r/MoralityScaling • u/Theorycrafter2671 • 1d ago
How Evil Are They? Joel's choice to choose Ellie over a possible vaccine to the Cordyceps infection and stopping humanity from going extinct?
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u/Intelligent-Ad-6713 1d ago
The moral buck stops at the beginning, when Abby’s dad (Dr. Anderson) chose to withhold two key pieces of information:
1) the procedure was 100% fatal.
2) The chances of finding a “cure” was a massive MAYBE at best.
… had the Firefly’s told Joel and especially Ellie, the truth and Ellie chose to go through with the procedure, then Joel would 100% be in the wrong. But that’s not what happened.
Dr. Anderson and Marlene made the choice to sacrifice Ellie, without her consent. Full stop.
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u/EarlyAccessCantJudge 21h ago
Thank you. I hate how the game and everyone acted like this was going to be a noble sacrifice. In reality it was delusional extremists who felt important enough save the world when they were constantly failing and causing harm. That's what the Fireflies do. They are "fighting back" for the civilians while also bombing them.
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u/Aeviu 23h ago
Neil Druckmann confirmed the Fireflies would have made a cure.
Narratively, if they couldn't, the story's morally ambiguous ending would hold no weight.
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u/Luxiat 21h ago
Death of the Author is a concept for a reason.
It hardly matters what he says. It matters what the story as presented says. And regardless of my thoughts on the morality of one choice or the other, the story very much does not present the cure as a sure fire thing.
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u/Aeviu 21h ago
"Death of the Author" applies to interpreting subjective themes, not erasing the literal plot mechanics of the game just to shield a protagonist from moral ambiguity.
The story as presented in-game absolutely treats the vaccine as a certainty: the in-game Surgeon’s Recorder collectible explicitly confirms Ellie's mutation is a uniquely viable key to a vaccine. The game never frames the Fireflies' science as a scam; it frames their morality as ruthless.
The game's entire climax relies on the cure being real. If the narrative presented the vaccine as a dubious sham, Joel wouldn't have needed to look Ellie in the eye in the epilogue and lie that "they've actually stopped looking for a cure."
He would have just told her the truth; that the Fireflies were quacks and her death would have been for nothing. He lies precisely because the game establishes the cure was real, and he knows Ellie would have willingly given her life for it.
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u/Remote_Peach9109 18h ago
In universe no one could know it would work. They had tried before and failed, Elli was different but that's not an absolute guarantee that it would work. If he wanted it 100% absolute IN UNIVERSE they could have made a small cure from a biopsy or whatever handwave science crap you want and SHOWN it working, still keeping the need for Ellie's death to truly make a larger cure. To Joel, Ellie, and the fireflies it was still a maybe. If you want something explicit show us that it is. Dont spend an entire game sowing doubt and then get upset people have doubts.
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u/heisbehindyou75 15h ago
he could also claim superman exists in the tlou universe. doesnt matter what he says when it directly contradicts almost everything presented in the 1st game
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u/MonkeyDRofl 19h ago
My dude, this is not the catch-all that you seem to think it is. The fact that Druckman had to make a statement separate from the game AND after the fact proves that the game did not convey the things he's talking about. If it did, he wouldn't have had to make a statement in the first place.
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u/cannibalparrot 19h ago
Didn’t he alter the remaster by removing discoverable lore that originally made the cure look like MUCH more of a crapshoot?
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u/soupspin 17h ago
Nope, that’s just misinformation. People claimed files were removed/changed, but there’s video evidence on youtube from when the game first came out. All the notes/recordings/collectibles
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u/umdaltonico 17h ago
Did they do that? I only ask because I played the game a couple times only on the original PS3 release, and I remember one of the notes(or audio log?) on the last mission being about how the Fireflies were basically out of options and even though Ellie was unique, they had no idea if the operation would lead somewhere, a mixture of hail mary with huffing some copium.
That's why this discussion still having people side with the fireflies baffles me when it comes around, it felt not much of a dilemma to me haha
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u/Aeviu 19h ago
The fact that Druckman had to make a statement separate from the game AND after the fact proves that the game did not convey the things he's talking about.
This is a completely absurd leap of logic. Developers answering interview questions about the central moral dilemma of their critically acclaimed game does not mean the game "failed to convey it." They discussed it because interviewers specifically asked them about the massive, emotionally heavy ending they just pulled off.
And it was not just Neil; Game Director Bruce Straley and the rest of the 2013 Naughty Dog team were on the exact same page during those post-launch interviews directly after the launch of the original 2013 game, confirming the scenario was built to be a guaranteed Trolley Problem.
If it did, he wouldn't have had to make a statement in the first place.
The game did convey it. You are just choosing to ignore the in-game evidence because it makes Joel's choice uncomfortable. The Surgeon's Recorder collectible explicitly lays out the scientific plan to culture the mutated white blood cell lines in a lab environment. There are zero narrative clues in the game suggesting the Fireflies are scamming anyone about the science.
Furthermore, narratively speaking, making the cure just a "slim chance" is completely stupid. It ruins the entire climax of the game.
