Is Joel Meant to be Seen as the Villain?

[Winter]

Something I've heard and read a number of times is that Druckmann intended to have Joel be viewed as the Villain and that what happened to him was deserved since he put the whole world on the line to save his daughter.

The thing of it is, that's not what the games or Druckmann himself has said. Take a look at Joel's murder BOTH from Ellie's and Abby's point-of-view. On Ellie's side this is treated as a terrible thing with Abby and everyone else being framed as sinister and evil and we focus mainly on Ellie and Joel during the Death. And on Abby's side, we see that she takes no pleasure in this and that Ellie's cries are what she focuses on most.

And during the game's flashbacks Joel is shown in a sympathetic light with him not killing any humans during those flashbacks and the one person he comes close to attack was only done because the man was insulting his daughter for her sexuality. Joel, in JUST Part 2 is never shown as a villain but as a father who saved his daughter, and maybe that was the wrong choice but the game doesn't really make it out to be the wrong choice so much as Joel's choice.

And going over to Part 1, well, just about everyone we as Joel killed was in self-defense and him saving Ellie was presented in a understandable light. We may not agree with Joel but we understand his motives.

The greater problem here is the presentation of the Fireflies, I mentioned this before but the underlining problem with the FF is they honestly suck. At no point in this series, regardless of media, have they been presented as competent. Oh sure they thing they're doing the right thing but they've failed at everything they've done.

Not helping matters is the bad science behind killing Ellie and just how quickly the FF scientist went for the dumb idea. As has been pointed out anyone with any understanding of Biology killing Ellie would only result in destroying the cure these idiots seek to create so Joel was the only one making the right choice by saving Ellie. The fact that they jumped at the chance to kill Ellie also indicates that they wanted FAST results instead of taking the time to understand how this would work.

Add this to their constant string of failures and it just makes the FF look like idiots who insist that bashing your own head into a wall is the best way to cure a headache.

And yet the games DO intend to have the FF presented as ultimately in the right despite all evidence to the contrary. Neither the games nor the show have given us a reason to assume the FF would be successful this time or that they are in anyway right so why should I feel bad when these child killers are killed?

And that is the real issue here, Joel is being presented as complex person who may have made a mistake but we can understand him and may have done the same if we were in his position. The FF are idiots who make no good points, fail at everything, jump to conclusions and keep falling back on murder as their one and only solution despite and we're told that they are no different to Joel.

[CharlesPhipps]

I have an interesting perspective on this.

Joel is absolutely evil.

He also deserves to die by most ethical systems that advocate for capital punishment.

And you know who would agree with me?

Joel.

It's skipped over but never denied that Joel is a former Fallout-style Raider who murdered who knows how many people to keep Tommy alive during the apocalypse. The big thing is, Joel is unrepentant about this. He would do it again and the stuff he's doing for Tess as her chief enforcer is not actually that different than what he's doing before. Firefly, Fedra, criminal, or civilian--Joel will do what he has to do to survive and only cares about a handful of people. It was the case before Sarah died (he abandoned that family on the road) and it got much worse afterward.

People keep trying to make excuses for Joel, which is kind of missing the point. They try and say the Firefly cure wouldn't work and Ellie would have died for nothing. Which is something that never enters into Joel's consideration. They try and say the Fireflies didn't get Ellie's consent. Which we know that she would have enthusiastically give (not that a 14 year old being willing to die should be respected).

Joel is intensely charismatic. Joel is Chaotic Evil, however, except for the fact that he's intensely loyal to a small handful of people he's willing to die for. Which is why D&D alignment is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it. We absolutely know where Joel is coming from, how he became what he is, and what he's capable of. We, during the apocalypse, wish we had someone like Joel to protect us or our loved ones.

But Joel's defining line is not, "baby girl." It is "Find another." Find another child to murder for your miracle drug.

It's not that I disapprove of child murder to save humanity.

It's that I disapprove of this one being murdered.

And Joel is honest about that.

When Abby and her crew gun Joel down, Joel doesn't try to defend himself. He doesn't know who the Hell these teenagers are but he knows that he's killed SOMEONE they loved. The fact he's killed so many that it could be any one of HUNDREDS of people is another statement of just who he is and he knows it. It's why he's so calm about this because he absolutely has it coming in his mind and is alright meeting it like a man. Another reason we like him.

But like Sandor and Bron from Game of Thrones, that doesn't mean they're not awful people.

