S01.E09: Look for the Light

[Whimsy]

Quote

A pregnant Anna places her trust in a lifelong friend. Later, Joel and Ellie near the end of their journey.

Season finale.

Original airdate 3/12/23

[wevel]

We're going to have to wait 2 years or whatever for Season 2, and the season finale is this short?!

Still packed a punch, of course, and there was a lump in my throat the whole episode, but GOD, I needed more.

[T Summer]

 When Joel said to Ellie it's about a 5 hour hike from here and they got to the top of that mountain and their destination was in sight... was it Tommy and Maria's commune?

I hope so, because I just want Ellie to be protected and relax and play with Shimmer[the pony].

[GustavMahler]

Well, there's that then...a bit predictable  and anti climatic. This will be one of those shows that I will forget about rather quickly and get interested again when season 2 comes out. No real anticipation angst for me.

[AimingforYoko]

The little quiver by Bella when Joel said, "It wasn't time that healed it." Just some top-notch wordless acting, right there.

[kay1864]

Wasn’t the whole point of her getting to a hospital to extract her antibodies or whatever? Didn’t Joel or Ellie realize there was a possibility that she would have to be sacrificed?

[Hanahope]

I think they both thought they’d draw her blood, maybe spinal fluid.  I don’t think either thought she’d have to die. the question is did Marlene tell her? Did Ellie know and agree?  Did Ellie allow Joel to lie to her because she knows how important she has become to Joel?

Edited March 13, 2023 by Hanahope

[Constantinople]

Near the end I was wondering if Joel would get the Moses can see but not enter the Promised Land treatment.

[peridot]

I wonder if Marlene would have killed the baby if Ellie's mom admitted to cutting the cord after she was bit?

It must have been so peaceful, feeding the giraffe and watching the herd of them graze.  That and the confession of Joel's suicide attempt lulled me, so that I almost didn't see the guys move around in the background.  I jumped hard!

Marlene turned into a monster over the years, willing to kill a kid for the small possibility of providing a cure/treatment.  She had to have known that Joel would strongly object, I'm surprised she didn't kill him first.

Joel is a killing-machine, he didn't have any expression on his face after each kill.  The nonchalant shooting of the doctor was something else too, it's like he hinges his sanity on Ellie's survival.

That lie sounds so implausible, I wonder if Ellie actually believes it, even after Joel swore it's the truth.

[maystone]

7 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

I think they both thought they’d draw her blood, maybe spinal fluid.  I don’t think either thought she’d have to die. the question is did Marlene tell her? Did Ellie know and agree?  Did Ellie allow Joel to lie to her because she knows how important she has become to Joel?

Marlene said that Ellie didn't know what they had planned for her. In fact, when Ellie finally awoke, she was surprised that she had been drugged.

I thought too that it would be some sort of fluid-based testing. Ellie obviously thought it was something in her blood because she tried to cure Sam with it.

I think that Ellie accepted that Joel was lying to her because Joel has become so very important to her. She loves him.

[buttersister]

She asked because she knew.

What she didn’t know was about the surgery. Marlene said she didn’t want Ellie to be fearful. Assuming Ellie would’ve sacrificed herself is possible, but that would be a Save the World or Save Joel Moment. Guess I’ll be stocking up on tissues during the next two years.

[Hanahope]

Yeah I guess Marlene might not have realized how bonded Joel became to Ellie until after she talked to him, so she probably did tell him the truth first.  She then forgot or perhaps didn’t realize how ruthless Joel gets when he’s about to lose someone he loves.  
 

[wevel]

41 minutes ago, AimingforYoko said:

The little quiver by Bella when Joel said, "It wasn't time that healed it." Just some top-notch wordless acting, right there.

Also, Joel's face after Ellie's "I'll follow you anywhere you go."

When Joel started to say "The reason I'm telling you all this ..." (about his suicide attempt) and then Ellie interrupts him with "I know why you're telling me," what did she think then was the reason? Just some more generic lesson about how life is always worth living or something? Because she seemed really surprised/moved by the "It wasn't time that healed it" comment.

[magdalene]

I feel like the writing is trying to convince and manipulate me into believing that Joel is all of a sudden the bad guy in this.  Guess what show? It ain't working.

So, they were going to kill Ellie, a 14 year old kid, for the possibility of a dubious vaccine that may not even work?  Which Ellie did not consent to?  Not that she could consent as a child.  Under the age of consent, hmm writers?  Right.  And Marlene thought Joel, of all people, would go along with this?  I am glad Marlene is dead. I hated her guts in this episode.

Joel is a ruthless killer and I am sad about it but it hasn't changed my feelings for him. I do believe he should have told Ellie the truth.

I guess it will be about 2 years until the second season.  That gives me a long time to consider  whether I should and will watch the second season.  Sighs. My nephew, who's played both games has advised me against watching the second season.  He loved the first and hated the the second game. So he is biased but he also knows me very well.

[overtherainbow]

Yeah, Joel is the good guy in this. Screw "the greater good", this is a guy who's lost way too much. Let him live out his days with Ellie and his brother on the Wyoming commune, and if she consents to giving the fireflies a chunk of her brain when she's older, that's on her. She's 14, she's not ready to be a science experiment. 

This show has been amazing and there chemistry between Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey is great. I feel it’s been a while since HBO has produced a true gem, but I feel this series is exactly that. The ending was perfect. I found myself really tearing up at the scene with the giraffes. It was a little hint that life goes on in this universe, and it isn't all cordyceps crazies and cult leaders. While I wish there were more episodes and I'm sad it's over, I'm also glad they didn't draw it out the finale unnecessarily like so many shows. 

[Peace 47]

The scenes with Joel and Ellie in this episode leading up to the final hospital vignette were truly beautiful.  That relationship is the part of the story that really captured my imagination, and the conversations that took place—Joel trying to help Ellie via canned pasta and board games, their connecting over the pun book and the giraffes, their getting into a frank discussion about Joel’s suicide attempt (which as an aside, felt like the absolute missing piece of Joel’s character as to why he went on after Sarah died and was the perfect grace note to his character), etc.  Those moved me deeply in that they presented the possibility of finding love and connection again in this absolute wasteland of the apocalypse.  And there is some part of me that wishes that was the story being told.

But of course, this story is not an uplifting one:  it is an utter tragedy, and so then we have the hospital vignette and the aftermath, where Joel sacrifices (whether he fully realizes it or not) nearly everything good he has salvaged from finding Ellie (connection, trust, openness) except her very life.  But what parent can willingly sacrifice their child for a vague platitude that her death might help the world?  Marlene was willing to sacrifice Ellie, but as much as she cared for Anna, she was no parent to Ellie.  (The actress who played Marlene in the game and the show is wonderful:  love her.)