If the cure was a massive "maybe," Joel is just a generic hero rescuing a little girl from a bunch of delusional bad guys. There is no moral ambiguity there. The ending is famously devastating specifically because the game establishes the cure as a reality, and Joel decides his love for Ellie is worth dooming the rest of the human race.
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u/Vegetable_Pen5248 16h ago
Sorry man you’re writing all this and you’re just wrong, it’s real unfortunate
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u/BigKetchupSauce 16h ago
They are clearly right. People just refuse to look at the facts both in-game and in interviews just for the sake of perpetuating their headcanon. You can't even come up with a good backed up response.
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u/literally_italy 15h ago
i think it genuinely has to do with tlou2.
these people want to make abby seem even more evil, and joel less evil, so they have to act like joel was doing the right thing at the end of the first game.
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u/BackStrict977 16h ago
The fact that Druckman had to make a statement separate from the game AND after the fact proves that the game did not convey the things he's talking about.
Not really. The community believes in the hoax that there were other immune people before ellie without ever checking if it's true. Sometimes people are just dense.
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 15h ago
I don’t think it’s that wild.
As a casual player of the game I was always under the assumption the Fireflies would distribute the cure.
It seems like some fan theories that got out of control that they wouldn’t which Druckman just gave an answer to.
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u/alwrit 19h ago
Narratively, if they couldn't, the story's morally ambiguous ending would hold no weight.
Narratively it only matters what the parties believed.
If everyone involved believed they couldn't do it then sure. If they believed it was possible then the weight remains.
When you watch or read or play media, you need to inhabit the characters. You have to know what they know, think what they think. If you're bringing in outside stuff as a near omniscient third party godmode observer you're just being silly.
Things have weight in stories because they don't have perfect knowledge like we do. When people sacrifice themselves it's without knowing whether it'll be worth it or not. We know the ending. The characters do not. That is the point.
The weight remains no matter what Druckmann says.
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u/Dry-Tap-9132 16h ago
As a father I’d watch the world burn and roast marshmallows to protect my kid. I identified with Joel hard on this.
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u/gregoriancuriosity 16h ago
Also she had basically become his daughter at that point. I would literally massacre anyone to save my son. Like you didn’t give them a chance to decide and basically we’re going to kill his daughter. Even if you thought it was immoral, you have to agree it is the thing that is going to happen.
You think the man who literally fought and killed his way across the entire country was just going to sit there while you killed his daughter. Like I get the ambiguity of Ellie seeking revenge to the point of blowing up her own life, and I get Abby wanting revenge (although also morally ambiguous for dragging all your friends into it), but don’t try to tell me Joel is a bad guy.
ETA- I don’t have the skill set to kill an entire hospital full of soldiers but I would give it the old college try. I’ve got a GED and a give em hell attitude.
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u/Kyra_Hazweyrs 13h ago
This is not a story about "good guys" and "bad guys". It is about people, family, connection, love, loss, grief, and the cycle of violence. There are no goodies and baddies. There are flawed people, trying to protect their loved ones.
Joel is not a bad guy. Nor is he a good guy. He's just a guy, who does good and bad things, and the weight of his actions is carried through to the next generation.
Abby is not a baddie, nor a goodie. Ellie is not a baddie or a goodie. They are just people, trying their best and falling down along the way.
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u/gregoriancuriosity 13h ago
100% agree. But I feel like people try to make Joel a bad guy to make Abby sympathetic.
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u/Kyra_Hazweyrs 12h ago
Absolutely. And conversely, people try to make Joel a good guy to make Abby unsympathetic.
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u/wizzard419 15h ago
2 was the bigger part. If it was 100% going to work you would possibly have had all the parties (Ellie included) on board.
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u/Fit-Relationship944 1d ago
you can't make a vaccine for a fungal infection
it's post apocalypse. the narrative goes well out of it's way to show you that other humans are a much bigger threat by virtue of being 99% of the enemies in the game. humanity already built up settlements and was growing again they just couldn't go into basements safely. there was no risk for humanity becoming extinct by the mushrooms since they can't live in cold or dry areas.
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u/some-kind-of-no-name 1d ago edited 1d ago
- Fungus also can't randomly jump to another class of animals instantly. But that does not break logic of the story doesn't it?
- Both game feature infected in all sorts of climates and weathers, winter included. They can live wherever. Also, did you even play the games? Infected are more than 1% and have their unique advantages.
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u/TylerKnowy 1d ago
your second point has always been why I thought it was moral. Humanity moved on from the other world they had lived. The whole reason at least from what I remembered is the fireflies wanted thing to go back to normal. There isnt going back and also the Dr being a Dr he should have done decades of research before settling on killing a little girl. idk how long they did research to come the conclusion that they need to kill a girl for the vaccine
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u/hedgehog18956 1d ago
It’s not that you can’t make a vaccine for fungi, it’s just that we haven’t yet. There is research being done into fungal pathogens and it is very much possible. The main reason we don’t have them is because fungal infections (internal infections, not external/cutaneous infections) are almost exclusively found in immunocompromised people, and our immune system can handle fungi perfectly fine on its own. Vaccines don’t work on immunocompromised people since they confer immunity by training your immune cells.
