Ok so The Last of Us is probably my favourite game of all time. I think it’s something that transcends the medium and that it stands toe to toe with the best movies and tv shows.
It’s easy to see why HBO has developed it into one and throughout this video, I’m gonna be discussing why the game’s ending is something that has stuck with me since it first released all the way back in 2013. It’s a game that I’ve completed multiple times and every time there’s a remaster or remake it’s something I pick up day one just so I can go back to it.
Gameplay Mechanics in The Last of Us
Though overall the gameplay is pretty straightforward, what really elevates the Last of Us is its character development and story. Over the shoulder third person survival horror games had become a staple of the industry after the release of Resident Evil 4 and though the Last of Us doesn’t really break the mould when it comes to that, the characters go above and beyond to elevate the entire experience.
The ending is no different and what really pushes it is the fact that very few words are spoken between the characters, but you can see instantly what’s going on beneath the surface. Performance capture in video games is something that’s came a long way over the last couple of decades and we’ve pretty much watched games evolve from 2D sprites to living breathing people who can portray their deepest thoughts in their expressions and body language.
The Last of Us capitalises on this massively and Naughty Dog arguably helped to pioneer the cinematic experience in video games.
Games have always been criticised for their storytelling but here was a studio that put that above all else and the game excels because of it. Whenever I’ve talked about the ending of the Last of Us, I’ve always referred to it as being The Godfather of gaming. Now what I mean by that is that it is very similar to the ending of another of my favourites, The Godfather.
In that we see Michael Corleone descend to new depths and he has his sister’s husband killed for betraying the family. His girlfriend Kay goes to him and after Michael’s sister barges in and reveals the truth Michael lies about it in order to not destroy the image Kay has of him. However, from the final shot you very much get the idea that she knows the truth but that she’s willing to accept the lie, but the reality is too horrifying to bear.
We watch the door close on her and it’s something that still gives me goosebumps today due to the symbolism carried in it.
The ending of The Last of Us is in the same vein with Joel lying to Ellie and we see as she very much has to force herself to believe it because the alternative is too devastating to accept. We’re very much left wondering if the person we’ve followed throughout the entire story is actually the good guy we were led to believe they are, and it leaves us questioning the final few moments over and over. We’ve spent hours and hours being Joel and putting ourselves in his shoes. We’ve grown a bond with the guy and seeing him lie here is completely understandable even if we don’t totally condone it.
It really speaks to how complex the game is as a whole and the entire thing operates in shades of grey.
Now in order to get to this point and all that it means we have to talk about the steps that got us there.
This all happens because of the opening of the game which completely defines Joel’s life.
In it we watch Joel and his daughter Sarah on the night of the Cordyceps outbreak. After a rather laidback introductory scene, you’re thrown in at the deep end and from the perspective of Sarah you watch the world descend into chaos. No one knows what is going on and in this panic, the car there in with Joel’s brother Tommy is forced off the road.
Sarah’s unable to properly walk and Joel has to carry her through the streets as the infected to start to swarm them. They come across a lone soldier and whilst this would normally be a sign of safety in any other situation like this The Last of Us twists the scenario. Ordered to kill the pair the soldier fires on them and he hits Sarah. She dies in Joel’s arm in a moment that will completely rip your heart out of your chest and it’s arguably the most impactful game opening of all time.
Now from here we get a twenty-year time jump and pick up with Joel living in a FEDRA outpost. Working as a smuggler with his girlfriend Tess we very much get the idea throughout the game that Joel has had to do horrendous things to survive. This drove a wedge between him, and his brother and it seems like he’s a complete shell of the person that he used to be. Due to the loss that Joel faced that night he’s cut himself off emotionally so that he doesn’t have to face the emotional toil that took on him. Joel’s entire outlook is based around surviving, and he doesn’t care who he has to kill or steal from in order to do it.
However, there is still a symbol that ties him back to his old life and that is the watch that Sarah gave him on the night she died. Though it’s busted up and broken he still wears it because it’s the singular memory of his daughter that remains. The cracks in it very much represent his own psyche and how beneath the surface he still longs for a relationship like the one he had with his daughter.
