This post is a discussion piece around the ending of The Last of Us Part 2. If you have not completed this game, do not read any further. THIS POST IS GOING TO CONTAIN A LOT OF SPOILERS.
It likely took you about 25-30 hours to complete The Last of Us Part 2. I personally found it to be an incredible game. The ending is going to be one to split opinions and generate a lot of questions. The ending wasn’t exactly clear cut and some may have felt a little unsatisfied about it all. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to the ending of The Last of Us Part 2. Feel free to disagree and share your thoughts in the comments section below.
So let’s jump onto the biggest question about the game. A question that a lot of people are going to have questions about.
Why Didn’t Ellie Kill Abby?
This is the big one, why didn’t Ellie kill Abby at the end of The Last of Us Part 2? The final scene was quite strange. Ellie couldn’t get rid of her desire for revenge. She gave up the perfect little life with Dina to hunt down Abby and kill her. She knew that she was never going to rest until she avenged Joel’s death. So why didn’t she do it?
The reason for it started when Ellie first found out why Abby was not with the rest of the prisoners. We didn’t know what the pillars were, but the prisoner gave you a fairly good idea that Abby was not going to be in a good state when we found her if she was alive at all.
When you finally find Abby, you do not get to see the Abby you expect. You see a deathly, starving and skinny woman who is a shadow of her former self. Her controversial muscular appearance has faded away. These people who captured her have completely destroyed her.
Why did Ellie let Abby down from the Pillar?
Ellie lets her down and spends the next few moments in complete disbelief. She is finally faced with her opportunity to seek the revenge she so desperately craved. Ellie gave up everything for this moment, but it wasn’t what she had hoped for. She wanted Abby to deserve this death. Seeing her up on the post, it would seem that someone else has already had this satisfaction.
Ellie lets Abby down because she wants to face her. When Abby stands up, Ellie is shocked by her appearance. She struggles to figure out what to do. This was meant to be her moment to take down the main villain of the game. What satisfaction will she get in killing Abby when she is like this. At this stage, is death a relief for Abby?
Why did Ellie Fight Abby At The Boats?
This was where things take a turn. When presented with the fact that Abby is about to get away and potentially survive this, Ellie acts impulsively. She hasn’t had the chance to digest what is happening. Ideally, the two of them would have had a conversation about all of this, but Ellie decides that she needs to kill Abby before the chance is gone. She has lived with the regret of letting her get away before and does not want to let this happen again.
Abby might be weak, but she has a little fight left in her. The fight doesn’t escalate to anything huge but Ellie eventually gets the upper hand and has Abbys head submerged below the water. It is clear that Abby doesn’t have the strength left in her to push Ellie away.
Seconds away from Abby dying, Ellie has a brief flashback of Joel playing the guitar and gives up. She allows Abby to live, but why?
The Joel Flashback
This flashback was important. You might think that Ellie recalling a memory of Joel would give her that drive to watch the last drop of life drain from Abby’s eye, but it does not. It does the opposite. Almost as if Joel was bringing her back to reality. Reminding her that this is not who she is. She is not a bad person and that she shouldn’t become the same monster that she saw Abby as.
The memory of Joel was also the moment that emotionally overwhelmed Ellie. Already struggling to deal with the emotional weight of finally finding Abby. Dealing with seeing her in such a deathly state. There was far too much for her to deal with all at once. The sudden reminder of her father figure and how he is no longer alive was too much for her. She couldn’t deal with it anymore and breaks down.
Was this the right decision? Maybe not. Will she be faced with the same emotional problems and desire for vengeance when life returns to normal? Likely not. This final scene is enough to emotionally scar her and will likely allow her to suppress what happened to Joel to the point that she can deal with it.
Ellie may not have killed Abby, but she got to see that she has completely fallen. She has lost everything she ever had. All her friends are dead, she has no place to call home and we can only assume that she was completely broken while being held captive. From Ellie’s perspective, Abby got what she had coming.
Why Didn’t Abby Kill Ellie?
Let’s zip to a different moment in the story for a moment. In what seemed like the ending of the game, Abby had the chance to kill Ellie. A moment that nobody wanted to happen. Abby showed an unexpected level of restraint. She allowed Ellie to live with a stern warning that if she ever saw her again, she wouldn’t show the same level of compassion.
If Abby was alone, she may have killed Ellie, but she was not. The SCAR kid was there to help her understand that this was not worth it. There is more going on here than the brief interaction where Abby was given the signal not to do this.
