The Last of Us: Controversial Ending Explained

Warning, spoilers. It is recommended that you watch The Last of Us Episode 9 before you continue reading this article.

This early 2023 phenomenon series, The Last of Us, has everything to win the title of best live-action adaptation of a video game. A true worldwide success, the series, overseen by Neil Druckman and Craig Mazin, is wrapping up its ninth and final episode.

For several weeks, viewers have been following the journey of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in a United States devastated by a pandemic caused by the fungus Cordyceps. During their journey, the duo will encounter infected and hostile survivors that they will have to fight.

If Joel ends up in Ellie’s hands, it’s because the latter is immune to the infection and because Joel has been charged by the Fireflies, a popular anti-martial militia formed after the outbreak, at a particular landmark in Sault. Lake City.

The tragic end of The Last of Us

At the end of the last episode of the series, as in the game The Last of Us: Part IJoel and Ellie arrive at their destination and meet up with Marlene (Merle Dandridge) and the Fireflies at St. Mary’s Hospital. Eli will undergo surgery so that he can create a vaccine against the infection. However, the procedure requires the removal of a fungus that has mutated and grown in Ellie’s brain, causing the girl to die.

Joel can’t bear to lose “his surrogate daughter” and goes on a killing spree by killing all the members of the Fireflies, but also the surgeon in charge of the operation and even kills Marlene. He drives away with Ellie, still drugged.

Later, when Eli wakes up, Joel lies to the girl about what really happened. He tricks her into believing that there are other immune survivors like her, but they haven’t received much scientific help and the Fireflies have stopped looking for a vaccine.

Ellie asks if she can believe him and Joel lies to her again. The young girl, no matter how doubtful, chooses to believe him. And together they head to Jackson to find Tom (Gabriel Luna), Joel’s brother, and live there.

By making this selfish choice, Joel proves his love for Ellie, but he also risks dooming humanity because the young girl may hold the key to a vaccine against Cordyceps infection.

Controversial result

This final episode, entitled “Look for the Light” and directed by Ali Abbas (The Frontier, Les Nuits de Mashhad), is very faithful to the ending of the video game The Last of Us. This last chapter at least takes some liberties. In particular, there is Anna (Ashley Johnson), Ellie’s mother, who gives birth to a young girl, and then we learn how Ellie was immunized against cordyceps.

Additionally, the episode does not feature the entire battle between the Klackers and the Colossi against the infected in the tunnel leading to Salt Lake City. But “Look for the Light” still remains very close to the video game as a whole until its fateful and controversial conclusion, which should create as much debate as it did when the video game work was released in 2013.

indeed, as He is a Yorker He recalls that the debate arose even before the release of the game, because the testers were devastated by the result of the game. Its creator Neil Druckman, also a co-showrunner of the series, noted that some wanted to make a choice to save the world. Or he just didn’t want to kill innocent doctors.

When the testers arrived in the operating room, half of them looked for another solution before realizing that they had no choice. Neil Druckman also noted that testers who had children were much less hesitant to kill the surgeon than others. Some players were outraged at being deprived of a conventional heroic narrative and forced to participate in such a morally questionable narrative.

If Joel’s final choice, full of consequences, is quite controversial, it is primarily the catalyst for the whole essence that is The Last of Us. It’s a love story, and Craig Mazin, one of the series’ co-showrunners, recalls and explains vulnerability :

“Love is behind the most extreme choices we make and the most extreme behavior. Do you love this person more than these people? Parents always say to their children, ‘I love you more than anything’. Do you really?’

For Joel, the answer is yes. It is deep and uncertain about the positivity of love that must go forward. What Joel did in the name of love is a selfish but understandable act. It develops a chain of events that will not be broken.”

Unlike the video game, the series adaptation of The Last of Us makes it possible to offer more points of view than Joel, by developing additional stories and characters, and thus creating more ambivalence in the hero, who is certainly protecting his “surrogate daughter” but who is no less a killer .

“We’re invested in Joel’s story. We don’t want him to lose someone he loves. What about all the people he kills? Who loves them? It’s also the power of the narrative that captivates me.”Craig Mazin explains.

By making this decision, Joel takes this power away from Ellie, who was determined to serve a righteous cause and be a key part of humanity’s survival. Joel did not put Eli’s wishes and interests before his own and preferred to keep his “surrogate daughter”, very selfishly, even if we understand that she became the reason for his life. life.

If this ending is controversial and causes debate, the fact remains that it provides an opening for another video game. The Last of Us: Part II, which, in addition to continuing Eli’s story, shows the inevitable consequences of Joel’s choices. Already ordered, The Last of Us Season 2 will more or less follow the story of the second opus of the video game franchise.

The Last of Us series is available in its entirety on Prime Video.