Now this very much becomes the case in Ellie. Revealed to be immune to the Cordyceps infection she represents the hope that humanity can find a cure and return to the old life that everyone likely longs for.
Joel and Tess are tasked with escorting her across the country to a firefly outpost and we watch as Joel slowly lowers his walls in order to let her in. Ellie represents the daughter that he lost and the chance to return back to a normal life like what he had with Sarah. There are so many subtle moments in the game, and I love the moment where Joel longingly stares at his watch almost as if to remind himself of that life. There’s also the fact that he called Sarah Baby Girl which is something that he later refers to Ellie as.
Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us
After Tess is killed, we see Joel refusing to talk about it or acknowledge it because to him it’s something else that he won’t have to face up to if he pushes it to the back of his mind.
However, he very clearly becomes attached to Ellie and he even refuses to palm her off to his brother Tommy.
Now at his outpost we get a very important scene in which Tommy says that he returned back to their homes in Austin Texas. The night that the outbreak happened they had to make a run for it and didn’t get the chance to grab any personal belongings. Joel hasn’t returned because of how painful it is to go back there and thus it’s all remained pretty much how he left it. Unless someone’s been through it and spammed the triangle button on every square inch of the place.
Guilty.
Anyway, here Tommy found a photograph of Joel and Sarah, but he refuses to really acknowledge it and he immediately hands it back. However, come the end of the game we learn that Ellie grabbed this on their way out and that she’s carried it with her ever since. Now this is clearly a major change in him. Rather than refusing to even acknowledge it he puts it in his pocket and finally lets that part of his life back in. Now this moment is very important for both Joel and Ellie as it’s also the last major conversation that they have before they’re quote unquote saved by the fireflies.
The pair make their way underground and after almost drowning the pair are taken to a hospital where they’ve made their camp.
Joel wakes up to discover that they’re preparing Ellie for surgery so that they can remove the mutated strain from her which will finally give us the hope for a cure.
There’s just one thing, Ellie will die during the procedure and in order to save humanity they have to kill her.
Joel doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye and instead he’s escorted away by an armed guard.
At this point he pulls a fast one and kills the soldier before brutally interrogating him so that he can go and save her.
Now though this is completely damning humanity, we understand Joel completely in this moment. Like him we’ve become attached to Ellie throughout the story and after spending a good ten hours protecting her the last thing that we want to see her do is die. In addition to this we’ve seen the ugly side of humanity throughout and obviously question whether we’re even worth saving if the cost is going to be one of the only genuinely good characters that we meet. It’s said that children are our future and I think it’s smart to have the game centre around middle aged and elderly characters because it shows how f**ked humanity is. Sarah, Sam and Ellie are the only child characters in the game and to have all three dice could completely kill the outlook that there’s a bright future ahead of us.
Even if players were given a dialogue tree during this moment where we could decide what to do, I still think that the majority of people would choose to save Ellie.
The final part of the game follows him as we move through the hospital murdering the Fireflies and what’s probably the last brain surgeons on the planet.
But you understand all of this because you’ve been with Ellie and will do anything to stop her from being killed.
You succeed as well and manage to make it out of the hospital killing Marlene on the way out. She very much represents the opposite side of the coin to Joel due to the backstory that we get filled in we know that she also cared about Ellie as well. She was entrusted to her, but Marlene is willing to make the tough choice for the greater good. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few to her and the pair very much represent a dichotomy over what to do.
Knowing that they won’t stop coming for Ellie, he kills her in a scene, and it shows just how low he is willing to sink to protect Ellie. It’s very important to bear in mind that almost every time we see Marlene she’s wounded and cowering over. This is very much the case in her final scene, and she paints out a sympathetic figure as she lies on the ground begging for her life.
But Joel can’t have Ellie with a target on her back and thus he does what he has to in order to make sure Ellie is safe.
Now this entire flashback is told to us with the backdrop of Ellie waking up in the back of a car still in her hospital gown.
Joel pedals her a story about how there’s lots of immune people out there and how the fireflies have stopped looking for a cure. The story doesn’t even really make sense especially due to her still being in her hospital gown. Ellie is still too devastated to question it though and she turns around defeated that it’s all been for nothing.