I do think in showing Joel as a mass shooter in a TV medium, it hits in a way that doesn’t hit when playing a video game (where you take out hundreds or thousands of people coming at you).  I think the show runners do want you (general you) to be repulsed by Joel for purposes of setting up the moral quandary of the story.  These weren’t good, innocent people, though, that Joel was taking out:  every single one of them had a gun trained on him (even Marlene, who was setting hers down but it was not out of reach), except for the doctor, who had the metaphorical gun to Ellie’s head instead of Joel’s.  So I’m not sure (still have to think on it further) that the moral quandary is as deep as the creators think that it is.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Peace 47

[aghst]

1 hour ago, kay1864 said:

Wasn’t the whole point of her getting to a hospital to extract her antibodies or whatever? Didn’t Joel or Ellie realize there was a possibility that she would have to be sacrificed?

 

1 hour ago, Hanahope said:

I think they both thought they’d draw her blood, maybe spinal fluid.  I don’t think either thought she’d have to die. the question is did Marlene tell her? Did Ellie know and agree?  Did Ellie allow Joel to lie to her because she knows how important she has become to Joel?

 

1 hour ago, Hanahope said:

Yeah I guess Marlene might not have realized how bonded Joel became to Ellie until after she talked to him, so she probably did tell him the truth first.  She then forgot or perhaps didn’t realize how ruthless Joel gets when he’s about to lose someone he loves.  
 

 

Joel wasn't going to let Ellie die.  Even if she herself wanted to do it for the chance to save everyone else.  Not that a young girl like that would be giving informed consent.

Yeah Marlene didn't expect that they'd grow so close when she asked Joel to take her.

But she recognized it as soon as he woke up and maybe in reality, those Fireflies would have shot Joel even if he walked away peacefully.  For all we know, they used the concussion grenade to disarm Joel and capture Ellie on purpose, not that patrol didn't recognize him.  They just pulled Ellie away but they knocked Joel out, rather than hold them at gunpoint to identify them.

Marlene's pretty ruthless.  Despite her ties with Ellie and her mother, she presumably decided quickly that they'd sacrifice Ellie.

Guess she's not better than FEDRA or Kathleen but that doesn't change the fact that Joel kind of went crazy, he wasn't going to let anyone harm Ellie, even if he had to massacre everyone there, which he did.

Then of course he lies to her about what he did.

Inside the Episode, Pedro Pascal said that Joel believed Ellie would have volunteered to sacrifice herself so it wasn't about Ellie not having a choice, it was that Joel couldn't bear the thought of losing her, after what they've been through, including times when Ellie was in danger.

 

 

[kay1864]

Wow, Ellie’s mom played Ellie in the game. They look so much alike!

And a real baby on that apparently yucky floor!

Edited March 13, 2023 by kay1864

[paramitch]

Oh, man. It was so hard to watch but made total sense. Beautiful writing.

Each step of this five months has brought Joel to: "I would burn the world for this child."
Each step of this five months has brought Ellie to: "I would die to save the world."

It's tragic and beautifully symmetrical. It's fricking Shakespearean.

Let's just say I am not okay. This was superb. But good God, so dark. I will say that the show is true to itself -- this is what the story has been building toward all season, and it pulls no punches. The moment I saw Marlene lay out those choices to Joel, I did a full-body shudder, because there is no way at this point that he would allow that to happen.

The other interesting aspect is that while they didn't give Ellie a damn choice (ugh), I 100% think she would have chosen to die, and that's what the end scene is telling us.

I loved Ellie starting with the list of lives lost because at first it looks like she's just telling Joel about losing Riley, but somehow that turns into a reckoning -- an accounting of all the lives lost to get her to the place where she could save the world. And then couldn't. Because Joel couldn't lose her. Aghgh. I'll be thinking about it a lot. But beautifully done.

It was incredibly bleak viewing but I do think each episode of the show has led us here really brilliantly. Love is a powerful thing, and it can also be a terrible thing. And I gotta say, there are a ton of parents out there who would definitely do the same thing Joel did. I'm not condoning it, it was horrific. But I get it.

Meanwhile, I was happy we got at least a few moments of beauty and companionship. The giraffe! Joel's face watching Ellie feed the giraffe! Just a beautiful moment.

Also, one of the nurses was Laura Bailey! (She was in The Last of Us II and won a BAFTA -- she played a major character. I am spoiled on who she played. Also Ashley Johnson was in this -- she was Ellie's voice in the first game, and won a BAFTA for her performance. (Both Laura and Ashley are on Critical Role, a D&D show I love beyond all reason.)

I love how the show included and honored the game's voice actors wherever it could. The leads all got great parts onscreen! Joel, Ellie, Tommy, Marlene!

Also, while they're passing out that bucket of Emmys to Bella next year, they need to give one to Pedro Pascal as well. An incredible performance.

But oh, my God. This was dark. And -- looking back -- inevitable.

[Brn2bwild]

<small voice> Couldn't they have tried to make a cure from her blood first?

It seemed like they reached the "we must kill her and take her brain" stage awfully quickly.  That must have been Marlene's goal from the beginning when Ellie was chained up like a dog, which is chilling.

[WaltersHair]

The real crime here, is that the medical people were so quick to sacrifice Ellie. Why not do blood work, and study her first before carving her up?

Medicine is inexact in the best of times. Using Ellie's brain to treat the world with its potential antibodies is a shot in the dark at best. Can you think of one one cancer treatment all on it's own that is 100% effective on all people all the time?

Joel is living on borrowed time anyway. I don't see that commune thinking what he did was right or good. They'd find out eventually.

[paramitch]

There's that great quote "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain." And that was Joel here. The moment he shoots those soldiers in the stairwell, boom, Joel is lost.

So for me, the brilliant thing about that finale -- and specifically, the final conversation between Ellie and Joel -- is that at the end of that conversation, Ellie is the hero of the story. Standing across from the villain who would kill everyone else to save her.

[thuganomics85]

Least valuable player easily goes to the Firefly who Marlene told to cover baby Ellie's ears and he apparently was like "No, I don't think I will" instead.  Dude, come on!  I'm usually not about abusing your subordinates, but I hope Marlene gave him hell after that, heh.

