SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US SEASON 2 UP TO EPISODE 6The Last Of Us Season 2’s Episode 6, titled The Price, is a heavy one. Not only are we still dealing with the loss of Joel and watching Ellie struggle with her drive for revenge, but this is where we get all the context we need for the five years between the first and second seasons. We see more of Joel and Ellie’s relationship in that time, not only following the uneasy events of the first season’s ending, but also the time Ellie spent growing up, from 14 to 19.
However, one thing we never see in the game but is added in the show is Joel’s upbringing. We get a glimpse of teenage Joel protecting his younger brother Tommy from their abusive father. In this moment, we see early stages of Joel’s need to be a protector, but also an admission from his father that he knows he’s not doing great, but he’s doing his best, and he hopes Joel can “do a little better than me”.
This quote and this context gave me a sudden, unexpected, deeper connection to Joel and his relationship with Ellie on a personal level.
A New Layer Of Complexity For One Of The Most Iconic Video Game Relationships
We’re given this context at the start of the episode, before the sequence of Ellie’s birthdays in Jackson pass, showing how Joel has tried to make each one special, despite their increasingly estranged relationship. All of this leads up to the scene on Joel’s porch, as Ellie returns from the New Year’s party. She confronts Joel about his false version of the events at Salt Lake City with the Fireflies, and he finally tells her the truth.
However, despite the difficulties, and despite the moral dilemmas that players have argued and debated for years after the game launched, he regrets none of it – instead, he repeats the words of his own father, telling Ellie, “I hope you do a little better than me.” This encounter, as we know, is their last before Joel’s past catches up with him.
The Fear Of Becoming Like Those Who Came Before
While countless fans have connected with Joel and Ellie over the years, on many different levels, this feels like the first time I’ve really had a strong, personal connection with these characters.
Nobody is here for a trauma dump, so to be blunt: I am constantly worried about becoming my father. He never wished for me to be better than him – that hope has to come from myself – but to see the hereditary struggles passed down, and the mistakes of people who have been moulded by the people they don’t want to become, suddenly gave me a much stronger sense of sympathy for Joel and Ellie.
Joel is not a good man. I’m not here to debate the things that have already provoked plentiful arguments on the internet. He loves Ellie and would do anything to protect her, but that’s the problem. Even when we can now see him trying to do better than his own father, whether by simple failure or by going too far in the opposite direction with the sense of protectiveness he learned, we see him create his own rifts between himself and the only child he now has.
And at the end of all that, and the end of his own life, all he can do is convince himself he did what was right, that he did his best, and hope that Ellie can do better than he did. And of course, Ellie will now carry that weight too, passing on her own deficiencies as a parent.