Ellie is somehow passively suicidal but fights so hard to live. Shes such a well written character.

If you add the comic books into this, we find out that Ellie has been put into multiple people care within the military over and over and over and every time she asks to stay with said person they dump her back at the military school. This adds to her abandonment issues

This really puts into perspective of Ellie's reasoning for why she abandoned Joel and Tommy.

The moment we realize that Joel wasn't the main character, it was Ellie, and Joel was just the vessel for the players to see her grow.

I think her runnin away was genius because it showed Joel how worried he was that he wasn't there to protect her while also showing him how it feels to be abandoned. I believe that led to his change of heart in deciding to not pawn her off on Tommy.

The most telling part of Ellie's character in Part 1 was how she responded to Joel at the end.


She KNEW he was lying to her, and she willingly accepted it for the sake of holding onto their relationship; even at the sake of her personal goals.

To add to the “pointlessness” of the deaths of those who helped her on her journey to the fireflies, all of those deaths were tied to the infection. Riley, Tess, and Sam  got bit eventually leading to their deaths. Henry kills himself because he no longer had anything to live for after his brother was gone. As someone who could potentially be the solution to this, she probably had an even greater incentive to want to sacrifice herself so that no more deaths like those could happen

Understanding this is vital to get the full meaning of the final scene in TLAOU II, when she is alone, physiscally and metaphorically, in the house she used to live in with Dina and JJ. During that game Ellie, without realising, becomes the very thing she fears the most, she is completely alone.

It is interesting that Joel gives Ellie the same advice her mother gave her at the beginning, that she needs to find something to  fight for.  Book-ending Ellie's character arc, starting with her loss of her mother and ending in the discovery of a father.  Making Joel's final lie so much more poignant and tragic.

As a player, we experience & rejoice in Joel's fatherhood redemption arc, his growing love for his surrogate daughter, and ultimately his unwillingness to betray that love.  Yet it is in Joel's redemption, in his love for Ellie, that  actually betrays the central essence of Ellie's character instead.  

He refuses to tell the truth to protect himself, certainly, but also to protect Ellie, in a vain attempt at giving her a “normal”  life that she doesn't want.  Leaving the player to ponder the complexities of love, sacrifice, and mendacity.

Brilliant writing and story telling.

The delivery of "You are treading on some mighty thin ice", from Troy gets me every time.

Can't wait to watch this later! I think her journey isn't discussed as much and I am glad someone is doing an analysis on her journey

ellie in a nutshell: survivor's guilt

I mean, again, Joel and Ellie were duped by the Fireflies. They were totally incapable of producing a cure or even furthering the research into one. All the people she lost along the way died for actually nothing more than for her to live another day and in a real life scenario sometimes that's all you get, brother. If you think about it, it starts to hit a little different and puts life through hardship in a new perspective.

Her whole journey was to process her grief, her anger, and her pain of losing time with Joel. It isn’t until she could finally get all the poison out, push herself so far that she has to let go of her pain, that she remembers the one memory that brought closure and forgiveness with Joel. The light at the end of the tunnel. The memory that consolidated their entire relationship, and therefore, could crystallize her security in knowing how much Joel loved her and how much she loved him.

Yeah, she lost her fingers, but Joel was more than a guitar. Ellie gained something stronger for herself.

This was some amazing insight into the story I haven't seen yet! I never put much thought into Ellie saying everyone she cares about either died or abandoned her, but this video put everything in a whole different context! Might have to replay the game with this new perspective. Great analysis man! Always look forward to your uploads, keep it up!

I’d also add that the “I’m still waiting for my turn” adds a depth: Ellie is “living on borrowed time”. In the sense that the bite means death. With no cure, no vaccine and no immunity in this world, bite equals death in every equation. In those moments after she was bit, she faced and accepted death. She didn’t choose the easy way out, she chose to stay and live out that death with Riley. But then she waited. And waited. And lived. And waited. But death never came.

She is living far past the point where she accepted her own death. She was counting seconds, living every moment as if it was the last one because soon it would be, and then at the end of it she still had an “infinite” number of seconds. All this must have a surreal tinge to her, who was born in this world where the bite is 100% a death sentence. It must feel as if she had just cheated death, cheated the laws of the universe and suddenly she has extra time.

This can fork in two ways: one of them is that she might still be constantly afraid that at some point the disease will indeed manifest and she’ll turn, and the other is that she sees this time she earned as extra time, borrowed time, and it needs a reason. Why is she different? Why her? Why did this happen? Can there be a different future?

The search for purpose that you spoke of aims to answer these questions. And every death seems avoidable, since now she is proof that there is indeed a chance that a bite doesn’t equal death. This exception must make every death feel different, avoidable, not inevitable. It’s much easier to let go of people when you know there’s nothing you could have done than when you feel there’s something to do and you just couldn’t for some reason (this being that she doesn’t now how to “transmit” or apply her immunity on other people).

I just replayed the game when Part 1 came out on PS5, adding up to two play throughs, and still this video added a whole new perspective on the dialogue that I hadn’t considered before. Amazing game, amazing video

I can see now that this is really pissy of Joel, cuz she was fighting to make those deaths matter, and Joel took that away. She was also fighting for a purpose, to make her life mean something after everyone abandoned her over and over again, and Joel took that away too. I know Joel meant well but he at least could have told her the truth, to why he saved her, to maybe make her think there is someone who cares for her like she always wanted.

Honestly this video gave me a new perspective on Ellie. Perhaps her questioning Joel is her confirming that he wants to stay with her. If she got so mad about him potentially pawning her off on Tommy then maybe she's holding out hope that he does in fact want her as his new daughter. They very clearly care about each other and since she can read his emotions so well, she probably could tell he was lying at the end and realize how important she is to him which is the only reason she didn't call him out for it at the end. Just my little theory. Although her reaction to the truth in part two doesn't support this theory much.

Fantastic video! It’s rare to see videos about Ellie from the first game, it’s mostly Joel. I love how you show Ellie perspective at the end, a lot of people were saying Ellie should get over it and stop being mean to Joel when the second game came out, but you’ve captured exactly why she couldn’t just do that. I hope to see more videos on the last of us from you soon.