So, in the end, they make it to the Fireflies and the plan is to extract the Cordyceps from Ellie's brain, which would basically have killed her.  So, in other words, she was to be sacrificed to save all of humanity.  And Joel.... was not going to let that happen.  I can definitely see the debates over all of it and both sides have good points, but for me personally, there is a lot of shadiness going on that I find myself on his side, despite him clearly being driven by emotion.  It sounded like they didn't even tell Ellie the truth before putting her under and even though I think it could be accurate she would have consented, the fact that the option wasn't there is very icky.  Plus, the fact that she is a minor too just kind of throws the entire consent thing right out the window.  Also, do we really know for sure if it would have worked?  She could have ended up dying for nothing, honestly.  So, yeah, while Joel might have torpedoed a chance at a cure, I think there was a lot more going on here that makes me not want to fully turn against him.

That said, we certainly saw how brutal he is here.  Dude was just mowing down people with ease and we saw him at least kill one person who was surrendering.  And the doctor too, who he probably could have been disarmed without actually shooting him in the head.  But I think what he said to Marlene before he finished her off was accurate in his mind: they would have kept coming for Ellie and he didn't want that to happen.  In the end, Ellie and keeping her alive is all that matters for him now.

Fun seeing Ashley Johnson a.k.a. Video Game Ellie here and as Ellie's mom none the less.  I actually think Anna still sounded enough like Ellie/Bella Ramsey's version that I could see them being related.  Equally interesting that 

Spoiler

apparently Laura Bailey was playing one of the nurses, since she has a big role in the second game.  I wonder if she'll show up in a more prominent role next season.

The scene with the giraffe was a nice moment of levity amongst all the darkness.

Joel revealing the truth about his scar was heartbreaking and well-acted by Pedro Pascal.

Yeah, Ellie absolutely knows that Joel is lying to her about what really happened, but is choosing to go along with it because she just can't bring herself to fully admit that the man who has saved her life multiple times and protects her in a way that no one else has, is lying to her about what he truly did.  I can only imagine how this will change things for them going forward.

If I had one major complaint here is that I do think this show could have used maybe another episode or two to really flesh things out and spend more time with these characters.  Ironically, it feels like they were initially worried about spending too much here or thinking people didn't want this to go on for too long, and weren't expecting it to be as big of a hit as it was.  Granted, I'm glad they didn't go too overboard because I certainly don't want them to drag things out, but maybe a little bit more could have helped.  That said, this is easily one of the best first seasons of a show for me and without a doubt the best adaptation of any video game series in all of media.  Never underestimate HBO!  Can't wait to see what Craig and Neil do with this going forward!  And more of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey bringing their A+ game!  Hopefully it gets a few award love: wouldn't mind seeing Episode Three get one for writing especially.  Hope the wait won't be too long!

[Peace 47]

Okay, I’ve thought about it for another couple of hours, and I’ll say the same thing I said last week when Joel was “creatively” encouraging those dudes to give him a geography lesson.  Great job, Joel; no notes!  Okay, one note:  he shouldn’t have lied to Ellie about what he did.

To oversimplify Mazin’s point in the little after-episode talking head he had on HBO Max, he was saying that this story is profound in part for showing the horrific things love makes us do, and while they as creators are not judging Joel’s actions, he did seem enamored of the moral issue the story raises.  But there’s a reason why self-defense and defense of others is a legal justification for murder:  because the (nominally) non-apocalyptic society in which we currently live says that it is unfair to assign culpability when there is no other option to save a life.  I mean, ethically, I guess that the situation is like a reverse Trolley Problem (let the trolley barreling towards Ellie kill her, or actively pull the lever to switch the trolley to another track to kill even more unknown people), but there’s at least some basis in the moral judgment of the current U.S. legal system not to condemn the act of protection.

If Joel harms no one, he lets himself be marched outside, and either those guards let him go, as Marlene promised, or they kill him, if Marlene was just lying to get him out of the hospital and away from Ellie.  And Ellie dies (or Ellie and Joel both die) at the hands of their murders.  That is the ethical choice that Joel should have made?  The Fireflies are desperate, disorganized, in chaos and clinging to the idea of a cure that the show hasn’t set up as being practical in any sense.  

And even if the “cure” or “vaccine” would 100% have worked and could have been mass-produced in a society where manufacturing was all but halted, what world are they saving?  The one where “people” (as Joel and Ellie refer to them)—cultists, cannibals, authoritarian fiefdoms, raiders, etc.—are the real threat to anyone with a shred of decency? 

[aghst]

How would you even distribute this cure?

Going to go to every region, fight raiders, infected and people who are protective of places like the one they're going to and say "we have a cure!"

Just take this drug and you will be immune!

Yeah how is that working out?

[Raachel2008]

4 hours ago, Hanahope said:

I think they both thought they’d draw her blood, maybe spinal fluid.  I don’t think either thought she’d have to die. the question is did Marlene tell her? Did Ellie know and agree?  Did Ellie allow Joel to lie to her because she knows how important she has become to Joel?

Of course they thought that because that's what make sense. You live in a post apocalyptic world where there is ONE person who is imune to a virus who wiped almost all humanity and your plan is to open her brain? That's the most stupid idea ever. Study her blood, take her spinal fluid, collect her saliva, etc. I mean, it we are going to be brutally honest here, Ellie would probably spend the rest of her life locked in that hospital being tested and I assume eventually they would want samples from her brain (something she couldn't have seen coming, but Joel should).

But it sounds plain dumb and extremely simplistic to just cut her brain, killing her to find a cure when you don't even know if her blood can really help in any way. Heck, you don't even know if Ellie spits on your face three times if you are imune. From all we know she became imune when e her mom was bitten giving birth and the virus was passed through the blood (something Marlene knew), so why not explore that?

I'm not even going to enter the whole 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' (TM, Spock) debate, because Ellie is a kid and she cannot make that kind of decision. She has no agency for that, so fuck you Marlene.

Ellie knows Joel is lying. She knows. And Joel knows she knows. And they are both accepting that because they love each other and are all that they have left.

I knew what was going to happen because I was spoiled for the major points of the game and I'm utterly disappointed that they are not going to deviate from the game at all. They are very very lucky that they have Bella Ramsay and Pedro Pascal, because the story doesn't really hold itsef on TV.

Loved loved the giraffes.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Raachel2008

[Glade]

The Giraffe's escaped from the zoo was truly magical, and I loved the Joel/Ellie dialogue this episode, even though I hated the episode length. 

