SPOILER WARNING: This feature will reveal key plot points – including the ending – of The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2
Many people who know what Joel did at the end of The Last of Us might be horrified by that question, but with the remake of part 1 on the horizon, let’s reflect on it, and on Joel’s monumental decision at the end of the first game. Was it just brutality and selfishness by Joel, or was he right to do what he did?
Joel made the world-changing decision to save Ellie’s life instead of creating a cure for the infection. Joel killed dozens of people from a faction called the Fireflies, who wanted to kill Ellie and use her as a potential cure for Cordyceps – the disease that’s wiped out most of the planet. Does Joel’s decision make sense outside of his love for Ellie? Let us look at the world of The Last of Us. It’s a terrible post-apocalyptic place, brought to its knees by a fungal plague that turns people into mushroom zombies, and with pockets of humanity seemingly prepared to do anything to survive. One of the big lessons we learn from our journey across both games is that people can be monstrous also.
In Joel’s journey we come across cannibals who take Ellie and scavengers who are willing to do anything in order to survive. Morality has disappeared from this world; it’s a luxury, and survival comes ahead of petty moral matters like ‘right and wrong.’ In a world where cannibalism seems like a pretty good idea, you know something has gone terribly wrong. Now imagine seeing all this from the eyes of Joel – someone who’s seen first-hand how low humanity has stooped in order to save itself.
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This poses a bigger question: is humanity worth saving? After everything Joel has witnessed, why would he think the people left are somehow more valuable than Ellie? The Fireflies have a grand scheme of making a cure and making the world great again, but this would cause its own problems, starting with ownership. Fireflies would have leverage over the entire world with a cure, and already you can envision a nefarious ‘big pharma’ corporation forming. The cure, after all, is probably the greatest and most elusive object of power in the world of The Last of Us.
Would the Fireflies not become corrupt or power-hungry, getting into a position where they could extort anyone with a small vial of a cure? Would this not bring about war? Many armed militias would be desperate for a cure either to save their own people or to make profit from it to further protect themselves.
We already know with Joel’s brother, Tommy, that bandits constantly raid his hydroelectric dam which powers Tommy’s little town in Jackson County. The people in his town aren’t aggressive so the bandits wreak havoc without a personal reason to instigate an attack. With actual power at stake, the raiders and rival factions would be out in force. Joel has seen enough in his journey to know that a cure wouldn’t fix this ruinous world, and in fact could escalate existing conflicts.
The apocalyptic vision of The Last of Us reveals the inhumanity within humanity. Joel no longer trusts people. Many would disagree with his misanthropic, pessimistic viewpoint, but you could argue that subsequent events vindicate it. Look at what happened in Part 2. Joel helped a group of survivors, who turned out to be members of a faction called the WLF, led by Abby – a woman looking for her father’s killer, who happens to be Joel. Her group owed Joel their lives as they had little chance of survival before he arrived. Yet, he was killed by them . In the end Joel’s views, even though drastic, did make sense in this new changed world.
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In The Last of Us Part 2, we see constant faction wars between the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) and the Seraphites (Scars). The Seraphites are a primal cult that believes in a prophet and even supports human sacrifice as repentance for their sins. The WLF are extremely hostile to outsiders and distrustful of even their own members. They have a massive arsenal of weapons and are not afraid to use them. Both factions are dark, mistrusting, and tribal, and representative of the dangers of groups getting power.
Then there are the slavers, known as Rattlers, who kidnapped Abby and Lev. They simply saw potential money in front of them and took their human merchandise. Constantly we are reminded of humanity’s failings. Even the Fireflies, who made Joel look like the villain after he refused to hand over Ellie for the cure, were killing children in hopes of finding a cure, and bombing buildings in response to the armed military who controlled quarantine zones. The worst things that tend to happen to characters within The Last of Us are a result of human activity.
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In a world of slavers, cults and armed militias – none of whom seem to have the people’s best interests at heart – you can see where Joel’s trust issues could come from.
There is a strong case to be made that a cure would cause more problems than solutions.The nefarious factions of the world have their power structures and interests in keepings things as they are. What’s to stop the likes of the WLF from taking the cure for themselves, giving it only to their own and becoming a far higher power in the process? Someone like the Scars would probably see the cure as blasphemous to their beliefs, as they believed the ‘old world’ was full of sin and refused to use technology created before the pandemic.
So was Joel onto something? What he did was brutal and sinful, but his decision may have been correct. A cure wouldn’t necessarily diminish the brutality this world has given birth to, nor would it cause peace between these morally dubious and violent groups. Instead of throwing another potentially chaotic and divisive element into the mix, Joel decided to dedicate all his power to preserving Ellie, the one piece of humanity that he knew still had good left in it.
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