The Last of Us - HBO Series [Spoilers after episodes have aired -- no game spoilers]

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yeah, it looks weird. Is it possible you just haven't seen a giraffe super close up very often, though? That's probably the best shot of a giraffe's face 99% of us have ever seen hah.

The Calgary Zoo's Giraffe is an endangered Rothschild's Giraffe which is a sub-species that looks slightly different than the ones everybody grew up with in their school books. That may be why it looks odd to people.

[chemgear]

Remarkable climb and considering going to head to head with academy awards.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Originally Posted by GGG

Joel and Marlene did the same thing. Marlene by trying to kill her, Joel by murdering the doctor and then lying. Joel took away her agency by killing the doctor. That was a self serving decision that allowed him to have his daughter back.. He easily could have shot a knee cap to end the surgery. There is no ambiguity he was as wrong as Marlene.

Joel doesn’t really love Ellie he loves himself as he always did. He is unredeemed despite the shows first 8 episodes trying to convince you he had changed.

Did they?

I saw it as them convincing us that Joel could let someone in again

Not that he had changed on any fundamental level with his approach to surviving in a cruel post apocalyptic world. Especially when his way has proven to be successful at keeping him and his brother alive.

Think of the 55 year olds you know. Who actually undergoes changes on a meaningful level despite dealing with significant life events? No one.

Also how many in that age range would let their adopted child be harvested for medical means, even if positively serving, without an a-ok from the child or any kind of goodbye? No one.

At no point has Joel been shown to be a guy who isn't ultimately selfish about himself and his kin. What makes any one watching these episodes think he was going to give real consideration to the person closest to him being made a sacrificial lamb, given his background and highly cynical and jaded view of the current world?

Imo him being on the fence to allow it would be out of character

Some people just wanted to see the protagonist be better than he actually was.

I suppose you can't please every one, but this feels like an imaginary character development that was never actually demonstrated through the season.

Dude just brutally massacred multiple guys just in the last episode all just to get Ellie's whereabouts. This was thoroughly within character.

[nik-]

Not sure how Joel took away the agency of someone that was lied to, drugged, and then about to have her brain carved up. She didn't choose to die for humanity. She was deceived.

Afterwards? Maybe, but he killed everyone involved, so that causes a bit of a problem.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by nik-

Not sure how Joel took away the agency of someone that was lied to, drugged, and then about to have her brain carved up. She didn't choose to die for humanity. She was deceived.

Afterwards? Maybe, but he killed everyone involved, so that causes a bit of a problem.

They both took away Ellie's agency.

Marlene knew that Ellie would likely have said yes, but she wasn't going to take the risk that the answer was no and something goes wrong.

Joel also knew that Ellie would likely have said yes, which is why he lied. He, like Marlene, couldn't take that risk either.

At the end of the story, Ellie was robbed of her choice by the only two people she trusted.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Originally Posted by Cole436

They both took away Ellie's agency.

Marlene knew that Ellie would likely have said yes, but she wasn't going to take the risk that the answer was no and something goes wrong.

Joel also knew that Ellie would likely have said yes, which is why he lied. He, like Marlene, couldn't take that risk either.

At the end of the story, Ellie was robbed of her choice by the only two people she trusted.

Adults being adults. No one was in the right. Just two people with different agendas clashing.

And she ended up with the one that was better at killing.

I'd say it checks out.

I don't think a single character introduced is inherently good or innocent (otherwise they wouldnt have survived 20 years of cordiceps). Some appear to have a tough time grappling with that.

Ellie might be the closest, since she's been justified in her actions when she did have to resort to violence.

[Wormius]

Some of this presumes that Ellie didn’t consent to be dissected. It may have been her wish, which is why she asked Joel later about whether he was telling the truth.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The Calgary Zoo's Giraffe is an endangered Rothschild's Giraffe which is a sub-species that looks slightly different than the ones everybody grew up with in their school books. That may be why it looks odd to people.

Based on the articles linked it's actually a Masai giraffe not a Rothschild. And its name is Nabo.

If you look here it looks totally real: https://www.instagram.com/p/B7MWi16hLBw/?hl=en

I'm thinking the issue was just the quality of the overlay from the blue screen, just somehow looks a bit off.

Originally Posted by Wormius

Some of this presumes that Ellie didn’t consent to be dissected. It may have been her wish, which is why she asked Joel later about whether he was telling the truth.

Nah. I think the ending is her choosing to believe Joel, even though she had a suspicion he might not be telling her the truth. So she's arguably complicit, but she's choosing to trust him.

[Inferno]

*Edit* Don't look up Abby if you haven't played the second game or already know who she is.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1635148681031868416

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by Inferno

https://twitter.com/user/status/1635148681031868416

I encourage anyone who has not played Part II or know the story to not Google anything about this. It will be massive spoilers for season 2.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Basically there is no point in googling it, she is a voice actor for a character that appears later on in the story.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Basically there is no point in googling it, she is a voice actor for a character that appears later on in the story.

My point is not to google anything about Laura Bailey in relation to TLOUII or Abby. It will be massive spoilers.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I understand.

Spoiler!

I am saying that if you just say "this is a voice actor for a character yet to appear", or "hey look, Laura Bailey had a cameo", no one cares. If you say "MASSIVE SPOILERS YOU GUYS" then you're effectively posting spoilers yourself by indicating that the person is important to the story somehow.

I would suggest that any mention at all of anything to do with the second game is entirely off limits in this thread.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

I guess I was expecting a bit more of a dynamic finale but looking back I'm not upset, it was still a great episode. And overall I loved this series. A hidden gem for me. I never played the game, never knew anything about it, just knew it was filmed in Alberta. Loved all the episodes. And on top of that my daughter knew all about it about and watched it with me every Sunday so it was a cool little bonding time for us as well. So for a show I knew nothing about just a short time ago this series was a home run.