The word the fireflies used was 'cure,' not vaccine, which implies it would be more like anti-venom, unless you were actually contemplating 'curing' the already infected which, after a certain stage sounds very difficult.  But whether it's a treatment or inoculation or both, it seems like it could only realistically be distributed among a small section of survivors (unless they're going to take ships and go...fucking everywhere with it, every island, every continent, every hidden cabin in the mountains, in this deeply divided, mistrusting and factionalized world) would still be fighting off infected hordes until they reached the end of their lifespan/truly stopped finding new humans to infect.  That would take potentially a very long time.  Undoubtedly it would help some people, but the world before is never coming back, especially since the early 2000's had already locked in a large amount of catastrophic climate change that's going to place severe limits on humanity's survival anyway.  So, I don't really blame Joel for not saying "okay, murder Ellie to test your theory."  At least Marlene and the surgeon aren't around to try and replicate the conditions of Ellie's birth with new mothers/babies, which would be horrifying. 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Glade

[30 Helens]

1 hour ago, Raachel2008 said:

From all we know she became imune when e her mom was bitten giving birth and the virus was passed through the blood (something Marlene knew), so why not explore that?

I assume that’s exactly what happened. Vaccine via umbilical cord, so to speak.

Which means they should know exactly how to cure it. Get a bunch of Firefly ladies pregnant, infect them just as they’re giving birth, then years later have their immune babies hook up. A few generations later, problem solved.  I know, it’s cold. But hey, they started it.

[Anela]

Joel, you gorgeous human being.

Yes, that's what I was thinking, as he murdered the people who were going to murder Ellie. I don't care. They gave him a little girl to protect, and that's exactly what he did. 

6 minutes ago, 30 Helens said:

I assume that’s exactly what happened. Vaccine via umbilical cord, so to speak.

Which means they should know exactly how to cure it. Get a bunch of Firefly ladies pregnant, infect them just as they’re giving birth, then years later have their immune babies hook up. A few generations later, problem solved.  I know, it’s cold. But hey, they started it.

I was thinking the same thing: that they would impregnate women, and have them bitten just before giving birth. *shiver* 

Now, I'm going back to my Dead Like Me re-watch. 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Anela

[conquistador]

The excision strategy was so very extreme. If you have a total sample pool of N=1, then it would be wise not to kill off that sample with the very first experiment conducted. If the cordyceps has spread to Ellie’s brain, then there ought to be live fungus tissue all the way from the brain to the bite mark on her arm. That is, if it even went to the brain at all - why would it, if it doesn’t recognize Ellie as human?

The sensical approach thus would be to extract fungus tissue from the arm (and draw some blood while you’re at it), and try to build a vaccine based on that, all while keeping Ellie alive and well for possible future extractions and research.

Or maybe just muck around in her brain willy-nilly, couldn’t hurt right.

Edited March 13, 2023 by conquistador

[paigow]

How can there still be so many giraffes? Fireflies should have eaten them by now.

Marlene was gut shot in Episode 1... she recovered and beat Joel to Salt Lake City...  

[conquistador]

1 hour ago, Anela said:

I was thinking the same thing: that they would impregnate women, and have them bitten just before giving birth. *shiver* 

I guess you could inject live fungi into them, but that is not much less gruesome… Also feeling a bit nauseous thinking of all the trial and error to get the timing right…

I’m curious as to how they have planned to test the vaccine. Somebody has to be villing to sacrifice themselves before they can confirm its efficacy - perhaps the Fireflies are that dedicated to the cause.

[cambridgeguy]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

Marlene was gut shot in Episode 1... she recovered and beat Joel to Salt Lake City... 

Joel and Ellie walked from KC to Wyoming.  If Marlene had a car beating them would have been a piece of cake, plus Joel is proof that a gut wound isn't a big deal in this world.

On the one hand, being chased by an infected and then fighting them off when you're in labor is horrifying.  On the other, it means you can deliver a child so quickly you don't notice until the baby is crying on the floor. 

[paramitch]

I love that Anna's first words to baby Ellie are, "You fuckin' tell 'em, Ellie." Like mother, like daughter!

The main thing I took away here was the complexity of point of view. Each one of us loves someone deeply (or so I would hope) -- someone we say things like "I'd kill for you," or "I love you more than life," etc. And this episode (and the entire season) kind of calls us to task for that. If we go back narratively across the season, each episode is showing us a different answer to the micro-version of the Trolley Problem -- "What would you do to save someone you love? What wouldn't you do?" And then it forces us to examine the potential toxicity of that. 

• Some become Bill, willing to die because he can't live in a world without his beloved.
• Some become Henry, willing to cause the death of someone good and noble (and possibly doom an entire city), in order to save a child (who is heartbreakingly probably already doomed).
• Some become Kathleen, willing to burn the world (and kill innocent children) because someone killed the person she loved.
• Some become Tommy, cutting off beloved but problematic family entirely in order to create a new (and less toxic) family.
• Some become David and his followers, rationalizing murder and cannibalism as long as it saves THEIR family.
• And some become Joel -- willing to end as many lives as needed because they are going to kill his little girl.

The Joel who casually threw a child's dead body on a pile in episode 2 becomes the man who mows down a hospital of people (some of them surrendering and/or unarmed) to save the child in his arms. I mean, good lord, that's a hell of an arc. The worst part? I get it. Part of me still does love and care about Joel. I hate what he did. But it's hard to completely shut down on him. He went through hell to keep Ellie safe. He loves her more than any other person in the world. And now they're going to kill her (and not even with her consent?) Screw that.

I wanted Joel to save Ellie. The show gave me that wish -- in the worst way.

8 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Wasn’t the whole point of her getting to a hospital to extract her antibodies or whatever? Didn’t Joel or Ellie realize there was a possibility that she would have to be sacrificed?

I don't think the usual reaction to creating antibodies would be "I'm going to die." In fact, in the vast majority of cases, the patient would be absolutely fine. Even if it was neurologically based, you would think they could get what they need from her spinal fluid or even (worst case) a very tiny brain tissue sample that would not be life-threatening.

8 hours ago, Hanahope said:

I think they both thought they’d draw her blood, maybe spinal fluid.  I don’t think either thought she’d have to die. the question is did Marlene tell her? Did Ellie know and agree?  Did Ellie allow Joel to lie to her because she knows how important she has become to Joel?

I agree that this is what I would have expected as well. However, Marlene openly tells Joel that she did NOT tell Ellie she was about to die, or give her a choice in being part of the creation of the vaccine. The sad thing is, I think if it had been handled with Ellie and Joel in a different way, as I mentioned above, Joel would have allowed Ellie to make the choice. What sealed everyone's fates was the fact that they were just straight-up INSTANTLY willing to murder Ellie and not even give her the information or choice before doing so.

