This week’s episode of The Last of Us featured a pivotal and controversial moment from the record-setting Naughty Dog game The Last of Us Part II. Whether you’ve played the game or discovered this twist for the first time while watching the episode, you’re probably still processing. This moment took over the conversation surrounding the game from before its release, and fans are still divided all these years later.
Now that the television series has reopened this wound, the conversation will heat up yet again for better or worse. Instead of being like everyone else and screaming their opinion about who was right and wrong in what went down, I’d like to explore the incident based on the events that led to it and another similar situation from another television series.
To do this, I’ll have to discuss the show in detail, so if you aren’t caught up yet, this is your spoiler warning. Come back to this after you’ve watched the latest episode.
Yes, Joel is dead. Abby murdered him in the ski lodge with a golf club. In 2020, gamers had a hard time processing the loss of one of their favorite protagonists of all time. This moment of brutality and rage is slowly enacted with the forceful subtlety of a blunt instrument. And it is made that much worse by the death blow to Joel (Pedro Pascal) being done in front of a helpless Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) has one and only goal from the first moment we met her in season two’s opening: killing Joel. This is also far more information than players had when they met her in the opening chapters of The Last of Us Part II. Let’s first explore why this was Abby’s mission and what led her down this path.
A tragic domino effect of violence.
At the end of last season, Joel makes a crucial decision that sends ripples throughout post-apocalyptic America and he ignores Ellie’s wish to stay with the Fireflies so she can help find the cure. Joel discovers that Ellie would not survive the surgery to accomplish this goal. He decides to get her out and will mow down whoever is in his way. One of those people, in Joel’s way, was a doctor. This unarmed doctor was in the operating room with his two nurses and a sedated Ellie. Joel shoots this doctor at point-blank range and takes Ellie away. As we find out in the season two episode “Through the Valley”, this doctor was Abby’s father.
Joel’s actions that day set in motion a domino effect of violence. If you’ve played The Last of Us Part II, you know this need for revenge propels players through the game, and transfers from Abby to Ellie in an even more calculated and brutal fashion. The Last of Us asks whether revenge is worth the toll it takes on those involved. On one hand, it feels like the only logical reaction in that moment of pure anger, grief, and shock. However, as this story proves, the feeling of enacting revenge is short-lived and will most likely lead to more revenge and violence. The other side of revenge is the idea of perspective. To explain that further, let’s talk about another zombie-related series.
Whether you love or hate The Walking Dead, there’s no denying that the introduction of Negan flips the entire story upside down. Rick and his group begin hearing rumors of Negan’s power and decide to take out a whole base full of Negan’s men before they can cause more destruction. They do so in the middle of the night and take out a large group of Negan’s (sleeping and unarmed) followers. This leads Negan to round up Rick and his group and brutally kill two of Rick’s people in front of him. The show follows Rick and therefore uses this moment as a call to action for the audience to hate Negan and want him dead for what he did.
The Last of Us looks to shift the narrative through heartbreak.
If we take perspective into account and the story was to follow Negan instead, would the audience still feel the same way watching Negan enact his revenge after losing so many men? This argument is endless and it’s hard to pick a side. There’s always more than one side, and there will always be reasons for both sides to justify their actions. This isn’t true for every situation, and there are many instances where there is an obvious right and wrong side, but in the end it simply perpetuates the cycle of violence. But when you look at (fictional) situations like The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, a simple protagonist change can completely shift the narrative.
Over the remainder of the series, we’ll see the effects of Abby’s actions on the story. If the show continues to follow the game’s story closely, we will see a new side to Ellie that will both break you and scare you. We’re going to learn a lot about Abby and her group, and we’ll see flashbacks of Joel and Ellie that will hurt our hearts again.
What made the game so controversial was witnessing this heartbreaking moment and seeing the world through the eyes of the person who caused it. But, if you look at this story through the lens of what a perspective change can manage, it might change how you view this game and this series. Or maybe there’s no changing the hurt you feel from the first playthrough. Either way, there’s more than one way to view this situation just as there’s more than one way to view things that happen to us daily.
Images courtesy of HBO.
From a young age, Tyler has been amazed by filmmaking and writing. When he’s not watching movies in theaters, he also enjoys playing video games and binging one of the numerous shows he’s watching at any given moment. Working with The Young Folks was a highlight of his writing career and he is looking forward to this new adventure with In Between Drafts!
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