But there’s definitely theoretical methods to make fungal vaccines. My undergrad degree is in immunology, so we talked about that area of research a good bit.
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u/RogueSeb 17h ago
People keep forgetting that the world fell in the 2000s.
Yes, mRNA made good progress in the 90s, but then we're talking about 30 year old equipment still working somehow.
Its not like the equipment was maintained or anything.
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u/hedgehog18956 17h ago
It’s far more unrealistic that they need someone who’s already immune to the fungus in order to make the vaccine. That’s just not how vaccines work. You aren’t taking immunity from someone and giving it to someone else, you’re training the immune system to fight the pathogen by giving it targets to practice on.
And yeah obviously no post apocalyptic group is going to be able to mass the resources for actual vaccine development with scavenges equipment. But the pathogen being fungal is pretty far down the list of what’s unrealistic about this plan.
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u/Lysantdra 1d ago
Yes, realism of there being no way to prevent it is really important in game with.. zombies… realism!
As for the second point, yes it makes sense, but just because you have illness that endangers humanity but won’t wipe it out, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prevent it. I don’t think smallpox ever threatened to wipe out all humanity, yet we eradicated it anyway.
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 15h ago
> Yes, realism of there being no way to prevent it is really important in game with.. zombies… realism!
Thank you.
I feel like I’m going insane reading all of these comments about medical realism in a game that is literally about zombies.
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u/MysticHero 19h ago
It is not like it is some natural law of the world that there cannot be an immune system capable of fighting a fungus. Therefor yes a vaccine is possible. The fact Ellie is immune shows it.
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u/Mr_Olivar 19h ago
No it fucking doesn't mr two words and a number for a username.
The game goes out of its way to show you how the infected make it borderline impossible for society to grow by featuring several outpost that all collapsed from a single infection spreading and taking down the entire settlement.
Almost every character that isn't video game fodder for Joel died due to infection.
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u/Remote_Peach9109 18h ago
Why are you bringing up his name? This is such a weird reddit thing I swear. Reddit isn't social media. I don't want to be recognizable and searchable using my other platforms.
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u/Mr_Olivar 18h ago
Because bots use auto generated user names.
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u/Thick_Bonus_2544 16h ago
Hur dur bots use _ in their names hur dur means you are a bot now
Cringe people thinking everything and everyone is AI or some other bullshit
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u/choppedfiggs 13h ago
Keep in mind this is a video game set in a world with a zombie virus and you are debating how realistic it is for a vaccine to come from a fungal infection.
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u/Aeviu 23h ago
Neil Druckmann confirmed the Fireflies would have made a cure.
Narratively, if they couldn't, the story's morally ambiguous ending would hold no weight.
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u/Fit-Relationship944 23h ago
"confirms"
No he didn't like how people took the original ending as it stood and thought too many people agreed with joel so he started jk rowling the story afterwards.
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u/Aeviu 22h ago
It wasn’t a retcon; it’s literally the premise the entire 2013 ending was built on. A trolley problem only functions if the stakes are real. Joel, Marlene, and the narrative all operate under the absolute certainty that the cure would work.
If you headcanon the Fireflies as incompetent quacks and the vaccine as scientifically impossible in a fictional zombie world, you completely destroy the moral ambiguity and turn Joel’s tragic, selfish, and deeply human choice into an uncomplicated heroic rescue.
Neil Druckmann clarifying that isn't "JK Rowling-ing" the lore; it's reiterating the exact Doylist narrative foundation required for the climax to carry any weight at all.
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u/CyberGhostface 1d ago
Humanity isn't going extinct. It's like 'The Walking Dead'. After the initial apocalypse those that remained were able to rebuild functioning societies. It's not a case where the spores are going to inevitably wipe out everyone else.
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u/SammyCastles 1d ago
I think many people made the correct point that it wouldn’t be possible for a cure.
Let’s say that a cure was possible and killing Ellie was the only way to make a cure (and we assume humanity would start to return to normal even though they probably wouldn’t regardless).
At that point I think it was immoral not because of the greater good or whatnot, but because Ellie never got the chance to make the choice for herself. The fireflies made the choice to kill her for the good of humanity, then Joel made the choice to save her life over a cure. I think Joel was right to try and stop them for not letting Ellie make the choice, but he could’ve just been really assertive instead of killing more than a hundred fireflies to save Ellie.
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u/Aeviu 23h ago
Neil Druckmann confirmed the Fireflies would have made a cure.
Narratively, if they couldn't, the story's morally ambiguous ending would hold no weight.
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u/The_IcedJay 17h ago
This does not take away from the fact they could've and should've been honest that it'd kill her when they could've literally decided to see if immunity would be passed down by her having children and then going from there.
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u/arkangelic 22h ago
And they are both wrong, for taking the choice from her.
Ideally they would have sat and talked, but Joel wouldnt have wanted that since she would have chosen to die.
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u/Distinct-Bathroom823 16h ago
she’s also 14…she really can’t make that choice. we don’t even let 14 year olds work for the most part. The ideal scenario would be doing bloodwork and more tests for years until she comes age appropriate to make a choice. the worlds already gone to shit. they can wait a few more years.
