SPOILER ALERT if you havenât played The Last of Us or The Last of Us: Part II
In The Last of Us, Joel Miller and Jerry Anderson fuck humanity by ignoring the only person on the planet that holdâs the key to a possible cure for the fungus thatâs killing humanity. We know Joelâs part first hand since weâre the ones doing the fucking. In The Last of Us: Part II, we learn Jerry Andersonâs part.Â
âBut Joel was acting nobly and heroically! And Jerry was making a hard decision, choosing the many over the few, or the one!â, you say. Well, both their actions left humanity fucked. Jerry, possibly the only person left who could synthesize a cure, is dead, and in the sequel game, so is Joel. Meanwhile, humanity is left without a cure. Like I said, fucked.
âThatâs harsh!â you screech, âThey were taking the best decision from a group of shitty decisions.â And hereâs where I say they shouldnât have been making these decisions at all. The only person whose decision it was to make was Ellie.
Yes, 14 year old Ellie was the one who shouldâve made the decision as to whether she should sacrifice her life for a possible cure, or choose to live and leave the scientists to continue looking for a cure. If she truly was humanityâs savior, shouldnât she be given the choice to save humanity or not?
âBut sheâs only 14!â, you shriek, âSheâs too young to make that decision!â Who says? Society has collapsed. Sheâs wandering around in a world trying to kill her and sheâs killing back to protect herself. She knows the stakes. Would waiting 4 years and letting her make that decision on her 18th birthday make you feel better, even if you knew it meant 4 more years of suffering and death for millions of innocent people?Â
She was always the only person to make that decision. But two white men decided to make that decision for her. Did they ask her? No. Did they consult her? No. Did they trust her to understand the consequence of the sacrifice she wouldâve had to make? No.
Instead, they didnât consider what she might want or let her exercise agency over her own life. Instead, Joel wasnât willing to sacrifice her for the possibility of a cure, and Jerry decided he had to sacrifice her to save humanity. But neither were sacrificing anything because it wasnât their sacrifice to make. It was Ellieâs sacrifice alone to make if she so chose. And she never got to choose.
Imagine if at the end of The Last of Us, Ellie was fully informed and asked to choose. The player could choose to live and then fight their way out of the Fireflies compound, or they could choose to sacrifice her life, trusting Jerry to find a cure.Â
If she chose to sacrifice herself, she would die, Jerry would fail to find a cure and Joel would kill Jerry, and fight his way out of the Fireflies compound. The Last of Us: Part II would be Abbyâs quest for vengeance and Joelâs quest to avenge Tommy after Abby kills him trying to get Joelâs location.
If she chose to live, weâd get The Last of Us: Part II, but Ellie wouldnât have survivorâs guilt. She could still continue down her dark path of vengeance and perhaps even continue on to form her own cult of personality and embrace her villainous turn in a third game.
Instead, we got The Last of Us: Part II where Ellie goes on a single minded, all consuming quest for revenge with no consideration or care for the people in her life.
All because two white guys didnât consider that humanityâs savior was supposed to choose whether to save humanity or not. So they did what they wanted and fucked humanity.Â