Agree with this. Think actual people and so fictional characters can very easily be self-serving while still deeply caring about other people. Maybe Joelâs actions would be a lesser talking point if weâd had more showing of and less alluding to the events that had shaped him.
Ellie wants to do it because they both think sheâll be giving a blood sample, not her entire brain? Shes already unconscious by the time she gets to the hospital and they donât wake her up to explain what the actual deal is. itâs only after, with hindsight, that she says she would have still been willing.
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ah, must have misremembered - Itâs been a while since I played it. In my mind she was aware of the potential risk but wanted to do it anyway.
Yeah I just looked it up and Ellie finds out between part 1 and part 2 - not just what the fireflies needed to do but then what Joel did
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they didnât make Ellie aware of the risks. It wasnât for Joel or the fireflies to decide. Only Ellie. 100% correct to kill everyone involved in cold bloodâŚor somethingâŚhe spared the nurses?! (did he, canât remember)
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@moderators could you please change the title to: The Last of Us 
spoiler outbreak!
Cheers (I think plenty of stuff is spoilered but maybe good to give advanced warning that thereâs lots of spoiler-y chat happening)
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Just watched the last ep, agree that it didnât really work although the sections where it was just Joel and Ellie talking to one another were better because of the performances
Having Joel do his terminator thing felt really out of nowhere, totally unrealistic in the context of what we have watched so far and unearned. Whereas in the game the action is kinda par for the course even if, as the player, you donât agree with the motives. Imo they should have just drawn out him killing Marlene, that had more emotional resonance but was reduced to flashbacks. It was like they felt they needed to do the big assault rifle sequence to appease gamers. I doubt if they were coming to this story fresh, without it having been a game, that is how they would have chosen to show Joelâs descent.
Overall the show was just fine. I would rank it alongside The Watchmen film as a film/tv adaptation that shows the problems with sticking too close to the source material.
Have you done The Watchmen show, for comparison?
I read an interview where they said that bit was Joelâs âJohn Wickâ moment, so maybe weâve been giving a bit too much credit in terms of artistic intention etc! 
Yeah I loved it! ropey finale aside
Think its a really good example of doing something interesting with a property/universe that works for the medium
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Apologies if I missed anything, but I felt the game did a much better job in managing the timeline of the trip.
The games timeline from their initial interaction to the hospital took almost a year: Summer 2033 to April 28 2034; with the story events scattered throughout to act as an arch for the characters bond.
I can only recall 2 time jumps in the TV series both in Ep 6: the 3 month skip after Kansas City and the 5 day riding on a horse montage to get to the University. They didnât even seem that close after the 3 month time skip compared to after their horse riding trip. Also the snow on the hills in the finale suggests itâs still winter.
As a viewer it felt like too much of the show was spent with them being strangers to one another (4 out of 7 eps), let alone the disruption of the one offs and with the 3 EPs that were 3 months into their journey being some of the shortest (8=51m & 9=44).
By the end, Joelâs actions almost felt directly due to Ellie saving his life (a couple of days before, maybe) more than any codependancy built up between them over the course of a year through a shared difficult journey.
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Very much enjoying all the recent chat. For all the stick Last of Us gets for being tropey, which it is, those tropes funnel the plot into a really interesting ending. Itâll be talked about for a long long time and thatâs partly why I like it so much - because of all this discourse it throws up.
I feel like the discussions have changed over time too. Back in 2013 there was a lot less sympathy for Joel and I think a lot more people felt he did the wrong thing. The show makes him more sympathetic, and audiences are more understanding of his actions. I think this is a bit of a reflection of how society has changed in the past 10 years - thereâs a greater awareness of the impact trauma has.
When I first saw the ending, I felt very strongly that Joel had done the wrong thing. But replaying the first game a lot, that position softened more and more⌠until Part 2. The stuff in the sequel makes it even messier, which is a cool thing for the writers to do. Hearing peopleâs different takes on all this stuff has me further question what my attitudes are and puts me into uncertainty about what I think is and is not right, how bad of a person Joel is, and more - I quite enjoy that reflective process and thereâs not many stories that encourage this to such an extent.
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Just finished the show.
Absolutely fascinating as an act of adaptation and one that there will be really interesting studies about in years to come IMO.
Ultimately I enjoyed it but it didnât convince me of its need to exist. I was worried going in that, to some extent, its position above games in the artistic hierarchy would grant it a status of being a more serious work by comparison. It fundamentally was unable to improve upon the elements of the game that are unique to that medium though.
When Joel gets impaled in the game, the weight you feel from suddenly needing to play as Ellie is something that only a game can do. Similarly the passivity of watching that final section in the hospital compared to you actively taking those actions and living in the moral darkness of them isnât possible to replicate.
The fact that the second game has even more of those formal elements driving the moral ambiguity makes me worry about the second season of the show.
All that said, there is still so much that TV/film does that games canât (yet) and this show is exceptional in those elements. The performance of Bella Ramsey is astonishing. Pedro Pascal is fantastic but the Ramsey work is special. The show also being able to flesh out the minor characters with such depth was really impressive as well.
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This, basically
EDIT - Donât go back to the post Iâm quoting there for second game/season spoilers
Decent write up - despite liking stuff about the show, I agree with a lot of this:
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