The Last of Us Season 1 finale is here and its everything that fans hoped for and more. The series finally gives us the giraffe moment we’ve been hoping for and tells us Ellie’s origins and of course, shows us Joel’s choices. The consuming nature of pure love that can make one do outrageous things, even violent ones, has been a running theme of the series. In a new featurette, co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann along with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey elaborate on Joel’s decision and the contradictory nature of it.
“The thought experiment for this whole story is the unconditional love a parent feels for their child. And how far can you take this story to demonstrate what that means?” says Druckmann. “It is not just about the beautiful parts of love, it’s also about the dark side. It’s about how everything wonderful and everything bad ultimately can start with love,” adds Mazin. While Joel and Ellie started as an estranged pair reluctant to create any connection, during the course of Season 1 they’ve come to rely upon and trust each other. Mazin notes, “It’s about the way we treasure the people that we love more than everyone else. How love leads to emotions that can rage out of control.”
“We’ve seen Joel kill. We’ve seen him lose loved ones. So, how do you take that any further?” Druckmann, notes, “What if it’s between saving all of humanity, or this one girl. That’s the easiest choice he’s ever made in his life.” Joel started by losing his daughter the night of the outbreak, which hardens him and it's that broken man on a journey to heal that we’ve been following all along. Pascal explains, “what would make one choose one thing over the survival of humanity, essentially. Which is something that he does because he finds himself incapable of losing again.”
Merle Dandridge, who played Marlene in both games and on the series explains the parking lot scene, saying, “The parking lot is the last shot. It’s the last opportunity to save what Ellie can gift the world. Joel, he is wrestling with his grief, and he can’t see past it.” Pascal adds, “There’s no limit to how much we could try to understand that, how much we could defend it, or judge it.” He feels Joel’s decision is “this beautiful shadow that one can explore and question, find the horror and find the humanity of.” Druckmann reveals that this whole journey, “we’ve been working towards this trust that is forming between these two characters, and how honest they are with each other, and how much they learn to rely on each other.” But when it comes to saving Ellie and not telling her the truth, “Joel puts all of that on the line. Like a parent, you feel like you need to lie to your children to protect them. And that’s what Joel does at the very end,” he elaborates.
Ellie's Point of View
Ramsey explains that Ellie knows deep down that Joel not telling the truth. “But she can’t let herself believe it, because it’s too painful, and it’s too scary, the idea that her only purpose in life hasn’t been fulfilled,” she says. “That that had been taken away from her by the person that she loves and trusts the most is too overwhelming. So she forces herself to believe Joel.” Mazin tells, “Time doesn’t really heal anything. It just makes it fade. But people heal things.” Joel and Ellie had been more than honest with each other in this episode, so when Joel saves Ellie, “in that moment, you understand the depth of what she means to him. And the horror of it all is why the ending has to be the way it is,” Mazin notes.
The co-creator also notes that the ending is something that people have been arguing about for over a decade. The dilemma being: “Should Joel have done what he did? And a lot of people will say no, and a lot of people will say yes,” Mazin says, “In the end, the only thing we can be sure of is that we understand why he did it, and we understand that Ellie would not have wanted him to do it. That complexity is why The Last of Us, as a narrative is so gorgeous. It’s why it’s the most beautiful story told, in the entire genre of video games.”
All episodes of The Last of Us are available on HBO Max. You can check out the featurette below