8 hours ago, Constantinople said:

Near the end I was wondering if Joel would get the Moses can see but not enter the Promised Land treatment.

I absolutely got that vibe as well. Jackson looks so beautiful from where they are, and I couldn't help but wonder what they will think of Joel. It's almost like his sin has to be a visible thing. And let's not forget that there were two witnesses. Those nurses are going to tell, and sooner rather than later. It definitely makes me very interested in how Maria will view Joel upon their return -- Maria who was absolutely right to be concerned about his capacity for violence.

8 hours ago, peridot said:

I wonder if Marlene would have killed the baby if Ellie's mom admitted to cutting the cord after she was bit?

Marlene turned into a monster over the years, willing to kill a kid for the small possibility of providing a cure/treatment.  She had to have known that Joel would strongly object, I'm surprised she didn't kill him first.

That lie sounds so implausible, I wonder if Ellie actually believes it, even after Joel swore it's the truth.

I absolutely think Marlene would have killed the baby. Which is interesting -- this episode starts with the lie of a parent who simply wants to save her child -- with Ellie's mother Anna giving birth in this horrific circumstance then lying when Marlene shows up: She knows Ellie may be Infected. But she lies. She wants to give Ellie a chance, and who can blame her? It's her baby girl.

Now cut to the end of the episode. Joes does a terrible thing. But, well... They're going to kill his baby girl. 

And I agree, to some extent -- Marlene makes a fatal error. It's understandable, but it dooms everyone. She removes Ellie's choice and decides she can die to save humanity (let's set aside whether I think this is smart thinking scientifically, since to me it's an awful lot like killing the goose that can lay your golden egg). That affects everything else.

As far as the lie, I think Ellie mostly believes Joel. For now. But obviously the reckoning will come. Bella played it perfectly. She believes him, but also hesitates.

7 hours ago, magdalene said:

I feel like the writing is trying to convince and manipulate me into believing that Joel is all of a sudden the bad guy in this.  Guess what show? It ain't working.

So, they were going to kill Ellie, a 14 year old kid, for the possibility of a dubious vaccine that may not even work?  Which Ellie did not consent to?  Not that she could consent as a child.  Under the age of consent, hmm writers?  Right.  And Marlene thought Joel, of all people, would go along with this?  I am glad Marlene is dead. I hated her guts in this episode.

Joel is a ruthless killer and I am sad about it but it hasn't changed my feelings for him. I do believe he should have told Ellie the truth.

I don't think the show wants us to feel any certain way at all. I would simply argue that the show is simply asking us to not look away at what Joel does. I think Mazin/Druckmann know this is a terrible thing. But I don't think they are showing us Joel's actions with inherent judgment at all. I think they are asking us to react however we would react.

Most human beings, and certainly most parents, have people they would die for. And kill to save. I think what they did here is pretty balanced and complex -- they show us the rightness and wrongness of both sides -- of Marlene's approach here (removing all agency from Ellie herself, which is incredibly unfair), and of Joel's (his mercilessly taking lives and saving Ellie at all costs, including killing the doctor so they have no way of repeating the situation any time soon). 

I think the interesting part here is that Marlene and Joel both commit the same sin in the end here -- they lie to Ellie when she deserves the the whole truth.

7 hours ago, overtherainbow said:

Yeah, Joel is the good guy in this. Screw "the greater good", this is a guy who's lost way too much. Let him live out his days with Ellie and his brother on the Wyoming commune, and if she consents to giving the fireflies a chunk of her brain when she's older, that's on her. She's 14, she's not ready to be a science experiment.  

I get this, and I think a LOT of people are going to react this way. For me, it was complicated. I totally wanted Joel to rescue Ellie, but I admit when he started the killing spree with zero mercy I was sick to my stomach. The show gave me what I wanted, all right.

7 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

The scenes with Joel and Ellie in this episode leading up to the final hospital vignette were truly beautiful.  That relationship is the part of the story that really captured my imagination, and the conversations that took place—Joel trying to help Ellie via canned pasta and board games, their connecting over the pun book and the giraffes, their getting into a frank discussion about Joel’s suicide attempt (which as an aside, felt like the absolute missing piece of Joel’s character as to why he went on after Sarah died and was the perfect grace note to his character), etc.  Those moved me deeply in that they presented the possibility of finding love and connection again in this absolute wasteland of the apocalypse.  And there is some part of me that wishes that was the story being told.

But of course, this story is not an uplifting one:  it is an utter tragedy, and so then we have the hospital vignette and the aftermath, where Joel sacrifices (whether he fully realizes it or not) nearly everything good he has salvaged from finding Ellie (connection, trust, openness) except her very life.  But what parent can willingly sacrifice their child for a vague platitude that her death might help the world?  Marlene was willing to sacrifice Ellie, but as much as she cared for Anna, she was no parent to Ellie.  (The actress who played Marlene in the game and the show is wonderful:  love her.)

I do think in showing Joel as a mass shooter in a TV medium, it hits in a way that doesn’t hit when playing a video game (where you take out hundreds or thousands of people coming at you).  I think the show runners do want you (general you) to be repulsed by Joel for purposes of setting up the moral quandary of the story.  These weren’t good, innocent people, though, that Joel was taking out:  every single one of them had a gun trained on him (even Marlene, who was setting hers down but it was not out of reach), except for the doctor, who had the metaphorical gun to Ellie’s head instead of Joel’s.  So I’m not sure (still have to think on it further) that the moral quandary is as deep as the creators think that it is.

Wonderful observations! A few thoughts -- first off, the early conversations between Joel and Ellie are so moving. He can see that she's hurting, she's not okay, she's still dealing with trauma, and he's trying so hard to find little things to distract and give her joy. At least the pun book still worked!

Then there was the giraffe, and that is a gift Joel gives her. Ellie finds the giraffe, but it is Joel who realizes it will interact with them, and his giving Ellie the chance to feed it is the moment that finally breaks through to her and gives her joy. It's such a gorgeous moment. I also loved seeing the herd of giraffes in the square below -- all that beautiful life in that green and growing space, protected and happy and nature still winning out.

I disagree with you that the moral quandary isn't a deep one. Joel could have disabled the vast majority of those people, many of whom I would argue were at least potentially good people -- they are on the side of good, they are trying to save the world. They didn't kill Joel and Ellie on sight, for instance. Joel doesn't just fight a bunch of adversaries to save Ellie, he kills several people who were already disabled with additional head shots. He shoots a man openly surrendering to him. He shoots a defenseless doctor. He shoots Marlene AFTER disabling her.

