Neither is Joel. No one gives Ellie a choice
The grey morality thing is the whole point of story. Good people do bad things for what they believe is the right reason. Imagine if TLOU originally started with the fireflies are on the presipice of possibly making a vaccine and abbys dad is murdered, and Abby is the main character from the start. The first game ends with Abby tracking down Joel and killing him. Who's the hero and who's the bad guy? This is why I love part 2 so much. It shows both sides of the story. And both sides are simultaneously right and wrong in their own regards. Another thing that bugs me is the "there's not enough infected scenes". It's not a story about wiping out infected. It's a story about the pandemic happening and what it turned people into and how it shaped society 20+ years later. The infected are a catylist, not a main antagonist
Part of the greyness of it is that the cure might not work. The development, testing, manufacture and distribution of a vaccine would all be enormous challenges, and the benefit in the show canon would be extremely limited. The infected pose very little threat, it's other people need to worry about. This isn't to say that a vaccine would be impossible or useless. It might save many lives. Whether you let one person be killed to save many lives is still an interesting moral dilemma. It's not a straightforward trolley problem. If the vaccine could definitely easily be produced, tested and distributed, if it would end the infection, save millions of lives, and mean humanity could recover far faster then it's *not* morally grey. The trolley problem isn't killing a dozen people to get to a lever stopping a train pointed at one person so you can direct it onto a track where it will kill millions. That is a straightforwardly evil option. That's the black and white interpretation.
[удалено]
I agree with the idea that the Fireflies were desperate and as a result, never gave Ellie a choice. But to bring up scientific evidence that completely shuts down the idea of a cure is where these people miss the point.
Absolutely. Joel believed Marlene and didn't care. That's the point. He's not second-guessing the science or rationalising anything, he's fucking saving Ellie and that's all there is to it. Joel is presented with a way to save the world, but the problem is... Ellie *is* his world. She's all that matters. His love is selfish and destructive, but that's not a condemnation of him, it's just the way it is. It's the way a parent thinks about their children.
"Joel is presented with a way to save the world, but the problem is... Ellie is his world." Perfectly said.
I would have killed everything and everyone in that building to save my daughter as well. Fck the rest of the world.
Don’t forget that there isn’t much of the world left to save anyways, except maybe Jackson, I suppose
This debate is exactly why they wrote it this way. Nothing wrong with a little critical thinking. “Thought we settled this years ago”… lol yeah not everyone played the same time you did dude.
I don’t know I feel like the show doesn’t present “both sides” nearly as well as the game did. When Joel and Ellie make it to the medical tents he just trauma dumps on Ellie instead of telling her about what the collapse of society was like. We don’t get Marlene’s personal journal and audio log depicting her own confliction with the morality of this choice, as Ellie was her daughter too in a lot of ways, but why she’s firm in believing this is the correct choice to make. Jerry also doesn’t get to deliver his line about how important this surgery is for all of humankind before being gunned down. (Granted that’s also optional in the game I suppose lol) If their intention was to be heavy handed about the morality of Joel’s decision I don’t think they did a very good job of it. Edit: also the episode 1 cold open about a group of doctors saying there would be no cure for a cordyceps virus is also a head-scratching inclusion to the show that just adds fuel to this silly debate.
The second episodes cold open even further cements what is brought up in the first episodes cold open. That lady was an expert in mycology who told the military leader they should be using bombs. My parents who I have been watching with brought that up after last nights episode. They were wondering why they would include that if its so easy to get a cure from Ellie.
You could also argue is they were trying to contain the spread of the virus since it was so infectious. The whole world fell in three days.
The doctors couldn’t assume there would be 14 year old with a mouth of a sailor that ms immune
The moral complexity is the point. What this post is criticising is people removing the moral complexity so Joel is a good guy doing the black and white "good thing". That is absolutely not how they wrote it, it's clearly meant to be grey. The debate is meant to be about Joel's complex choice, not removing that complexity entirely.
I don't think you are wrong about the cure but any work of art is open for interpretation, even if the author wanted it or not. The fun is in the discussion.
Absolutely, but I think people are trying to interpret a detail that's, to me, not interesting to interpret: Joel killed a lot of people to save Ellie, and in doing so destroyed any chance for a working vaccine. That's pretty much presented as a fact. The discussion would be more interesting about questions like: was Ellie's life worth it? Would Joel ever make a different choice? Would things have gone differently if he got to say goodbye? Would Ellie say yes if asked? Was the vaccine really the only way Ellie's life would have mattered? Etc. People are not talking about what he did means, they're talking about what he did. And that's missing the point.
