I know it’s my job and all that, but I’m getting so sick and tired of talking about The Last of Us. It feels like every six months, we all start debating if Ellie was right for doing that thing in The Last of Us Part 2, if Joel was actually the bad guy in The Last of Us Part 1, or if it was actually nutritionally possible for Abby to get as jacked as she did based on the calories available to her.
That last one was just a nitpick from people who don’t think women can be as fit as Abby is, which, for the record, they can.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign of The Last of Us discourse stopping anytime soon, with the upcoming second season of the HBO adaptation airing this month and a promise from the showrunners that the second game’s story will be told over the course of multiple seasons.
Before the new season has even premiered, Neil Druckmann weighed in again to get his opinion heard about the ending events of The Last of Us Part 1 to tell everyone “Joel was right.” Thanks for saying so, I guess, but I just don’t care anymore.
Debating For Debating’s Sake
This is not the first time Neil Druckmann has said he thinks Joel was right for killing all those people at the end of The Last of Us Part 1. He’s said on podcasts and in interviews that he thinks Joel does what any father would have done, what he himself would have done if put in that position.
I’m not here to argue with Druckmann’s stance on it. It’s fine for him to have an opinion, but I’m just over this conversation. I’m over most conversations about The Last of Us, actually, because these games have been talked to death. Over and over again, we talk about the morality of Abby, Ellie, and Joel, and I just don’t think there’s much else to say at this point, especially when the point of the two games is to highlight how morally gray the actions of the characters are.
While it might be a little dissatisfying for some to hear, the concrete answer to the question ‘was Joel right?’ is that there is no concrete answer, and looking to Neil Druckmann for a definitive answer doesn’t work because he can’t give it. It’s a personal, moral debate, so he can only give his side.
Feeding The Flames of Internet Discourse
I’m not interested in debating anyone about The Last of Us anymore, but it’s impossible to escape takes on the series, especially from its creators. The Last of Us ends each episode with a two to five-minute documentary about the making of the episode featuring interviews primarily with Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, the series’ showrunner.
These making-ofs are filled with some of the most unhinged takes on the events of The Last of Us that make me wonder if Druckmann and Mazin understand the core aspects of what makes the series so interesting. Mazin thinks Ellie was an evil, twisted person all along, while Druckmann thinks Joel is a misunderstood hero. Every week, as the first season was airing, I watched through my fingers as the pair threw more takes into the fire to feed the flames of internet discourse.
It doesn’t matter what anyone who made The Last of Us thinks about The Last of Us because art can stand on its own in spite of its creators. That said, I wish it didn’t have to, and I wish we’d stop hearing about a debate surrounding a game that’s over a decade old. My brain is at its absolute limit of The Last of Us discourse, and I’m dreading the day that the episode in season two of the HBO show airs when Abby does that thing because I just can’t take any more conversations about whether Joel was a bad guy or not.
The only way to get me back into the discussion is if Druckmann and Mazin do something truly subversive with season two in the same way they did with the first season’s third episode ‘Long, Long Time.’ Who knows, maybe we’ll get an entire episode setting up the PS Vita girl. Now, that would deserve some discourse. Your move, Neil.