S01.E09: Look for the Light

[violet and green]

My pressing concern was Ellie's right eyebrow. The one that usually has a little scar and missing hair section and then carries on, albeit fainter. In the final episode, it looked as if the entire section from where the scar usually sat to the end of the eyebrow was shaved off. Why? It was really distracting.

[theredhead77]

12 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

will they have to catch a bunch of infected mold monsters to make them people again?

If they were able to make them people again is that even the right thing to do? Would they remember all the other people they murdered ate during their infected state? What sort of injuries are they able to survive in their infected zombie state that would be life-altering (or threatening) when returned to human form? How cruel that could be.

Edited March 15, 2023 by theredhead77

[paramitch]

I always need to percolate over things a bit, and while I thought this was a strong episode of TV, considering the episode was only 44 minutes or so -- what I would have liked to have seen was a 60-minute episode that deviates when Joel and Ellie are captured by the Fireflies. In this version:

• Joel wakes up, Ellie and Marlene greet him
• Marlene tentatively thanks Joel for getting Ellie there, explains to Ellie that they will begin testing her (Ellie eagerly agreeing, Joel cautious)
• Ellie meets the nice doctor who wants to save humanity
• She and Joel bond with some of the Fireflies
• Ellie tells bad puns to the Doc and nurses
• A "one year passes" montage of Ellie being tested and Joel and Ellie becoming family to the Fireflies
• Ellie comes to see Joel and they joke around (he doesn't realize she's saying goodbye)
• THEN Marlene tells Joel Ellie is going to surgery
• She says Ellie agreed
• THEN Joel shoots up the place
• Everything after that the same

To me, the stakes would have been higher. The science more believable. The "our loved ones" versus "their loved ones" would have more strongly echoed back, etc.

I still think it was a great episode, and a very strong season overall. I just think they fumbled it a little bit at the finish line (there's no real equal moral equivalence here as written because Marlene did not give Ellie the choice or even information).

I would give the show as a whole a strong 9. After 2 days to think about it, I'd give this episode a 7.

[MrWhyt]

3 hours ago, slowpoked said:

I guess my pressing concern is, did Ellie ever get the swiss knife that her mother had left for her?

Ellie had her switchblade for the run of the series.

[theredhead77]

Marlene gave one of her Firefly mercenaries the switchblade when they were escorting Joel out of the building. Joel took it back after he shot the guy.

[Dev F]

47 minutes ago, paramitch said:

To me, the stakes would have been higher. The science more believable. The "our loved ones" versus "their loved ones" would have more strongly echoed back, etc.

I agree that a longer time frame would've made the science more believable. In fact, as a guy who cringed when Game of Thrones dated every major event to a "fortnight" after the last major event, I'm in favor of more time passing in serial narratives in general. (And it's something The Last of Us has otherwise been really good at; unlike in Game of Thrones, it takes longer than two weeks for Joel and Ellie to trek across an entire continent on foot!)

But I also see a benefit to the compressed timeline we actually got, because I think there's meant to be a level of abstraction to the Firefly side of things. I'd say the idea they're going for is less "our loved ones" vs. "their loved ones" and more "our loved ones" vs. "the abstract idea of acting for mankind's benefit." Developing emotional connections to the nice doctor and the rest of the Fireflies might step on that a bit. It sort of changes a difference in kind into a difference in degree—which member of our big found family do I care the most about, instead of do I care more about my found family than saving humanity in general.

I've been playing around with other possibilities in my own head. Like, would it have helped to emphasize that what the Fireflies really need is not Ellie but this thing growing deep inside her brain? Establishing that it's something they know can survive outside her body might help them seem more callous than reckless, and defuse the objection that they're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. But that's fairly fussy.

In fact, I've yet to land on an option that doesn't seem fussy or off-center in one way or another. Maybe it's just an ending that doesn't have a perfect-10 version.

[CooperTV]

9 hours ago, Dev F said:

If that's the case, then why would Joel lie to Ellie about it? That lie now dangles like a sword over the most important relationship in his life, and if he thought his choice was self-evidently correct, he wouldn't have needed to hang it there.

He assumed the role of her father, and that was classic white lie to give her the future life she deserved. It could bite him in the ass, it couldn't but he tried to spare her feelings, that's for sure.

It's not the first lie he told her regarding her safety. In e4, when they're in the forest, she asks if they're safe and he answers they are, and then goes to do a third watch.

Otherwise I've no idea, I didn't like how this scene was handled narratively both in the show and in the game. It was really clunky, rushed and unconvincing in the show, by far.

  

8 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

 I think she wanted to show him out instead of kill him right there because she did (as she said) feel indebted to him for getting Ellie there, but she started in with the threats just to get his compliance and make him go.

We have to pick a lane here than don't make excuses for Marlene, in my opinion. So either Joel is a ruthless killing machine with no humanity left, and Marlene just  threatened this person bodily harm, for reasons, even though he delivered on his promise ten times over and brought the precious cargo through the hostile environment unharmed and got death threats instead of reward for it.

Or Joel is fatherly caring Joel with special skills who Marlene feels indebted to but still say to shoot him after saying they're gonna kill his child in the name of science.

It cannot be both of those things. The first option is a Marlene is an idiot with no survival instincts. The second option is Marlene is a monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Edited March 15, 2023 by CooperTV

[endure]

On 3/12/2023 at 8:04 PM, 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.

Kill or be killed is what it came down to.  Joel has found meaning in his life for protecting and loving Ellie as if he were her father.

[Dev F]

1 hour ago, CooperTV said:

He assumed the role of her father, and that was classic white lie to give her the future life she deserved. It could bite him in the ass, it couldn't but he tried to spare her feelings, that's for sure.

A "classic white lie" is when your kid's dog dies and you tell her you sent it to a farm upstate, not when you gun down a dozen people and tell her raiders did it. That's a hugely consequential lie regarding something she deserves to know the truth about.

And as the showrunners pointed out in the episode podcast (and I can't believe never registered with me before), it's something she's almost certainly already guessed the truth about. After all, she knows Joel didn't spirit her away under a shady pretense while implying that everyone is dead because the Fireflies tried to draw her blood. There's a reason why she's talking about everyone else she knows who died—because she's contemplating the possibility that it was her turn to go and Joel took it from her.