I totally get why he did all of that. I do. If the doctor lives, he will always be a threat to Ellie (and aware of her existence). If Marlene lives, same. But Marlene was also the closest living thing to a mother to Ellie in some ways, present at her birth, someone who had protected Ellie and tried to keep her safe, who had loved her mother, etc.

For me this was pretty complex and while I understood Joel turning into the Terminator at the end here, it broke my heart and I found it very hard to watch.

5 hours ago, Brn2bwild said:

<small voice> Couldn't they have tried to make a cure from her blood first?

It seemed like they reached the "we must kill her and take her brain" stage awfully quickly.  That must have been Marlene's goal from the beginning when Ellie was chained up like a dog, which is chilling.

5 hours ago, WaltersHair said:

The real crime here, is that the medical people were so quick to sacrifice Ellie. Why not do blood work, and study her first before carving her up?

Medicine is inexact in the best of times. Using Ellie's brain to treat the world with its potential antibodies is a shot in the dark at best. Can you think of one one cancer treatment all on it's own that is 100% effective on all people all the time?

Yeah, 100% this. I said it above, but killing Ellie right away without at least EXPERIMENTING with lesser approaches like using her cerebrospinal fluid or even VERY SMALL brain matter samples just seems stupid to me. I could see a doctor skipping those steps in desperation, but again -- really? It does seem like a really terrible, hasty decision.

5 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

But there’s a reason why self-defense and defense of others is a legal justification for murder:  because the (nominally) non-apocalyptic society in which we currently live says that it is unfair to assign culpability when there is no other option to save a life. I mean, ethically, I guess that the situation is like a reverse Trolley Problem (let the trolley barreling towards Ellie kill her, or actively pull the lever to switch the trolley to another track to kill even more unknown people), but there’s at least some basis in the moral judgment of the current U.S. legal system not to condemn the act of protection.

If Joel harms no one, he lets himself be marched outside, and either those guards let him go, as Marlene promised, or they kill him, if Marlene was just lying to get him out of the hospital and away from Ellie.  And Ellie dies (or Ellie and Joel both die) at the hands of their murders.  That is the ethical choice that Joel should have made?  The Fireflies are desperate, disorganized, in chaos and clinging to the idea of a cure that the show hasn’t set up as being practical in any sense.  

And even if the “cure” or “vaccine” would 100% have worked and could have been mass-produced in a society where manufacturing was all but halted, what world are they saving?  The one where “people” (as Joel and Ellie refer to them)—cultists, cannibals, authoritarian fiefdoms, raiders, etc.—are the real threat to anyone with a shred of decency? 

Great examination of the issue. Right now I feel like everyone was wrong here except Ellie -- I keep thinking of that quote about "he who saves a life saves the world entire." A single life is a precious and sacred thing. What Marlene does is wrong, because she does not give Ellie the choice and she lies to her about the situation instead. What Joel does is wrong, and in the end he, too, lies about it to Ellie.

For me right now, the only hero in this story is Ellie. Even though I still care about Joel, I understood what he did. I'm just also still horrified by it.

4 hours ago, Raachel2008 said:

Ellie knows Joel is lying. She knows. And Joel knows she knows. And they are both accepting that because they love each other and are all that they have left.

I definitely think this is one way to interpret the expression on Ellie's face at the end, there. I think at the very least, Ellie has doubts about the truth of what he said.

But she loves him. For now, she'll accept it. But those doubts will still be there. It's heartbreaking to me because it's like the first corruption in Eden -- Ellie and Joel are family, they love each other. But there is a tiny seed of poison in Ellie's love now because she doubts Joel. What happens when she discovers what he did? What happened to Marlene?

I'm in for season 2, but I gotta say, I'm also pretty scared to watch. I loved this season but I don't know how much darker I'm willing to go.

2 hours ago, paigow said:

How can there still be so many giraffes? Fireflies should have eaten them by now.

Marlene was gut shot in Episode 1... she recovered and beat Joel to Salt Lake City...  

I swear to God, my first reaction to seeing MARLENE there was, "OH MY GOD, Marlene, why didn't you just take her your own damn self?!"

Edited March 13, 2023 by paramitch
added quote

[Johnny Dollar]

I don’t know how anyone can see Joel as the villain in thus scenario. Ellie essentially became his daughter over the last few months. What parent wouldn’t do what he did to save their child?

If I was Marlene lying on the ground with a bullet in my chest, instead of begging Joel to let me go, I’d be begging him to finish me off. What exactly is in her world that is still worth living for?

[Hanahope]

I think Joel could have told slightly more of the truth.  That Marlene told him what they were going to do, they argued and then into the raider lie where he chose to go save Ellie instead of help Marlene.  That he later saw marlene dead.  Let Ellie know that was her fate, to die for maybe a cure, not a Ben a sure thing.  That he now has no idea where such work is still ongoing.  
 

I think Ellie might have fully accepted that half truth.  But Joel’s full lie will fester in her as she knows something isn’t being said.  
 

I agree it seems awfully hasty to go straight to full out brain removal without any non death trials.  

[KeithJ]

I'm a bit confused.  Marlene wanted Joel to take Ellie west but then Marlene actually beat them out there?  I don't remember, why couldn't Marlene take her herself?

[paigow]

Boston FEDRA might be the last one standing... and the least competent dealing with Infected... Salt Lake City is free. Otherwise, the Hospital would have been overrun.

When did all the animals escape from the zoo? Where are the Apex Predators?

[PurpleTentacle]

Me the first few seconds of the episode: "Is it? Is it really? Yes, it is Ashley motherfucking Johnson!" Making her Ellie's mother in this was inspired and I'm so glad I wasn't spoiled.

That being said, I think Marlene can infer how Ellie got to be immune now and could probably make more, if she was willing to sacrifice a pregnant woman and a baby, which I wouldn't put past her.

They are playing it very ambiguous if Ellie knows that making a cure will mean death for her. I hope that isn't something they do to make season 2 go in a particular direction, that nobody will like.........

I still think these doctors have no chance in hell to find a cure and so Joel's actions are a 100% justified. You don't kill your only test subject after two hours. You keep them alive and well as long as possible, so you can take samples for as long as possible. It doesn't make sense that you'd need to cut out the whole brain and the whole fungus. As Merlene says: "He's going to remove it [the fungus] from her [Ellie], multiply the cells in a lab...". If you can multiply the cells in a lab, which has been my argument for 10 years, why don't you just take a small biopsy? Why cut out Ellies whole brain? You don't need many cells of a fungus to grow it in a lab.

