Justifying Joel’s Decisions Written by Samuel Gronseth
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oel’s rampage at the end of The Last of Us leaves scores dead, including doctors central to the search for a cure, for Ellie’s sake. His actions save her life, but in doing so he effectively destroys any known chance of finding a cure for the infection that’s left the world in ruins. This act, and his decision to lie to her about it, leave the player asking themselves: did Joel do the right thing? This question has endured long since The Last of Us released in 2013, and it persists after The Last of Us Part II intentionally refused to definitively answer it. As with many of the game’s central conflicts, the morality of the situation defies black-and-white moral judgments, and there’s value to be had in debating the ethics of Joel’s decision to kill the Fireflies and save Ellie. That said. Just because there’s value to be had in the discourse doesn’t mean most of the discussion that actually happens contains that value. As with so many issues within the gaming community, this question gets muddled, simplified, overthought, and all other manner of bent out of shape. So I’m not here to provide definitive answers, but I thought it would be worth going over the facts, as well as some of the common arguments, and set a few things straight. On a basic level, this is the question being asked: is one person’s life worth saving all humanity? The Fireflies are trying to find a way to spread Ellie’s immunity to others. If this doesn’t result in a cure, it could at least result in some kind of preventative measure to keep the living from being infected. Obviously, this would be a good thing. But there’s no way to study Ellie’s immunity without killing her. But of course, it’s also a little more complicated than that. As many people are quick to point out, this is not a guarantee of a cure. It’s a chance. There’s no guarantee that studying Ellie’s immunity would result in a usable cure, only that they could study her biology and use their findings to try and develop one. So this alters the core question, if only slightly; is one person’s life worth the chance to save all humanity?
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OCTOBER 2020 | LEVEL STORY