[Winter]

Joel is absolutely evil.

I wouldn't call Joel absolutely Evil, I mean have you met David? Joel is more ambiguously moral as he has done some dark shit which included killing innocent people but as far as we know he never killed kids, he never raped and never eat people.

But that leads to another problem, for all the terrible things Joel has done we never SEE those moments. We're two games and one show in and we've yet to see Joel hurt or kill someone who wasn't trying to kill him or someone close to him. Even the guy in the show that is begging for mercy he was trying kill Joel and would have killed Ellie and that's as bad as Joel gets.

For the record I'm not counting anyone Joel kills while under the control of the player as it's possible to avoid killing several people in the game and the few that the game gives you no choice, well, you have no choice you either kill them or they WILL kill you.

And on that note the Hospital level in the game. I can honestly say that I've gone through play-throughs were I didn't actually kill anyone in the final mission and yes that includes Abby's dad. I just shot him in the leg, a simple graze that would be painful but completely survivable and the only way he could die is if the other doctors were REALLY incompetent.

It was actually funny as I learned that Abby was going after Joel to avenge her father and I went, "Wait I didn't actually kill him. How much did those doctors sucked that he died from that?"

Anyways, the problem with never showing us Joel's true darker side is that it undercuts the idea that he is deserving of such a terrible fate. Not saying that he deserves it but if we never see him being truly horrible we can never SEE him as deserving of what happens and even if we could, again, the Fireflies suck so much that siding with them is next to impossible.

We cannot truly bring ourselves to side against because he's being reasonable and is competent and the FF we can never side with because they're plan involves killing a kid and likely destroying the means of stopping the fungus due to their own stupidity and misunderstanding of how anything works.

[hammerofglass]

It's been a while but don't you murder like a dozen people in a robbery in the first mission after the time skip?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yes he has lost his way, narratively speaking.

Fireflies aren’t made to look right in the show imho.

A modernistic judgement of someone in a post apocalyptic story isn’t the most helpful. Not in a black and white context. I do see it as Joel’s choice and not the right one really.

[CharlesPhipps]

It's been a while but don't you murder like a dozen people in a robbery in the first mission after the time skip?

There's a bit of dark humor about Joel's killings that takes advantage of Ludo Narrative Dissonance. It's a video game so of course we're going to kill dozens of people along the way like Nathan Drake. However, if you pause in the levels to listen to what they're talking about, the reason Ellie and Joel are being hunted obsessively by the bandits that laid a trap for them is because they're angry and furious someone has murdered dozens of their friends.

That's why they're obsessively pursuing the pair.

Which is a nice bit of humanization even if it has the kindergarten rules of, "They started it!"

Yes he has lost his way, narratively speaking.

Fireflies aren’t made to look right in the show imho.

A modernistic judgement of someone in a post apocalyptic story isn’t the most helpful. Not in a black and white context. I do see it as Joel’s choice and not the right one really.

There's also the fact that The Last of Us is not The Walking Dead but closer to Fallout and 2. There's a functioning society in The Last of Us and a lot of communities that still have the rule of law, even if it's Medieval or Wild West.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yes he has lost his way, narratively speaking.

Fireflies aren’t made to look right in the show imho.

A modernistic judgement of someone in a post apocalyptic story isn’t the most helpful. Not in a black and white context. I do see it as Joel’s choice and not the right one really.

There's also the fact that The Last of Us is not The Walking Dead but closer to Fallout and 2. There's a functioning society in The Last of Us and a lot of communities that still have the rule of law, even if it's Medieval or Wild West.

I wouldn’t call it a society based on what we see in the show.

There are communities and they have rules, but describing it as laws in society would be misleading.

[CharlesPhipps]

I wouldn’t call it a society based on what we see in the show.

There are communities and they have rules, but describing it as laws in society would be misleading.

If you mean it's a tyranny, that describes most of human history.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I wouldn’t call it a society based on what we see in the show.

There are communities and they have rules, but describing it as laws in society would be misleading.

If you mean it's a tyranny, that describes most of human history.

There doesn’t seem to be anything in the way of a centralized institution for any group in the show.

[CharlesPhipps]

There doesn’t seem to be anything in the way of a centralized institution for any group in the show.

Really? Because FEDRA rules at least dozens of city states that they trade with supplies on from Atlanta to Boston to Kansas City.

That's larger than Europe.