(Minor dialogue spoiler for the first game.)

Spoiler

In the game, Ellie's dialogue hints at it even more specifically: "She says, 'Let's just wait it out. Y'know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together.' I'm still waiting for my turn."

It's the mirror image of what Marlene did: She didn't ask Ellie to sign off on her own sacrifice because deep down she was afraid she might say no. Joel doesn't want Ellie to know that a sacrifice was even possible because he's afraid she would've said yes. Which is nowhere near as bad, of course—but it's also not something Joel would worry about if he thought the whole thing was a deranged folly. Because "It was a deranged folly and your death wouldn't have saved anyone" is a perfect rejoinder to Ellie's potential objection, if only Joel believed it. But he doesn't, so he lies instead.

Quote

Otherwise I've no idea, I didn't like how this scene was handled narratively both in the show and in the game. It was really clunky, rushed and unconvincing in the show, by far.

Whereas if you assume that Joel believes in the possibility of a cure, it makes total sense and is a perfect, bittersweet capstone to Joel and Ellie's story. Just sayin'.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Dev F

[conquistador]

Going back to episode 1 feels quite rewarding after having seen the whole show. There are a lot of details I didn’t pay much attention to at first go that become more significant in hindsight.

For example:

* Joel already being efficient at killing (saving Sarah from the infected neighbour)

* Seeing Tommy

* Joel has a guitar in his house

* Ellie brandishing her mother’s knife

* Marlene mentioning Riley

And more. They have certainly worked on getting the characters and their stories cohesive throughout the season. One other such example (which was pointed out to me) is how Joel’s hearing loss matches up with the suicide attempt that we learn of in the final episode.

[paramitch]

I think one of the things that makes the Marlene/Firefly stuff feel a little less satisfying for me here is also the fact that -- beyond the fact that Marlene is weirdly overly cold, unkind, and rude to the guy who just helped get Ellie there under near-impossible conditions -- the Fireflies are seriously over-the-top sneering and rude to Joel right away.

All Joel has done at that point is to protest (understandably) in love and grief that Ellie has to die. Marlene tells them to let him go but to shoot him if he does anything else. The soldiers are immediately sneering and mean, mock and shove him, and are openly bullying.

It's just weird when these are the good guys -- but then again, they aren't necessarily, are they? They use people and discard them, and there's a reason Tommy at a certain point finally noped out.

Meanwhile, on rewatch, honestly, it's kind of satisfying when he shoots the cruel guards, even if it's also shocking.

[conquistador]

5 hours ago, paramitch said:

What I would have liked to have seen was a 60-minute episode that deviates when Joel and Ellie are captured by the Fireflies. In this version:

• Joel wakes up, Ellie and Marlene greet him
• Marlene tentatively thanks Joel for getting Ellie there, explains to Ellie that they will begin testing her (Ellie eagerly agreeing, Joel cautious)
• Ellie meets the nice doctor who wants to save humanity
• She and Joel bond with some of the Fireflies
• Ellie tells bad puns to the Doc and nurses
• A "one year passes" montage of Ellie being tested and Joel and Ellie becoming family to the Fireflies
• Ellie comes to see Joel and they joke around (he doesn't realize she's saying goodbye)
• THEN Marlene tells Joel Ellie is going to surgery
• She says Ellie agreed
• THEN Joel shoots up the place
• Everything after that the same

To me, the stakes would have been higher. The science more believable. The "our loved ones" versus "their loved ones" would have more strongly echoed back, etc.

I think you are on the right track - but just for the sake of argument, would it not be really difficult for Joel to lie about it afterwards? Even in the present version Ellie doesn’t really believe him, but at least for Joel there is the benefit of all the events transpiring so quickly, making it all a bit of a blur.

[paramitch]

13 minutes ago, conquistador said:

I think you are on the right track - but just for the sake of argument, would it not be really difficult for Joel to lie about it afterwards? Even in the present version Ellie doesn’t really believe him, but at least for Joel there is the benefit of all the events transpiring so quickly, making it all a bit of a blur.

Yeah, I think as @Dev F pointed out above, I was probably overthinking that (it's a thing I tend to do).

You both make good points about how that might not be the most workable approach (it's probably too much) -- although I still think at least a little of that above stuff would have helped to enrich the conclusion.

While I'm nitpicking (and again, I really did like the episode)... 

I also honestly just wish we'd gotten a bit more of Joel and Ellie in the beginning, in their new bonded roles as a real family.

I was a little disappointed that Ellie was so checked out and distant at the start. I know she is dealing with trauma there, but as it's been two months, and after the incredibly emotional high point of episode 8's ending with her hug and his "Baby girl, I've got you," I was a little bummed that she seemed so cut off from Joel at the start of this episode. That also slightly minimizes the effect when she is again slightly distant at the end of the episode (as she is thinking about whether he may have lied and what he may have done).

To me, it would have been more effective to have her and Joel be at their closest at the beginning here, sharing a story or talk around a campfire -- just some little thing that gives us something to amplify our sense of loss at the end. This entire story, all Ellie has wanted was for Joel to be her parent, for her to feel like someone would never abandon her. She has yearned for this desperately. She finally got it, and yet here it felt like something was missing at the start.

Versus when Ellie faces Joel at the end -- it's obvious that something has changed inside her, and she at least suspects something (it's not clear if she 100% disbelieves him). And I think that would have been more impactful if they were closer to start. The beautiful giraffe scene kind of gave us that, but I would have liked more.

[Danny Franks]

4 hours ago, Dev F said:

Whereas if you assume that Joel believes in the possibility of a cure, it makes total sense and is a perfect, bittersweet capstone to Joel and Ellie's story. Just sayin'.

The wonder in his voice when he told Tommy she was immune suggests to me that Joel did think there was some chance of a cure. His determination to take her to the Fireflies, even when they had no clue where to find them as well. Because if he didn't believe in a cure, the logical thing to do would be to suggest Ellie just stays in Jackson, where it seems safe.

