Last of Us Part 2 ending controversy

One of this year’s most critically acclaimed pieces of entertainment is also its most hated. Its creators are copping a deluge of vile messages.

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NOTE: This article explores the story and characters of The Last of Us Part II, and it is full of spoilers. Seriously, all the spoilers. Every last one of them. You’ve been warned.

One of 2020’s most critically acclaimed pieces of entertainment is also, confoundingly, its most hated.

The Last of Us Part II, which arrived on the PlayStation 4 last month as one of the more highly anticipated video games in years, has enjoyed overwhelming praise from critics.

“An astonishing achievement,” declared The Washington Post.

“The kind of challenging, groundbreaking work that comes along two or three times a decade,” proclaimed The Guardian.

In our own review, Wilson Smith praised its “engaging story and brilliant gameplay”, calling it the frontrunner for game of the year.

RELATED: Our review of The Last of Us Part II

Screen Rant went even further, saying there was “no doubt” Part II was “the greatest game of this console generation”, stretching all the way back to the PS4’s launch in 2013.

You get the idea. In all, the game has received 53 perfect scores, with a rating of 94/100 on Metacritic and more unironic uses of the word “masterpiece” than you can count.

Whether you're talking about gameplay, story, or visuals, #TheLastofUsPartII is nothing short of a masterpiece. It's more than a video game, and it's an experience that we'll be talking about for years to come.

Our Review: https://t.co/UUkv8Dlc72#GameProvidedByPlayStation pic.twitter.com/l21CxUPel1

— Greg Miller (@GameOverGreggy) June 12, 2020

Honestly blown away by every last little detail @Naughty_Dog put into this game.@Neil_Druckmann & @Grosstastic wrote a tremendous story, elevated by the deeply moving performances of @TheVulcanSalute, @TroyBakerVA, @shannonwoodward, @LauraBaileyVO, Stephen Chang, & company. pic.twitter.com/wn611cE0Jm

— Dan Casey (@DanCasey) June 12, 2020

The Last of Us Part 2 is a masterpiece worthy of its predecessor, and is one of the best games of this generation.

For the full review: https://t.co/TjR3euMkqC pic.twitter.com/Af286u08gf

— IGN (@IGN) June 12, 2020

ONSLAUGHT OF HATE

Then there’s the user score. An astonishing number of reviews – well over 100,000 – have yielded an average rating of just 5.3/10, including thousands of zeros.

Many of those user reviews were posted immediately upon the game’s release, which is curious, given its story takes dozens of hours to finish.

Nothing since Game of Thrones’ final season – in film, television or gaming – has been review bombed so swiftly or brutally.

That’s because, like Thrones and 2017’s The Last Jedi before it, Part II has enraged an ugly, intolerant subsection of geek culture, characterised by its unfortunate tendency to go absolutely feral when it doesn’t like something.

RELATED: Why the level of hate for The Last Jedi is ridiculous

You might think that’s too harsh. To be clear, I want to stress that there have been plenty of fair, thoughtful criticisms of the game.

That is not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about the sort of people who have spent the last few weeks sending vile abuse to one of Part II’s voice actors, Laura Bailey. Her crime was to play Abby, a character these so-called fans didn’t like.

Here is a small sample of the messages she’s received.

“I’m going to find where you live and slaughter you for what you did.”

“Just wanna say you should die b**** f*** you, you ruined it.”

“I will find u and I will kill your kid for that just wait for that.”

“F*** you dumb Abby b**** go f*** yourself.”

The other primary recipients of this charming feedback are the game’s writers, Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross. Here are some of the more coherent examples from Druckmann’s inbox.

“F*** you stupid cuck you ruined one of the best games made you stupid piece of s***.”

“Why did you ruin such a good game for everyone I hope you get fired you gay and trans loving r***** f***. Go die in a hole you radical feminist. Radical feminist scum.”