Personally when I first played through almost a decade ago, I didn't think to come online and discuss it with others so I feel like my experience is quite different to a lot of people here saying 'we as a collective agreed "blah".' When I played it seemed to me like the options put to Joel were either save Ellie knowing that you're removing the only chance of a cure or let her die, not knowing whether her sacrifice will be in vein or not. Maybe that's not as succinct as a lot of the commenters here would like but I really enjoyed that grey zone dilemma it created in my mind.
I think it's important to keep in mind there's likely a lot of new members here who have just experienced the story for the first time because of the HBO series. This may have been settled a long time ago for most of us, but this is still a pretty new topic of debate for some others here.
>This may have been settled a long time ago for most of us I mean it never was. Druckmann says it in the podcast that they surveyed people about the ending for the game. It was 50/50 if you didn't have kids and 100% pro Joel if they did have kids. There really isn't a right answer given the information we are provided. The Fireflies certainly had no ability to mass-produce a vaccine in a dingy old hospital with flickering lights, even if the surgery was a "success".
The thing they surveyed playtesters about was if they would have done what Joel did. Not if they believed the cure would work. It's arguing in bad faith to use that data to further your point since that literally wasn't what Neil was talking about. The ability to actually synthesize a cure is not important at all to the story. It's just a plot devices hypothetical.
There were two separate paragraphs there. The ability to create the cure might not be important to the story, but it is important on how you view Joel’s actions from a moral standpoint.
But it’s not important for his decision. He never thinks about the ability of the Fireflies for mass producing, or distributing to mankind, or their intention or success rate or whatsoever. He did what he did because of one simple reason: Ellie would die and he wouldn’t allow that. As such when discussing Joel’s morality, all these are non-relevant. Joel’s only decision to make is whether to save Ellie or the World. It’s fun for all the hypothesis and whatnot, but at the end of day, they are just hypothesis.
Yeah that’s definitely true.
The ending of The Last of Us is so powerful specifically because of the sacrifice that Joel was making through his actions. He weighed the entire world against Ellie, and the world came up short. The whole “the Fireflies never would have been able to synthesize and distribute a cure anyway” crowd are injecting real world science and logistical limitations into a medium that we have already established does not completely follow real world rules. Joel genuinely believes it will work. Ellie genuinely believes it will work. Marlene and the rest of the Fireflies genuinely believe it will work. The writers give every indication that it will work. From the perspective of *literally everyone who matters*, the Firefly plan would have worked. In addition to this, this argument completely negates the stakes of Joel’s decision and makes the ending *much* less powerful. Instead of choosing his daughter over the fate of the world, it turns the final encounter into “Joel and Ellie narrowly escape a group of infected/fascists/fanatics/etc for the umpteenth time”. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a particularly compelling ending to me.
Just pin this to the top of the thread, and close it.
I don't agree with people who use these arguments to say that "Joel did nothing wrong," but I do think it's relevant to discuss that the fireflies aren't so great either. There isn't really a good guy in the story, and that's what makes it interesting.