Talking around Joel's thought processes and reasoning that he had doubts, that the science didn't make sense, undermines his actions. He was saving Ellie, no matter what. They could have given him a ten hour presentation on exactly how the cure would work and a rollout plan that was fool-proof. He'd still have killed them all to get her out of there.

2 hours ago, conquistador said:

* Joel already being efficient at killing (saving Sarah from the infected neighbour)

And Joel being pretty ruthless when it comes to protecting his own - that family with a kid on the highway, who he instructs Tommy to drive past. He's not some generous, altruistic hero, even before the Mushroom Apocalypse. Tommy would have stopped, so would Sarah. Joel said no.

1 hour ago, paramitch said:

I also honestly just wish we'd gotten a bit more of Joel and Ellie in the beginning, in their new bonded roles as a real family.

I was a little disappointed that Ellie was so checked out and distant at the start. I know she is dealing with trauma there, but as it's been two months, and after the incredibly emotional high point of episode 8's ending with her hug and his "Baby girl, I've got you," I was a little bummed that she seemed so cut off from Joel at the start of this episode. That also slightly minimizes the effect when she is again slightly distant at the end of the episode (as she is thinking about whether he may have lied and what he may have done).

Joel does say that she seems "a little quiet today" so I think we can assume that she's not always withdrawn and shut off, but it comes and goes. That seems realistic for PTSD, which is something Ellie surely has after what happened with David.

I liked that it served as a role reversal to scenes like the one at the beginning of episode 4, where she's peppering him with questions about Tommy and he doesn't want to answer.

Then, it was because Joel was deliberately closed off, but here it's just that Ellie is distracted and can't focus on what he's saying.

Don't get me wrong, I'd have loved an extra ten minutes of runtime in the episode, showing us more of their journey, and that there were ups and downs in her mood. But I got their closeness from Joel's 'I need to cheer her up' attitude and Ellie responding sincerely, albeit with a delay.

2 hours ago, paramitch said:

I think one of the things that makes the Marlene/Firefly stuff feel a little less satisfying for me here is also the fact that -- beyond the fact that Marlene is weirdly overly cold, unkind, and rude to the guy who just helped get Ellie there under near-impossible conditions -- the Fireflies are seriously over-the-top sneering and rude to Joel right away.

All Joel has done at that point is to protest (understandably) in love and grief that Ellie has to die. Marlene tells them to let him go but to shoot him if he does anything else. The soldiers are immediately sneering and mean, mock and shove him, and are openly bullying.

I think it's because Marlene knows she's doing something wrong. She knows she should have given Ellie the choice, but she couldn't face doing that. Joel is saying what Marlene should be saying, to honour Anna's wishes and her memory. But Marlene has her higher duty* so she can kill the daughter of her oldest friend. But she still can't tell Ellie she's going to do it.

She's thankful to Joel (although she never liked him in the first place, so she's not warm to him) right up until she realises that he's going to be a problem - he's formed an emotional bond with Ellie and Marlene has likely seen and heard (from Tommy) what sort of man Joel can be.

*I like to think that Anna was thinking of this when she asked Marlene to find someone to raise Ellie, not to do it herself. Marlene is similar to Joel, in that she'll sacrifice anything and anyone to get what she wants most. She isn't someone you'd want raising your kid.

[Johnny Dollar]

Suggestion to future dystopian surgeons planning on killing children to extract brain tissue - don’t bring a scalpel to a gunfight.

The doctor “believes” he can extract a cure from Ellie’s brain. Have they done other tests or experiments in the twenty years this has been going on to lead him to that belief? Maybe try ingesting bleach first. Joel was 100% right to go postal on those dopes. 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Johnny Dollar

[paramitch]

This video is fricking amazing and says everything I wanted to.

Joel was right.

 

[wanderingstar]

This has been bugging me since I watched the finale: why would they need to kill Ellie to make the cure? According to this article, the wouldn't.

Quote

However, Casadevall stresses, you definitely wouldn’t need to kill anybody in order to obtain the sample. “You could just get a brain biopsy. You can get a good chunk,” or, even better, “you could get somebody who’s dead and infected. You could just get [the molecule] from that brain.” And as for getting ahold of this molecule, one would think you could use just a blood sample, but Casadevall is willing to play the show’s game: “If it was secured in the blood, you could just get it off the blood. But, I mean, it may be that it’s only produced [in the] brain tissue.”

But Dr. Stuart Levitz, professor of medicine and microbiology and physiological systems at UMass Chan Medical School, finds the idea that an immune response would be only in the brain to be, well, science fiction: “It really doesn’t make any medical sense to me, or immunologic sense. I mean, even with people with brain infections—and in my lab I study a fungus that mostly infects the brain—people have immune cells in the blood that have activity against the fungus. You wouldn’t have to remove a brain in order to study the cells.

Why was this never an option? I could see Joel being worried about them getting anywhere near Ellie's brain and objecting to that. But why did it have to go straight to "we have to take her whole brain?" 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Gillian Rosh

[T Summer]

What if Joel just wanted to give Ellie some peace for right now, and he plans to tell her the truth at a  later time? Fresh off being imprisoned,  nearly getting gang raped and cut up into little pieces and narrowly escaping being  locked in a burning building  maybe he just wants to take her to Tommy and Maria's and let her recover? I'd even say Joel telling her the truth is going to become necessary at some point, as she is super vulnerable if she thinks the Fireflies won't keep coming after her and that isolating a cure has already been tried unsuccessfully on others. Those nurses know what a rarity Ellie is and are still around to tell the tale. I could very well see Joel telling Ellie the real deal early in season 2.

I've watched because the two principal actors are so good. Loved ep 3, the commune and most of all watching the Joel + Ellie relationship grow,  but I'm not so enamored of the writing here. Too much having to suspend disbelief over and over again. They knocked Joel unconscious to spirit Ellie away, but didn't see fit to restrain him? His killing spree happened in the exact time it took to get to Ellie before the surgeon started cutting into her brain? Too much like last time.