“What a stupid f****** k*** rat. Thanks for saving me some good cash and go bless the guy who leaked it all. Get f*****, liberal c***.”

I think you’ll agree that calling these people “feral” was, if anything, an understatement.

ANGER IS NOT CRITICISM

This sort of invective represents the absolute extreme; a minority of the people who don’t like the game.

They’re the same people who fervently believe reviewers have praised Part II because Sony or Naughty Dog paid them all off. It is simply inconceivable, in their minds, that anyone could have played the game and liked it.

Nope, not possible, game’s trash, must have been an elaborate global criminal conspiracy. That’s the logic, and they are sticking to it.

They’re also the people who complain about Part II forcing a progressive political “agenda” down their throats because it dares to feature the kinds of characters who are everywhere in real life, but have long been woefully under-represented in gaming.

There’s a lesbian romance, a transgender teenage boy, and a bulked-up woman with biceps almost as big as my thighs, who needs to share her workout tips with all of us immediately.

The existence of these characters in a big budget game is not proof of some nefarious political agenda. It is a reflection of the real world.

Trans people exist. Women with different body types exist. They deserve to be represented in our stories. It isn’t these characters’ role in Part II that is conspicuous, it is their absence from other games.

It’s worth noting that the anger towards Part II actually started weeks before its release, when hit the internet.

As a result, some fans decided they hated the entire thing before even starting it.

Of course, writing off a story based on selectively leaked details, or heck, even a full plot summary, is completely unreasonable.

I could make any story, from the original The Last of Us, to Harry Potter, to freaking Schindler’s List, sound trite and stupid on paper.

Judging a game without playing it is the same as reviewing a film without watching it, or a dish without eating it, or a book without reading it, or a hotel without staying in it. You simply do not have the information you need to reach a conclusion.

I’ve dwelled on this subject because I think it’s important to distinguish between genuine criticism of a story, which is not only fine but actually adds to the discussion, and the abusive, deranged stuff some gamers are engaging in, which is completely unacceptable and needs to be called out.

If you are sending abuse to an actor, or spreading nonsense conspiracy theories, or whining about some imagined “radical feminist agenda”, or ranting about how crap Part II is without even experiencing it for yourself, then you are not engaging in criticism of the game. You’re just being an asshole.

Far too many people have approached this story in bad faith, without even trying to understand it, and have then had the nerve to try to ruin it for everybody else out of spite.

The funny thing is, by going ballistic over Part II, these same people are proving just how relevant its most obvious themes are. They themselves are vindicating many of the risks its creators took.

Part II is, after all, largely about the corrosive nature of hate. It explores how even righteous fury can be self-destructive, eating away at the soul and poisoning our relationships with other people. It examines our habit of “othering” our enemies, stripping them of their humanity to justify any act against them – or in this case, any level of verbal abuse.

The fact that this story has provoked such an unhinged reaction, without a hint of self-awareness, feels weirdly appropriate.

LAST WARNING: OK, from this point on, we really are going to be diving deep into story and character details from The Last of Us Part II. If you haven’t finished the game or think you might experience it in the future, stop reading.

THE DEEPER THEMES OF PART II

There are genuine reasons why someone might dislike or bounce off Part II, even if they go into it with a completely open mind.

The game’s violence is frequently brutal, and made all the more unsettling by the realistic graphics.

Part II takes its characters, particularly Ellie, to some very dark places. For some people, the sense of despair and hopelessness it evokes will feel oppressive.

The original The Last of Us was a picnic by comparison.

One of the first game’s strengths was the way it balanced its more serious moments with a generous amount of levity. The sequel’s humour is sparser and more understated.

But the story is worth pushing through all of that darkness for, if you can, even when you get the urge to put down the controller.

Because this game isn’t just the straightforward revenge tale implied by its marketing. It is not just about hate. It’s so much more than that.

I am honestly perplexed by the number of people who think Part II’s message boils down to “violence is bad”. Were they playing through it blindfolded, with the sound turned off?

