The Last of Us - HBO *Spoilers* See warning in post #1

I think with it being in the food supply at the outbreak, it would have been in every city, or at least cities with minimal infection rates would have shut down very quickly to minimise spread, and ultimately ended up similar to cities where there were higher rates of infection.

Well, that's the whole point. It is more obvious in the ga... source material (I said I wouldn't use the "G-Word" as I used it about 10 times in one post before). In the source material it is more obvious because it is less linear. As I said elsewhere, you can it times sneak around characters instead of barrelling in and you hear these "bad guys" simply about mundane human stuff. Even fearing that this lunatic and his girl would come in and kill them. Then comes the section with David and you go all Jules from Pulp Fiction with Fuuuuuurious anger and shoot up the place. Killing as many as you can. But it cuts then to Ellie and David and that is SO tense as you play as Ellie.

Then come the giraffes. It's a beautiful decompress scene which would have caused nerd-riots if it wasn't in the series 😀. This is very much the deep breath before the plunge.

So by the middle parts of the game, you were seeing the world just as people trying to survive and many (myself included) often spent much time trying to AVOID squaring up against humans because of said dialogue.

Then David and the rage rises :)

Then you have the final section (Quite short as in the show) and you start running around killing everyone. In the source, you have no choice: It's either do that or the story does not progress. And as you are doing this you are thinking 1: They got Ellie. 2: Wait, these are the good guys. They are trying to save the world. 3: This is what Ellie would want!. And then that gut punch with the lie. Especially as you suspect that she knows it's a lie. And it's telling that this episode, bar the opening sequence was probably the closest to the source.

So no, Joel is not "The good guy". This is something that is expanded upon greatly in the sequel.

I can absolutely understand (And expected) the mixed reaction to the series. Players have being waiting for this for years and it was translated brilliantly (IMHO). But, yeah, I can understand if many were underwhelmed. As previously, it didn't bring anything NEW to the genre bar excellent writing, production values and performances. I personally thought it was very good. But then I loved the source. I thought the additions to the series were fantastic (The couple in the cabin, The flashbacks, Bill & Frank, Ellie's birth) and the nods to the source were great without being too on-the-nose (Ellie's mother, David's right-hand-man, Melanie's right-hand-man, Marlene all played by actors from the source. Marlene herself played by the same actor).

TLDR: Joel is not the good guy. I liked the show but can understand people's apathy if they haven't played the source.

Yeah a huge part of the discourse after the first game released was centered around whether or not Joel is a good guy (considering that his actions take place in a very different world than ours) and whether or not he did the right thing (bearing in mind that even if the Fireflies could make a vaccine, is the world too far gone, and would they ever be able to administer the vaccine to such a degree etc).

Ultimately, Joel made a selfish choice. He made the choice that was best for him, and even though it means Ellie survives doesn't mean it was what she would have wanted. He made a decision that wasn't really his to make. But he also made it without really thinking about the consequences or weighing up the results/effects, he acted purely on instinct in saving Ellie. It wasn't a rational decision. Where he really failed imo, is lying to Ellie at the end.

She didn't consider she'd lose her life. So it's uncertain how she'd have felt about that. Maybe even the Ellie at the beginning of the story might have chosen different to the Ellie at the end of the story. She lays it out for us that she thinks it's the right thing to do following the loss of Riley, Tess, and Sam. But she doesn't know the whole story.

Although. I suppose Ellie questions Joel at the end. So I guess we can't really rule out that she hadn't considered that.

I think in the end. I would have felt it hard to allow Ellie to die if I were Joel. And I think that empathic feeling is what's important. Regardless of what would happen.

The problem here is that Ellie didn't get a choice, and that one fact undercuts any point trying to be made about Joel.

You say it wasn't his decision to make. Sure, it should have been Ellie's decision, but the only way Ellie actually gets any input into that decision is for Joel to first do what he did. If he doesn't then she gets murdered without any knowledge of what was really going on.

The show made it clear multiple times that Ellie did not go there to die, she talked many times about what they would do "after", so taking away her agency really undercuts any theme about Joel making choices.

I think Druckmann has said in interviews that for the purposes of the story, it would have been successful and they could have made a vaccine. I know the science behind that is, as you say, wishy washy, and I've seen people online saying there's never been a vaccine for a fungal infection before, let alone one which ravaged the world like cordyceps and 20 years down the line with less medical facilities, knowledge etc. But, for the purposes of the story, the vaccine could have been made.

Joel wouldn't know if it was possible or not. He kind of has to just take it at face value that it would. He would have made the same decision either way.

Something I think is interesting that the show did is show why Ellie is immune, and why it's likely she's literally the only one in the world who is. I always wondered in terms of the games if it was possible that many people were immune, but had never been bitten or infected like Ellie was and therefore didn't know they were immune.

