Joel's Lie To Ellie In The Last Of Us Finale Could Majorly Backfire In Season 2

Spoilers ahead for HBO’s The Last of Us Season 1 finale. After surviving hordes of Clickers and a cannibalistic cult leader, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally made it to Salt Lake City in The Last of Us Season 1 finale. First, Episode 9 revealed the origin of Ellie’s immunity: Her mother was infected just prior to giving birth, causing Ellie’s brain to begin producing a chemical messenger that “makes normal Cordyceps think she’s Cordyceps.” In order for the Fireflies to produce a cure for the brain-invading infection, a surgeon would need to cut into Ellie’s brain, killing her in the process. After Marlene broke this news to Joel — along with the fact that the teen was already in the operating room — he went on a shooting rampage, choosing to save Ellie’s life, rather than humanity.

The anesthesia wore off, and Ellie, who was unconscious the whole time, woke up in the back seat of a vehicle Joel was driving back to Wyoming. When she asked what happened with the Fireflies, he told the first major lie. “They were running some tests on you and some others. Turns out, there’s a whole lot more like you, people that are immune, dozens of ’em,” Joel claimed. “The doctors, they couldn’t make any of it work. They actually... They stopped looking for a cure.”

But the truth was that Ellie was the only one of her kind, and he killed everyone who knew how to make the cure. So why did Joel lie to Ellie? A flashback to just before the smuggler fatally shot Marlene (Merle Dandridge) offered a major clue. After Joel told the Fireflies’ leader that Ellie’s fate was not for her to decide, she asked him what he thought Ellie would decide, then. “I think she’d wanna do what’s right, and you know it,” Marlene said.

She was probably right, and Joel likely did know it. That’s ultimately why he killed Marlene: to keep her from coming after Ellie again. Already suffering from survivor’s guilt, Ellie all but confirmed Marlene’s prediction when she admitted that she blamed herself for the deaths of Riley (Storm Reid), Tess (Anna Torv), and Sam (Keivonn Woodard). At least if her body could have produced the cure, all that carnage would have at least been for something. It was clear that Ellie was profoundly affected by what she saw as her own failure. “Swear to me,” she begged Joel. “Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.” He lied a second time, replying, “I swear.” Despite skepticism in her eyes, she accepted his answer.

Joel’s actions marked a major shift for his character. Whereas he was closed-off and hardened when they began their cross-country trek from Boston, he eventually grew to love Ellie, no longer seeing her as just “cargo.” He went from refusing to talk about Sarah (Nico Parker) — the daughter he watched die on the first day of the Cordyceps outbreak — to having full nostalgic conversations about her with Ellie. Though viewers could see Joel softening throughout the season, his love for the teen perhaps became most clear in the aftermath of Ellie’s bloody faceoff with David (Scott Shepherd). “It’s OK, baby girl. I got you,” he assured her, as she sobbed in his arms. Ultimately, Ellie gave Joel something to fight for again, and he wasn’t going to lose another daughter — even at the price of the fate of humanity.

Expect the truth to come to light in the already announced second season of The Last of Us. Series co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have already signaled the next installment will cover at least part of the video game, The Last Of Us Part 2, which picks up five years later. Though Druckmann’s 2020 PlayStation sequel documents the fallout of Ellie learning what really happened in Salt Lake City, there’s still no telling which direction the HBO adaptation’s plot will go.