This is a story about empathy. It’s about the power of forgiveness, for your enemies, your loved ones and yourself. It’s about the quiet resilience it takes to overcome trauma. And, just like The Last of Us, it is fundamentally about the complicated relationship between Ellie and Joel.

None of those themes – none of them – would go anywhere without the one narrative choice that has inspired so much of the backlash.

THE ‘BETRAYAL’ OF JOEL

I am talking, of course, about the writers’ decision to kill off the protagonist of the first game, Joel Miller, in Part II’s prologue.

A lot of fans are hung up on the specific circumstances of Joel’s death. They argue, quite vociferously it must be said, that it is completely out of character for Joel to give the group of strangers in that ski lodge his name.

If Joel had just kept his mouth shut, they assume, the former Fireflies wouldn’t have known who he was and he might have come out alive.

This argument is not remotely compelling, firstly because it entirely ignores possible explanations – maybe, just maybe, a man can grow sufficiently less cynical after four years living in relative peace to give the people who just saved him from a horde of murderous mushroom zombie monsters his first name. Maybe.

More importantly, the whole debate is nullified by the fact that Joel’s brother, Tommy, tells Abby both of their names in an earlier scene.

I can’t stress that enough. Abby already knew who Joel was and would have killed him anyway. It’s an irrelevant, meaningless argument.

There is also a fair bit of angst about the manner of Joel’s death, with Abby torturing him and then caving in his skull with a golf club. It is, admittedly, a shockingly brutal scene, both physically and emotionally.

There is no heroic end for Joel – he does not, for instance, sacrifice his life to save Ellie. There’s no final, poignant piece of dialogue. No chance to say goodbye. Just a broken man lying helpless on the ground, taking one last, pained look at the girl he loves as a daughter, before being snuffed out.

Some have called this scene disrespectful, which I suppose it is, but only insofar as the world of The Last of Us is completely indifferent towards everyone who inhabits it.

Any character can die, at any moment, as cruelly and suddenly and pointlessly as Jesse in the Seattle theatre, or that random Seraphite who strayed too close to Ellie’s hiding spot in the tall grass.

That is how death works in real life as well. How many people die too young? How many lose a parent without ever getting the chance to settle unresolved arguments, or properly express their love?

Should Joel and Ellie be protected from that fate, merely because fans adore them? Of course not. We’re talking about the series that killed Joel’s daughter 20 minutes into the first game. It should have been clear from that moment on that the writers were never going to coddle us.

I also want to address the remarkably common claim that Joel’s death is “bad writing”, which is an insult that gets thrown around the entertainment world far too often. It has essentially become a quick, easy way to dismiss any narrative choice we don’t like.

This scene is actually an example of extremely strong, purposeful writing. The first half of the game, if not the whole damn thing, hinges on it succeeding, and it does.

The fact that you played as Abby during the prologue, and witnessed Joel save her from the horde, amplifies your feelings of anger and betrayal when she suddenly turns on him.

It’s a clever use of perspective, in a way that’s only possible in this medium. For a while there, you were Abby. You might have felt sympathetic towards her. When she turns out to be an enemy, it feels like a violation of trust.

Note that you’re not shown Abby’s face in the lead-up to the blow that finally kills Joel, or immediately after it lands.

When you experience that moment again from her perspective a dozen hours later, this time you do see the conflicting emotions on her face. Yes, there is hatred there, but it’s mixed with fear and vulnerability and disgust, and the horrible realisation that the satisfaction she expected to feel is not coming.

Quite the performance from Bailey, it must be said.

There’s a reason you don’t get to see this from Ellie’s perspective in the prologue. It would make Abby seem too conflicted; too human.

As the former Fireflies argue over whether to let Ellie and Tommy live, you can’t hear them, partly because Ellie seems to have gone temporarily deaf from the trauma of what she just witnessed, and partly because she’s too busy screaming death threats to listen.

