Among the complaints levied against The Last of Us Part II, perhaps the most common one is the ending. Some see it as a betrayal of both the characters and the ending of the previous game. However, to look at it that way is to miss not only the meaning of the ending but of the entire game itself.
[This article contains major spoilers for both The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II.]
When it comes down to it, the original The Last of Us is an allegory about the horrible things we are willing to do–and the lies we are willing to tell–in the name of love. The Last of Us Part II, on the other hand, is an allegory on the cycle of revenge and the difficulty ending it.
The cycle is obvious. Joel kills Abby’s father. Abby kills Joel. Ellie kills Abby’s friends. Abby kills Ellie’s friends. There are only three possible ways this can end: 1) Ellie and all those related to her are dead. 2) Abby and all those related to her are dead. Or 3) both Abby and Ellie give up on their respective revenges.
The third way is, while the most hopeful, also the hardest to achieve narratively. The need for revenge is easy to accept in a character because it is understandable on a fundamental human level. Having a character realistically give up on revenge takes a lot of time and development.
This is why it’s so important that we spend half the game with Abby. We have to understand why the person who hunted down and killed Joel would then choose to end the cycle of revenge on her end–and this is something that just can’t be done from Ellie’s point of view.
At first, Abby is haunted by the death of her father. Even after getting her revenge by killing Joel, this trauma remains. Her work with the WLF likewise does nothing to repair her damaged soul. It’s only as she works to try and save Yara and Lev that she finally starts to be able to move on. She finds a new purpose: not in killing but in saving–in doing something her father would approve of.
The slogan of the WLF is “May your life be long. May your death be swift.” But as Abby realizes, there is more to living than simply life and death. You need to reach for the hope of something better to come–to “look for the light.” That is how she wants to live–especially after taking Lev under her wing–and so Abby decides that she is not a wolf but a firefly.
This is why, despite the fact that Ellie just killed the majority of her friends–including her lover and a pregnant woman–Abby lets Ellie, Dina, and Tommy live when she has them all at her mercy. She wishes to break the cycle and show Lev a more hopeful way to live–not drag him down into the same old endless spiral of death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltNnEx90PBU
But, of course, the cycle of revenge can’t be broken unilaterally. Both sides have to give up on it. The final few scenes of the game are about how Ellie decides to end the cycle on her end as well.
After being spared by Abby in Seattle, Ellie is haunted by PTSD surrounding Joel’s death. She feels that the only way she can get past it is by getting the revenge she failed to obtain. So she once again goes out hunting Abby–only to discover she has been imprisoned by slavers for months before being left staked on a beach to die.
When Ellie finds Abby, she is weak, malnourished, and totally defenseless. All Ellie needs to do is pull a trigger to end it. But instead, the goodness inside her surpasses her need for revenge. She frees Abby (who in turn frees Lev) and heads with them to some nearby boats. Yet, it’s then that the need for revenge takes over again.
Abby has no intention of fighting. She has already let go of the past. It’s only because Ellie threatens to kill Lev that Abby agrees to fight. At this point, both girls are weaker than they have ever been and so the fight is doubly as brutal. However, with rage on her side, Ellie gains the upper hand, forcing Abby’s head underwater in the shallow surf.
However, just before Abby drowns, Ellie sees a vision of Joel. While we only get a glimpse of the vision in the moment, we get to see the full memory later in the ending as Ellie plays her guitar at the now abandoned farm she once shared with Dina.
On the night before the game started–after the party when Ellie and Dina kissed for the first time–Ellie went to Joel’s house. In what would be their last conversation, they talked about the end of The Last of Us–how Joel massacred the fireflies and robbed the world of its only chance at a vaccine all for the sake of the girl he loved like a daughter. Joel tells her that, even now with their strained relationship, he’d do the same thing–meaning he still loves her that much. Ellie responds: “I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that. But I would like to try.”
It’s obvious, even to Ellie in her rage that the Abby she sees now is not the Abby who brutally killed Joel. Rather, Abby has pretty much become Joel–a hardened killer who finds a new, hopeful reason to live by adopting an orphan teen in the apocalypse.
Still, Ellie can’t forgive Abby for taking Joel from her. But if she can’t at least try, then how could she have ever forgiven Joel? And so she lets Abby go free–and in doing so finally breaks the cycle of revenge.
Without her revenge to drive her, Ellie then returns to the farm outside of Jackson where she and Dina lived with J.J.. However, Dina has moved out of the farm in the interim–likely back to the town as she implied she would the night Ellie left to find Abby once more.
Feeling that the final tie to her life in Jackson has been cut, Ellie wanders out into the world to find a new purpose. Roll credits.
And while that’s technically the end of the game, there is one more little bit of plot to be seen in the form of the new game plus title screen. It features the boat Abby and Lev escaped on, beached in front of the Catalina Casino–which is itself on Catalina Island where the fireflies are said to be regrouping. And given that there are flags flying at the Casino, it appears that Abby and Lev are not alone on the island at the very least.
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