Current Events > Was Joel justified in his actions? (Last of Us Spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

What are your thoughts?

I think he was more justified in the show since they made it clear that Ellie was given no choice in the matter. In the game its a little more ambiguous

All of them, no, definitely not, but he was right that the Fireflies would just come after them. Regardless he his shit bashed in and gets what is coming to him in the end.

the surgery would have killed her or made her braindead right? I didn't play the games.

I can't really blame him since they were keeping him prisoner and wouldn't even let him see her. Plus Marlene should have let her people know to expect them.

I think the world is probably too fucked to recover even if a cure worked anyway >_>

Unequivocally yes.

Morally he was right. Scientifically for the greater good he was wrong. More so i think the fireflies were wrong not to kill joel too because theyre aware of his nature and they were already fine killing a child.

BlueBoy675 posted...

I think he was more justified in the show since they made it clear that Ellie was given no choice in the matter. In the game its a little more ambiguous

The show kinda failed about her really wanting to make a difference. The game really showed she was bent on making sure that what she did matter.

Thats why the events of 2 have a bigger impact. My complaint with the show feels like it should have been more than 10 episodes. The small convos you get in the non-combat sections of the game hammer home how much of a dick Joel was to her. His short answers and scoffs to alot of ellies convos, his short temper with her, and his dumb rules. It felt better in the games story when he comes around to keeping with their adventure and him actually opening up.

The show could have fleshed it out a bit more.

I never played the game but I thought they made it pretty clear in the show that Ellie wanted to make a difference.

The way the fireflies went about this was sure to cause joels reaction to the scenario. More so if they were going about it this way then they should have killed joel.

Marlene is either stupid or impossibly naive to expect Joel to have not formed an attachment to Ellie or that he'd put "the good of mankind" ahead of her life.

I don't know whether I'm giving the writer's way too much credit or way too little, but it seemed super obvious to me that they were trying to give Joel the trolley problem. Would he willingly sacrifice the life of a child in handing her over to radical extremists for the possibility of saving many more? Or would he protect her, potentially at the cost of all those other lives, because there's no guarantee that there are no other options available for dealing with the problem.

He made his choice, but the idea that you could evaluate his decision into a binary right or wrong seems to oversimplify the whole situation.

BlueBoy675 posted...

In the game its a little more ambiguous

Was it? She was unconscious in both, and they were going to kill her before she woke up.

What they are is understandable.

And very little else, given Ellie was volunteering regardless or the impracticality of the fireflies attempt or after plan.

Lairen posted...

Morally he was right. Scientifically for the greater good he was wrong. More so i think the fireflies were wrong not to kill joel too because theyre aware of his nature and they were already fine killing a child.

The first part was just Joel's plot armor as the protag of TLoU1. As for the second part, ethics are nothing in the face of another chance for humanity. Not to say we should do literally anything to progress and survive, because then we would be absolute monsters, and technically we already are, but in some ways certain ethics and socially accepted norms are a sort of indoctrination and population control as well. So, in some instances what is the point of honor if it leads to immense suffering and deaths?

Regardless Ellie isn't Sarah and could never fill the void that was left in Joel's life after her death, but Joel is a fool and tries to do so anyway and does terrible things and becomes a literal enemy of humanity by denying the Fireflies Ellie's body.

Number090684 posted...

Regardless Ellie isn't Sarah and could never fill the void that was left in Joel's life after her death, but Joel is a fool and tries to do so anyway and does terrible things and becomes a literal enemy of humanity by denying the Fireflies Ellie's body.

Being just a bit overdramatic there, don't ya think?

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Being just a bit overdramatic there, don't ya think?

Nah it's the truth.

Crimsoness posted...

Marlene is either stupid or impossibly naive to expect Joel to have not formed an attachment to Ellie or that he'd put "the good of mankind" ahead of her life.

Does she know much about him? From her perspective I don't think he'd be seen as anyone other than a merc.

Hell if she wasn't a little girl I don't think he would give a shit. The opening after the time skip really shows off how cold and detached Joel has become.

he was justified.

1. The doctor murdered 6 others in failed attempts at a cure ,before Ellie.
2. Lets say they were able to make the cure. They have no way of mass producing the cure.
3. They cant even get a young teen across the country themselves.

From a purely practical perspective, we have no guarantee that the "cure" would even work; yknow, given it had never been done before and was being handled by a Mengele hack in a basement. The fireflies had no practical way to distribute it, especially given they were enemies if the state. A state that had gone completely power-crazed and may well shut down the cure effort, themselves, for their own twisted reasons. A regime shift to the fireflies had a lot of potential to be just as bad for the survivors. There's a lot there to give pause.

