Last Of Us 2 Ending EXPLAINED - Why It's Dividing The Fandom

Can You Understand And Spare Your Enemy?

No other game has ever made me feel the sheer level of putrid, stomach-churning negative emotion that these final hours conjured up.

Seeing Ellie make the decision to track Joel's killer - a woman who has spared her twice at this point, and repeatedly asked her to stay away - was the wrong move in every possible way.

And yet, by again forcing you into the shoes of someone you don't agree with, you're forced to see these actions through.

Ellie ultimately tracks down Abby, and the pair have another horrifically bloody fight. Wounds are ripped open, faces punched, arms bitten. Both characters end up as bloody, exhausted messes, until Ellie is strangling and drowning Abby underwater.

Here, at the zenith of her actions; her face a contorted mess of anger, sadness, malice and perhaps some satisfaction, she stops.

Ellie spares Abby, she and Lev leave on a boat, and Ellie returns home to find Dina has taken their child and cleaned the house out.

The game ends with Ellie walking away from the house, alone.

This action of sparing the person who killed your father figure and friend might be seen as "weak", but the overwhelming feeling is sadness; of being overwhelmed at the depiction of violence, and being thankful that two people you care about are not tearing each other apart anymore.

The Last of Us 2 is asking if after everything, you could forgive or at least understand this individual you've conditioned yourself to hate.

Multiple times throughout the story, Abby and Ellie are proven wrong about the machinations behind the WLF or the Seraphites. They're forced to see people as human, rather than one-dimensional villains it's easy to hate.

Applying these lessons in reality, could we do the same to avoid horrific circumstances happening in real life? Do we need to get as far as brutally beating each other, or could a peaceful resolution be reached much earlier?