This stops you from realising that Abby is the one who ultimately decided to let Ellie live.

All of these things are deliberate. At this point in the game, you are supposed to view Abby exactly as Ellie views her – a monster, committing a ruthless act of violence against someone you love. Everything is designed to make you hate her with as much fury and certainty as Ellie does.

If the scene fails, you won’t buy into Ellie’s revenge quest, and the daring narrative experiment of the game’s second half – which asks whether it’s possible to empathise with someone you hate – becomes pointless.

Basically, if you never hate Abby in the first place, the entire game falls apart.

So if Joel’s death makes you feel angry and betrayed, that’s not bad writing; it’s the exact opposite.

A quick side note here, before we move on, for anyone who might be upset about the writers “manipulating” them into feeling certain emotions. I know you’re out there. I’ve seen the Reddit threads.

Every story that has ever been written was designed to evoke certain feelings from the reader, viewer, player or listener. That is how literature works. If you’ve ever watched a film, or read a novel, then congratulations – you have been manipulated by a writer.

I can’t quite figure out why this is put forward as a criticism of Part II, and literally no other piece of media ever.

HOW PART II FULLY REDEEMS JOEL

Moving beyond the death scene, the writers’ treatment of Joel in Part II is incredibly interesting. By the end of the game, I was actually convinced they had found the most fitting way to honour his character.

Yes, I see that sceptical look on your face. Hear me out.

First, a quick refresher, in case you’ve forgotten the details, or somehow managed to stumble a few thousand words into this incredibly longwinded monologue without ever playing the original game.

At the end of The Last of Us, Joel completed his mission. He successfully escorted Ellie, the only person known to be immune to the cordyceps fungus, to the Fireflies, who hoped they could use her to develop a vaccine.

There was just one catch – the surgery would kill her. Joel had to choose between the fate of humanity, and the fate of the girl he’d come to love as a daughter.

He chose to save Ellie, slaughtering everyone in his path, including at least one doctor. And when Ellie woke up, he lied to her, telling the girl her immunity meant nothing and, by implication, their entire quest had been pointless.

Everything that happens in Part II is a consequence of those two decisions.

Joel’s lie shatters his relationship with Ellie and adds to her already significant emotional baggage, including the survivor’s guilt that’s been eating away at her since Riley’s death in Left Behind.

His hospital killing spree leads to his own death when the band of former Fireflies, led by the daughter of the doctor he murdered, arrives in Jackson seeking justice. Cue the golf club.

It’s obvious why this sequel is called Part II, and not simply The Last of Us 2. It is a continuation of the same story. New light is shed on Joel’s actions, which are treated with the weight and thoughtfulness they deserve.

The original The Last of Us was very much open to interpretation. While it was, broadly speaking, a redemption story for Joel, many fans felt his decision at the end of the game was made for selfish reasons.

He could not bear the idea of losing another daughter and suffering that same agonising loss all over again, so he doomed humanity, knowing full well that, given the choice, Ellie would want to go through with the surgery.

Part II does a fascinating thing. The way I read it, at least, this story removes much of the ambiguity from Joel’s motives and casts him in a far more positive light.

In Ellie’s final flashback of the game, standing on Joel’s porch, she shouts at him for stopping the surgery and, in her view, robbing her life of meaning.

“I was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would have f***ing mattered. But you took that from me,” she says.

Joel – having responded meekly to Ellie’s earlier rebukes about intervening with Seth and harassing Jesse about her patrols – stands his ground this time.

“If, somehow, the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again,” he tells her.

His voice, until now quiet and submissive, suddenly swells with conviction. He stops hunching over and stands up straight. There isn’t the slightest hint of an apology.

It’s subtle, but I think this is confirmation that Joel committed those acts at the end of the original, terrible as they were, for the best possible reason.

He was not, as many players assumed, motivated by a selfish desire to preserve his own relationship with Ellie. When they’re speaking on that porch, he believes that relationship is already over; damaged beyond repair. And yet he would change nothing.