For sure. Marlene & the Fireflies are to blame in many respects for not even giving Ellie the choice, or even a chance to say goodbye to Joel. That itself led to Joel making the choice he made.

But Joel also made that choice. The Fireflies didn't give Ellie a choice, and neither did Joel. But the Fireflies were doing it for larger, unselfish reasons. Marlene had a deep personal connection to Ellie through her mother, but still ordered the doctor to proceed because it was for a vaccine. Joel made his decision for more selfish reasons. It wasn't just to save Ellie's life, but for himself.

While I've really enjoyed the rest of the series I think that last fell flat. The pacing just felt wrong, sluggish but also rushing through, like someone sleepwalking on an escalator. Also the shootout scene just didn't work imho, I know they were going for a detached/old-school 'bad' Joel but the mood and flow just didn't gel. It just had Plot-Armour written all over it so there was no real tension at all, at the same time not enough focus on Joel himself to make that side impactful (even after an overdone attempt at the start to set him up as now super-cuddly to artificially expand that emotional dynamic range for later). On a side note it looked like Bella had gained weight since the previous, not a criticism of that in itself but it makes me think there was a fair amount of time between that and the other episodes, like they took a break. It might explain the uncharacteristic mis-steps.

That said it was great seeing Ashley get a prominent role and she played it very well.

At this point she was his daughter and I don't know about others but me, given a choice, I would rather have the world burn than let anyone save it by killing my child.

And that's the point. Just because we can see why he did what he did, or even agree with why he did it and think we'd do the same thing, doesn't mean it was the right choice. The right choice for him, sure. The right choice as a whole? Debatable.

Like I said though, where Joel's ultimate failure comes is lying to Ellie at the end. She asks him to swear that everything he said about Marlene and the Fireflies was true, showing him that she already doubts what he said. And he lies to her. Again, we know why, and may have done the same thing, but it doesn't mean it was the right choice.

And there's where the ambiguity and discourse around whether or not Joel is a good guy or a bad guy, or if he did the right or wrong thing comes from.

Then he should have put that on the screen, any story that needs supplementary reading is a failure.

To be honest I don't know why he didn't, it would have taken 2 lines of dialogue and would easily have framed the scenario the way they clearly wanted. When Marlene is talking to Joel, instead of wishy washy mumbo jumbo she instead says something like:

I'm obviously no scriptwriter but it seems they could have focused the choices to be made a lot better.

It's not wishy washy mumbo jumbo (I mean, in real life it is, but in the context of the show it isn't), she outright explains why Ellie is immune and how the doctor is going to make a vaccine. She explains Ellie has been infected and immune since birth, the cordyceps in her releases a chemical messenger which makes it think she's cordyceps, and the doctor is going to remove and use that cordyceps to reproduce the chemical messenger which they can use to create a cure.

Again, mumbo jumbo sci-fi explanation, but for the purposes of the show there's no way that Joel could know whether or not it would work. He's not a doctor or scientist. It doesn't matter to him whether or not it would work, because he'd make the same choice regardless.

But the problem is that what Marlene says is clearly ridiculous in universe, and Joel was quite right to be sceptical of it.

Why? Because if you had an immune person who is creating a chemical messenger, the last goddamn thing you want to do is kill that person, especially not mere hours after first getting a look at her.

What if she dies in your ill equipped hospital before you extract the messenger? What if your theory doesn't work? What if it nearly works but you run out of samples before fine tuning the process?

Somebody tells me that they are going to kill the only immune person in the world mere hours after finding her and I immediately think they are a **** idiot who shouldn't be allowed a rubber scalpel. This was a scenario that absolutely needed to avoid medical mumbo jumbo and just focus on the certainty or belief that the experts knew exactly what they were up to. Any jargon could only ever take away from that certainty.

Do you think if it was made absolutely crystal clear to Joel that the vaccine would definitely, 100% work, that it would have made any difference to Joel or changed his decision?

Off the bat, I loved it. I loved the series as a whole. I really felt for Ellie's mum after seeing the bite. Imagine, getting that far, 9 months of pregnancy in THAT universe (best of luck with any cravings you get!) and then to fall just at the finish line. Heartbreaking stuff.

I really liked the attention to detail that she hadn't fed Ellie yet as she was afraid she'd infect her. That was a nice touch.

As a non game player, the bit with the giraffes threw me. Were they looking at a zoo? I actually thought they might have got attacked by a wild animal like a lion or a tiger 🙈

Anyway, I thought they did a great job. I loved the pacing, but it goes to show you can't please all the people all the time because if that was TWD, there would have been enough there to drag it out for at least 4 seasons 😂

One last thing, why the hell didn't Marlene let him say goodbye to Ellie? She could have handcuffed him/tied his hands together, brought him to the room to look at the operation threw the window. It was very stupid to have their story potentially finish like that. From reading above, it sounds like what happened in the game as well.