It’s interesting that you seem to see Joel as sympathetic relative to Marlene.
You seem to think that Joel had to kill the doctor. He did not. He could have shot the doctor in the leg and stopped the surgery. I agree that Joel massacring all the firefly’s was restoring Ellie’s agency right up until he shoots the doctor and between the eyes and kills Marlene.
At that point Joel did the same thing that Marlene did: take away her agency while she was unconscious. Marlene in taking away her life Joel I’m forcing her to sacrifice her dream of saving the world. Marlene is right when she says Ellie would have chose death and Joel agrees with her. The whole point of that scene is to make them both monsters.
The game clearly is much softer on Joel, Joel has to kill the doctor to defend himself and the cure might not work. Here it’s much more cut an dry. Joel choses to kill the Doctor and Marlene over Ellie’s unconscious objection.
As you state for Ellie to have agency she would have to be told. Joel chose not to facilitate this making him as bad as Marlene, worse actually because his motivation is selfish. I disagree that in the show this is left up to interpretation.
When you watch the first episode he essentially ignores his daughters birthday, ships her off to the neighbours, shows up late when his daughter has something special planned. Certainly not dad of the year here. If the goal was to communicate that Sarah was the most important thing to Joel it didn’t work. Perhaps again that’s different in the game.
Joel is just filling the hole left by his previous failure to protect his daughter. It’s motivated out of guilt and failure. If he loved her he at a minimum doesn’t lie to her.
I think you are attributing game Joel traits to TV Joel which leads to the different assessment of the mora character of Joel.
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