re: The Last of Us | S1, Ep 9 Season Finale | NO GAME SPOILERS Thread

quote:

---

As Marlene says, they both know what Ellie would have chosen, but Joel wants to remove that agency and option from her because it's what he wants, and he doesn't want to hear that truth, or confess to what it cost to carry it out with killing Marlene and the Fireflies. S

---

Marlene also was taking advantage of Ellie’s good nature and youthful naivety. The fire flies knew they had a minimal chance of this succeeding as they had done it before and still killed the hosts without generating a vaccine or anything useful. It makes the whole thing so much more slanted leaving that out in the show where Joel finds the recordings of their doctors admitting they don’t really know what they’re doing.

quote:

---

Both in the game and in the show, he did a horrible thing, but IMO the game did a better job of making it as morally ambiguous versus the show where it clearly wants you to lean towards what Joel is doing is wrong

---

Exactly. This is a major failure to me by the show. It completely changes how a general audience looks at it. Before it was far more even handed and you could really have seen merits either way. Desperate rebels/survivors vs a desperate father.

Now it’s the spunky rebels vs a deranged lunatic…wonder who everyone will side with?

Man, I read the last page or so and thought I was in the wrong thread since the game is discussed ad nauseam.

I finally got to watch the finale last night. I liked it, but it felt a bit disappointing for a finale. And Joel going off the deep end wasn't something I was expecting. Seeing several comments about how the game did a better job of making you want to side with Joel, and I wish the show would've done that too. Because he basically went from likable hero to sadistic murderer in five minutes. I get the feelings about his daughter and all that, but Jesus you could at least try to work with people and come to a solution rather than just killing literally every person you ran into, including what I assume to be one of the only brain surgeons left on the fricking planet.

And now we have this lie hovering over Joel and Ellie for the rest of time, because you can tell she knows he's full of shite, but she also trusts him so she rolls with it.

I don't know, this episode just felt a little disjointed from the series to me. I liked it, and I'm down with this show for the long haul. It's a good show, even really good at times. But it's also relatively meh at times as well. So I guess basically I like the show, I just wish it was better. If that makes sense.

Off to read the rest of the thread and see what everyone else's thoughts were (and I'm sure I'll get lectured on why I'm stupid for not sucking the show's dick).

quote:

---

Those people are misremembering the game. What they claim the game says does not. If anything the recordings you find drive home more that Joel was really putting in peril humanity's best and maybe only chance at a cure. As the game also does not have anything about how Ellie's immunity happened. For all intents and purposes she is just an anomaly with no clear indication what may have offered her immunity. The show actually, seemingly, offers a theoretically repeatable way to reproduce Ellie's immunity, as cruel as it would be(infection during birth to the mother).

---

So we’re taking the person performing surgery on Ellie’s words as the gospel. Ok.

ETA: I’ll admit I misremembered the part about them saying she was unique. But they still didn’t address they have tried this before and failed. There was by no means any guarantee of her being a cure. And of course we will all just have to see what we get in LOU2 that further erodes or strengthens anything that happens.

quote:

---

So we’re taking the person performing surgery on Ellie’s words as the gospel. Ok.

---

Funny how you wanted to use the (misremembered) words as gospel to paint Joel in a more positive light, but once I show you you are misremembering them the doctor is an unreliable narrator.

Fact is the game drives home the point(as does the show) that Ellie is unique. Hence the Fireflies literally sending tons of people to their deaths, entering undesirable deals with someone like Joel, to try and carve a way for Ellie to get to the lab. If immune people are all over the place, it makes little sense. And as the game drove home in the final act, yep, Ellie is unique.

It may still not have worked, but this retcon narrative some of you are on to defend Joel(who would have done what he did regardless) is simply not supported in game or show.

quote:

---

But they still didn’t address they have tried this before and failed

---

Yes, they did. Read that transcript of the recording. It literally details the past attempts and why Ellie is different. Ellie is the only case of full immunity they have ever come in contact with or know of.