Last ep hinged on Joel being cured and waking up and getting to Ellie at the exact moment  she was running from danger? Ellie having overpowered two grown men with guns and cleavers from a position of being pinned down on a table? It's beyond hand waiving or creative license.

Then as many have mentioned, there's the unbelievably ridiculous plan to make the very first procedure performed on the one person thought to be immune to Cordesyps total brain removal? It's like a bad joke! Really bad. Smarter more imaginative people right here on this board expressed worry  Ellie might be held captive for as long as it took to do various tests (analysis of blood, spinal fluid and  brain cell samples. tests on her  immune system etc)  to hopefully make an anti venom type cure and / or vaccine, but no one thought they'd kill off the source as step one.

 

 

 

[Starchild]

2 hours ago, Gillian Rosh said:

This has been bugging me since I watched the finale: why would they need to kill Ellie to make the cure? According to this article, the wouldn't.

Why was this never an option? I could see Joel being worried about them getting anywhere near Ellie's brain, but why did it have to be "we have to take her whole brain." 

Here's how I might fanwank this, and I think it's reasonable:

Relatively speaking, there aren't a lot of people left at the end of the world. Not many of them are doctors. And not many of those doctors are surgeons. And of the few surgeons there are, not many are brain surgeons.

And even if they had a brain surgeon, did he have access to the tools he needed (MRIs, x-rays, etc.) to locate a precise area of Ellie's brain to extract a sample without causing her harm?

I would bet this doctor was just a GP, without the requisite skill and equipment to do anything other than saw open her skull and hack at her brainstem to remove the whole organ.

Then, they'd have to find a microbiologist, but that's a future stage of the plan.

Not sure if @paramitch's video says anything similar, haven't watched it yet, but it makes sense to me.

[Dobian]

On 3/12/2023 at 7:06 PM, peridot said:

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.

Marlene wasn't a monster.  She had seen civilization destroyed and *billions* of people die.  And here was a person with immunity, and they had a trained geneticist and the medical equipment to produce a vaccine from her. If they try, humanity has a chance.  If they don't, the extinction of the human race is pretty much guaranteed. Putting one girl's life above the billions who died before her and the millions remaining would be absurd, as terrible as it sounds to kill her.

Yes, Joel killing all those people to get to Ellie shows the glaring contradiction in his character.  He will save the girl at all cost, even at the expense of other lives.  The doctor he killed could have saved lives in other ways even if he didn't find a cure. Joel is a complex character and probably the best video game character ever written.  I can completely understand his motivations given his personal history, as flawed and tragic as he is.  The way he rescues Ellie shows that it is not heroic but monstrous in it's own way, as he tries to atone for the guilt over his daughter's death twenty years before.

 

[mcree]

People are trying too hard. What is actually said?

Ellie is “being prepped for surgery”

The fungus “grows in (or in the game, all over) the brain”

If Marlene said, “But don’t worry, it’s just exploratory” or a biopsy, “so she should be fine” (except that there is always a risk with surgery) and Joel “can stay and wait to see how it turns out”: would Joel have taken that deal?

Does Joel trust the Fireflies enough that they won’t alter the deal? Would the Fireflies have wanted the deadly smuggler to hang around and not cause some kind of trouble in the future?

No, it’s “thanks for delivering her, but you have to leave (and here’s a souvenir)”; “I don’t trust you enough that when it comes down to it, you won’t kill her for a cure”; and for both parties, “don’t ask Ellie because she might say the opposite of what I want”.

And they both thought that if trouble broke out, they could solve the problem with a gun. The maximum number of sides that win such an argument is one. The minimum is zero. Here, Joel won.

[Hanahope]

i think the fact that Marlene gave Joel the switchblade is evidence enough that Marlene absolutely expects Ellie is going to die.  

[b4pjoe]

Just now, Hanahope said:

i think the fact that Marlene gave Joel the switchblade is evidence enough that Marlene absolutely expects Ellie is going to die.  

Yes she did know but she was not real smart. If the fireflies had a brain, and Marlene knew exactly what Joel was, they would have kept Joel locked up in that room and not told him anything until the surgery was done and Ellie was already dead. I mean I guess he still could have murdered them all but it wouldn't bring Ellie back so what would be the point other than revenge that would do nothing? They also could have just killed him before he woke up and the surgery would have concluded and all of them would still be alive and they would "maybe" have the cure but I do not believe they really had a clue what they were doing so I am glad it worked out the way it did. I was a lot more invested in Joel and Ellie than Marlene and fireflies.

[CooperTV]

1 hour ago, mcree said:

No, it’s “thanks for delivering her, but you have to leave (and here’s a souvenir)”

No, it was "if he as much as twitches, shoot him".

 

1 hour ago, Dobian said:

And here was a person with immunity, and they had a trained geneticist and the medical equipment to produce a vaccine from her. If they try, humanity has a chance. 

Marlene actually said the doctor thinks they could have a cure. Like Marle actually cares about humanity and not about the Fireflies's chance at overthrowing FEDRA and whoever using "the cure".

So yeah, she's a monster, and her doctor is a Salt Lake City version of Dr. Shiro, known Japanese war crime perpetrator.

  

1 hour ago, b4pjoe said:

Yes she did know but she was not real smart. If the fireflies had a brain, and Marlene knew exactly what Joel was, they would have kept Joel locked up in that room and not told him anything until the surgery was done and Ellie was already dead. I mean I guess he still could have murdered them all but it wouldn't bring Ellie back so what would be the point other than revenge that would do nothing? They also could have just killed him before he woke up and the surgery would have concluded and all of them would still be alive and they would "maybe" have the cure but I do not believe they really had a clue what they were doing so I am glad it worked out the way it did. I was a lot more invested in Joel and Ellie than Marlene and fireflies.

This entire post is my thoughts exactly. If Marlene wasn't a complete moron, the situation somehow could have worked in any direction. Appeal to Joel, lie to him, kill him right away but 100% not tell him you will kill the girl and then escort him outside without supplies and the threat to shoot.

Edited March 15, 2023 by CooperTV

[Starchild]

To be fair to Marlene, she had no idea that ruthless, cold, emotionally detached Joel had come to love Ellie like a daughter in so short a time. Not until it was too late.

