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

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.

Good show. But man, they really turned Joel into a computer game character in the final 2 episodes. Firstly giving him the heath boost to make a miraculous recovery and then the final fight scene where he just takes out a bunch of soldiers. Both really could have been avoided with an episode between 8 & 9.

It was a baseball pitch the giraffes were in you could see a scoreboard. Probably escaped from a zoo.

We are not ever told by the show that "they know how to make a vaccine" we are told they have a theory on how to make a vaccine that involves killing the world's only immune patient. Never even using in world science does it say it's more than a theory.

It wouldn't have changed Joel's decision and Marlene who was happy to kill an innocent child should have just put a bullet in Joel too. I mean who would have known.

Marlene doesn't kill Joel because they owe him a debt for how he managed to get Ellie there. Marlene is ultimately honourable. She's willing to let Joel go, and even though she has that connection and history with Ellie through her mother she knows the sacrifice needs to be made. The cordyceps is around Ellie's brain and there's no way for them to remove it without killing her. I don't think Marlene would allow the doctor to go through with it unless they were as certain as they could be that it would work and there was no other way around it.

An absolutely horrible decision, but I'd disagree that Marlene was happy to kill an innocent child. She also explains to Joel that Ellie hadn't woken up before being prepped for surgery, so they didn't cause her any pain or fear. It's why they didn't wake her up to have a goodbye with Joel or let her make the choice whether she wants to go through with it. That would be a huge thing for Ellie to bear in her final moments/hours. I think from Marlene's perspective, it was better that Ellie didn't have to be faced with that choice.

Neither Marlene nor Joel made the "right" choices or are definitely good/bad. It's a far more complex situation. But Joel made his choices for more selfish reasons than Marlene.

That is literally what they are going to do.

There's a difference between an educated doctor/surgeon "thinking" it might work based on the tests they did on Ellie and what he'd be able to do with the chemical markers they can make from the sample of cordyceps in Ellie's brain, and someone just saying "I think this might work"

They would not risk killing the only living immune person based on "I think this might work". There is a level of uncertainty in everything, and Marlene is convinced enough to let them do this which will kill Ellie, even though she promised Ellie's mother, her friend, that she'd take care of her and keep her safe.

Maybe they'd discover after doing it that the cure only works on specific people, or before a certain age etc. But they wouldn't know any of that without first being able to produce the vaccine, and to do that they would have to do the surgery which would kill Ellie.

It still doesn't change the fact that Joel would make the same decision.

The only thing that doctor could be sure of was that they will keep him alive by any means until he does it. So of course he did convince them it will work.

Even Joel knows enough from what Marlene said to recognise that the cordyceps is around the brain. It's how he figures that the surgery they're planning would kill her.

Now you're just stretching and making stuff up. They would still need a doctor, and if anything his life would be in more danger from them if he killed the one person in the entire world who was immune (and someone Marlene has a personal connection to) without believing strongly enough that it would work. There's no indication that his life was in any danger from the Fireflies.

I never said from Fireflies in particular, but his life, along with everyone's life, was in danger. How do you get the best protection you can get in that situation? You become indispensable. You're the only one who can 100% do it. You can't ignore his lack of ethics and his conflict of interest when he claimed he could do it.

The exhaustive tests they conducted in about 15 minutes? The doctor absolutely jumped the gun with vivisection there should have been months of testing done on Ellie.

Ah that's so cool! She did great in this!

Agree. We did wonder for a while if we were looking at a flash forward or a flashback.

I think people are more so questioning why the giraffe scene is important, especially as many who played the game consider it an important story moment.

The scene is important because it helps Ellie start to snap out of how distant she became after what happened with David. It's a small moment of joy and excitement, and beauty, especially to Ellie as someone who was born into the post-outbreak world. It helps Ellie and Joel both reflect on the journey they've had and how it's coming to an end, and think about what happens next (thinking the Fireflies will just do some tests and take blood samples or whatever and then they'll go back to Jackson). It's also important for Joel as he's truly looking at Ellie as a daughter, and getting to help her experience something like that, like a parent taking the child to a zoo, is something he's longed for.

It's just a small, personal moment between them, before they talk about what comes next, if Ellie wants to go through with it or just leave, Ellie reflecting on how important seeing the journey through is as it could lead to a cure and how everything they went through can't just be for nothing. That also shows us that if the Fireflies had woken Ellie up and gave her the choice to go ahead with the surgery or not, she would have.

I thought Pascals puppy dog manner at the start of the episode was really jarring to be honest. Like a teenager bouncing around after getting a kiss from his crush, all chatty, making plans for the future and bringing her gifts. I get what it was supposed to represent, but it was far too much a disconnect from everything we had seen to that point and needed to be a bit more subtle.

The problem is that he has come to accept her as a surrogate daughter, but we saw how he acted around his daughter in episode one and it wasn't like that. Episode one felt real, the beginning of the last episode felt like exaggerated stage play directions.

Well it is very, very stupid to kill the only immune person, so it is somewhat understandable that Ellie and Joel didn't consider it a possibility. They probably joked about it around a campfire one night and then dismissed it as being too stupid for serious consideration.