A Powerful, Divisive Season Finale

When The Last Of Us released back in 2013, it was widely hailed as one of the greatest video games of all time. This was in no small part thanks to its powerful, controversial ending. The HBO adaptation makes small changes to the final moments of this story, but largely hews closely to the game.

The big change is a flashback scene. We see a woman—Anna—running through the forest. She’s clearly very pregnant and fleeing from someone—or something. She makes it to a house where she calls for people who aren’t there, then rushes upstairs and barricades herself in an empty room. This is Ashley Johnson who plays Ellie in the video games (and also Pike in The Legend Of Vox Machina, among myriad other roles). Even if you didn’t recognize her, you’d recognize her voice immediately. What a voice!

In any case, the infected bursts through the door and she barely manages to fight it off with her switchblade. She quite literally gives birth while staving off the zombie. As the baby wails on the floor, she sees that she’s been bitten. She cuts the umbilical cord quickly and scoops up her baby, who she names Ellie. Here we have an explanation for Ellie’s immunity. She was still attached to her mother when the cordyceps entered her bloodstream, but was cut off quickly enough that the fungus didn’t fully take root. Now, when cordyceps enter her they think she’s already infected and move on. Kind of like a vaccine, but not quite.

Regardless, now we know. This was never explicitly stated in the games but it makes sense.

Back in the main timeline, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are making their way to the Fireflies. Ellie is out of sorts and Joel does his best to cheer and distract her. He finds food, the game Boggle, he chats with her breezily but she’s distant, still stuck in the horrors that befell her with the cannibals in last week’s harrowing episode. The only thing that breaks her from her gloom is yet another classic scene from the game: The giraffes.

The two have made their way up through a skyscraper to get a view of the city. When they come to a bombed out area of the building with no way up, Joel boosts Ellie to the next floor so she can push a ladder down (another fun video game moment). She spots something and rushes off, forcing Joel to race after her. What he comes upon isn’t what he expected. A giraffe is grazing outside. Ellie stares at it in amazement, and Joel cuts off some leafy branches for her to give the animal.

Below, they see a whole herd of the magnificent creatures. I half-expected to hear the Jurassic Park theme play over the scene. It’s spectacular. “Was it everything you hoped for?” Joel asks, reminding us of a similar scene back in Boston—though he asked the question in a very different tone back then. “It has its ups and downs,” Ellie replies. “But you can’t deny the view.”

They make their way toward the hospital and Joel opens up about his past. He tells her about how he tried to kill himself after Sarah died, and that sometimes it feels like there’s no going on but if you just keep on keeping on, you’ll find something new to fight for. “Time heals all wounds?” she says. “It wasn’t time,” he tells her, and it’s clear to both Ellie and to us what he means. Ellie has saved him just as sure as he’s saved her.

But it’s not over yet. They’re ambushed by patrolling Fireflies and Joel is hit hard over the head with a rifle. He wakes up in a hospital bed. Marlene (Merle Dandridge) tells Joel that she owes him. It’s a miracle he got Ellie this far. Then she tells him what the doctors are up to. They think Ellie has been infected since birth, which has given her a special immunity that they can essentially extract from her. She’s in surgery now.

“But cordyceps infect the brain,” he says, realizing the implications of this. “I have no other choice,” Marlene replies. Ellie can save the world, but she won’t be around to see it. “Don’t do this,” Joel begs. “You don’t understand.”

Marlene says she’s the only person who understands. She was there when Ellie was born. She made a promise to her mother to protect her. But the greater good demands the sacrifice, and Ellie won’t feel pain. They never even told her so she never even felt fear.

Marlene tells her men to escort Joel to the highway and leave him with his pack and Ellie’s switchblade. They push him forward, leading him through the hospital, guns at the ready. In a stairwell, he makes his move. He grabs one of the guards’ guns and shoots them both. One is killed instantly. He asks the other where they’re keeping Ellie but the guard won’t tell him.

“I don’t have time for this,” Joel says, and shoots him dead. Then he moves back up the stairs and into the hospital, guns blazing. He shoots through the first guards. When one surrenders, lowering his rifle, Joel shoots him. He changes his clip, kills another, picks up that guard’s rifle. Fires until he’s out of bullets, pushing through the hospital like an angel of death. When that gun runs out of ammo, he picks up a pistol.

Leaving a trail of blood and carnage in his wake, Joel finally reaches the pediatric ward and finds the doctor and several nurses in a room about to begin surgery. Ellie is unconscious. He enters the room and tells them to unhook her.

The doctor turns, grabs a scalpel and stands between Joel and the operating table. Joel shoots him and repeats his instructions. They unhook Ellie and he scoops her up and carries her away.

In the parking garage below, he sees a van that’s apparently been worked on. He heads toward it when Merle emerges from the shadows, gun drawn. She tells him it’s not too late. They can still save the world. “That’s not up for you to decide,” he says. “It’s not up to you, either,” she fires back. Let Ellie decide. “I’m sure she’d do the right thing.”

For a moment, it looks like Joel will relent. Marlene lowers her handgun and Joel shoots her in the stomach. He puts Ellie in the van and hears Merle gasping. When he walks around the van she’s struggling on the pavement. She pushes herself up and begs for her life. “You’ll just come after her,” Joel says, and shoots her again.

On the road, Ellie finally wakes up. She asks what happened and Joel lies. There were dozens of others just like you, he tells her. They couldn’t find a cure. They gave up. Then raiders attacked and he barely got her out of there alive. She seems skeptical. When she asks about Marlene, he doesn’t answer, and she rolls onto her other side, facing away from him.

They make it most of the way to Jackson, but have to hike the final few hours. When they reach an outlook overlooking the city, Ellie stops. She asks Joel to swear to her that everything he said about what happened at the hospital is true. He doesn’t blink. “I swear,” he says. She studies his face for a minute and then says, “Okay.”

And the credits roll.

Much like the game this show is based on, this leaves us with all sorts of questions and a great, big fat debate over the moral implications both of Joel’s actions at the hospital and his later decision to lie to Ellie—both to keep her from returning (thus keeping her safe) and to preserve their relationship, which he worries will not last if she knows the truth.

I’m working on a separate piece to discuss this at greater length. For the purposes of this review, I’ll just say this: I’m on Team Joel here all the way. If you don’t protect the innocent, there is no greater good worth saving. If you sacrifice the life of your own daughter (even surrogate daughter, as is the case here) to save the world, then the world is not worth saving. It’s one thing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, but to sacrifice another?

This was a tremendously powerful episode. I’m startled at how much they packed in with a run-time barely over 43 minutes long, but it worked and never felt rushed. I’m also impressed how they took the hospital sequence and adapted the video game combat into something so cinematic and haunting. But mostly, I love how this ends with Joel lying to Ellie out of love, and her accepting it—despite maybe knowing it’s a lie—also out of love. And then it’s over, just like that.

I will reiterate that this is such a perfect ending that I wish it was the ending but we got The Last Of Us Part II, for better or worse, which means we’ll get at least two more seasons of The Last Of Us on HBO. And here I am deeply torn, as I really think they’ve done a great job (other than a lull in the middle of the season) and I love Pascal and Ramsey in this. What’s coming makes me nervous. I won’t spoil that here, but I’ve discussed it elsewhere if you’re curious.

What did you think of the season 1 finale of The Last Of Us? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Check out my video review below:

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