[slowpoked]

18 hours ago, MrWhyt said:

Ellie had her switchblade for the run of the series.

Hmmm, I should probably watch it again. I thought Marlene had given Joel something before she sent him off with the Fireflies. But yes, I remember Ellie playing with one throughout the series. I guess Marlene gave that to her when she was old enough.

[MrWhyt]

15 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

Hmmm, I should probably watch it again. I thought Marlene had given Joel something before she sent him off with the Fireflies. But yes, I remember Ellie playing with one throughout the series. I guess Marlene gave that to her when she was old enough.

yes Marlene gave the switchblade to Joel as she sent him away from the hospital, she presumably took it off Ellie and was giving it to Joel as a keepsake.

[bitchin camaro]

I thought it was an interesting parallel to the kid wandering into the Boston QZ at the beginning. Tests positive, here’s some medicine to make you feel better and when you wake up you can have all the toys you want. Knowing he’s never going to wake up but it is the humane thing to do. I’m sure they fed Ellie a similar line of bullshit. 
 

Hell, maybe FEDRA yanked that kids brain for tests too before tossing the body into a pit. (Just throwing stuff at the walls here, but what are the odds that a little kid can get bit enough to be infected but not get shredded to bits? And live long enough to wander into the zone without turning shroomy? I should probably lay off the wine for the night…)

[Dev F]

19 hours ago, paramitch said:

I think one of the things that makes the Marlene/Firefly stuff feel a little less satisfying for me here is also the fact that -- beyond the fact that Marlene is weirdly overly cold, unkind, and rude to the guy who just helped get Ellie there under near-impossible conditions -- the Fireflies are seriously over-the-top sneering and rude to Joel right away.

Yeah, this is another another minor change from the game that ends up having unintended implications. It was an invention of the show to have the Fireflies attack Joel and Ellie and drag them into the hospital. I think we'd be much more likely to give the Fireflies the benefit of the doubt if they weren't the ones who clonked Joel over the head and separated him from Ellie in the first place—or if, say, they saved them from some other attacker instead.

It's funny that at the same time the writers tightened up the scientific explanation for Ellie's immunity to make the Fireflies' actions look more reasonable, they made a couple of these little tweaks that accidentally made them look less reasonable again.

12 hours ago, Starchild said:

Here's how I might fanwank this, and I think it's reasonable:

Relatively speaking, there aren't a lot of people left at the end of the world. Not many of them are doctors. And not many of those doctors are surgeons. And of the few surgeons there are, not many are brain surgeons.

And even if they had a brain surgeon, did he have access to the tools he needed (MRIs, x-rays, etc.) to locate a precise area of Ellie's brain to extract a sample without causing her harm?

I would bet this doctor was just a GP, without the requisite skill and equipment to do anything other than saw open her skull and hack at her brainstem to remove the whole organ.

Ooh, I do think that's a good way of looking at it. I could even imagine a version of Marlene's speech where she tries to assure Joel that they have no intention of killing Ellie, but Joel reads between the lines that it means they think she very well could die and they're going to do it either way.

The danger is that it might make the Fireflies look too incompetent to produce a cure, but I could see it working if the idea is that the brain surgery is the hard part, and then they just need to culture the new cordyceps sample, which is something their scientists do all the time.

[paramitch]

Okay, brilliant little detail I noticed upon rewatch:

As Marlene comes up the stairs, she hears Anna singing to the baby:

Hold me
Close to your heart
Touch me
Give all your love to me

Anna is singing AN A-HA SONG! ("The Sun Always Shines on TV")

First off, it's another Eighties song (which is code to us for "danger ahead").

And secondly, it's a lovely poignant reminder that Ellie grows up to love A-Ha too (I wrote about this in the "Left Behind" post, but the "Take on Me" lyrics were incredibly appropriate to that episode there).

Meanwhile...

13 hours ago, T Summer said:

What if Joel just wanted to give Ellie some peace for right now, and he plans to tell her the truth at a  later time? Fresh off being imprisoned,  nearly getting gang raped and cut up into little pieces and narrowly escaping being  locked in a burning building  maybe he just wants to take her to Tommy and Maria's and let her recover? I'd even say Joel telling her the truth is going to become necessary at some point, as she is super vulnerable if she thinks the Fireflies won't keep coming after her and that isolating a cure has already been tried unsuccessfully on others. Those nurses know what a rarity Ellie is and are still around to tell the tale. I could very well see Joel telling Ellie the real deal early in season 2.

I would LIKE to see this... but I don't think he would. I think this is one of those  unilateral "I'm the parent and I'm doing this because I think she doesn't need to know" decisions. I mean, knowing Ellie as the person she is, there is no way this isn't going to upset and anger her, so it sort of adds to the overall tragedy of this. Joel is who Joel is -- he won't risk losing her. Ellie is who Ellie is -- she was willing to sacrifice herself regardless of his feelings.

But I get it. I've already written walls of text on my evolving feelings about the writing here. I do think handwaving the science and streamlining/simplifying the situation at the Fireflies weakened the overall effect, but I do appreciate what they were trying to say. I have definitely thought and talked more about this finale than many, many others.

11 hours ago, Dobian said:

Marlene wasn't a monster.  She had seen civilization destroyed and *billions* of people die.  And here was a person with immunity, and they had a trained geneticist and the medical equipment to produce a vaccine from her. If they try, humanity has a chance.  If they don't, the extinction of the human race is pretty much guaranteed. Putting one girl's life above the billions who died before her and the millions remaining would be absurd, as terrible as it sounds to kill her.

Yes, Joel killing all those people to get to Ellie shows the glaring contradiction in his character.  He will save the girl at all cost, even at the expense of other lives.  The doctor he killed could have saved lives in other ways even if he didn't find a cure. Joel is a complex character and probably the best video game character ever written.  I can completely understand his motivations given his personal history, as flawed and tragic as he is.  The way he rescues Ellie shows that it is not heroic but monstrous in it's own way, as he tries to atone for the guilt over his daughter's death twenty years before.

