Stop explaining The Last of Us to us, Neil Druckmann

A long-standing The Last of Us mystery got explained by its creator this week, and I’m not sure if I like it.

Earlier this week, The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann appeared on the Sacred Symbols podcast from Last Stand Media to discuss the game and the show. At 53:45 in the episode, Druckmann drops a bit of information regarding the intent behind The Last of Us’ famous ending.

For a little recap (obviously, spoilers are ahead), in a post-apocalyptic America, Ellie is supposedly the only survivor immune to the rampant zombie-like cordyceps infection that has killed the world, and it’s Joel’s job as a smuggler to escort her to safety. The ending of the game sees Joel brutally killing members of a group who wish to use Ellie’s immunity to create a cure for the infection.

Because this group—the Fireflies—plan on killing Ellie to extract whatever information they can from the cordyceps growing in her brain, Joel makes a decision that forever dooms humanity by killing the one surgeon who apparently can make the cure and taking his surrogate daughter away from them.

“Could the Fireflies make a cure? Our intent was yes they could,” says Druckmann on the Sacred Symbols podcast.

"Now, is our science a little shaky that people are now questioning it? Sure. Our science is a little shaky and people are now questioning it. I can't say anything. I can say our intent was that they would have made a cure. That makes the most interesting philosophical question for what Joel does."

The Last of Us is full of moral quandaries like this, where characters constantly make difficult decisions and reap the consequences later on. Both games are filled with layers of finely-packaged details that have generated some excellent discussions on how each character thinks, feels, and behaves.

The question of whether a cure was feasible has been a massive talking point within the The Last of Us community since we all rolled credits on the game in 2013.

In the past, some fans reckon they could have made a cure, while others insisted the Fireflies were never able to do it.

Obviously, if the Fireflies can make a cure, that makes the ending more tragic. It means he’s condemned the world to a virus that’s already killed millions. It’s an interesting subject to take into a sequel, which at the time Druckmann hadn’t planned. But I really feel like this is something that doesn’t need further elaboration.

The thing that’s so interesting about the ending to The Last of Us is the moral ambiguity of it all. Joel isn’t motivated by his opinions on the Fireflies’ ability to create a cure. He’s not standing there weighing up the pros and cons and coming to a logical conclusion about saving Ellie.

It’s pretty obvious in the text itself that Joel’s main motivation for his actions are that he doesn’t want to lose his new surrogate daughter the same way he lost his other daughter, Sarah. That’s exactly why the game shows Sarah’s death in the prologue. It wasn’t just a piece of shock value to reel us in, but a way to tie in to Joel’s actions at the ending. But even with all that stuff laid out to you, there are so many interesting layers to the story and different ways you can interpret every line and detail.

I guess I can't blame Druckmann too much for discussing this. The Last of Us is a huge phenomenon now. It spawned a sequel, a HBO TV series, and a few too many remasters and remakes. He probably gets constantly asked about the ending in interviews, so this was bound to happen sooner or later.

It’s times like this I think back to that famous David Lynch clip, in which he refuses to elaborate when questioned on his comments about Eraserhead being his most spiritual film. With Druckmann’s latest comments, it feels like an attempt to really simplify a large amount of nuance the game has.

The more a creator explains the intention behind their work, the less interesting it becomes. There are fewer opportunities to apply your own reading to the text, and it suddenly becomes siloed away in favour of the creator’s word. It starts to feel like you’re being told how you should feel about it, rather than leaving room for interpretation.