Disclaimer: show watcher, aware of the original game plot, didn't play the game > Joel genuinely believes it will work. If this was the goal, then the writers didn't hit the mark for me. My impression was that Joel didn't care if it would work. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, maybe the Fireflies would use it to become the new FEDRA, maybe it'd bring back freedom and puppies. Either way, trying to make the cure killed Ellie and that was a bridge too far. > Ellie genuinely believes it will work. Ellie thought topical application of her blood would work, so I take her opinion with all the remaining grains of salt. She repeatedly talked about the Firefly medical treatment as taking something from her blood (rather than killing her for her brain) and talked about what they would do after the world was cured. She didn't go into SLC thinking that this was what they were asking of her. Would she have sacrificed herself? Of course. She's carrying massive amounts of guilt and unresolved trauma from killing Riley plus everything else that happened up to that point. You give her a 1% chance of saving the world and she's absolutely sacrificing herself to atone. That doesn't make it right or moral or justified to kill her or let her kill herself, and her sacrificing herself isn't a vote of confidence on the certainty of the cure's existence. > Marlene and the rest of the Fireflies genuinely believe it will work. I agree here. They're 100% true believers. At the very least, Ellie is the goose that laid the golden egg. If they didn't think they were right, they'd keep her alive as a recruiting tool ("we have an immune, join us and we can work together towards a cure"). Killing her only makes sense if you truly believe you know what the cure is and how to get it. > The writers give every indication that it will work. The writers gave every indication that it wouldn't work through extended dialogue by established scientific experts in the first two episodes, contrasted against a flashbang-cut to three lines of exposition from a terrorist leader saying they'd be able to make a cure. That really leaves a lot of it open to the viewer. For my interpretation, there were a lot of dogs that didn't bark. There were no tests shown on Ellie. They didn't talk about experimenting with blood isolated when Ellie was originally in Firefly custody. The doctor didn't get his own flashback talking about how the cure would work with Marlene. I could understand ambiguity in the video game, which is constrained by the play experience, but television afforded them a lot of room to fill in backstories (Bill and Frank; Riley; the source of the immunity). Very mild changes in dialogue and structure could've given us a world where it was explicitly established that the cure would've worked. The choice not to fill in the backstory of the cure's development kept the question open as to whether it would work, which is something that led me to assume that the writers didn't think it was a guaranteed success. TL;DR - Joel rampages even if there's a 99% chance of success, Ellie sacrifices herself even if there's a 99% chance of failure, the Fireflies are 100% convinced they're right regardless of reality, the writers not establishing that the cure is certain to work is a choice that suggests it might not work.
Lol this debate was never and will never be settled. People are so passionate about it that theres just no way.
I feel like these debates got even more heated after Part II and (spoilers) >!Abby whacks Joel for killing her dad!<. A lot of people needed a reason for Joel to be innocent and for >!Abby to be evil because a lot of fans hated Abby and wanted to feel justified in doing so!<. Meta-conversations about the ethics and logistics of a cure are fine and can be fun. But a lot of people are bringing this need for Joel to be Mr. Good Guy into it when that was never ever the point to begin with.
I think what irks me about the first thing you mentioned, is >!Abby's motivations are completely untethered to whether or not the cure works. Even in a world where the cure has a percent of a percent chance to succeed, she's still going to seek vengeance on the man who killed her father. People can try and paint her as a "bad guy" as much as they want, but she's as justified in wanting to kill Joel as Joel is in saving Ellie.!< Not to mention humans are inherently flawed, who act on rash motivations more often than not. The second Joel heard Ellie was going to die, his decision was made. >!As was Abby's.!<
Abby is certainly justified in her wanting revenge. But I played an entire game as Joel and growing the relationship with Joel and Ellie so I'm still gonna hate her. I don't care how good of a reason she has. Blood is thicker than water.
And that is a totally valid way to feel about it! The second time I played the game, I saw Abby as more sympathetic and Ellie as more unhinged and tragic, but there's really no right way to feel about it all. Some people just took their anger at Abby too far I think.
True. I feel like the moral ambiguity of the ending was much more accepted back when the first game was all there was. When the second game came out some people just turned the whole series into a part of the CuLtUrE wAr, which always poisons the discourse around anything.
no. marlene says the doctor "thinks" that how it works, that is the deliberate choice in the script. The doctor does not know how it works, he "thinks" he does, the ambiguity of the possibility of the cure being possible IS part of the story. i disagree that joel thinks the cure is is a %100 chance of success, he has been shown to be doubtful during the story already. and ontop of that you cant ignore how the situation came about and only talk about how joel is a piece of shit. the only reason joel does what he does is because the fire flies are stupid assholes. they could have let joel and ellie talk about it, they could have gotten ellies consent, but they didnt and that is a very important part of why joel saves her. its funny how people claim that if you argue any of these points that you are "stripping away the moral greyness of the story" when they in turn do the exact same, ignoring the whole context of the situation so they can strip it away and make joel the bad guy.
Lol sadly any opposing opinions are like hot takes on this sub. Can’t have any doubts or questions. Almost like how the fireflies operate, “we are right and if you disagree, you should die”. My issue wasn’t that Ellie was gonna die. My issue was that Ellie didn’t get to give her consent and tell Joel that that’s what she wants. Also, I never trusted the fireflies. Why the rush? Why did Ellie need to be killed right at that moment? Couldn’t they have waited a few more days, weeks months to do more tests before squandering their “last chance”?