I think this is all what the writers wanted us to see, I just think they didn't quite succeed. The doctor, for instance, was willing to kill a child without her consent, on a hunch ("he thinks it could be a cure").

9 hours ago, CooperTV said:

If Marlene wasn't a complete moron, the situation somehow could have worked in any direction. Appeal to Joel, lie to him, kill him right away but 100% not tell him you will kill the girl and then escort him outside without supplies and the threat to shoot.

Basically, this is where the videogame origins are most apparent for me -- a simple, fast "DO THIS NOW" plot here worked fine in the game and was understandable due to game mechanics. I just don't understand why they didn't make it more believable or complex when translating it to television. I got what they wanted to convey, I'm just bothered by the transparency of it, and by how  unbelievable and awkwardly written the situation actually is upon closer examination.

8 hours ago, Starchild said:

To be fair to Marlene, she had no idea that ruthless, cold, emotionally detached Joel had come to love Ellie like a daughter in so short a time. Not until it was too late.

Right, but she could have read the room. Within seconds of his awakening, watching his reactions, she should have been better at realizing and responding to his state of mind. Even when she seems to want to provide sympathy, it came across as pretty cold -- sure, she says "I was there when she was born" as if that's supposed to mean something, but all I saw was her total reluctance to take baby Ellie, and we know from the show that she instantly put baby Ellie into a FEDRA orphanage. So her "I love her too" implication there just feels weird to me. Does she? I'm not convinced.

31 minutes ago, bitchin camaro said:

I thought it was an interesting parallel to the kid wandering into the Boston QZ at the beginning. Tests positive, here’s some medicine to make you feel better and when you wake up you can have all the toys you want. Knowing he’s never going to wake up but it is the humane thing to do. I’m sure they fed Ellie a similar line of bullshit. 

Yeah, I thought of this scene too and am sure the parallel is deliberate. The problem is, the first child's death was compassionate. He was infected and doomed. So they gave him a sweet story and a painless goodbye. But Ellie is old enough and brave enough and self-aware enough of her own importance to be given agency or at least information about what they are going to do. So to me the actions of the Fireflies remove the ethics of their action. 

Aside from the fact that I don't think it's okay to kill a child to (maybe, possibly) save the world, in the universe we're watching, the main threats to survival aren't the Infected, they are very plainly set forward as being the human beings who are left.

18 minutes ago, Dev F said:

Yeah, this is another another minor change from the game that ends up having unintended implications. It was an invention of the show to have the Fireflies attack Joel and Ellie and drag them into the hospital. I think we'd be much more likely to give the Fireflies the benefit of the doubt if they weren't the ones who clonked Joel over the head and separated him from Ellie in the first place—or if, say, they saved them from some other attacker instead.

It's funny that at the same time the writers tightened up the scientific explanation for Ellie's immunity to make the Fireflies' actions look more reasonable, they made a couple of these little tweaks that accidentally made them look less reasonable again.

Yeah, it just felt a little clunky to me. I would have really liked your idea here -- that the Fireflies SAVED them from some raiders, and THEN Joel wakes up, etc.

[Dev F]

1 hour ago, paramitch said:

I would LIKE to see this... but I don't think he would. I think this is one of those  unilateral "I'm the parent and I'm doing this because I think she doesn't need to know" decisions.

Yeah, at the point where Ellie is basically saying, I know you're lying to me and I super-duper need you to come clean right the fuck now because it's tearing me up inside, and Joel still doesn't tell her, that's definitely not an I'll just wait till she's gotten a good night's sleep situation.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Dev F

[Peace 47]

9 hours ago, Dev F said:

It was an invention of the show to have the Fireflies attack Joel and Ellie and drag them into the hospital. I think we'd be much more likely to give the Fireflies the benefit of the doubt if they weren't the ones who clonked Joel over the head and separated him from Ellie in the first place—or if, say, they saved them from some other attacker instead.

Isn’t this (basically, with a slight change of setting) what happened in the game, too, though? The Fireflies came upon Joel and Ellie, knocked Joel out, dragged the two of them to the hospital, and separated him from Ellie?

 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Peace 47

[Kel Varnsen]

It seems like if Joel has no problem killing all those fireflies, with guns and the ability to strategize and work together and hide from bullets without even getting hit once, it seems like they could just unleash him outside some QZ and he should have been able to take out every infected all by himself.

[b4pjoe]

8 hours ago, paramitch said:

I would LIKE to see this... but I don't think he would. I think this is one of those  unilateral "I'm the parent and I'm doing this because I think she doesn't need to know" decisions. I mean, knowing Ellie as the person she is, there is no way this isn't going to upset and anger her, so it sort of adds to the overall tragedy of this. Joel is who Joel is -- he won't risk losing her. Ellie is who Ellie is -- she was willing to sacrifice herself regardless of his feelings.

Maybe I missed it but when did Ellie agree or say that "she was willing to sacrifice herself"?

[Dev F]

1 hour ago, Peace 47 said:

Isn’t this (basically, with a slight change of setting) what happened in the game, too, though? The Fireflies came upon Joel and Ellie, knocked Joel out, dragged the two of them to the hospital, and separated him from Ellie?

Well, yes and no. (Mild game spoilers.)

Spoiler

In the game, Ellie nearly drowns in the flooded tunnels, and Joel is desperately giving her CRP to save her life when a Firefly patrol finds them. He refuses to stop to put his hands up when the patrol demands it, so one of the Fireflies knocks him out. It's presented more as a misunderstanding than the Fireflies being deliberately aggressive, and Ellie is already badly hurt, so it makes sense that the Fireflies would spirit her away to save her life.

In the show the way I probably would have played it is this: In the last leg of their journey to the hospital, Joel and Ellie stumble onto an underground pocket of infected (giving the fungus zombies one last hurrah for the season). In their attempt to escape, Ellie is knocked unconscious, and Joel uses the last ounce of his strength to get them both to the surface.

There, in the shadow of the tunnel entrance, Joel sees the familiar silhouette of a figure with a gun. He desperately insists that they're not infected, but the figure doesn't lower his gun, and Joel is too weak to fight back this time. Shots ring out . . .

