The Last of Us has an ending that leaves many questions regarding Joel’s actions. Was he right to do what he did? Well, The Last of Us’ creator Neil Druckmann believes he was.
Please be aware of major spoilers for The Last of Us (the game and the first season of the show) below.
At the end of The Last of Us, Joel executes multiple members of the Fireflies when he discovers that for them to work on a cure for the cordyceps virus, Ellie would need to have an operation that would kill her.
By this point in The Last of Us’ narrative, Joel has come to consider Ellie to be like his own child, and having already lost one daughter, he can not bring himself to lose another one. But, whether or not Joel was right to do this has been an ongoing debate since the first game released back in 2013.
Now, ahead of The Last of Us season two, IGN asked the show’s cast and creators the same question, and Naughty Dog’s own Neil Druckmann is firmly on the side of Joel simply doing what he had to do.
“I believe Joel was right,” Druckmann said. “If I were in Joel’s position, I hope I would be able to do what he did to save my daughter.”
Fellow showrunner Craig Mazin added he would probably do the same thing if he was put into Joel’s position. “But I’d like to think that I wouldn’t,” Mazin said, adding: “That’s the interesting push and pull of the morality of it. And that’s why the ending of the first game is so provocative and so wonderful. It just doesn’t let you off the hook as a player.”
Mazin continued: “People get to the end of The Last of Us [the game] and there is that question, what would you do? What should you do if faced with the opportunity to save the world, if you sacrifice your child. That goes back to Abraham and Isaac. It’s so profound. The notion of sacrifice to save the world.”
“It’s a difference between, OK, if I had to kill a random person to save who knows how many lives, in the abstract, you would say, well, yeah, that makes sense, of course,” Druckmann furthered. “But now, remove it from being a random person and it’s your kid. Now the answer is very different.”
Other cast members such as Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie in the show, said that Joel did save the world, it is just that the world he saved was his own. Jesse actor Young Mazino mused: “It’s like death begets death begets death and I think that’s just a perfect example. And yeah, it’s his world. Who cares about the world if your world isn’t there?”
These comments echo what Troy Baker – who plays Joel in the games (and James in the show’s first season) has previously stated. Back in 2020, Baker said he believes Joel’s actions at the end of The Last of Us to be “the most selfish act ever”. However, he doesn’t feel the ending could have played out any other way, as, in Joel’s eyes, Ellie was “his world” and as such saving her was more important than saving humanity.
The second season of The Last of Us is set to debut next month, and will comprise seven episodes, with one of those episodes being “quite big” in length. It will not cover the entirety of The Last of Us Part 2, with subsequent episodes expected to wrap up the narrative.
Earlier this month, Druckmann admitted he is “really curious” about how viewers will react when The Last of Us season two makes its debut.