What does this tell us? It means that Joel acted selflessly, not selfishly, in that hospital. He rescued Ellie because he believed she deserved to live, whether he could be a part of that life or not. She was worth saving, whatever the cost to the world and, more significantly, whatever the cost to himself.

Druckmann himself hinted strongly at this interpretation on the official Last of Us Podcast a week or so ago, as he spoke about the main theme of the first game.

“How far are you willing to go to protect your child? And this idea of taking (Joel) to the end of the line. What’s the most extreme act he would have to take?” Druckmann said.

“Characters will take a path of least resistance. Whatever is the least they have to do to achieve their goal, that’s what they’ll do. So you put an obstacle, so they have to make a more extreme choice. And another obstacle, so they have to make a more extreme choice.

“OK, Tess has died, he’s sacrificed that. He’s sacrificing his safety. He opens himself up to loss in a way that he hasn’t before, so he’s starting to sacrifice himself. OK, he’s sacrificing all of mankind to save her.

“Where do you go after that? It’s like, he’s willing to sacrifice his relationship with her, to save her. That’s the ultimate sacrifice that he could make. He’s lying to her, knowing that this could be it – she might never trust him again – but he’s got to do that so she doesn’t go back to that hospital and try to get the cure.”

Joel doesn’t give a damn about himself. In the end, Ellie is all he cares about – her safety and her happiness.

Objectively, his decision is still veeeery morally dubious, but it is motivated by the purest form of parental love.

THE TRUE VILLAIN OF PART II

Joel’s influence on Part II is felt long after his death. In fact it shapes the most crucial moment in the story – Ellie’s decision, at the last possible moment, to let Abby live during their final showdown in Santa Barbara.

That choice has baffled a lot of players.

This is supposed to be a revenge story, right? Why put the goal Ellie has so relentlessly pursued quite literally within her grasp, only to have her suddenly change her mind?

It makes the whole thing pointless. The writers, in all their cruelty, destroy this beloved character’s life, and then don’t even let her have that one cathartic moment of justice.

Again, the accusation is that Druckmann and Gross are betraying the spirit of the original game, where Ellie declared: “After all we’ve been through; everything that I’ve done. It can’t be for nothing.”

Or so the argument goes.

Ellie’s abandonment of her quest for revenge, just before it’s too late, is not “nothing”. It is, in fact, the whole point of the story. Not just because she’s breaking the “cycle of violence”, but because it’s the moment she starts to triumph over the true enemy of the game, which is and always was her own trauma.

Through our time playing as Abby, we get to live in the shoes of someone who already accomplished what Ellie is trying to do.

Abby got her revenge. She killed Joel. And it didn’t help her one bit.

When we switch to her perspective in Seattle, she is still having nightmares of her dead father. They don’t go away until she finds purpose in the form of protecting Lev, just as Joel found his own in protecting Ellie.

Through Abby’s flashbacks, we see how her four-year obsession with finding and killing Joel has poisoned her relationships with other people.

She can’t even spend a single, romantic afternoon with Owen in the aquarium, because she has to hit the gym, building her body into a killing machine.

(This is the part where I point out that Abby is built like a truck not because of some political agenda from Naughty Dog, but because of her own obsession with revenge. Pretty powerful, as workout motivations go. Most of us just want to look good on the beach.)

We see a more devastating version of the same dynamic play out when Ellie leaves Dina and JJ. She couldn’t stay in that idyllic farmhouse, for the same reason Abby couldn’t stay in the aquarium with Owen.

“Ellie’s obsession with Abby is a lot like a drug addict, and Dina leaves because she sees a drug addict who just can’t quit,” Druckmann said during a spoilercast with Kinda Funny Games after Part II came out.

“Every time Dina thinks she’s hit bottom, it’s like ... she hasn’t hit bottom; it doesn’t look like she’s going to hit bottom anytime soon.”