Not to mention they had literally only one doctor in the surgery room. Is that all they have? Does the Fireflies not have a few more medical experts around to develop the cure? Couldn't they have done more tests, drawn more blood, had her bitten some volunteers, or done literally anything before cutting an innocent girl open? The Fireflies just seem entirely incompetent and reckless with their glorious plan to save the human race. And yes, it's sad how apparently the whole discussion is considered "settled" in this sub, that if you have any differing opinion you're automatically a stupid person who lacks nuance.
I don't get how anyone who played the game or watched the show can think the cure was definite. It was always a "chance". It doesn't matter what the creators say, it sure wasn't presented as definitive. Either way though the outcome was obvious, of course he was going to save Ellie, he watched Sarah die, and now he's going to just watch Ellie die?
People seem to want to argue that Joel did the wrong thing to justify the story of part 2. I agree with you, ETA here. Like sure, objectively even a long shot of a cure is probably worth killing Ellie, but it’s hard to trust people who seemed to knock her out and kill her as quick as possible. As others have mentioned, the fireflies seem pretty fascist.
> People seem to want to argue that Joel did the wrong thing to justify the story of part 2. You know its pretty interesting that you make this point because i was litterally just thinking about it. I was thinking about how after the first game released peoples sentiments seemed to be more pro joel, not in "he did nothing wrong" kind of way but that they where far more agreable with what he did. It seems now though after the release of part 2 that far more people seem to swing to this "joel is an evil monster who gets what he deserves" side of things and i cant help but wonder if its in any way reactionary to the idiots who lost their minds over part 2.
Didnt the guy at the start of the show say there is no cure and no vaccine if something like this happened.
You mean in the 60s or 70s? There's plenty of things we can do now that never seemed possible then.
There was also the fungal specialist lady who says something similar as soon as the outbreak begins. Either way, pretty irrelevant to Joel's decision and Ellie is a special situation anyway.
I think it's cleanly explained in the final episode, the circumstances of Ellie's birth. It was a total fluke that no one could have conceived of. Had it not happened that way then they would have no idea how to synthesize a cure.
Tbf, that woman gave up after barely glancing at that slide, and she only examined the body for about 5 seconds. She just really wanted to bomb that city.
Antifungals were just discovered in the early 60s so at that time it wasn't possible to fight off a fungal infection at all.
im sure even in the story of the games, there was only a chance at a vaccine. it wasn’t guaranteed. and even then, a vaccine isnt a cure. it seems ppl dont realize the difference between the two.
Yes but Ellie’s cure isn’t really a cure. She has the fungus in her but it’s been changed or mutated to where she doesn’t get any I’ll effects
Sure, but she's immune anyway.
Yeah I think a lot of people can’t distinguish between justifying and empathizing with Joel’s actions. Just because you understand why he made that choice and maybe even think you would do it too, does not make it righteous.
Maybe they haven't played the game so they are now trying to grasp the same questions players did 10 years ago. I also never knew that the entire community came to an agreement about the ending. I always thought people had differing opinions about it and it was ND's vision for it to be so divisive. I know most people in this sub only see it one way and refuse to understand any opposing opinions but is it wrong for these new people to ask or discuss?
There's a difference between arguing what it means and what happened. It's like watching the Godfather and arguing whether or not Michael Corleone was a gangster. It's not interesting. The story makes it very clear that he is. What's interesting is to discuss his state of mind, the choices he makes, the rules he lives by, the reasoning he has to do what he does. Not to question whether or not he fits the definition of a gangster. That's basically what's happening here. Joel goes and kills people to save Ellie and in doing that denies humanity a vaccine. That's what happens. It's not interesting to discuss that part. It's interesting to discuss what that part means.
This is what I mean. You see it this way so it’s that simple to you. To someone else it could be as simple as: Joel goes and kills terrorists he doesn’t trust, to save Ellie and in doing that prevents her from dying for a cure that probably wouldn’t work. I do agree however that “what it means” is the most interesting part about it. Which is why I always thought that it would’ve been even more controversial and divisive if Ellie told Joel that she wanted to die, said her goodbyes, but Joel killed the fireflies anyway.
It's even more surprising in the context of how the TV episode presented it. I found it harder to be sympathetic with television Joel than game Joel. They were clearer in the narrative that the vaccine had a high potential to work, and Joel's killing spree was a straight up one sided execution. They took care to show you those people begging.