[timun]

Originally Posted by GGG

Joel and Marlene did the same thing. Marlene by trying to kill her, Joel by murdering the doctor and then lying. Joel took away her agency by killing the doctor.

She had no agency: she was unconscious on the table! She made a completely uninformed decision based solely on Marlene's deceit, and without Joel's intervention would have died because of the false pretenses.

That was a self serving decision that allowed him to have his daughter back.. He easily could have shot a knee cap to end the surgery. There is no ambiguity he was as wrong as Marlene.

Yes, it was a self-serving decision insofar as he had become attached to Ellie and didn't want her to die. In order for Ellie to have any agency in any of this she should have been fully informed beforehand, to have been explicitly told: "There is the potential for a cure to be created from the Cordyceps in your brain, but in order to remove enough of a sample to work from you would die during the procedure. You would be sacrificing your life, but a potential cure could save our entire species. Do you want to go through with it or not?"

Whether he's as "wrong" as Marlene is entirely up to your interpretation, which is the whole point of the story! He could have shot the doctor in the leg, sure. In the game, you're given a choice to shoot the doctor, but if you hesitate long enough the doctor will lunge at you with the scalpel and you'll kill him defending yourself.

Joel doesn’t really love Ellie he loves himself as he always did. He is unredeemed despite the shows first 8 episodes trying to convince you he had changed.

This whole "Joel was always a ####ty dad", "didn't grow at all" and "didn't redeem himself" conclusion is... different, anyway. I'm not really sure where you got the impression he was a ####ty, "self-interested" father to Sarah, that he had to "grow" out of this and "redeem himself" for it. You got all that from Episode 1? I interpreted Joel to just be a blue-collar working father doing the best he could in the circumstances he was in. I have no idea how you leap to the conclusion this made him a self-absorbed POS.

Did he "grow" as a person? I would say he quite clearly grew out of the misanthropic malaise he'd been in for 20 years, but he did so at the expense of a bunch of other people's lives and potentially doomed the human race in the process. Did he "redeem himself"? Well, no, probably not considering the murders and the potential dooming of the human race.

"Joel doesn't really love Ellie" is... a bafflingly bizarre conclusion to me. Or course he does. Did he selfishly chose to kill all the Fireflies and save her rather than let them kill her, despite it potentially dooming the human race? Yes. Does this make him "not really love Ellie"? Don't know how you conclude that.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I understand.

Spoiler!

I am saying that if you just say "this is a voice actor for a character yet to appear", or "hey look, Laura Bailey had a cameo", no one cares. If you say "MASSIVE SPOILERS YOU GUYS" then you're effectively posting spoilers yourself by indicating that the person is important to the story somehow.

I would suggest that any mention at all of anything to do with the second game is entirely off limits in this thread.

Spoiler!

I get what you're saying, but I just googled "Laura Bailey The Last of Us" and the very first thing that comes up is massive text is who Abby is and what she does. If anyone even wanted to just google info on that photo, you'd be spoiled right away

[GGG]

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.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Already watched half the cutscenes for part II

Whenever a season of something ends and I know the production for the next season is months or years out, I just indulge on the source material of future seasons to fill myself in. It's just too long to wait to find out and usually I forget half of what I saw by the time it rolls around.

Glad that part II by the sounds of it is getting split into multiple seasons. There's lots of room for them to add extra material to bridge the time gap and maybe flesh out the backgrounds of the characters to be introduced.

I think they're going to make a number of changes to help things make more sense in the show's format and perhaps spark less outrage than it sounds like the game generated.

If they stretch out two seasons into 3-4 years, it should provide the studio time to develop part 3 as well

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

It's at least arguable that Joel killed the doctor for the same reason he killed Marlene. If the doctor is dead, then there's no one to perform the surgery - or at least one less person willing to perform the surgery. It's one less reason to come after Ellie. I don't know if he did that math or simply thought, "here is someone who was about to kill my girl, and is now stopping me from taking her out of here, he dies".

The notion that he lied to her and therefore must not really love her is completely insane, though.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by TrentCrimmIndependent

Did they?

I saw it as them convincing us that Joel could let someone in again

Not that he had changed on any fundamental level with his approach to surviving in a cruel post apocalyptic world. Especially when his way has proven to be successful at keeping him and his brother alive.

Think of the 55 year olds you know. Who actually undergoes changes on a meaningful level despite dealing with significant life events? No one.

Also how many in that age range would let their adopted child be harvested for medical means, even if positively serving, without an a-ok from the child or any kind of goodbye? No one.

At no point has Joel been shown to be a guy who isn't ultimately selfish about himself and his kin. What makes any one watching these episodes think he was going to give real consideration to the person closest to him being made a sacrificial lamb, given his background and highly cynical and jaded view of the current world?

Imo him being on the fence to allow it would be out of character

Some people just wanted to see the protagonist be better than he actually was.

I suppose you can't please every one, but this feels like an imaginary character development that was never actually demonstrated through the season.

Dude just brutally massacred multiple guys just in the last episode all just to get Ellie's whereabouts. This was thoroughly within character.

So where I see development is where he went from Ellie as cargo earning money to Ellie as person he loved as his daughter. Growth that he cared about another person than himself. He showed signs of it with the deaf kid and his brother. Then when the opportunity presents itself to show he truly cares for this other individual more than himself he shoots the doctor and lies about it to preserve his reality because he can’t lose her. It’s still all about him. I’m not criticizing the show I’m criticizing Joel, he was a selfish murderer at the start and ended a selfish murderer, still broken