Ellie is still suffering from PTSD. She isn’t eating; she can’t sleep; her skin hurts; she’s tormented by flashbacks of Joel’s death. She thinks the way to fix it is to avenge him.

But Abby’s story is a cautionary tale. It’s telling us how futile Ellie’s mission is. Murdering Abby will not heal her pain.

There’s a lot more going on inside Ellie’s head throughout Part II, and most of it is open to the player’s interpretation. But here I am, an armchair psychologist, ready to give you my piping hot take.

Ellie’s anger is not just aimed at Abby and the other former Fireflies. It is turned inward, against herself.

She feels guilty that she shunned Joel from her life for so long, squandering time they could have spent together. She blames herself for the fact that he died before she could fully reconcile with him. At least part of her probably believes she failed to save him.

In her mind, the only gesture left to her, the only thing she can do to show her love for Joel, is to seek justice.

The survivor’s guilt is still there too, worse than ever before. Riley, Henry, Sam, Joel, Jesse – the list keeps getting longer. In the original game, at least, Ellie could tell herself that there was a reason for her survival – she was the key to a cure. Her life meant something.

Now she thinks it entirely meaningless. As far as Ellie is concerned, she should have died four years ago, or even before then. She doesn’t deserve to be alive.

When you don’t value your own life at all, it’s a lot easier to risk throwing it away. So Ellie chases Abby to Santa Barbara, seemingly not caring whether she survives the trip.

Fast forward to the critical moment. What makes her stop drowning Abby? It’s a brief flash of Joel – but for once, she’s not seeing his death.

It’s the memory of their conversation on his porch, when they started to reconcile, and when Joel refused to resile from his decision to save her.

Something starts to click in that moment.

It is clear, from everything Joel said and did when he was alive, that he would never have wanted Ellie to throw away her life on a pointless quest for vengeance. He would not want her to be locked into the same cycle of endless violence that eventually ended his own life.

He would want her to move on, live her life, and be happy. And he would want her to forgive herself. That is the only way she can honour his memory.

WHY THE ENDING IS HOPEFUL, NOT DEPRESSING

Many fans – even those who enjoy and appreciate Part II – feel the ending is depressing.

Ellie has lost everything. Dina has abandoned the farmhouse and, presumably, taken JJ back to Jackson. Tommy has turned into a bitter old man. Because of her missing fingers, Ellie can’t even play the guitar, which was the symbol of her connection to Joel.

She walks off towards the forest, heading for who knows where, and leaves the guitar behind.

The song that plays over those final moments is called Beyond Desolation.

For some reason, when I first listened to the soundtrack weeks ago – before finishing the game – I assumed that title meant an absolute f***ton of desolation. In the same sense, for example, that much of the backlash against this story has been “beyond” unreasonable.

Something didn’t fit though. Like most of The Last of Us’s music, Beyond Desolation has a rather melancholy quality to it, but it didn’t sound bleak enough to justify its title.

When that track played over the ending, I realised my mistake, which in hindsight was rather obvious. When you are “beyond” something, it means you are on the other side of it.

Ellie went to an incredibly dark place in this story, but at the very end, she has put it behind her. By leaving the guitar Joel gave her, she is finally laying him to rest properly, along with some of the mental demons that have plagued her.

“I think there’s something very important about portraying characters who get knocked down by life, by their own bad choices, and who find ways to pick themselves back up without pretending those things didn’t happen or they didn’t make mistakes,” Halley Gross told The Los Angeles Times during an interview about Part II last month.

“I want to write the stuff that would have inspired 17-year-old me. I want stuff that when I’m feeling low, can say, ‘This person found a path forward.’”

Joel saved Ellie’s life at the end of the The Last of Us. By the end of Part II, he has finally convinced her she deserves to live it.

With his help, Ellie found her path forward.

For more longwinded opinions, follow @SamClench on Twitter

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