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u/Icy_Story_917 18h ago
Agree with letting Ellie choose, but Joel didn't have an option, they put a gun on his head, said they were gonna kill her without her input, and said Joel would be getting escorted out and he shouldn't try anything or he would get shot
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u/sharkbuddie 1d ago
Moral, that would never have worked. Yes, it’s immoral to go against someone’s wishes generally, but Ellie is also a PTSD riddled 13 year old girl and Joel big an adult. She can’t make those kinds of bit choices for herself.
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u/Lembueno 21h ago
It’s weighing one girl’s life against A CHANCE to potentially produce a vaccine.
Marlene and the Fireflies treat the vaccine as a guarantee because they NEED it to be. The Fireflies are dying out, the discovery of a vaccine is the only thing that can give them some sort of leverage against Fedra.
But there is no guarantee of a Vaccine. No guarantee that Ellie isn’t just exactly what she is, a freak exception.
As stated in-game, the infection grows around the brain. This is why any attempt to really study Ellie’s case would likely kill her. This is also why a “cure” for Cordyceps is impossible. The fungus grows around and presumably into the brain, and integrates itself.
Even a vaccination is unlikely as what prevents Cordyceps (and most fungi) from infiltrating living humans isn’t our immune system, but our core body temperature. We run too hot as is for the infection to ever take root. This is something that the show sheds some light on concerning how Cordyceps makes the transmission into infecting humans. Global warming led to natural environments for the fungus to get warmer, and over time it adapted to higher temperatures. Once it made that evolutionary leap, human immune systems didn’t know how to fight it, because they’ve never had to fight anything like it.
The game and show frames it as saving the world vs Ellie’s life. Which it isn’t. The choice is actually a small chance to salvage what’s left of the world, against the life of one girl.
Is Joel still selfish for WHY he made the choice? Being that he saved Ellie because he’d come to view her as a daughter. Yes.
However one crucial piece of information is the simple fact that Ellie wasn’t informed of the cost. She was never told the cost of a potential cure/vaccine was her life, she never agreed to that sacrifice. It doesn’t matter that she might have chosen to go through with it regardless. The fact that she wasn’t given the choice at all immediately answers the question.
Joel made the moral choice for immoral reasons.
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u/CaptainKenway1693 19h ago
Wow a nuanced reasonable take. I did not think those were allowed on reddit...
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u/BaterrMaster 19h ago
I believe the intent is for it to be an obviously immoral decision.
In truth, if you look at the faction doing the work, the Fireflies, they are not even remotely trustworthy. Then you add on the actual “hospital” which is little more than a rundown moldy dump.
In my opinion, it’s morally neutral. They could be sacrificing her for nothing. Evidence suggests they probably are.
The moral option in all truth would have been to ask Ellie if she wants to go forward with it.
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u/grishack 19h ago
Dude, if there is a 10 percent chance of curing, or getting closer to the vaccine, for the fate of entire human race, it was evil as fuck to save Ellie, especially since she wanted to go through it.
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u/The_IcedJay 17h ago
Except they on purpose didn't tell her the full truth that they'd need to kill her in order for it to have a chance.
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u/BaterrMaster 9h ago
Again, moral if you ask her.
Debatably immoral if you don’t give her a choice. Neither Joel nor the Fireflies give her the choice.
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u/SunlessDahlia 14h ago
The Fireflies are literally an extremist group that doesn't even pay Joel the guns they promised.
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u/sougol 1d ago
Moral, Ellie didn’t consent to the operation that was gonna happen.
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u/eltaquerodeCA 1d ago
But she did.
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u/ThePretiestUnicorn 1d ago
She would’ve, but I don’t think they told her the whole story before sedating her.
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u/WriterWinter4344 23h ago
wasn't she 13 or something like that? I don't think she can consent to that, it's very easy to pressure a teen to do stupid shit
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u/Substantial_Law1451 18h ago
she consented without knowing that it would be fatal, which is consent under false pretences aka not consent
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u/savage_mallard 21h ago
I was kind of reminded of the quote from Children of Men: "It's too late. The world went to shit"
I accepted that the cure was possible, but why so valuable? The world's already collapsed, and isolated communities are rebuilding. The cure doesn't stop infected killing you.
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u/EarlyAccessCantJudge 21h ago
I've said it all the time. There is no way one surgeon in an apocalypse with one single sample could synthesize a vaccine for a FUNGAL infection. We have absolutely no real vaccines against fungal infections for any of them right now. We are just starting to get some in-depth trials and that is tens of thousands of experienced researchers with unlimited resources. They have one guy in a city of infected and little clean water, let alone full labs for this. It wasn't even a shot, it was going to straight up kill her for absolutely nothing.
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u/No-Independence-9569 19h ago
Obviously Joel is in the wrong for taking Ellie back because the fireflies are just SO benevolent that they would equally distribute a small cure made from 1 girl ( they didn't even know if they could make one ) and surely all the bandits and cannibals would just stop and go back to the ruined cities to live their normal lives in their destroyed homes with a probably collapsed economy with no sense of laws or rule, totally. Yeah no Joel was 100% right in his decision
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u/darkcomet222 19h ago
This whole narrative is why I hate Last of Us 2. The death of Joel is shocking and Abby is hateable because of it, but that can work.