Also the fungus clearly doesn't just grow in the brain. We've seen that.

I'm really disappointed, that Druckman couldn't come up with something better. He had 10 years.

The last third was very well shot and showed the human cost of Joel's actions, but like I said, I reject the premise that this was in any way morally ambiguous. Not only is Joel in the right for protecting his child, he is also protecting the only known person on the planet who is immune from dangerous quacks. Maybe some day actually competent doctors will come from Europe or India or somewhere and find a cure from Ellies blood and biopsy samples. Very small chance, but a better chance than if she dies for nothing now.

[conquistador]

With regards to Joel’s actions, I appreciate how much of it was foreshadowed. We knew he had been very violent in his past, we also saw in the previous episode what an effective and cold killer he can be when he thinks the situation calls for it. His attachment to Ellie as motivation has also been thoroughly laid out, especially with the new information on his suicide attempt.

I also think that we as viewers are left conflicted, the same way Ellie was. It’s true that he protects her, but we also see that he is capable of lying to her and betraying her ideals if it means being able to keep her around longer. This is a darker side of Joel that we, and Ellie, have to come to terms with.

[Luckylyn]

The way it was shown makes it appear the decision to operate on Ellie to kill her for a potential cure was decided before she even showed up.  They didn’t examine her, take samples, run tests, or do trials to try various strategies before setting on killing the only resource they have to find the cure. That’s ridiculous.  It makes me question the skills and intelligence of the people working on the cure.  

[bethy]

I wonder if some of Joel's complete ruthlessness when it came to killing the people who had endangered Ellie also arose out of the fact that they had just survived another situation where Ellie had been in danger and Joel hadn't been able to save her. Ellie saved herself, yes, but we know that Joel has a ton of guilt for not being able to save Sarah (and Tess), and I can see that Ellie's trauma from the last episode would add to Joel's feeling of helplessness and shame for not being able to protect those he loves. To me, Joel's hunt through the hospital came across a lot like Joel was just done. He shut himself down completely and was going to burn it all to the ground, no survivors, including himself, if Ellie was dead. 

And I found the scene of Ellie's birth incredibly tragic - not just that her mother was infected and killed, but that some of the first words spoken over Ellie were about her being "tough." She wasn't tough; she was an infant. From the very beginning of her life, she was, in many ways, on her own and without true protection. As someone pointed out up thread, even the guy holding her didn't shield her ears from the sound of the gun killing her mother. And Marlene doesn't seem to have done much to nurture her or protect her, in spite of her relationship with Ellie's mother, putting her in the FEDRA school fairly early on in her life. (I don't remember that I even got the idea the two of them actually knew each other much at all in the first episode.) It just made me so sad for her. 

[PurpleTentacle]

10 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Wasn’t the whole point of her getting to a hospital to extract her antibodies or whatever? Didn’t Joel or Ellie realize there was a possibility that she would have to be sacrificed?

In any sane world, with competent doctors, there wouldn't be that possibility, no. You'd have to be a complete lunatic to go like "Right, let's rip this little girls brain out, before having time to run any tests, so we can maybe find a cure!"

10 hours ago, Hanahope said:

I think they both thought they’d draw her blood, maybe spinal fluid.  I don’t think either thought she’d have to die. the question is did Marlene tell her? Did Ellie know and agree?

Merlene didn't tell her. That much she made clear: "We didn't tell her, we didn't cause her any fear."

The only question is if Ellie figured it out on her own. She is very celver. But again, no reasonable person would think that would be an option, since it's not a reasonable course of action.

10 hours ago, peridot said:

That lie sounds so implausible, I wonder if Ellie actually believes it, even after Joel swore it's the truth.

It seems like she knows what the truth is and just accepts Joel's lie because she loves him, right? Which is why I hope that the plot of season 2 isn't what I think it will be...

8 hours ago, paramitch said:

Also, one of the nurses was Laura Bailey! (She was in The Last of Us II and won a BAFTA -- she played a major character. I am spoiled on who she played. Also Ashley Johnson was in this -- she was Ellie's voice in the first game, and won a BAFTA for her performance. (Both Laura and Ashley are on Critical Role, a D&D show I love beyond all reason.)

Great catch. I did not recognise her with the mask. If people here want to see more of these amazing actresses, I can wholeheartedly recommend The Legend of Vox Machina and soon The Mighty Nein.

And then come over to The Legend of Vox Machina discussion thread. ;)

8 hours ago, paramitch said:

Also, while they're passing out that bucket of Emmys to Bella next year, they need to give one to Pedro Pascal as well. An incredible performance.

Bella Ramsey: best leading actress

Pedro Pascal: best leading actor

Nick Offerman: best supporting actor

I will accept nothing less.

6 hours ago, Anela said:

I was thinking the same thing: that they would impregnate women, and have them bitten just before giving birth. *shiver* 

In real life, you would try it with any other mammel first, but considering the fireflies approach to a cure, yeah that's probably what they'd do......

1 hour ago, KeithJ said:

I'm a bit confused.  Marlene wanted Joel to take Ellie west but then Marlene actually beat them out there?  I don't remember, why couldn't Marlene take her herself?

Well Marlene was shot, so she had some healing up to do. Also she only wanted Joel and Tess to take her to a Firefly camp outside of Boston. From there those Fireflies would have taken Ellie further, but once the three of them got there, all the Fireflies were dead.

Of course if Marlene had been a bit more patient, she could have taken Ellie herself, but being patient doesn't seem to be in her nature.

[PurpleTentacle]

Also shower thought: The way Marlene explained it, the fungus in Ellie producing biological messengers to tell other fungies "hey occupado!" and the newly introduced fungus not growing because of that, means that any infected should work to produce a cure. Because Marlene said they'd only use that biological messenger for the cure and you'd think that every fungus produces and recognises it, or else it wouldn't work. Ellie is only special in the sense that the fungus doesn't consume her, but that messenger molecule, you should be able to extract from any infected.

[Dev F]

20 hours ago, conquistador said:

The excision strategy was so very extreme. If you have a total sample pool of N=1, then it would be wise not to kill off that sample with the very first experiment conducted. If the cordyceps has spread to Ellie’s brain, then there ought to be live fungus tissue all the way from the brain to the bite mark on her arm.

No, that would only get them a sample of normal cordyceps, which they could extract from any infected person they dragged in off the street. The idea is that only Ellie's brain houses the unique cordyceps strain that halted the growth of her regular cordyceps infection.

