I love all the loops people jump through to argue that the Fireflies would not be able to create a cure and thus Joel was morally correct to save Ellie and the consequences are undeserved.
I read somewhere once that people who look for those justifications are missing the point of that ending. Even if it was 100% certain the Fireflies would succeed in a cure, Joel would still have gone through with killing them all. It doesn't matter what those people think, the writers basically decided that a cure was possible and Joel's actions prevented that.
That's a great way to summarize that, thank you! They said to save a life is to save the world entire, but not for Joel.
The extra twist is that Ellie would have said yes. She took it as her life's purpose in both games. Both the Fireflies and Joel took Ellie's agency away. People tend to be sympathetic towards Joel because he kept her alive, but her wants mattered just as little to him as they did to the Fireflies.
I love all the loops people jump through to argue that the Fireflies would not be able to create a cure and thus Joel was morally correct to save Ellie and the consequences are undeserved.
I read somewhere once that people who look for those justifications are missing the point of that ending. Even if it was 100% certain the Fireflies would succeed in a cure, Joel would still have gone through with killing them all. It doesn't matter what those people think, the writers basically decided that a cure was possible and Joel's actions prevented that.
That's a great way to summarize that, thank you! They said to save a life is to save the world entire, but not for Joel.
The extra twist is that Ellie would have said yes. She took it as her life's purpose in both games. Both the Fireflies and Joel took Ellie's agency away. People tend to be sympathetic towards Joel because he kept her alive, but her wants mattered just as little to him as they did to the Fireflies.