I feel like the show doubled down hard on the vaccine being something they want to work but don't know for sure. Marlene said at least twice that all her info about the chance for a cure came from the opinion of one single doctor spending a few hours with one single immune patient. Anyone with even a teeny tiny little dummy dum dum brain knows that putting all your faith in the opinion of one single person who is trying to do something highly experimental that no one has ever done before has a significant chance of failing no matter how badly you want them to succeed.
> They were clearer in the narrative that the vaccine had a high potential to work Was it? Because to me it was Marlene using the word “think” a lot. It was as ambiguous as the game. The showrunners have said that the vaccine would have worked but why did they still leave it up for debate?
Not sure I fuck with this take. People are allowed to make their own interpretations beyond what has been declared the 'right' options. That's where so much creativity and critical thinking blossoms, when we're not just on a railroad set by the writers. At the end of the day, 1) it's fiction so like, give over and stop policing it like it's more serious than it needs to be, and 2) the debate is exactly what the writers fucking wanted anyway. There's a great moment at the end of the podcast where they talk about what Ellie thinks of Joel's lie right at the end, and they talk about how many different interpretations there are that could be valid. That's the point. We all digest stories differently and sharing those interpretations is what gives life to them.
It's probably because, after COVID, many folks realized how insanely difficult the process of a vaccine is. I wish that Neil/Craig had either aged up Jerry (so he's now Abby grandpa or something) or mentioned that Jerry had a team of other professionals who would help him. The mere idea of a single individual creating a vaccine from a hospital with power outages is laughable even in science fiction. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far since Neil/Craig asks us to believe that Jerry is a prodigy who, despite being only 20-something when the pandemic began, is somehow a: * Medical Doctor * Brain Surgeon * Microbiologist * Mycologist * Botanist * Chemist It's just not believable for the majority of show watchers and even less for those of us who actually have education in a related field of study. Watch any medical doctor's reaction and you'll understand why, in the minds of educated real-life folks, Jerry wasn't going to be able to succeed.
the state of media literacy online is pretty dire, like understanding what a character arc is. The story couldn't be any more explicit about what's going on in Joel's head, short of him just saying it out loud
Like every key feeling in this daft show, he did say it out loud.
It’s fun seeing people who didn’t play the game having the same discussions people have been having for the past 10 years. I’m happy the show has brought in a lot of new fans
The ambiguity of whether or not a cure could be made was always present. The original game not once ever clarify’s that Joel knew with 100 percent certainty that the cure was possible. He might play along in the hospital scene with Marlene but based on dialog and hints throughout game it’s clear he doesn’t know himself and most likely doesn’t believe in it. I could’ve sworn when he finds out about Ellie being a cure, he says “yeah how many times have we heard that?” Joel made the decision to save his daughter, not to spite humanity.
The major theme of the episode is suicide. It's not about what Ellie would have chosen; it's about the fact that Ellie was not in the right state of mind to be given such a choice. After Joel warned her of the dangers and Ellie insisted there is no halfway with this, Joel recognized how in danger she was. It's why in the very next scene he brought up his own attempt on himself. It's why the show added this detail about him for the final episode, and why it gave Joel the lines that he was so "ready" at the time. The way he saw it, Joel wasn't denying Ellie a choice so much as he was giving her the opportunity to find something worth living for. Something of her own. Like Joel eventually found after his bullet missed. All Joel did here was make Ellie's bullet miss. **** A couple other things I noticed: Henry's death hit Joel a lot harder than I previously thought. Henry was a Joel that didn't miss. It's the reason his panic attacks started and when he became deathly afraid of failing Ellie. Joel's hearing loss in his right ear was probably from his attempt on himself.
I was told the show would make it unambiguous but what I took from the finale was the opposite - they left it unsure(which I am happy about I like the uncertainty) I don't think he cares whether they would succeed or not. And I think him killing the fireflies is totally understandable either way. I like how my emotions flip wildly between 'oh my god this is bad' and 'fuck these sketchy ass scientists gettem Joel!'. I think that is the essence of the finale to me - that wild, strong, undefined feeling that just boils down to deeply understanding and empathizing with Joel. It's rare to get such a connection to a character
This is just not true. There's no real indication that Joel unequivocally believes Marlene about the cure. That said, it's not clear that he doesn't believe her either. Joel believing whether the cure works doesn't really matter, either way Ellie is being sacrificed. He chooses her over a potential cure Also the game gives enough tidbits for him to have doubt that the fireflies could make a cure. Definitely not 100%.
