The Last of Us Fans Debate Joel’s Decision in Season Finale

The Last of Us fans are debating Joel’s big, controversial choice in the season finale of the HBO Max TV series. The Last of Us is one of the most beloved stories in gaming, but it also has a deeply controversial ending and an even more divisive sequel as a result. While we won’t get into the details regarding the latter, we are going to talk in-depth about the ending of the first season of the TV show which is also the ending of the beloved 2013 game. Fans were quite surprised to see the lengths that Joel was willing to go to in order to keep Ellie in his life.

After finally delivering Ellie to the Fireflies, Joel is informed by Marlene that she’s entering surgery as the key to curing the infection may be in her brain. Joel immediately realizes this surgery will kill her and pleads them to find someone else, but she’s all they have. She could quite literally be the key to saving the universe. Marlene has some soldiers escort Joel out of the building, but he gets the jump on them and shoots up the entire hospital, killing tons of Fireflies including ones that surrender to him. It’s brutal, it’s violent, and these people aren’t bad guys like the other foes Joel has encountered. He manages to save Ellie from the surgery and takes her unconscious body out of the hospital, killing Marlene in the process.

When Ellie awakens later, she questions Joel about what happened back at the hospital and he lies to her. Joel notes that there are other immune people and that the Fireflies have given up on their crusade for a cure. They also had to leave abruptly as the hospital was attacked by raiders. Ellie appears to have some doubts about the story, but accepts the story.

Naturally, this is a lot to take on. Joel possibly dooming the world in the name of love, lying about it, and so on. It’s all morally dubious, to say the least. Fans are now debating the ending of The Last of Us on social media, which may give fans of the game some deja vu as the exact same thing happened back in 2013.

What did you think of the finale of The Last of Us? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder. You can view some of the discourse below.