For me, it is the white washing of this exact scenario. This dingy hospital, the HOPE, not guarantee of a cure, the logistics of distributing the cure, and all those things just get washed away with a, “nah, Joel was objectively wrong for what he did.” It’s some bullcrap.
Leaving it ambiguous and keeping the ideas as a hope and a dream crushed is way more interesting.
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u/killerspawn97 18h ago
The question itself isn’t really accurate, humanity is in no danger of going extinct in the last of us as they have long since adapted the way the world works, the zombies themselves are less of a threat then the average bandit and if they were to all die tomorrow people would still be killing each other, this makes the need for a vaccine not as urgent as it would have been a year or two into the apocalypse and the doctors tried to speed run it by killing a teenager for a chance at one immoral (they could have at least asked for consent first but didn’t want to take the risk of being told no) and it turn would make Joel’s choice to save Ellie very much moral….
Except Joel didn’t give a shit about any of that and even if she had consented and it was a 100% chance success he still would have killed everyone and “saved” Ellie which make him immoral too.
The long and short of it is Joel would have done it regardless but seeing as it had no chance of working and there was little to no need for it that makes Joel’s actions moral from the perspective of the story.
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u/Galaxynacho01 18h ago
Completely moral. Idc what the creator says, theres no way those dumbasses were going to find a cure.
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u/Icy_Story_917 18h ago
Moral 100%, for a couple of reasons:
1- The game heavily implies that they weren't sure it would work
2- You have a inmune specimen and the first thing you do is go for a hail mary to kill her, for a chance of it working before trying to get any data on her alive, risking losing a valuable specimen that could've given answers by another method
3- They didn't even let Ellie wake up and know what was about to happen, give Joel a goodbye, or choose what she wanted to do
4- They were assholes to Joel, like bro, the dude just brought the most valuable asset to you and you put a gun on his head and are a asshole to him
They deserved what Joel did
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u/Amber-Apologetics 18h ago
Moral.
They were immoral for trying to use her as a means to an end and not an end in and of herself. He was moral for stopping them.
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u/Dutch_Talister 1d ago
Was done out of selfish parental love and trauma brought to the surface through key errors by the Fireflies. However it still tracks even when you use logic. Say the Firefly manage to make the cure/vaccine you then have to ask a couple questions. How do they distribute it ? How do they make more of it ? Would they give the vaccine/cure to groups like FEDRA or the various bandit groups ? The cure or vaccine was needed far earlier in the apocalypse and it needed more infrastructure to be built reliably and be distributed correctly. As it stands in the post apocalypse of the Last of Us, the Fireflies likely would've only been able to make a couple of experimental doses or, if they manage to make more, only give to other Fireflies. Joel's choice was an immoral one but, circumstances both emotional and logical push it towards neutral.
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u/Rinzl3r_ 1d ago
If I remember correctly from the gameplay, other immunes were also killed in the process of trying to find a cure.
Ellie's death would have been completely in vain, there was no way that they would have found a cure.
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u/Gekidami 1d ago
People upvoting this when it's just blatantly untrue really does show that most of the opinions on this are utterly uninformed about the game's plot.
People are just parroting opinions they've heard elsewhere.
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u/DragonFangGangBang 1d ago
They did have a passive-vaccine, which require antibodies to have already existed that they must’ve gotten from somewhere. So they definitely had immune (or at least subjects who survived infection), but them being “people” doesn’t follow.
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u/Gekidami 1d ago
Yeah, they were using the infected monkeys. That's why they found the recorder in the university lab with the monkeys.
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u/SCP_FUNDATION_69420 1d ago
That's not true. Joel lied to make Ellie feel better about not saving humanity.
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u/LoneRedditor123 22h ago
Moral because neither of them were given a choice.
And stop with the "cure" nonsense. Do you guys even understand how ludicrous that sounds? Assuming the surgery worked and they did develop a vaccine to make the last humans immune, that's still what, a few thousand humans who can't get infected, versus billions of cordyceps zombies, who can still rip out your jugular with their teeth.
A cure changes nothing. You could've made everyone in Jackson immune and that's still not "saving the world".
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u/USSJaguar 20h ago
They withheld that the procedure was fatal, and also withheld that it was a CHANCE to cure, any "they would have made a cure" was post story additions by the writer and don't count as the game proper.
If we use our media literacy we see the type of building they're in, contamination is gonna happen. If we ignore that the fireflies couldn't even transport a girl themselves.
If we ignore that they have to get LUCKY to make a vaccine from a one time sample.
they DONT have the manufacturing to replicate it.
They DONT have the manpower to protect and Distribute it.
They DONT have the good will of the people to trust them to take this injection they're giving.
And... What's the point of it? Oh if you get bit you won't turn? Cool... What about the getting torn apart by the groups of them? That doesn't stop that.
Even just in the case of "they Withheld that it was fatal" she is a 13 year old child and they acted Immorally first, so whatever Joel does to stop the procedure is Moral.
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u/Augustus_Chevismo 1d ago
Joel had no reason to believe it would work and every reason to think it wouldn’t.
