The Controversial ‘The Last of Us’ Ending Stays True to the Game
“Swear to me.”
“Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.”
The Last of Us Season 1 ends with the same false promise reassured in the 2013 video game: that the Fireflies failed to find the cure to the global pandemic, that they are no longer looking for it, that Ellie and Joel should just continue on, live on, as if no hope exists.
Of course, the Fireflies are still looking for the cure. Joel simply killed them.
His final words to Ellie, his reassurance that the Fireflies failed, come at the tail end of a series of morally nebulous decisions—beginning with beating a FEDRA guard to death while escaping with Ellie, continuing through his killing defenseless scavengers in Kansas City, and again torturing and killing hunters in the west. Each of these decisions Joel makes in order to save and protect Ellie. His final decision, however, which includes slaughtering several Firefly soldiers and then this ultimate lie, audiences are meant to read differently: this choice, Joel makes for himself.
The selfishness of that decision will, of course, come with some viewer debate. While Joel lies to Ellie, his falsely reported actions ultimately did save her life. The question for viewers will be whether or not this decision is one Ellie herself would have wanted. Throughout the season we learn of Ellie’s repeated survivor’s guilt. Beginning with Riley—who Ellie names during the very last scene—Ellie has been the left-behind (the last of us?), the survivor who blames herself for failing to prevent the suffering of others. Then there was Tess. Then Sam. And now, at the very end, she believes, Marlene and the Fireflies. We're made to see that Ellie's reason for searching out the Fireflies stems from this guilt; she wants to save others as a kind of penance.
With that information, viewers are arguably made to see Joel’s final decision as incongruent with Ellie’s wishes. Therefore, Joel acts out of purely selfish motives. A survivor himself, and having failed to save his daughter, Joel wants only a return to normalcy. His desire to protect Ellie has ultimately become a desire to return to pre-pandemic life, regardless of whether such regression benefits Ellie or the last of humanity.
Season 2 of the series will likely follow the ramifications of this lie and pose questions about its endurance: is normalcy even still possible in a collapsed world?
Luckily, we’re likely to get a Season 2. We might just have to wait a bit.
How does The Last of Us game end?
Nearly identically to the series. While Joel and Ellie arrive to the Fireflies hideout under slightly different circumstances—while navigating a flooded alley, Ellie almost drowns—the subsequent events are the same: Marlene tells Joel that Ellie is in surgery; Joel realizes the operation will kill Ellie; Joel saves Ellie, killing Marlene and the Fireflies; and then, returning to his brother, Joel tells Ellie the lie.
The dialogue is nearly identical in the series and both mediums end on the same shot: Ellie considering Joel’s answer and then saying, “okay.”
(You can watch the nearly 10-minute-long final cut scene here, starting at 9:49:15.)
The ending differences between the game and series have to do with gameplay style. After Joel learns of Ellie’s fate, players are given one last moment of character control. While players can’t choose to not rescue Ellie, they can decide how much blood they want on Joel’s hands. Players can stealthily navigate Joel to the operating room and then flee with Ellie after only minimal bloodshed. (Of course, players cannot save Marlene, who dies in a cutscene.) Or players can run and gun, killing everyone.
In the series, this temperamental decision is removed; Joel flies into a fury, slaughtering everyone in sight. It’s perhaps the most powerful moment of the entire series and it succeeds by removing choices from the viewer. We simply watch helplessly as Joel falls apart. This kind of emotionality is a bit more difficult to capture in longer gameplay and may represent one of the few times where the lack of agency in the series improves on gameplay constraints.
Still, both mediums succeed in telling the same story. Ultimately, we’re just happy to have been able to experience the narrative both ways. (We prefer the game, but that’s just us.)
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