There's also the greater ethical implications of murdering an unconscious girl to harvest her brain, without her consent. You can argue that she would have wanted it either way - the fact is, she wasn't given a choice, so whatever she "would have wanted" is moot. She was suckered into a death trap under false pretenses, which is ethically repugnant regardless of the utilitarian result.

Regardless, none of this really matters, because Joel wasn't actually thinking about any of this. He was out for blood in the name of protecting someone he was attached to, no matter the cost. The point is that even if everything was on the up and up, Joel WOULD throw the world under the bus to protect Ellie.

Whether it's a reasonable request to ask someone who's lost so much to just let the last real person he cares about get murdered for some nebulous "greater good" is another question. Good or evil, it's human, and that's the point. Do we save "the last of us," or do we save "the last of US?"

KogaSteelfang posted...

Was it? She was unconscious in both, and they were going to kill her before she woke up.

In the game Ellie is clearly aware of whats going to happen. In the show Marlene makes a point of saying they intentionally kept her in the dark and moved forward without her consent. I feel like that was a conscious decision by the showrunners to make viewers more sympathetic to Joels choice.

Granted I havent played the game in years so Im definitely not the expert opinion here

Crimsoness posted...

Marlene is either stupid or impossibly naive to expect Joel to have not formed an attachment to Ellie or that he'd put "the good of mankind" ahead of her life.

isnt the whole thing about Joel that he was a hard ass motherfucker, just like Mando?

in that way its surprising that he ended getting attached to Ellie and mando to Grogu, Its out of character to them

BlueBoy675 posted...

In the game Ellie is clearly aware of whats going to happen. In the show Marlene makes a point of saying they intentionally kept her in the dark and moved forward without her consent. I feel like that was a conscious decision by the showrunners to make viewers more sympathetic to Joels choice.

Granted I havent played the game in years so Im definitely not the expert opinion here

If this is the case in the game, how does Joel lie to Ellie? The whole lie seemed predicated on the fact that she was out for the entirety of that time. So he could fill in the gaps with the lie.

If she knew she was sacrificing herself, how was he able to lie within the game?

BlueBoy675 posted...

In the game Ellie is clearly aware of whats going to happen. In the show Marlene makes a point of saying they intentionally kept her in the dark and moved forward without her consent. I feel like that was a conscious decision by the showrunners to make viewers more sympathetic to Joels choice.

I don't think she was in the game. It was the same situation. She was unconscious from drowning and they took her straight to the surgery room before she wakes up. Joel lies to her afterward just the same. Iirc Ellie even asks him if they got what they needed(I may be wrong on this part though, it's been a long time). Which implies she thought she'd survive the procedure.

Obviously she'd choose to go through with it even knowing it's kill her, but game Ellie had the same amount of choice as show Ellie.

Its very possible Im misremembering the game. The show has made me wanna replay it though so maybe I will. I just got a PS5 and the version on there looks cool but Im not paying $70 for a 10 year old game

In the show though when Ellie wakes up and Joel tells her the drugs are wearing off she asks what drugs? Implying she never knew a procedure was happening in the first place.

No.

He is sympathetic but in no way is what he did the right decision and in no way is it justified

Since cordyceps is a fungal infection, and you don't treat a fungal infection with vaccines so making one from Ellie's brains would have been useless, I'd say yes.

We dont know because were never given clear answers.Thats part of what makes it a compelling story though

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Which would be great if she was ever given a choice.

She wasn't. And no, saying "she would have wanted it that way" is by no means the same thing as giving her a choice. She was brought in, unconscious, under false pretenses, for unconsented brain harvesting

Heartomaton posted...

Since cordyceps is a fungal infection, and you don't treat a fungal infection with vaccines so making one from Ellie's brains would have been useless, I'd say yes.

Hers was a unique case though. It's not just making an inoculation against a fungal infection, it's a mutated strain that is symbiotic as opposed to parasitic that is unique to Ellie.

Yes. Why would you trust a bunch of doctors that think it's okay to kill a little girl for a cure that might not exist? The Fireflies weren't even certain that the cure would work. They were just like "let's remove a kid's brain for experiments. please give us your step-daughter!"

Yes sort of. It makes sense to sacrifice her eventually for humanity but cut her up here in a hospital in who knows where. If you cant kill one dude, what makes you so sure you can even get this cure anywhere.