I get the sense a lot of people want an easy way out with Joel, and think that if they can show there was a timeline where the probability of success was low or zero, it makes the morally grey part go away. But the point driven home in both tellings IMO is that Joel would have done what he did no matter what if the Fireflies actions required sacrifice.

quote:

---

Idk. Show Joel and Game Joel to me are just pretty different and it’s disappointing. Game Joel felt like he had far more development and progression as his exterior cracked and you peeled back the layers. Much more complicated and nuanced.

---

And I don't see it this way. If anything show Joel demonstrates a lot more vulnerability, nuance, and trauma through Pedro's performance that makes his actions more tragic, and ambiguous, and less borderline psychotic at times.

quote:

---

Show Joel is like the writers wanted to show off some toxic masculinity because that’s hot politics right now. I

---

You are aware the writer of the show is the same as the game correct? If anything, the show softens the games male power fantasies and makes Joel a much more sympathetic, tragic, and relatable person in this adaption. I really just think people are misremembering the game, and the note people think said something completely different than people think is sort of driving that home. Joel came off a lot more superhero-ish and a lot less vulnerable. People in the threads even whined about Joel being too soft in this version. But I think in the end it paints a much more sympathetic and nuanced view of Joel. Same with Joel repeating that he doesn't really believe a vaccine would fix humanity cause humanity essentially doesn't want to fix itself and can't/won't....And i don't know that he is wrong.

quote:

---

I feel like we skipped the slow progression as he lets Ellie in emotionally. It was basically just the last two episodes.

---

Ellie was already in emotionally with Joel by episode 5. He just attempted to run away from it. Hence the monologue in Jackson. Same as the game Joel doesn't really openly embrace and allow himself to be vulnerable until David. Hell, that dialogue where he finally uses "baby girl" again was directly lifted from the game. That was always the moment he fully saw himself as a father again and wanted it. I actually think how quickly they went from that to putting Joel in a situation where he is faced with losing her creates more, not less sympathy toward his actions.

I do though agree that maybe a little more time after David would have been nice. I thought that in the game too. I know they hinted at budget reasons, but that final tunnel fight would have been nice to have. Then again, there is something to say for going directly from the moment Joel and Ellie really hit a new high in their relationship, and Joel reveals his deepest vulnerabilities, only to immediately take her away by force, isolate him, and confront him with sacraficing Ellie for a vaccine he doesn't think will even cure humanity cause it seems already lost to him by it's own volition. Even for me that knew it was coming hit hard, and I sort of got why he would snap.

quote:

---

This was one of my biggest issues with that whole scenario. Surely there are other types of things you can try before going straight for killing the one person who carries a legit hope for humanity.

Also, I'm catching up on the thread and keep seeing people shite talk this brain surgery and her chance of survival was zero because they are in a post-apocalyptic hospital running on fumes. Curious as to those same peoples' thoughts on how, then, the Fireflies would be able to turn Ellie's innards (blood, brain, whatever) into some sort of cure and manufacture it on a massive scale with those same dilapidated facilities at their disposal. Seems to me like both a brain surgery and a 'cure" would be fairly similar in nature in that they require expert facilities, expertise, etc.

---

Doesnt matter at the end of the day, the probability of finding a cure and having enough capacity to get the beginnings of a supply chain going could have been 99.9%, Joel's actions wouldn't have changed.

None of that is in his calculus.

He is told Ellie will be sacrificed and he was never going to allow even the 1% chance Ellie would have said no allow him to lose her like he failed to save Sarah.

And the Fireflies also were never going to give her the option to make her choice because of all they have lost.

I don't want to go into game territory too much, so ill put SPOILER WARNING just in case,


but I suspect some decisions that weren't as pronounced in the game have to do with knowing the rest of the story.

I think Joel also knows the fireflies and seems bitter about them also recruiting Tommy. He probably doesn’t trust them to actually follow through on what they want. They’re just as blindly following their desires as he is. And to him, they’ll likely fail, and they’ll kill a 14 year old needlessly while doing it. I just don’t agree that they made it ambiguous enough that no one really knows what would happen.

Also they completely left out the part where the fireflies kill Joel 200 times before he’s able to save Ellie.

In the games that makes you a lot less sympathetic to them when they merc your arse over and over again

I was surprised how easy they made it for him to progress through the hospital. In game obviously it’s the final level and ridiculously challenging. They have armed guards everywhere.

What a stupid fricking finale. frick this show.