Abby is not a monster. All of her childhood flashbacks tried to show that she and her father were good people. You might think that their plan to kill Ellie in the first game to generate a cure was not something a good person would do, but it was for the greater good. Both Ellie and Abby said that they would have agreed to sacrifice themselves for a cure if given the opportunity.
The death of her father caused her to be filled with this rage, the same rage that Ellie was filled with when Joel was killed. Their stories are the same and neither Abby nor Ellie are the monsters that their lust for revenge turned them into.
When presented with the chance to kill Ellie, Abby didn’t back off because she was told to. She backed off because she snapped out of it. She remembered that this horrible person is not who she is, a fact that her friends make her deal with when they speak of Joel’s death. She is able to relate to Ellie. Joel killed her father and she knew how this felt. Abby killed Ellie’s father. Abby should know exactly how Ellie felt.
Abby didn’t kill Ellie because she was told to, she did it because she remembered who she was. She remembered how she felt. Ellie is following in Abby’s footsteps, she has no justification to kill Ellie.
Could Abby Have Survived Her Injuries?
Abby was very weak when she and Ellie had a fight on the beach. Ellie had a knife and was slashing Abby quite a lot. Considering the dirt and the current state of medicine in the world, this many knife wounds would cause a lot of problems for someone. Considering Abby’s current state of health, could she have survived an attack like this?
Even though she was able to get into a boat and getaway, the number of slash wounds would likely result in her losing a lot of blood. There were no supplies on the boat for her to use to put pressure to stop the bleeding.
Chances are, if we ever hear from Abby in future games or DLC, she will have survived somehow or other. Slashes are bad news, but she wasn’t stabbed. All of the cuts were surface-level cuts on her skin. She may lose blood but it would be possible for her to treat these.
Abby’s father was a surgeon. Considering the circumstances, he likely taught her basic survival skills. Even if he did not, her life experiences being one of the most respected soldiers in their camp, she has had to deal with injures like this. It is very unlikely she would survive in the real world, but it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to make her survive this in order to have her show up in a future game.
What Happened To Dina?
Dina and Ellie had a nice happy home with a baby to take care of. Ellie gave it all up to hunt down Abby. When she returns, the house is empty and Dina is gone, where did she go?
We can assume that she went back to Jackson. We know that Tommy lived in Jackson and he was able to ride out on a horse to give Ellie the information he had of where Abby could be found. This means that Jackson isn’t that far away from the house they were living in.
Dina may not have ridden to Jackson on her own, but she may have waited for someone to come and visit. Dina will have someone from Jackson she could call family. Upon finding out that Ellie is gone and she is living there alone, raising a baby, they would have made her come back to Jackson where it is safe.
Why Did Ellie Leave The Guitar Behind?
This was a very sad moment and far more significant to the game’s story than it may have initially seemed. Ellie returns to the empty house to find all her artwork and guitar is still in the room. She tries to play the song that Joel wrote for her but is unable to do so. Abby bit off two of her fingers during the fight scene at the beach, preventing her from being able to play the chords.
She does not express any emotion but it is clear that this is an incredibly painful moment for her. Joel is dead, but she at least had music to remember him. She had the song he wrote for her and she had his guitar. Joel was gone, but he lived on through the music that he taught her.
Her quest for revenge gave her absolutely nothing, it only resulted in loss. Her final link to Joel is gone forever. She can never again play that song. She has lost the ability to keep Joel’s memory alive through the music he gave her.
Will There Be A Last Of Us 3?
The game ended on an open page. Ellie is likely going to travel back to Jackson where she will be faced with a lot of unhappy faces. Tommy was the one who forced her to leave Dina to take out Abby. She is going to be welcomed by him, but what next?
If there is a third Last of Us game, Ellie is unlikely to be the main character. Her story is over now. She has experienced enough to spend the rest of her life living in the shadows. This doesn’t mean there won’t be another game.
Abby is going somewhere, likely to rejoin the fireflies. She could more than likely survive the injuries she sustained on the beach. Abby is broken and has a long road ahead of her. Her journey making her way to the fireflies would be a start.
The fireflies are a broken group that are on the rise. The Last of Us 3: The Rise of the Fireflies would have a ring to it. Perhaps Abby will rebuild the group to become the most powerful faction in the region. With enough power, they will decide that they need to finally make a cure and coming after Ellie is the only way about it.
We have very little knowledge at the moment on whether there will be a third game. Considering the massive success of this game and the amount of information we do not know about this virus, they could keep this franchise going for another few releases for sure.
