The Last of Us Part 2: In Defense of Ellie

[Winter]

I can't believe I'm doing this but as the whole "Ellie is the Real Villain TLOU2" I feel the need to come to her defense. Before, we go on note that there will be spoilers so read at your own risk.

One the most notable arguments used against Ellie and in defense of Abby is that Abby only killed Joel and Jessie while Ellie killed all of Abby's friends in cold blood. This argument often ignores one of the single biggest parts of Ellie's killings, which is, ALL of the people that Ellie, and only Ellie, killed was in self defense or in the defense of others. Nora, Owen, Mel and Abby's dog are all cases of Ellie defending herself and in the case of Jordan, she was saving Dina who Jordan was attempting to strangle to death.

The only people who were not killed in self defense was Nick, Manny, Leah and Yara. Thing of it is, the first two were killed by Tommy, Leah was killed by the Scars and the Yata was killed by the W.L.F.. Ellie wasn't involved in any of their murders.

And it's not like the people Ellie killed were trying to be reasonable. Nora deliberately provoked Ellie by mocking Joel's death, Owen tried to shoot Ellie, Mel tried to stab her and Abby's dog tried to kill her. Nora had to do was lie to Ellie about where Abby went and all Mel and Owen had to do to stay alive was to show Ellie that Mel was pregnant. For the record I haven't played the game as I refuse to play a game that shows dogs getting killed and trying to make it as graphic as possible but Ellie killing Abby's pup was still self defense.

Yet the game wants you to take Abby's side over Ellie's, like her want for Revenge was somehow more wrong then Abby's and that Abby is the lesser of two evils forgetting that Abby beat Joel to death AFTER he saved her life.

And please note, I DON'T hate Abby. I don't think she's as bad as some make her out and I get why she wants revenge and while I do like Joel & Ellie and think they're great characters neither of them are my all time favorite characters or anything. In other words, I'm not really that bothered over Joel's death as others are. My issue here is that the game and its defenders, IMO, be unfaily taking Abby's side over Ellie's and ignoring what happens in order to justify their argument.

Let's take a look at Shadow of the Tomb Raider for a moment. In that game Lara indirectly gets God knows how many innocent people killed and constantly blames Trinity for her mistake because they killed her father and therefore she has the moral high ground. She knows that he deaths of all the innocent people who died in the Tsunami, the Storm and the Mudslide are HER doing but she keeps refusing to except that and just keeps blaming Trinity.

See, THAT is a case of the hero becoming a villain. Lara refuses to except that she's done anything wrong and keeps putting the blame on the people who, while by no means innocent, aren't the ones who took the dagger out and started this whole mess. In the first two games Lara kills in self-defense and she takes responsibility for her mistakes and does her best to fix them. But in Shadow she does everything she can to avoid excepting her mistakes and Jonah enables that mind set which only makes things worse.

But Ellie in TLOU2, she kills people yes but she isn't the one who fired first and all her victims could have lived had they not antagonized and attacked her or tried to kill people she was close to.

All this is made worse by the fact that Drunkmann has stated that Abby is his favorite character so this comes off as less that Ellie is crossing a line and more like the creator purposefully stacking the deck against Ellie in favor of his favorite. This is made worse that, as hinted at in the games opening title screen at the end of the game, Abby finds the Firefly's and Ellie has no one with Dina leaving her with their baby and her father dead.

The only person Ellie even comes CLOSE to straight up murdering is Lev who is an innocent in all this and even then she doesn't go through with it and I don't think she would have killed him because he not only didn't do anything to hurt Ellie but he in fact saved Ellie, Dina and their child while Dina was still caring him.

I'm curious how this will all turn out when TLOU3 comes out. But right now, I'm on Ellie's side and feel that Abby and her friends are still the greater evil. But that's just me and I'm just a viewer with an opinion.