The morally ambiguous ending of The Last of Us’ first season will surely divide viewers. It’s impossible not to feel conflicted by the outcome of its events, both for viewers and for our heroes.
However, if there is one thing that is crystal-clear by the time the credits roll, it’s that Joel (Pedro Pascal) sabotaged Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) entire sense of self with one huge lie. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s an important decision that sets the stage for the next phase of Ellie’s character development.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season finale of The Last of Us!)
“After all we’ve been through, everything I’ve done, it can’t all be for nothing.” This is what Ellie says to Joel early into the episode, after the two share a sweet moment with some wild giraffes before embarking on the last leg of their long journey. Joel has just told her that, if she wants to, they can forget the Fireflies mission, go back to Jackson, and live a (somewhat) normal life. But Ellie’s mind is made up: She wants her life to matter and to be the cure for all mankind.
Since we met her, Ellie has always felt this way about herself. When, months back, an Infected bit her and Riley (Storm Reid) back in Boston, she never knew that only one of two would turn into a horrible monster that day. She’s born this grief and guilt since that fateful day, having lost her best friend and first love while she somehow survived. But this also gave her a new sense of purpose—to save the world. And it’s that purpose that has kept her going through the long and perilous journey.
However, shouldering the weight of humanity’s fate takes a toll. Ellie strongly suffers from survivor’s guilt, and every death she has seen since Riley’s has only compounded her complex. This guilt was on display as early as the second episode, when Tess (Anna Torv) reveals her bite wound to Joel. As Tess peels back her shirt to reveal the tell-tale signs of infection, Ellie’s face goes devastatingly blank. Ellie realizes that not only was Tess bitten trying to protect her, but she also can’t heal Tess from this affliction—at least, not yet.
The loss of her friend and guardian hit Ellie hard, but even more heartbreak came later with Sam (Keivonn Woodard). Ellie so earnestly tried to cure her new friend from his bite, telling him that her blood was magic and that it would heal him. Then, in the morning, she discovered that despite her valiant efforts to use her own blood to cure him, Ellie failed to stop Sam from giving into the infection and turning into a monster. There is a crushing look of agony in her eyes, when she later drops Sam’s drawing board on his grave, her heart-wrenching “I’m sorry” penned on it. He was yet another person she could not save.
Despite this, it is easy to forget that Ellie carries this much pain and remorse. She laughs a lot and spits off the corniest jokes. She tells off adults like any regular snotty teen. And she gets genuinely excited over the smallest things (a soccer ball and a makeshift goal; an escalator; a hotel; etc). But deep down, Ellie is tormented by the thoughts of all the people she hasn’t been able to save. These reminders force her to drop her guard, allowing us to see her inner darkness.
Back in the sixth episode, when Ellie confesses to Joel that she tried to save Sam by smearing her blood on his bite, she solemnly asks him if he thinks the vaccine will work. Ellie’s terrified that if it doesn’t, she will once again have failed to save the people she cares about and the world.
For Ellie, knowing that she could cure this horrifying fungal pandemic is all she has—other than Joel, of course. Chalk it up to being a teen, but Ellie doesn’t have the foresight to imagine what her life could be like outside of using her body to assist science. When asked by Joel what she wants to do when their journey is over, she tells him that she wants to go to space—a normal dream for a 14-year-old, sure, but a sign that her hopes for the future are more imaginative than concrete.
But Ellie is forced to reckon with both her future and her present once she and Joel are with the Fireflies, preparing to create the vaccine. While Ellie lays unconscious on an operating table inside the Fireflies’ hospital, Joel is burdened with his own tough decision. Marlene (Merle Dandridge) thanks him for bringing Ellie to them and then tells him the devastating news: In order to make the vaccine to cure the world, Ellie will have to die. Joel, who has come to love Ellie as if she were his own daughter, sees this as an opportunity to right his wrongs. He has the chance to do what he couldn’t do with his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) and that is to save Ellie.
Tasked with choosing between saving Ellie or possibly saving humanity, Joel gives into his own selfish desires. He puts a stop to—by any means necessary (murder)—the deadly surgery that the Fireflies were about to perform on Ellie and saves the child he has come to care for like his own. However, this decision leaves Ellie feeling less important and more helpless than ever. Joel fabricates an entire narrative that there were many more immune people in the world like her, but despite that the Fireflies couldn’t make the vaccine work. And on top of that, she mourns the loss of her friend Marlene, who Joel falsely tells her was killed during an ambush on the hospital.
Ellie never really had ambitions for herself in Boston, training to be part of FEDRA, and any future she did have there died the same time Riley did. Finding out about her immunity gave her not just a goal, but a selfless, majorly important one. Now, that she, in fact, won’t save the world—according to Joel—Ellie has no sense of purpose, and that’s a painful, difficult realization to have.
It’s hard to argue that Joel’s lie to Ellie about the fate of humanity and her ability to save it isn’t terrible and selfish. If Ellie ever finds out about the truth that Joel hid from her, their relationship will surely suffer for that breach of trust. But in lying to her, Joel gave Ellie a chance at creating a life on her own terms. It might be a life in a crazy, broken, and fungal-infested world, but it is still a life. Now, she has the opportunity to pursue individual, personal, achievable dreams. She can find new love and a new meaning in this world outside of the idea that she must be a tool for others’ survival.
It’s a daunting challenge, defining yourself, but it’s something every average teenager goes through. Ellie was stripped of her real adolescence and forced to grow up mighty fast; Joel gave her an opportunity to get a little bit more of that growing up time back. The only question now is whether she’ll allow herself to take him up on it and start to figure herself out.
In the final minutes of the finale, Joel passes down some sage wisdom to Ellie. “If you just keep going, you find something new to fight for,” he tells her. We’ll have to wait until Season 2 to find out what that new fight looks like for Ellie, Joel, and the rest of us.