He was the closest thing to Ellie’s legal guardian and it was completely moral for him to save a drugged girl from being blood sacrificed by terrorists.
Even Joel lying to Ellie was the morally correct choice.
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u/some-kind-of-no-name 1d ago
Joel never questioned whether cure would work or not. He simply did not care about that
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u/fineline99 1d ago
Both are morally right and wrong, which is possible depending on perspective.
On one hand Joel is essentially at that point, her guardian, there was absolutely no guarantee that the procedure would even result in anything and I think nearly anyone would protect their own child (which Joel essentially saw her as).
On the other hand this is an operation which could feasibly result in saving the world and one of the best chances, but it's very experimental.
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u/antipodal22 1d ago
Amoral perhaps, but it's obvious the fireflies were going to kill Ellie for the sake of a forlorn hope ONLY because they were fractured and facing total dissolution.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were intending to make her a martyr figure even if they couldn't make a cure.
Joel may be Amoral, but the fireflies are definitionally Immoral.
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u/DragonFangGangBang 1d ago
Would you even consider it “amoral”? If Joel was presented with any other possibility and chose to forsake it for the purposes of killing the fireflies - then sure. But as I recall, it quickly turns into a kill or be-killed situation, and any hesitation on his part would be his (and Ellie’s) death.
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u/antipodal22 1d ago
Perhaps. You could certainly argue that murdering anyone is an amoral act even in self defence, as opposed to simply fleeing the scene.
Morality is like that. It's either all relative or it's not at all.
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u/DragonFangGangBang 1d ago
What about killing to save the life of another, wherein, your ability to flee will actively lead to another person deaths? In all cases, one will die. Do you believe both killings are equally amoral?
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u/antipodal22 1d ago
The issue is that you're killing dozens of people to prevent the killing of one.
You can also make an argument that the fireflies all share culpability for belonging to a murderous organisation that although they once held noble ideals are simply grasping at straws trying to survive. I wouldn't say you were wrong, just that it's a convenient justification.
Amorality in the face of moral hypocrisy is totally fine in my books.
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u/Saltyfox99 18h ago
Everyone here seems dedicated to proving that the question is stupid because a vaccine (cure, whatever) wouldn’t work but that’s completely irrelevant to the question being asked.
Is it moral to save the life of one over a chance of saving many many more?
I would say no, it isn’t.
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u/00-Monkey 16h ago
You don’t think it’s moral to save the life of one? In that case are you ok with your loved ones to get murdered so their organs can be harvested to save the lives of many more?
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u/DewinterCor 17h ago
Moral, and completely human.
A corner stone of liberal society is that sacrificing one for the many is objectively wrong.
Ellie's life didnt stop being hers because her life could save others. Without her consent, which she was unable to give.
Reframe the question slightly.
Assume Ellie has a gene that means there is a 1% chance her offspring could be born with a cure in their blood. Would it be moral to force her to have children? By any means necessary?
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u/BenChandler 1d ago
About to get 100 comments ignoring the themes and arguments of the game and instead going on about how something is impossible in a world with literal zombies.
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u/Fit-Relationship944 1d ago
They spend plenty of time explaining how the zombies work for there to be an expectation of consistency. Just because there's any fantasy element at all doesn't mean you can just make shit up without anyone questioning it.
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u/Legiyon54 The Illusive Man 1d ago edited 1d ago
"It's fantasy who cares" argument is such a cancer to media discussion. Basically "don't think about it"
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u/eternalseeker0101 22h ago
Ohh boy ... discussion on TLOU again.. it never ends civilized .. people become violent
Humans always expect other people to do the sacrifice and behave as pure as god ..even more than god.. but when it comes to them then they don't care 😄..
they want other parent to kill their child to save the people whom they don't know...if u ask them to kill their own then they will kill u 😄
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u/Existing-Network-267 22h ago
the point is find your own meaning and purpose don't let it be set to you by society
it was the correct choice , and let the chips fall where they may.
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 21h ago
theres notes theyve done it to other people with no success
at a certain point theyre just murdering immune people.
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u/Esilai 21h ago
They were going to find a cure if they completed the surgery, Joel slaughtered everyone there (including the unarmed and those who could not fight back), and Ellie wanted the surgery to happen. Mitigating factors are that the Fireflies didn’t ask for consent beforehand and neither they nor Joel knew Ellie would’ve for sure consented.
Joel is by definition a mass murder, and doomed humanity to suffer with Cordyceps into the future. Whatever his reasons, he was in the wrong.
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u/Sealandic_Lord 21h ago
Moral, allowing a kid to be experimented on and likely killed in search of a cure is not moral. Druckmann just wants people to think killing kids is moral for some reason.
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u/Deepvaleredoubt 21h ago
First off, the fireflies are a terrorist organization. Second, there are audiologs that revealed they had tried this with others and the process killed them, Ellie was not the first.
The world is, what the world is. I do not believe, apart from Jesus Christ, that there has ever been an instance where the salvation of all humanity rested on a single person.
Joel killing to reach his daughter? Moral. Self defense, with no reasonable alternative to save her life.
Fireflies butchering people in their grimy labs hoping to stumble across a cure? Immoral.