15 hours ago, Luckylyn said:

The way it was shown makes it appear the decision to operate on Ellie to kill her for a potential cure was decided before she even showed up.  They didn’t examine her, take samples, run tests, or do trials to try various strategies before setting on killing the only resource they have to find the cure. That’s ridiculous.  It makes me question the skills and intelligence of the people working on the cure.  

I assume they did take samples and run tests while Joel was unconscious. Per Marlene, they seemed to have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of Ellie's immunity; I assume that came from a (very fast) study of Ellie's blood. Or maybe they took samples of Ellie's blood when she was first their prisoner and tested them before Ellie herself arrived?

Either way, it's of course not hugely realistic that they'd be able to do that. But we're talking about a sci-fi fungus that turns people into mushroom zombies connected to each other via an underground network of self-propelled mycelia; I'm willing to accept a little more sci-fi hooey on top of that. Because it's clear that the intention is for it not to be hooey within the story.

And it's important to the story that the Fireflies not be quacks, because that story, about how Joel killed a bunch of people who were going to murder his surrogate daughter out of misplaced faith in a supposed savior who was wrong and selfish and doomed to fail, would be an exact duplicate of last week's storyline! And it would be a shame if his entire arc for the season ended with a stutter.

But this is something that's frustrated me ever since the first game came out. Why would players and now viewers want for Joel's actions to be unambiguously righteous? Isn't it more interesting if they're not? The idea that Joel saved Ellie at the cost of humanity writ large is one of the main things that separates The Last of Us from the typical The time, it's personal! shoot-'em-up.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Dev F

[cambridgeguy]

12 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Merlene didn't tell her. That much she made clear: "We didn't tell her, we didn't cause her any fear."

The episode was built on no one telling Ellie anything and making decisions based on what they felt was best.  Marlene thought dissecting Ellie was the one and only way to save the world, so why tell her she's going to be chopped up?  Joel couldn't bear to lose his new surrogate daughter, so why risk telling Ellie and give her the choice to sacrifice herself.  Then afterwards he probably decided, aside from his own fears that she'd hate him, there was no reason to tell her the truth because all of the resulting angst wouldn't revive the gaggle of bodies he left behind (although it would be ironic if the two nurses he presumably let live give a detailed description of him to anyone wanting revenge).  He wouldn't be the first parent to lie to his kid to try and protect them.

[MrWhyt]

1 hour ago, PurpleTentacle said:

I'm really disappointed, that Druckman couldn't come up with something better. He had 10 years.

why would he have spent the last decade rewriting the ending to his critically acclaimed game?

[conquistador]

9 minutes ago, Dev F said:

And it's important to the story that the Fireflies not be quacks, because that story, about how Joel killed a bunch of people who were going to murder his surrogate daughter out of misplaced faith in a supposed savior who was wrong and selfish and doomed to fail, would be an exact duplicate of last week's storyline! And it would be a shame if his entire arc for the season ended with a stutter.

But this is something that's frustrated me ever since the first game came out. Why would players and now viewers want for Joel's actions to be unambiguously righteous? Isn't it more interesting if they're not? The idea that Joel saved Ellie at the cost of humanity writ large is one of the main things that separates The Last of Us from the typical The time, it's personal! shoot-'em-up.

Yes, this is something that has been on my mind too. I have the impression that the surgery was meant to come across as credible at least to Joel, but that he decides to interrupt the procedure anyway in order to save Ellie and then subsequently lie to her about the whole operation. It's more tragic and also more interesting story-telling. It then becomes more of a writing issue, that the script wasn't able to convey a more convincing portrayal of the medical science.

Edited March 13, 2023 by conquistador

[PurpleTentacle]

26 minutes ago, cambridgeguy said:

  Joel couldn't bear to lose his new surrogate daughter, so why risk telling Ellie and give her the choice to sacrifice herself. 

Joel didn't have any opportunity to tell Ellie. When he came to she was already sedated and on the operating table. At that point Joel had to fight them out of that hospital.

I know they added that little line of Marlene's at the end of "even now we can find a way [to make a cure]" but how would that work? Marlene didn't even have a competent doctor before Joel killed him. Who is she going to dig up next? A chiropractor?

There is really no need to tell a 14 year old girl about something that isn't real. I see where the writers were going with this, but they missed the mark by about a hundred miles, which is even more frustrating when you think about the fact that they had 10 years to fix this.

20 minutes ago, MrWhyt said:

why would he have spent the last decade rewriting the ending to his critically acclaimed game?

To make it make sense? If I was a writer I would want to take pride in my work. I guess maybe that's just me and Druckman is fine with being adulated for crappy work.

27 minutes ago, Dev F said:

And it's important to the story that the Fireflies not be quacks

Well if that is important to the story, maybe the writers should have written it that way.

27 minutes ago, Dev F said:

But this is something that's frustrated me ever since the first game came out. Why would players and now viewers want for Joel's actions to be unambiguously righteous? Isn't it more interesting if they're not? The idea that Joel saved Ellie at the cost of humanity writ large is one of the main things that separates The Last of Us from the typical The time, it's personal! shoot-'em-up.

It's not about what I want, it's about how it was written. I want this to be morally ambiguous. I love these kinds of stories. That is why I'm so frustrated that Druckman didn't fix it! The way it is written now, there is no question, what Joel did was the right and rightous call from every conceivable angle. It would be so much more interesting if there was a real possibility for a cure and Joel just murdered everybody anyway. But that's just not the case.

Edited March 13, 2023 by PurpleTentacle

[Uncle JUICE]

I'm confused, were they going to just crack open her skull and take her brains? Also seems weird that they didn't shave her head. 

3 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

 

It's not about what I want, it's about how it was written. I want this to be morally ambiguous. I love these kinds of stories. That is why I'm so frustrated that Druckman didn't fix it! The way it is written now, there is no question, what Joel did was the right and rightous call from every conceivable angle. It would be so much more interesting if there was a real possibility for a cure and Joel just murdered everybody anyway. But that's just not the case.

Curious, do you think this problem (which I'm on board with) could have been solved with a two minute discussion between Joel and the doctor about what exactly was going to happen, that it was risky (so he'd be talking about less than certain death, maybe even as good as 50 50), that he wasn't sure it was going to work, that she'd recover, because the availability of medical supplies that make all surgeries safer is so scarce. That they have no imaging tech, so they can't be sure where the cordyceps is BESIDES the brain so they have to start there? This way Joel has to make a decision that a XX% chance isn't high enough for him, something like that? I just don't think adjusting the story this way is really difficult, so I don't get why they didn't bother doing it. 

I don't get why they went straight for the brain thing. It'd be much easier to sell Joel and Ellie on starting with the bites.