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Critic’s Notebook
Five years ago, the video game series that inspired the HBO show leaned into violence and pain, cutting short its exploration of love.
April 21, 2025Updated 10:58 a.m. ET
[This article contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of “The Last of Us.”]
Viewers still stunned or shaking from the brutal twist in Sunday’s episode of “The Last of Us” may find it no surprise that the same scene fueled an online backlash when it unfolded in a video game five years ago.
Fans of The Last of Us Part I (2013) came to its sequel eager to continue playing as Joel, the smuggler escorting a teenage girl, Ellie, who appears immune to a fungal zombie apocalypse. They had spent hours studying his hangdog face and listening to his reassuringly gruff lines. So when, early into The Last of Us Part II (2020), Joel is unceremoniously murdered by Abby, the daughter of a doctor he killed at the end of the previous game, players lashed out by review bombing the sequel.
Although critics largely adored both Last of Us games, some players were furious by the narrative shift, angrily attacking the creators in online reviews. Without Joel’s steady, unflappable presence, the sequel is bereft of his particularly violent brand of protection. It may sit within Joel’s shadow, but it remains a story committed to Ellie’s journey — her struggles, her successes and her grisly failures.
Looking back on the series, I must admit I was also dismayed at Joel’s untimely demise. But my protest comes from a different place than those who were simply resistant to change or too immature to accept a pair of playable female characters. (The review bombing was also rooted in homophobic angst after the game’s trailer showed Ellie kissing another woman.) I mourned not Joel himself, but the mountain of possibilities he took with him.
The first game ends on a heart-wrenching moment of sorrowful ambiguity. Joel (voiced by Troy Baker in the game and played by Pedro Pascal in the television show) has just done something monstrous. He has murdered an entire hospital wing full of doctors and resistance fighters, supposedly on Ellie’s behalf. Joel saves Ellie (Ashley Johnson/Bella Ramsey) from a surgery that would have killed her at the cost of dozens of lives and, potentially, the future of the species.