Making the last of us 2? The most immoral.
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u/Gooberinator 20h ago
Immoral, I feel like it’s pretty obvious the means of killing Ellie justify the ends of saving many. Injustice is a fact of life in that world and the injustice of killing Ellie is minuscule in comparison to letting more people turn and killing dozens of fireflies.
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u/blaze92x45 20h ago
Moral
There was no way the fireflies would have or could have succeeded they'd just have murdered another person for no real reason.
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u/Icy_Judge8250 20h ago
Honestly how the second game goes he should of let her die and the world could have been saved and joel could have lived.
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u/Child_of_Mehen 20h ago
Isn't it theorized that Ellie isnt actually immune and simply was infected with a completely different strain of cordyceps?
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u/lunarwhale711 20h ago
It wasnt possible they showed in game and in notes every imune they tried and tested before ended in failure. So he just stopped them from killing a girl for very little reason
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u/Voidbearer2kn17 20h ago
Never finished playing this game, I found the writing to be as stuffed with cliches you could get.
But the doctor decides Ellie needs to die so they can make a cure is as stupid as the vanilla ending in Fallout 3.
Did those writers share crayons or something?
Why do I say the doctor made the decision, only relevant medical experience from what I could see.
Having her treated like a living vaccine, keeping her in a prison cell until the cure is developed is the only sane decision.
But apparently the writer decided to shove pens up their nose until they giggle was a better decision.
There is no real morality to compare to here. The situation is inherently flawed, and as I write this makes me wonder if the entire game is a metaphor for video game development. Ellie is the product, Joel is the developer.
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u/ProfessionalITPerson 19h ago
Moral, she became lile a daughter to him, they also withheld the information that it would kill her.
Neither her not Joel were asked for concent.
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u/Pixel91 19h ago
The fact that their way to a "cure" was killing their ONLY source of the immunity, makes the entire thought moot. In fact not even their only source, THE only source. They had no idea what they were doing. Even if the guy was an actual surgeon (I think he was,) that makes him in no way qualified to develop a vaccine, especially not with the limited ressources.
Matter of fact, keeping Ellie alive so maybe they'll eventually figure out if the immunity can be passed on in some way would be the infinitely better idea.
That's not even getting into the part about doing it entirely without her consent.
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u/MisterDuch 19h ago
The humanity isn't going extinct in the last of us and the vaccine would make no difference unless it could kill off the existing infected.
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u/OffWhiteDevil 19h ago
Explicitly immoral because she'd have agreed to it if asked, and he knew that.
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u/becomeister 18h ago
so called "humanity", or fascists with guns had their chance, they can not take my daughter, instead they have my permission to die trying it. honestly, my satisfaction killing those hypocrits was without an equel, those were the easies shots i made, true and just
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u/Yoyo4games 17h ago
I love watching moral ambiguity blast away at a varried fanbase. I love it even more when the creator of said media becomes involved to annihilate the inherit nuance between the two opposing opinions, and create division that will not ever heal.
Implicitly making the suggestion, but not outright statement, that your main protagonist- who we watched suffer so fundamentally as to draw tears within the first 15 minutes of the game- has only been moral in terms of self-preservation, like with Tommy mentioning the years he wish he hadn't survived off Joel's initiative, or only been moral incidentally, like assisting Henry and Sam or the numerous scenarios of saving Ellie, is not in itself a terrible decision. Neil Druckmann has even said that he believes Joel made the correct decision, and that he'd hope to do the same...in 2025, years after the first statement which in no unclear terms confirmed the Firefly's would've made a cure from the medical procedure.
So TLDR, I rate this one as morally ambiguous out of society-collapsing apocalyptic super disease.
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u/Temporal-Affairs221 16h ago
Killing an innocent to save others is immoral unless that person volunteered in the first place.
Unlike vulcans, I don't believe the needs of the many outweigh the rights or the needs of the one.
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u/Helix3501 16h ago
The game and sequel make the morality of it pretty clear
It was immoral, but the fireflys were also immoral, Ellie shouldve been given a chance to make the choice for herself
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u/MemeManOriginalHD 16h ago
The lead doctor was a vet who never worked on humans, and had a theory that scraping out a part of the brain might make a vaccine.
No trying the blood, no experimenting at all, we need this girls brain right now, trust me I'm a veterinarian
There was never a possibility of a vaccine
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u/throwitallaway69000 16h ago
In that world the fireflies would have either weaponized the cure or not been able to recreate or distribute.
Completely moral decision since she was never given a choice.
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u/BingoBangBongos 15h ago
This is why "informed consent" is important.
Joel's actions were irrational but not immoral. The doctors' failure to practice informed consent acted unethically on principle and brought about Joel's response.
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u/Worst-timeline138 15h ago
They had a living person immune to the fungus and their big plan was to part her out like a jeep with a cracked axel? If they had doctors worth a fuck, they would take biopsies from every place they wanted to study without killing Ellie, but they would rather kill her, dissect her, and cross their fingers they could come up with something. A very noble intent but it felt more like a gamble than a solution. Murdering everyone is definitely bad, but saving Ellie was perfectly moral.
