What Joel did was pure evil not only because he doomed humanity but because he took away Ellie's agency and basically stole her arc in thee first game. [...]
But the Fireflies had already taken Ellie's agency away. They were sacrificing her without asking her permission or consent, without letting her in on the consequnces or results. While Joel had no right to take her agency away, neither had the Fireflies. What Joel did was understandable (though not neccesarily right), since someone he cared about was being murdered. If Ellie had gotten the choice, and agreed to it, only then Joel would have been a monster for pulling her out by force.
@steelknight2000: I am yet to see any zombie fiction adequately explain where zombies get the neccesary energy to survive from. Especially the ones who are so ruined they can clearly not metabolise anything.
I thought after the first one, and the sequel cemented my position that the Fireflies are the ones to blame for how the ending of 1 turned out. It wasn't confirmed in 1 that they never let Ellie regain consciousness, but in 2 they straight out confirm it. They were going to kill her without her consent. Marlene knew her, and knew that she probably would agree to sacrifice herself. All they had to do, was let her regain consciousness, sit her down, and ask her for her consent for them to go ahead. If she agrees, and Joel goes on a killing spree, he's clearly in the wrong. What he did, while clearly selfish, was saving someone he cared about who was about to be murdered. If he'd gone against Ellie's wishes, he'd been wrong. The fireflies never gave them the choice.
I never got any real sympathy for Abby either. I loved Yara and Lev, but Abby was real meh. Only at the very end, on the beach did I begin to feel, "you know, Ellie... Maybe she's had enough. Time to go home, maybe."
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