And behind Joel the last remaining infected falls dead. The figure steps forward and Joel realizes it's the Fireflies, who've just saved their life. He collapses into unconsciousness . . . and then we fade to the scene with Marlene in the hospital.

[Hanahope]

19 hours ago, Starchild said:

To be fair to Marlene, she had no idea that ruthless, cold, emotionally detached Joel had come to love Ellie like a daughter in so short a time. Not until it was too late.

i wouldn't say as much as 6 months is a 'short time.'  they left Boston before it got cold, so mid fall, by E8, its quite snowy, but in E9, there's no snow again and they don't have coats.  so it sure seems like they travelled through fall-winter-spring, at least 6 months.  sure some may say that's a relatively short time, but together 24/7, and through at least some expected hardships and attacks, that would bring almost anyone emotionally together.

[CooperTV]

2 hours ago, Dev F said:

Well, yes and no. (Mild game spoilers.)

There's virtually no difference to those scenes, apart from the game version looking vastly more epic because of the action set-piece before that.

The Fireflies attacked a person who was minding his own business. Why? Don't know. The working explanation to the Fireflies issue the show is that they're a( bad guys (true); b) complete dumbasses (also true).

[Starchild]

2 hours ago, Hanahope said:

i wouldn't say as much as 6 months is a 'short time.'  they left Boston before it got cold, so mid fall, by E8, its quite snowy, but in E9, there's no snow again and they don't have coats.  so it sure seems like they travelled through fall-winter-spring, at least 6 months.  sure some may say that's a relatively short time, but together 24/7, and through at least some expected hardships and attacks, that would bring almost anyone emotionally together.

Let me rephrase. :)

For a normal person, that would be more than enough time to get attached.

For someone with no heart (as Marlene believes of Joel), it wouldn't be.

[CooperTV]

15 minutes ago, Starchild said:

For someone with no heart (as Marlene believes of Joel), it wouldn't be.

Isn't Marlene dated Tommy at some point when he had his Fireflies phase? It's possible Tommy trash-talks Joel to all his girlfriends (as was evident from Maria's treatment of Joel), sure. But still, Marlene at least has to know Joel was a father and that his young daughter was murdered in front of him by authorities because they thought it was the right thing to do.

[Dev F]

25 minutes ago, Starchild said:

Let me rephrase. :)

For a normal person, that would be more than enough time to get attached.

For someone with no heart (as Marlene believes of Joel), it wouldn't be.

Yep. Marlene knew Joel as the guy who murdered innocent people to steal their stuff, didn't flinch from dead-child-dumping duty, and spent fifteen years with a woman who was in love with him without ever opening his own heart. Marlene had no reason to believe that six months with Ellie would do what a decade and half with Tess never could.

Especially since Marlene was looking at him through her own lens as a ruthless pragmatist who sent Fireflies to their deaths, and whose idea of honoring her best friend's dying wish was to dump her daughter in an orphanage and keep tabs on her from afar. She probably assumed that the difference between her and Joel was that she was ruthless in pursuit of social change and he was ruthless in pursuit of self-interest, not that she was a committed pragmatist and he was a heartbroken softie.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Dev F

[Starchild]

39 minutes ago, CooperTV said:

But still, Marlene at least has to know Joel was a father and that his young daughter was murdered in front of him by authorities because they thought it was the right thing to do.

Yes and people react differently to that kind of tragedy. In Joel's case, he appeared to become more cold and hardened. As @Dev F says, more than a decade with Tess didn't open him up. Did he have a relationship with Tess, give her respect, have sex with her? Yes. Did he ever say "I love you"? I (and probably Marlene) think not.

Six months with a bratty teenager who has her own attachment issues? What could happen?

[CooperTV]

18 minutes ago, Starchild said:

Yes and people react differently to that kind of tragedy. In Joel's case, he appeared to become more cold and hardened.

The question was if Tommy shared his life story and the fact his niece died in front of him while his brother held her, and after that the brother (Joel) was never the same.

There was dialogue in the show where Joel says "You don't understand", and Marlene says "I'm the only one who can understand".

So she thinks Joel is 1) cold-blooded killer who doesn't care, 2) she thinks he cares as much as she is (so, not much) or 3) she thinks he cares for Ellie as her father because he can bond with people in such a manner? And every option should have cause the unique response from smart!Marlene.

Option 1: Joel goes on his merry way with the promised supplies/kills Marlene  after they screw him over by not giving him a reward.

Option 2: Joel is drugged alongside Ellie and is woken up after the surgery that kills Ellie/They kill straight away.

Option 3: Marlene has a long discussion on the medical ethics and how they will wake Ellie up and ask her if she consider it possible to give her life at some point in not so distant future to potentially save the world.

Again, none of these options can be true simultaneously.

Yet what we got in the show is Marlene screwing over the known stone-cold smuggler, saying she understand how he feels but she'll kill a girl anyway and kill him if he refuses to go.

Enter Marlene's forever Pikachu face.

[Starchild]

9 minutes ago, CooperTV said:

The question was if Tommy shared his life story and the fact his niece died in front of him while his brother held her, and after that the brother (Joel) was never the same.

If I had to guess, I would say that Marlene knew about Sarah.

[Dobian]

On 3/15/2023 at 11:47 AM, CooperTV said:

Marlene actually said the doctor thinks they could have a cure. Like Marle actually cares about humanity and not about the Fireflies's chance at overthrowing FEDRA and whoever using "the cure".

So yeah, she's a monster, and her doctor is a Salt Lake City version of Dr. Shiro, known Japanese war crime perpetrator.

Okay, you have a doctor and equipment to study her immunity to the fungus and possibly develop a cure.  It's not a guarantee, but in *twenty* years it is the first and maybe only shot humanity has gotten.  If he is successful, humanity can be saved, including all the other kids out there like Ellie.  The alternative is eventual extinction for the human race, with people - including countless children like Ellie - living in misery.  His choice gives humanity a shot, even if it's a small one.  Yours likely dooms everyone to death.

