Warning: This article contains major spoilers fromThe Last of Usseason 1 finale.
It’s said that love makes you do crazy things.
How far would you go for the ones you love?
Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie in that climactic scene from ‘The Last of Us’ season finale.Liane Hentscher/HBO
Would you commit horrible acts if it meant protecting someone so precious to you?
He wakes to find a familiar face, Marlene (Merle Dandridge).
Ellie is being prepped for surgery, she informs him.
Joel (Pedro Pascal) carries an unconscious Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of the hospital on ‘The Last of Us’.Liane Hentscher/HBO
Joel doesn’t see it that way.
He kills the soldiers escorting him off the premises, grabs their weapons, and goes on a rampage.
With a heap of bodies in his wake, he departs with an unconscious Ellie in his arms.
Marlene (Merle Dandridge) tries appealing to Joel one last time in ‘The Last of Us’.Liane Hentscher/HBO
It’s a decision that gamers have been debating since the game first released in 2013.
“I’m confused about it morally.
I think it’s a difficult choice.
The ending hits differently in the show versus the game.
In the game, the player experiences the story from Joel’s perspective.
Therefore, as Druckmann said, they become complicit in Joel’s actions.
You must actively press the button to kill him to progress through the sequence.
“I like that unconditional love, we give that way too much credit,” Mazin added.
“It’s the highest form of love.
How can we, with each episode, thematically touch on that in some way?'”
Druckmann said of that main thesis of unconditional love.
That’s such a noble cause that he has,” Druckmann continued.
“And then how do we show this really sad thing that’s more…?
It’s sad more than anything else to see the darkness he’s capable of.
So then it’s about, how do we frame it with music?
How do we shoot it?
What are all the other tools we have to make you feel something very similar?”
Mazin admitted he didn’t think about the storytelling distinctions between the game and the show all that differently.