I just think you need to do way mire tests before you can cinclude on cutting her up, shes too valuable to act that hastily

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Great. Sedate Joel and wait for a few hours to hear that from her own mouth. Instead of rushing her off to an unconsented assisted suicide like she's about to spontaneously combust.

only thing Joel did wrong was killing someone who already surrendered. he could have just taken Ellie and left.

Blue_Popo posted...

I just think you need to do way mire tests before you can cinclude on cutting her up, shes too valuable to act that hastily

This is the only reason I'm not siding with the fireflies. They did practically nothing to test other options. She's unique, and literally the fate of the world depends on her. So they immediately decide to kill her.

That should be the last, final option after exhausting all other options first. That would also give her time to consent to the fatal procedure when she's a little older if it came to that. But no, they were going to squander the only chance they had.

Joel saved that potential cure. By accident for sure, but in the end, as long as she lives the potential cure does too.

Sacrificing Ellie without her consent is objectively wrong.

So the question is if Joel killing the Fireflies to protect Ellie is a worse wrong.

justified and moral can be different things.

In the span of what, at most 6 hours, they decide that they need to dissect their only hope for a cure? In the OR they were worried they wouldn't have enough electricity to get through the surgery. None of that made any sense. I'd have zero confidence in the doctor's ability to find a cure like that. His choice was the correct one from every angle.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Not really, because there's still the ethical hangup of essentially ritually dissecting and sacrificing a non-consenting child to do it.

Which remains morally repugnant, regardless of utilitarianism.

Heartomaton posted...

Since cordyceps is a fungal infection, and you don't treat a fungal infection with vaccines so making one from Ellie's brains would have been useless, I'd say yes.

its like everyone forgot how clear as day they made it in ep1 there is no cure lol.

Hey, everyone arguing that the Fireflies wouldn't have been able to create or distribute a cure, some news for you: it doesn't matter. That's just backtracking to find logical justification for what Joel did. Joel did not consider that. Point of fact, Joel is not the smartest dude and almost certainly believed that the Fireflies could do it. And just from a narrative standpoint, it takes so much away from both the story and Joel's character if you go with that idea.

The hard truth is that Joel fully and willingly chose to continue the apocalypse to save Ellie despite knowing she would want to sacrifice herself. He wiped out possibly the only group that has both the capability of creating a cure and wouldn't just shoot Ellie the moment they learn she's infected. And then he lied about it in such a way that she wouldn't try to find someone else to create it.

Joel and Marlene both did terrible things. Marlene should have given Ellie the choice. But only one of their choices doomed the entire human race.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

The way the game explains it is with an audio log that'd be tough to fit in the show. Marlene states that the other Fireflies absolutely do want to kill Joel right then and there, but she refuses to kill the only other person that would "understand the weight of the choice [to kill Ellie.]

Sentimentality gets her (and the human race) killed basically.

Fireflies: sacrifice 1 person to save humanity

Joel: sacrifice > 1 person and screw over humanity because he wants to play daddy again

Joel was objectively in the wrong and it rendered the entire trip, plus the sacrifices of everyone else, worthless.

I4NRulez posted...

The show kinda failed about her really wanting to make a difference. The game really showed she was bent on making sure that what she did matter.

Thats why the events of 2 have a bigger impact. My complaint with the show feels like it should have been more than 10 episodes. The small convos you get in the non-combat sections of the game hammer home how much of a dick Joel was to her. His short answers and scoffs to alot of ellies convos, his short temper with her, and his dumb rules. It felt better in the games story when he comes around to keeping with their adventure and him actually opening up.

The show could have fleshed it out a bit more.

Agreed. It was one of the many things from this season that made me wonder if someone that never played the game would appreciate the show as much as someone that played it. I felt like they glossed over a lot of minutia that the game was able to explain better through their cutscenes, random artifacts found, and whatnot. You just spend so much more time in each "area" during the game that I can see how the 55 minute episodic Cliffs Notes version of the story that the show presents can feel rushed to someone that never played the game.

I'm kinda confused as to how the show failed to show that she wanted to make a difference and have what she did matter when Ellie and Joel have a conversation where she literally says she wants to make a difference and have everything that happened matter in this very episode.

unless if I missed it, I think something that the show should have kept was how many people were experimented upon in the pursuit of the cure.

of course Ellie is unique, when it comes to her immunity, but it would have let the viewer know it was a more desperate scramble for something rather than just the Fireflies sitting around and waiting for Ellie.

besides that, I really enjoyed the episode.