It's easy to make the decision where we are sitting, but if you were in his and Marlene's shoes, you would have to explain why you decided for all of humanity why they have no future except death now.  Your argument is that it is immoral to not abandon that opportunity for one person.  That would be Joel's argument.  I don't agree, but I can understand the sentiment.  But to call the doctor a monster like Dr. Shiro, or Dr. Mengele, or any other evil doctor, is completely unfair and a false equivalency.  If you read up on them, they tortured their victims to satisfy their sadistic urges in the name of "science."  They were sociopaths, serial killers.  This doctor isn't trying to torture somebody and isn't doing this get his kicks or tap into his inner Jeffrey Dahmer.  He thinks he has a reasonable chance to find a cure.  He's thinking about all the other people out there who have no hope if he doesn't try to do something.  To consider his act immoral, okay, I again understand that position.  But he's no monster.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Dobian

[conquistador]

On 3/16/2023 at 4:58 AM, Dev F said:

The danger is that it might make the Fireflies look too incompetent to produce a cure, but I could see it working if the idea is that the brain surgery is the hard part, and then they just need to culture the new cordyceps sample, which is something their scientists do all the time.

Honestly, there is a lot we don't know with regards to how advanced society still is and how complex health science is at this point or in this particular universe. For the most part it seems all of humanity is in total shambles, but there are a few things to consider:

* Tommy's community is completely self-sustaining. Are there more communities like that? Perhaps much more common than we think, especially outside the US?

* It is mentioned that FEDRA have factories that produce bullets and drugs. So that is in itself a pretty large and technical infrastructure - requiring energy, material, labor and so on. 

* Most importantly, we see in the first few episodes usage of handheld cordycepts detectors. They may look like no more complex than the  thermometers used in the Covid pandemic, but that is very sophisticated and advanced technology, the like of which we don’t in our present times. It must have taken a lot of R&D to pull together - especially in a post-apocalyptic world. 

Edited March 17, 2023 by conquistador

[Hanahope]

Then Marlene has as much to blame, if not moreso, than Joel.  Assuming she knew that Joel lost his 14 year old daughter (which everyone seems to think she did because of Tommy), then she should have known that spending months 24/7 with another 14 year old girl, who likely had to be rescued/saved more than a few times during the travel (as Marlene herself had to be), Joel could have formed an attachment to her, and made Ellie his new Sarah.  she should have anticipated that, regardless of how she had previously experienced Joel.  

and then seeing how he reacted, that should have been another redflag/clue.  she should have explained it more to him, should have gone upstairs and told the doctor, hey, we need to address this.  Marlene's actions in not realizing Joel's attachment to Ellie, knowing how good he is at killing, is as much of a cause of dooming humans as Joel's. 

[minamurray78]

screw that doctor

primum non nocere

 

eta: oh about Joel, what can i say, I don´t want to judge him cause I would have done the same thing. What is right or wrong? I daren´t say, Was it just for love? was it also 20 years of living on the edge of lawlessness? This is what's (to me) attractive about apocalyptic scenarios, they push characters to the extreme and make you ask yourself uncomfortable questions. And I think Ellie knows. She feels resposible for a bunch of deaths but I think she also feels responsible for Joel's life, whom she clearly loves. What a burden for such a young person. I'm not spoiled for the game or anything, and I can´t really speculate what this will cost him.

Marlene was stupid on many accounts. If Ellie wouldn´t stop asking about Joel, she should have wisened up to their bond. I believe she knew Joel's history and what he's capable of. If I had been her, about to sacrifice a girl without telling her and without allowing her very dangerous protector to see her or say goodbye, I would have been sneaky enough to put him in a vehicle while unconscious and dump him outside the city. Either she felt she owed him that truth or  she really underestimated the depth of feelings and capabilities of a man who survived a trip across the country with a teenager in tow. Because I alwayas got this vibe from everyone (inlcuding Mariah who didn´t even know him personally) that Joel was meant to be though of as a dangerous person, rather than a hard noble hero.

Edited March 17, 2023 by minamurray78

[Dobian]

The dilemma over Ellie and the doctor is the classic "trolley problem" that's been studied in countless psychology and philosophy classes over the years.  There's a trolley coming down the tracks at high speed toward a person who is tied to the tracks.  You can pull a switch to divert the trolley away from the person, saving them, but then it will hit five people on the other track.  What do you do?  In this case, Marlene and the doctor are the switch operators.  Ellie is the person tied to the tracks.  They can do nothing (don't free her, continue with the surgery) and she dies while the others are saved.  Or they can turn the switch (let her leave with Joel) and the others die.

I know in this scenario some of you will argue that if they pull the switch then maybe everyone on the other track doesn't die, only a few who don't get off the tracks in time (no vaccine but somehow humanity survives).  Or if they don't pull the switch then another trolley comes rolling down that track and finishes them off anyway (surgery/vaccine not successful).

It's a complicated moral question.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Dobian
typo

[b4pjoe]

So would Ellie have been OK to do the surgery if she knew she was going to die? I don't think that was ever presented to her as a possibility. So you have to ask what would Marlene have done if she had given Ellie the choice and Ellie had said no?

[CooperTV]

49 minutes ago, Dobian said:

The dilemna over Ellie and the doctor is the classic "trolley problem" that's been studied in countless psychology and philosophy classes over the years.

Except a Trolley problem as any abstract experiment, is incomplete, and ethics questions are always specific and are based on individual details.

Details like Marlene and her group are failed terrorists ignored by normal people, and they, according to the show, are unable to do anything properly without falling flat on their face.

I deliberately ignore Joel's emotional response and actions here exactly because it's not about Joel in the end. It's about the Fireflies who are incompetent butchers with no common sense. No one would want those idiots to be the switch operators on anything ever, let alone let them decide the destiny of the US base human race.

5 minutes ago, b4pjoe said:

So you have to ask what would Marlene have done if she had given Ellie the choice and Ellie had said no?

I think the fact that Marlene doubled down on her "Ellie would have agreed to committing suicide" in the end, when Marlene was the one who robbed her of choice and ordered to put her under without a warning just "to not scare her" is the answer enough by itself.