Nothing hammered home The Last of Us‘s overall impact quite like its heart-wrenching ending. After fighting off hordes of Infected, a bone-chilling encounter with cannibals, and losing control of themselves more than once, Joel and Ellie deserve to rest. Emotions getting in the way of that rest was a bold choice on Naughty Dog‘s part, but one that pays off, adding dimension to characters that were already superbly developed.
With The Last of Us Part II on the horizon, fans are abuzz with speculation and excitement. But with the first game concluding the way it did, is a sequel really necessary?
A Complete Story
Upon reaching the end of The Last of Us, players were left with a lot of unanswered questions. Why would Joel lie about the Firefly lab? Why would Ellie accept it when she clearly doesn’t believe him?
However, we don’t need answers to these questions. Joel and Ellie are as real as video game characters come thanks to Naughty Dog’s emphasis on strong writing and interactions, and in this way, their stories feel complete. Throughout the game, we witness their ups and downs, both as individuals and as a pairing.
Contrast this with the Uncharted series, Naughty Dog’s action-adventure IP. The game’s protagonist, Nathan Drake, also undergoes significant character development, but the games are largely situation-focused. Like Indiana Jones, there is always another ancient treasure for Nate to pursue, and so the sequels made sense.
Unlike Nate, Joel and Ellie have one goal: reach the Fireflies and hope they can use Ellie’s immunity to produce a cure for the plague. And they reach that goal, even as Joel’s selfish choice — save Ellie, rather than let the surgery kill her — causes things to go awry. His brash actions, as well as Ellie’s neutered acceptance of his lies, have a grim finality to them. It’s not a comfortable end, but the uncertainty is meant to challenge your conceptions of these characters, of human nature, and of the bonds we share.
The Power of One
Sequels are tricky; even successful IPs can be haunted by one bad game. 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, for instance, left the titular blue blur buried under a mire of memes that he hasn’t emerged from to this day. Naughty Dog has proven with franchise after franchise that it can pull sequels off, so the worry isn’t necessarily that Part II won’t be a great game. Until Part II‘s announcement, a huge reason The Last of Us was so special was that it was a standalone title.
Joel and Ellie are very singular characters; the story belongs to them, it feels genuine because of them. Who they were — and more importantly, who they are come Part II — doesn’t really matter in light of who they become within the confines of the game. They make their own choices, whether you like it or not, and those choices have ramifications. Joel and Ellie grow and change in response to it all, and we know them intimately even as they transform.
The iciness of their final conversation makes us miss how close that transformation made them, and puts a damper on how well we thought we knew them after all. Not knowing what happens next is in line with the game’s willingness to throw gut punches — something that’s established from the very beginning, when Joel loses his daughter Sarah, and continued from that moment onward. It hits hard enough without needing Part II to expand on it further.
The Last of Us: One Night Live
Neil Druckmann, the creative director and writer of The Last of Us, staged a performance of some of the game’s pivotal moments entitled One Night Live, featuring several original cast members. The performance was a huge success and is now available online — that is all except for the final scene. No photos or videos were allowed as Troy Baker (Joel) and Ashley Johnson (Ellie) stepped out on stage one last time, but those in attendance have widely shared what this last scene contained: an epilogue to the game’s conclusion.
The epilogue serves as a reconciliation of sorts after the game’s intense ending. All it takes is a short conversation for Joel and Ellie to make up, a testament to the surrogate father-daughter duo they grew to be during the events of the game. If the final message of The Last of Us is that the people closest to us are often the ones who hurt us the most, this epilogue builds on it in a logical and heartfelt way in recognizing the path of forgiveness.
As Druckmann said, the epilogue was a way of “saying goodbye” to Joel and Ellie. There are plenty of ways to interpret that statement, but coming from the man who had a huge hand in creating these characters, it should have weight. To go back on it is almost to go back on Joel and Ellie and who they became, making Part II all the more controversial.
