Revisiting the Controversy of The Last of Us Part 2

I’m only about 15 mins in to the video but I do have to respectfully disagree about Tommy’s decision to leave Ellie behind not making sense. It makes perfect sense. He knows what Joel sacrificed so Ellie could live, and he knows his brother would kick his ass if he knew he was knowingly bringing Ellie into such a dangerous situation. Not to mention, Tommy has grown to love Ellie, too. It’s his niece. Did he know Ellie would probably find a way to follow him? Yes. But that doesn’t make it nonsensical that he would refuse to be the one to invite her to join him in something so dangerous. He knows if Ellie dies, Joel died for nothing. Not to mention, he knows Joel wouldn’t want either of them going after Abby. Tommy might want to go against that, but it’s realistic he would at least want to do what he could to limit Ellie’s role in it.

Ellie doesn’t ask why she’s never found anyone else who’s immune because she’s dumb or because the writing is bad, she asks it because the first thing Joel tells her when she wakes up is that there’s dozens of immune people. It’s his literal explanation from the first game as to why they left the firefly base.

hmm, i don’t know. i think dina leaving ellie makes perfect sense. she gave ellie an ultimatum, “if you leave again, i’m gone”. and ellie leaving again shows that she valued revenge over her family.

When you realise if Ellie just stayed with Dina and JJ, Abby would have died on that beach

Well, Tommy does tell Maria to lock up Ellie so she doesn’t follow Tommy. He went in her stead in order to keep her safe. Makes sense to me. 🤷‍♂️

One thing I've noticed about this game is that most criticisms of contrivances or "plot holes" are the result of people who just straight up didn't pay attention, or even worse, didnt even play the game. I could list examples, but there are honestly so many that I don't know where to start.

I never understood why Joel explained himself to Ellie while leaving out so many details at Salt Lake hospital. Like the fireflies took an unconscious Ellie and were ready to kill her to make this vaccine. Kinda silly because 20 years had gone by. What’s another day to wait before scrambling her brains? They also attacked Joel, a man who was performing cpr on a child. I get that they had to make conflict for the first games ending. But Ellie is a child and despite her potentially wanting to sacrifice herself, she is too young to make that choice, and the fireflies screwed up any possibility of making a vaccine due to their haste. I just think Joel should’ve explained himself further. Yes he lied, and it’s bad. But it’s not like Ellie was consenting and the fireflies handled this responsibly. “Oh my! The child is here! Quickly before she wakes up, prep for surgery! Right away! Let’s not do any tests or ANYTHING! We’ve waited 20 years for this chance, let’s rush into it blindly for no reason!”

i still maintain that it would have been better pacing to START with Abby’s story up until she gets to the theater AND THEN swapping to Ellie’s story from the beginning. it would’ve made people a lot more sympathetic towards abby, and the shock of seeing the girl you just spent the first half of the story playing as murdering Joel would have been mind blowing

I disagree that Ellie making the right choice by sparing Abby was "rewarded" by losing Dina and JJ. She lost them by making the wrong choice to pursue Abby instead of letting it go. Sparing her was Ellie finally learning her lesson

JJ is Jessie Joel not Jessie Jr. per Neil

Tommy leaving Ellie in Jackson makes a lot of sense to me. He didn’t want something to happen to her while seeking revenge. And on top of that if he did bring her along and something bad happened to her, he didn’t want that on his conscience. Losing his brother and his brothers “daughter” (again), both bc he couldn’t protect them well enough might have been too much for him. Also he knew he could take care of himself. Was it stupid to go alone? Yes. But he was for sure putting in work with his sniper. Edit: I also want to add that with his state of mind and emotions at that moment, he likely wasn’t thinking rationally (which would have been go with Ellie so you can both take care of Abby. And you can have each others backs) he was likely thinking more emotionally, being that he couldn’t handle losing Ellie too

Something I noticed on my second play through was the correlation between Ellie and a character that Dina talks about called "Eugene" Eugene joined the firefly's when he is a younger man and that's where he met Tommy and ended up in Jackson .A note from his ex wife that you can find in his bunker shows her begging him to come home to her and her daughter, telling Eugene to leave the firefly's, to let someone else save the world, let someone else get revenge on FEDRA, to pick family over revenge and war. But Eugene didn't, he left with the firefly's, left his family behind, and it seems like he never saw them again, and Dina comments on how lonely Eugene was for the remainder for his life before he had a stroke and died. In the end, Ellie also choice revenge over family, left her partner and child behind, and in the end lost everyone she loved and became very lonely. I don't know if this was an intended idea put into the game or if I'm reading to much into it, but I thought it was interesting.

they never pointed out how the good doctor and his people wanted to dissect the child’s brain without her consent for a chance at a cure cuz it’d throw a wrench into their whole moral compass thing.

I have yet to play either games. I've watched others playthroughs/cutscenes. But...my inital reasoning for Ellie putting the knife to Levs' throat was to in a sense antagonize Abby to engage in fighting her, giving Ellie a reason to to go though with it.

I would point out during Abbys first section before she meets jole during the snow storm she finds their tracs and follows them so I kinda do nto get how it is contrived to think some one hunting some one would find them when they leave tracks.

I don’t think they were manipulating players to like Abby and dislike Ellie. I think they were trying to show how they are such similar people, ridiculed with their addiction to revenge. They aren’t forcing you to switch teams or even justify Joel’s death by fleshing out Abby’s character and making her more human. In my opinion, Part 2 isn’t about hate, it’s about addiction. It’s as much a story about love as the first game, just to the other extreme. I do think the placement of Ellie and Joel’s talk was absolutely perfect. Showing us that scene towards the end of the entire game really changes your perception of any further play-throughs. It shows us that Ellie went through all of this knowing the whole truth and why Joel did what he did. It shows us how she finally had the chance to choose her own trajectory in life by deciding to forgive Joel, just for it to be so brutally torn away from her once again. “I don’t think I could ever forgive you for that. But I would like to try.”

So much about any kind of art/media/entertainment is subjective... But I've never heard anyone who's coined this game as "straight garbage" that hasn't also absolutely lost their mind over Joel dying. Those two opinions seem to be intrinsically linked... People are entitled to enjoy or not enjoy any medium of art - but to dismiss this game as "straight garbage" seems to be a very narrow and thinly veiled view.

i think i’m more upset that ellie can no longer play guitar than the fact she let abby live

I think my issue with the game comes down to rhe whole "ending the cycle of revenge" point just not working for me. The amount of people Ellie and Abby kill along the journey and I'm supposed to think that the cycle is over because Ellie spared the person she actually wants to kill? Who can tell me that the next game the child of another random npc (that's what the doctor was in the first game, pretty much) won't show up to kill either Ellie or Abby as revenge? Idk, it was just a bit too much for me to believe. It's a story that I don't think fits an action game. It will work better in the series for sure. ETA: I do like the game guys, I just didn't enjoy the story all that much but that's fine, the game was still pretty solid for me

Joel did get comfortable in the years in Jackson, but what's an even more sobering truth is that he just had that conversation with ellie the night before. He was on a high and felt like he's getting his daughter back. He's guard was absolutely down. That's all.