And Ron Perlman, surely?
I’m just going to leave this here.
Not really. It’s just a redemption arc; albeit a morally sketchy one. Joel will do anything he has to, to make sure Ellie is protected, no matter who else gets harmed.
For him. In the show, before they got to the hospital, Ellie was given a choice and explicitly choose the unsafe cure path (of life) over a let’s quit this and be safe with Joel path (of life). Joel, by lying, then decides for her to put her on the safe with Joel path. I guess that’s why I think it’s complicated. She was clear with what she wanted.
Lying to Ellie is one of the many “wrong” things he has to do to keep her safe and redeem himself. A redeemed man isn’t necessarily a good man.
If it isn’t made clear within the work itself, then it is the latter, surely. Shouldn’t an author make their intentions clear? Otherwise, it’s easy to use this as a justification when they get things wrong. After all, they get other things wrong, like gasoline that’s still useful a decade+ later. We accept the reality that the author presents.
Also, if they were able to get a vaccine from Ellie’s blood, wouldn’t we have accepted that? We believe the capabilities of the characters are what the author tells us they are. If we judge everything within a show by real-world standards, shows would be a lot different - people knocked out would suffer short and long-term effects upon waking, people wouldn’t take horrible beatings and avoid a hospital stay, ‘flesh wounds’ would sideline a character for the rest of the movie, etc. . .and ten-year-old gasoline wouldn’t power anything.
I mean, Ellie being immune because her mom was bit right as she was giving birth is total bullshit in the first place, we HAVE to assume the bullshit science for the cure is just as magical.
FWIW, I have read that the show’s Producers stated online that their intention was the cure would have indeed worked had they created it. It may not make sense but that was apparently their intention.
Her mother cut the umbilical cord with the same knife that she just killed the attacker with. She then lied, telling Marlene she’d cut the cord before she stabbed the attacker.
He didn’t save her (solely) for her sake, but for his own.
That’s the way I took it. It was the ultimate trolley dilemma. (The intent was that) Marlene and Joel were pretty equal in how much they loved Ellie, and each came to a different decision on what to do.
And to responsd to Snarky, yes, I agree. I guess I wasn’t clear enough. Ellie clearly stated earlier that she preferred finding a cure versus going down a safe path (living with Tommy, etc). Joel is eliminating that option for Ellie altogether to protect Ellie (against Ellie’s wishes).
We might be in agreement, maybe not. To clarify, I don’t think he did it to protect Ellie. He did it to protect himself against losing another daughter-figure.
Yes. That’s how I understood his motivations.
Creators can say whatever they want but if it’s not in the work, it’s not enough for me for facts most of the time. “It would have worked.” Well, nothing about any person gives me any confidence on screen.
Anyway, for the sake of argument murdering Ellie, and only murdering her would have created a successful vaccine. And sure, the clickers and what not are still out there, but at least a small nip won’t be fatal. Sure fine. But what I’m not seeing in discussions is how are the Fireflies going to distribute it? Who is going to trust them? Other Firefly cohorts? They seem to be a backstabby bunch.
That’s a big part of my problem. On screen there is no guarantee it’ll work AND they aren’t trying other options (like working with her blood) first and saving surgery as a last resort AND they have make enough for survivors AND get it to them AND have them take it.
…I just felt the finale needed more room to breathe. As much as I found the opening half of the episode included some of my favourite quiet moments of the show, by including those moments it meant the hospital scene with the Fireflies and the resolution happened in less than thirty minutes.
I felt we just needed to sit with the weight of Joel’s decisions a bit more. The most successful episodes of the show for me were the ones that didn’t necessarily follow the game beat-for-beat, and which took their time to tell the story. What we got was a sudden pivot in setting, pace and tone from the first half of the episode to the second and I think we lost a lot of the nuance along the way. It hit all of the required beats: it just lacked the emotional impact for me. Which is a shame, because they managed to get the balance right for much of the rest of the show.
And like Tess told Ellie in the first episode, you are not immune from being torn to pieces.
In the companion podcast, Neil mentions that when they were play testing the game ahead of its original release, they asked the testers whether or not they thought that Joel made the right choice in rescuing Ellie. In the cases where the testers were not parents, he said it was fifty-fifty. When the testers were parents, he said they were unanimous in proclaiming Joel’s choice to be correct.
But that hospital was SKETCH, dude.
Yeah, well, but weren’t our first vaccines just ground up scabs jabbed into a person with a sewing needle? We were able to vaccinate long before we were able to build modern biomedical plants.
It was a bit over the top. They could have had Joel escape his escorts somehow, cut off the power in the building somehow (because he’s a badass) so the operation can’t proceed, then somehow find Ellie (because he’s a badass) and snatch her away in the confusion and darkness. And then the two would ride out of town on a spirited giraffe.