Spoilers alert! The Last of Us series has come to an end. Joel, who saw his daughter in Ellie, saves her life. Time for a slightly longer and sadder finale than in the game.
Attention! Spoilers for The Last of Us Episode 9 – Seek the Light
The Last of Us ends its first season. Just like a video game: Joel (Pedro Pascal) tells Ellie (Bella Ramsey) that it doesn’t matter who dies – Riley (Storm Reid), Tess (Anna Torv), Sam (Keivonn Woodard), find something new that they can fight. In the last scene of the season, Ellie makes Joel swear. To swear to her thateverything he said about fireflies was true. He would swear there are dozens of people like Ellie who are immune and Marlene’s (Merle Dandridge) fireflies have stopped looking for a cure.
I swear.
Joel lies to Ellie. While she was unconscious, he murdered Marlene and the fireflies to save the girl. He began to see his daughter in her. He shot the Fireflies’ doctor before he could remove the cordyceps from Ellie’s brain so that humanity could survive.
How has the ending of The Last of Us changed compared to the game?
The scene from the show ended a little differently: in the alternate ending, the camera stopped at the growing distance between Joel and Ellie as they walked towards Jackson, Wyoming.
Change was something Ali Abbasi, our director, played with. He thought about doing this slightly longer, sadder version where Ellie says “okay” and then turns around and walks away. And Joel’s looking after her. We see the two walking, not really together, but separately, towards Jackson. something trages and then disappears. There was something beautiful about it. Everyone was wondering – but what are we doing? We discussed whether people who played the game would be more annoyed that they didn’t get the ending they were supposed to, or would they be more annoyed that they only got what they had before? How will everyone else feel then? Finally, there is something very concrete about the ending of this close-up of Ellie. It is not known what will happen next. It is unknown what she is doing. Leaving him or going with him, how does he feel? This moment is suspended forever.
said Craig Mazin, co-writer of the episode with game writer Neil Druckmann
Mazin suspected that viewers of the series would be “nervous” at the end of the season, adding that the reaction was “the wrath of lust and anticipation”. For fans who played the video game, what they didn’t know at the time was that the sequel would arrive seven years later as 2020’s The Last of Us Part II – it’s not a suspension, it’s a conclusion.
Of course, this decision has a moral ambiguity: are people still rooting for Joel, who is lying to Ellie’s face? But when we made the game and that ending was a hit, no one knew if we were going to make another game. I think it was easier for people to accept the fact that it’s not a cliffhanger, it’s the right ending. Here they could say “Oh you left us with cliffhangers” because they know season two is coming. So it was interesting to see a different reaction from people.
Druckmann said
All episodes of The Last of Us are available on HBO Max .