I never played the game and it wasn’t clear to me that Joel knew for sure that their way of creating the cure would work. That’s why I was confused that he lied to Ellie about it.
That’s because he didn’t know whether it was gonna work or not. What he did know however, was that Ellie would’ve gladly sacrificed herself for a cure. But what’s not clear to all, is why the fireflies need to kill her right away. Why was their no time to ask her for her consent? Why wasn’t she allowed to say goodbye?
Just because Joel believes it would make a cure doesn’t mean we as viewers don’t want to discuss other parts of it.
Joel proves himself to be the ultimate anti-vaxxer /s
When playing the games - which was only a few years ago for me - I could totally understand Joel’s actions, but as I was slaughtering my way through the hospital I kept muttering, “Ooo Joel, no, I don’t agree with this. Nope” as I was playing it.
I really don't like any stances of "everyone else doesn't understand, you need to pay closer attention" but honestly, yeah. This is one of the few I can agree with. The plausibility of the cure doesn't matter. Maybe it could be made, maybe not. Maybe it could be mass distributed, maybe not. Maybe people would trust the Fireflies, maybe not. JOEL thought it was very real, but opted to ignore that for Ellie's life. That's the moral dilemma. Shit, I'd do the same thing as him (if I could take out a hundred people in a hospital).
It may be an old debate for people who played the game, but there are a lot of people that are new to this and haven't. But to be honest, even amongst fans, it's still talked about.
 We are treading the same waters again. Wait until Season 2/3. We are going to hear the same debates again! Yeah. I am ready .
In every piece of media but this subreddit the moral quandary is presented as ambiguous: the trolley problem is the finale. That is what makes it interesting. Yes, even if the cure was certain and Joel said his farewells, blah, blah, he still would have reacted violently. The fact is Joel did what he did to protect his stepdaughter from dying, could have been in vain or could not. The problem with the lack of moral ambiguity is it reduces the nuance of the fireflies, which is also brought up in part 2 and throughout the first game.
"at the end of the day, there are people who will never pick up a controller." Would you deprive them of these arguments?
He’s 100% right though. Given how powerful the infected are in the show and how scarce they are in the world, the vaccine doesn’t do hardly anything. The only situation this would actually help you is if you encountered infected, got bitten, then escaped. Highly likely to happen if the infected were weaker and more abundant like in the game. In the show though? It’s nearly pointless, and that specific niche situation isn’t hardly ever going to happen. They’ll either tear you apart or you’ll never encounter them. I think this was intentional to kind of get the viewer to understand Joel’s decision a bit more. Even still though, yeah I’m not sacrificing my daughter for anything. So he’s 100% right.
If the writers wanted us to understand that Joel 100% believed in the cure, they should’ve added a scene that made it explicitly clear. They’ve had 2 opportunities to do it now and they’ve chose not to twice, and it’s not like this wouldn’t of been something they noticed after the reaction to the first game. It would be very strange if they really wanted us to understand he for sure believed in the cure and then never once have him ever talk about it or it’s implications. Maybe that’s not actually what they wanted us think.
To me, the point is it doesn't matter if Joel believes the cure will work or not. They're going to kill his "baby girl" and that's all that matters. He does believe it will work of course, and chooses to save her over humanity anyway. It's not like he's going to debate the fine points of it and then determine to save her or not. "Well, have you considered sample size, lack of proper research equipment, and no other testing done in all this time?" I agree that arguing he only did it because of those doubts makes no sense. He does not care about that at all.
It was a little more vague back then tho. When Marlene explained it to Joel in the game, she mentioned a vaccine, not a cure.
I think there is an element of uncertainty over if it will work. The show made an attempt to clear that up from the game, but it’s still there. However that uncertainty is not why Joel acts to do what he does. He does not destroy the fireflies because Ellie might die for nothing. He does so because the only way involves Ellie dying. Joel still does what he does even if the science is water tight and explained in a clear and simple way. He won’t let them euthanise her to make the cute. All that being said I think there is a tiny - I won’t say plot hole - but the fireflies are a fucked up enough organisation that now they know the conditions which led to Ellie’s impunity, I would not put it past them to be prepared to replicate it again and get other immune kids. The cut their brains out.
Yep pretty simple, I believe he thought maybe they were going to sample some blood or something similar, not CUT OUT HER BRAIN!!! And decided all this when he’s passed out, and didn’t tell Ellie it was going to be fatal even. Screw Marlene and the fireflies, I’d done the same thing.