Joel Lovers: Proceed With Caution

I’m about to make a lot of people mad with this one…

It’s time for season two of The Last of Us and my god have I been vibrating with excitement for this. I decided against replaying the game before it came out, partially to give the writers a chance to impress me, but mostly because I simply do not have that kind of time right now. Either way, as I waited for the first episode to drop I exchanged a stark realization with my husband:

There are people who don’t know Joel dies.

Dropped my fork full of pasta when he said that to me. Holy shit. People who haven’t played the game were going to lose their ever loving minds. To say the thought made me giddy would be an understatement. When the second episode dropped—and I got done crying like a baby—I immediately hopped online to share in the internet outrage and the cries for Abby’s brutal demise.

Only… people weren’t mad at Abby. They were mad at the… writers? What the heck? Left and right people were saying they were going to drop the show. That they didn’t want to watch anymore. That they were pissed they lost the main character. And I just. Don’t. GET IT.

Joel Deserved To Die

That’s right, I’m coming out swinging.

Let me just say, I absolutely love Joel. He is such a classic, midwestern dad style trope. Gruff, scarred, battle hardened and ultimately a big soft teddy bear who would bareknuckle brawl an army for you. I love it. And I loved every moment playing as him for the first game.

I would not have loved playing him in a second.

I’ve already played Joel’s story. I spent 70 hours as him. It was done, he was living happily in Jackson. What more would I have done as Joel? I can think of two major paths for him if he were to be the main character:

1. Someone kidnaps/kills Ellie. Okay, we’ve got the same story we got with part 1. Didn’t we already do that? Joel is cool, but he’s not John Wick. I didn’t play the Last of Us part 1 to be a badass op killing machine.
2. Jackson discovers Ellie was the cure and they go on the run. Again… Same game. Same Joel. Either way, it’s too similar to the first game and isn’t interesting. And apart from that, I didn’t want another story about Joel. Regardless of how good they could have made it, The Last of Us Part 2 was never meant to be about Joel. It was about Ellie. When the first game ends, we don’t get to see the fall out of his choices. They deliberately left the ending scene of him lying to Ellie as an opening for a new game. The only logical conclusion to draw is that the sequel game would be about Ellie. About how Joel robbed her of her autonomy and laid the guilt of dooming the human race on her shoulders. And there was no going back for her, no making it right once she learned the truth. He stole a piece of her humanity, and stole a piece of Abby’s too. In one selfish choice, he doomed two young girls to a lifetime of rage and grief that had no resolution. Nothing was going to bring Abby’s father back, just like nothing was going to absolve Ellie of her guilt by association.

We all loved Joel. That does not absolve him of his sins.

Abby Wasn’t Rage Bait

Dear god did I hate Abby. Few things have made me hate a character like The Last of Us 2 made me hate Abby. After she killed Joel, I was about to throw fists at my TV. Full of bloodlust and righteous anger, I was ready to fucking go. And then suddenly… I was playing as Abby. I won’t lie, when they switched me to Abby, I almost stopped playing. The realization of what they were doing made me even angrier. They were going to make me play as her to humanize her, weren’t they? They were going to make me play as her so I would understand her motives. They even gave her a kid to look after, as if that would make me see some maternal side to her. It only hardened my resolve. I was the hero, and she was the villain. Nothing they could do would humanize her.

Except… they were never trying to humanize her.

That was never the point. We played as Abby to show that you can’t humanize someone like that. Because when you kill a helpless, defenseless man like she killed Joel? You don’t come back from that. There is no salvation for you. A piece of you is gone forever. We aren’t meant to root for Abby. We aren’t meant to see Joel in her connection with the kid. We’re supposed to see how her hatred, her bloodlust, and ultimately her choice to torture and murder a man in her thirst for revenge took everything from her. She lost the respect of her crew. She lost Owen. Worst of all, she lost her humanity. And it never came back.

A Hollow Victory

It finally comes. Ellie catches up to them at the beach. This fight scene was so beautifully perfect. The whole game I clung to my anger. But with every bridge Ellie burned, with every line she crossed, with every blackening of her heart a piece of me died inside. But still, I held fast. I was determined Abby would not live.

And then she did. Ellie just walked away.

I’m not going to lie, I lost my shit. I screamed, like full blown rage screamed at my TV. I went through all that work, killed all those people, fought my way through the apocalypse to avenge my surrogate father only to let her LIVE? I couldn’t cope. I was mad for weeks after the fact. But once I calmed down… well, then I started to understand.

Let’s say they changed the ending. She killed Abby, left the kid stranded on the beach. Ellie returns home to the empty house. I take a deep breath, feel the relief that Joel got his justice and then turn off the game.

And then I feel empty. My victory feels hollow as I sit with what I’ve done. I start to wonder what happens to Ellie after that. She’s not just broken anymore, she’s lost the last of her humanity. There is no picking up the pieces, no making it right. No reconciliation with Dina. And what about Lev? The kid she leaves behind? Either they survive and come after her, killing their own humanity in turn. Or they’re dead, unable to fend for themselves.

We saw what revenge did to Abby. We saw how it cost her everything. How she had to scrape and claw her way back from the darkness, just to salvage a mere scrap of humanity. How could I condemn Ellie to the same fate?

I fought all that way for Joel. I killed all those people for Joel. This whole journey was meant to bring justice for Joel. The man who sacrificed all of humanity for this one girl to have a chance to grow up. Is it truly vengeance if it betrays his sacrifice?

Ellie Is Not A Villain

After some time to reflect and consider the ending, I stand by the fact that Ellie walking away wasn’t just the better choice, but the right choice. The writers made a statement with it, and it was bold and fresh. They understood the depths of what Ellie would lose by finishing the story she set out to write.

At the end of it all, Ellie had the opportunity to get the vengeance she thirsted for. She held Abby’s life in her hands. She could have ended it, could have chosen her own, selfish rage—but she didn’t. She chose Joel. She didn’t let Abby go. She let him go, let herself be free of the rage eating away at her soul. It was about her desire to hold on to her humanity, to not let herself fall victim to the darkness that we spent half the game watching Abby grapple with. In making that choice, Ellie stays true to her role in the story. Tragic, broken, and riddled with guilt and grief, but ultimately faithful to Joel’s memory. She remains a heroine.

Killing Abby would have been the safe choice. Giving you the choice to kill her would have been the lazy choice. Forcing you to walk away? That was the right choice. And like I said in my Game of Thrones Retrospective: anything that makes me stand up and scream at my TV and sob uncontrollably is worth the experience.