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The Last of Us Fans Defend Joel Miller's Controversial Season Finale Decision


WARNING: If you haven’t watched The Last of Us Episode 9, let alone the entire Season 1, you are in for MAJOR SPOILERS in this article. Read at your own risk!

Original The Last of Us fans who played the video game before the release of HBO’s live-action adaptation have been dreading this day to come: The Last of Us Episode 9 concludes Season 1 with a devastating, game-changing decision being left up to Joel Miller, in which he decides on whether Ellie gets to live or not.

See, despite Joel and Ellie finally reaching the Fireflies camp to extract the potential vaccine to the cordyceps virus from the latter’s immunity system, Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, reveals that there’s a high chance Ellie would not survive after surgery. Of course, while Ellie’s main goal had been to help humanity in any way she could, given her survival guilt, too, she would say yes to anything.

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However, it is important to note that Ellie at the time was unconscious when Marlene had taken her to surgery. Marlene, despite being a close friend of Ellie’s mother, Anna, is risking the life of a teenage girl for the sake of ‘rescuing’ humanity. Joel, on the other hand, would do everything to save his newfound daughter from any harm, which led him to slaughter the camp and whisk Ellie away from danger.

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Now, there’s no doubt that The Last of Us fans were divided on this decision. It held a lot of questions, and definitely would create more problems to encounter in The Last of Us Season 2.

For those unaware, The Last of Us Season 2 is bound to witness Joel’s demise, as a result of consequence from the doctor he killed in The Last of Us Episode 9. However, in spite of that, fans are defending Joel Miller’s decision, check out some of the fan reactions below:

Joel had two options: save humanity but lose Ellie, or save Ellie and risk humanity’s safety. He chose the former for a good reason. Apart from Ellie being unconscious and having surgery without full awareness and consent as to whether she would even live afterwards, the vaccine wouldn’t have ended up in good hands, anyway, and would instead have been utilized for trading commercial purposes.

Joel would have lost his only family, Ellie would have lost her only hope in seeing a brighter future for her, and ultimately, it wouldn’t have led to a The Last of Us Season 2.


For more articles like this, take a look at our The Last of Us, HBO, and Geek Culture pages.