This is a moment that really stands out to me and if we cut back to the Giraffe scene Ellie ends up storming off because Joel offers her a chance to return to Tommy’s. She says that it can’t be for nothing and that they have to power ahead.
Now when you think about it, the entire cure storyline that you’ve spent the last however many hours pushing through has been completely pointless and you’d have been better off just staying at Tommy’s in the midpoint of the game. However, that’s never really crossed my mind until this video because I’ve been so wrapped up in the characters. Even with the ending I still feel like it’s a triumphant one because you saved Ellie and Joel finally took a step back towards humanity rather than being the closed a cut off person that he was.
Now they could easily end the game there and I don’t think many people would’ve been mad if that had been the case. We’d just had a major action scene, stopped Ellie from being hunted and were riding off into the sunset.
But The Last of Us adds an epilogue that makes it’s ending something that will stick with everyone long after they put the controller down.
We don’t know how big of a time jump there’s been in-between the car ride and where we end up but clearly some time has passed.
Juxtaposing the dynamics that we’ve had throughout; Joel is way more talkative and instead Ellie is now the reserved one.
Eventually she stops him and brings up the day that she got bitten and how her friend Riley wasn’t lucky enough to make it. This is something that is later explored in the left behind DLC and it’s clear that she suffers from survivors’ guilt. Joel mirrors this as well and he says that he struggled along time with surviving. This is clearly commenting on how he died instead of Sarah, and he even touches the watch for a second to signify the guilt that he felt being someone who walked away that day whilst Sarah didn’t. However, he says that you find something to fight for and Ellie very much represents this. Had she died then we know that Joel would also have been robbed of his purpose and that he’d be surviving with nothing to survive for.
Now on top of this she’s clearly been thinking about the fateful day a lot and she asks Joel flat out whether everything he said is true or not.
The Ending of The Last of Us
Joel looks her dead in the eyes and swears that it was all true. Now I’m sure that a lot of you growing up were told by your parents to tell them the truth and they’d make you look them directly in the eyes and do it to see if you were being genuine or not. This is normally seen as being a sign of honesty however as humans get older, we of course become aware of this and adapt it into our lies. It’s actually said by psychologists that if someone does this that they’re more likely to be lying because it’s practiced, and we know that it’s meant to convey honesty, so we purposely do it
As we know, Joel is lying here and thus him doing this also lets us know how manipulative he is.
All that remains is Ellie’s reaction which conveys so much.
I absolutely love the way this plays out and as her eyes glance about we can read doubt, suspicion and confusion. She’s clearly built up in her head that he’s lying but he’s potentially willing to lie on top of the lie because he doesn’t want to change the situation between them. Ellie knows that if he’s lying then he was willing to murder people just to save her life and she’s clearly conflicted because of this.
Now she has a couple of choices here. Either she can say he’s lying, and this will divide them further. Or she can accept the lies and live in a world where she won’t have to deal with the survivors’ guilt or truth that someone murdered people to save her.
It’s a tough thing to deal with and she simply utters the word okay.
It’s not really an acceptance or denial of anything and instead she’s just taking everything at face value because the truth of it is far more horrifying. Now though I’m spouting off things that are basically my opinion here it’s completely possible to take your own interpretation of Ellie’s thoughts at this point. The game really wants the player to make up their own mind and everyone will have their own reading on this moment. Personally, I do see Ellie as being someone that knows the truth because of the way that Joel acts but she’s willing to bury it because she simply doesn’t want to accept the reality. Joel has been someone that has done horrendous things in order to survive and now we see Ellie willing to accept a lie in order to do the same thing.
So much is given to us in this moment and it’s why the game stands the test of time.
Naughty Dog can release a remake of the game that is completely the same as the original because they don’t need to change anything. The story is what carries this and this final scene that haunts players is a reason that people keep going back to it.
It’s why I think the game is something that we’re gonna be talking about for a long time and no doubt the show will also be something that people constantly go back to in order to re-examine this final scene. Though I really enjoy part 2 they could have easily ended everything at this point and it’s why the ending is perfect.
Now I’d love to hear your thoughts on it so I’m turning it over to you.
Comment below and let me know your thoughts on the ending in the comments section.
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If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming. We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace
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