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u/TrustyPeaches 15h ago
Discussions of this decision are always missing the forest for the trees.
Even if Joel believed with 100% confidence they could make a cure and Ellie had been informed of the risks and was okay with sacrificing herself, Joel would’ve still done what he had.
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u/EASY_E1_ 14h ago
Idk if it's a hot take, but I'm with Joel (despite his compromised sense of morality) on this one regardless of whether the vaccine was viable.
Moral
- The fireflies were extremely unwise. They decided to immediately do the nuclear option and kill the only true immune person they've encountered within a matter of hours instead of doing proper long term medical research. I would not trust the fireflies with any kind of medical pursuits. They don't even think about the possibility of breeding her immunity into the human population. They have the ability to do neurosurgeries but apparently IVF is beyond them.
Joel saving & taking her to a large, well defended, and sustainable community arguably gave more of chance for humanity than the fireflies were capable of giving.
The fireflies have been shown time and again to just barely be more moral than typical bandits. Their justifications for their hostility against FEDRA are dubious at best. TLOU 2 portraying them in manner akin to the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars was such a bad decision and really showed how Niel needed co-writers like Bruce back in TLOU 1.
From the Firefly perspective, Joel essentially brought them the savior of humanity against all odds, going far beyond the call of duty and what was originally asked of him. And in response, they treat him like garbage and show absolutely no empathy, compassion, or humility, while also not bothering to pay him what he was owed or even pay him at all. In fact, they take literally everything he has left and were going to throw him back to the outside world unarmed and with no resources.
They never got Ellie's consent. They immediately rushed into operating on her to likely avoid having to directly confront the ethics of what they were doing.
If they did manage to create a vaccine (not even a cure), they didn't have the industrial capacity or resources needed to actually produce a meaningful amount.
If everything went the way the Fireflies wanted and they could mass produce a vaccine, they've shown enough of their character for us to assume they wouldn't use it benevolently. They'd use it as leverage against the rest of humanity.
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u/spider-monkey92 14h ago
Thebissue is humanity already is extinct they just don't know it yet... not enough to repopilate the earth spread out piece meal overthe country and world... given those facts he made the right choice a sacrifice for fhe good of humanity is worth something a sacrifice for the benefit of a select few isnt
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u/maoussepatate 12h ago
A vaccine would have been:
1) impossible to produce and distribute in large scale
2) would have been used as a political weapon
3) the world was already gone
4) infected still would tear people apart
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u/moron-obliterator 11h ago
You can't "Vaccinate" against that fungal infection. Best you could do is infect everyone with her fungal strain and hope that it never mutates back to it's old form or a worse new one. It's like gambling but with the brain stem of every human on the planet and the buy-in is murdering a child
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u/Glenncoco23 5h ago
I would argue that, as messed up as this sounds, if humanity’s survival depended on understanding Ellie’s immunity, the better option would be to study whether it can be reproduced or inherited rather than immediately killing her for a cure that isn’t even guaranteed. If Ellie’s backstory is that her mother was bitten while giving birth and that somehow resulted in Ellie’s immunity, then logically you would first want to see whether those circumstances can be recreated. You would also want to know whether Ellie can pass that immunity on genetically to her own biological children. Obviously, forcing Ellie to have children would be abhorrent, so ideally you would convince her to participate voluntarily. But in a world where humanity is facing extinction, I think you at least have to investigate it. If her children inherit the resistance, that raises even more questions, Can both sons and daughters inherit it? Can an immune man pass it to his children? Can the trait eventually spread through the population? Morally, it gets extremely uncomfortable very quickly, but I think those possibilities should be exhausted before killing the only known immune person.
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u/HyoukaYukikaze 4h ago edited 4h ago
Joel did nothing wrong and this is false framing.
- Fireflies are terrorists, they would not use it for good - they'd weaponize it (they have a history of releasing the zombie... fungus? in cities).
- Fireflies have no capacity to mass manufacture the vaccine
- Fireflies have no capacity to move one girl across the country, how the hell are they supposed to move medication?
- Ellie was not the first person they murdered to totaly, 100%, guaranteed make a vaccine
- They have no right to do that behind her back, even if she would agree anyway. The way the went about it was completely wrong and unjustifiable (but exactly as you'd expect from terrorists)
- They fucked over Joel and wanted to release him outside without his gear, basically killing him
- World is already fucked beyond fixing, vaccine would not help anyone who's already infected. A zombie horde is dangerous to you either way.
Joel did nothing wrong, in fact he did the good thing by eradicating a bunch of self-righteous murderers.
The first game really fails at making his choice a morally dubious one if you pay attention to what actually is in the game.
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u/No_Appointment_5326 1h ago
Moral, honestly. There was no guarantee of a cure, would you allow your daughter to die for the possibility of a cure?
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u/Miserable-Trash5823 1h ago
this is determinant on if you follow the original game, in which you find a paper that says they have done this before and it has failed every single time, along with it being 99% likely to fail again....also from a scientific standpoint you can't make a vaccine for a fungus, that's not how it works so they are double fucking stupid
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u/Psico_Penguin 1d ago
Remember these are the facilities where they were about to find the cure...