The Last Of Us Alternate Ending We Didn't Know We Needed

Heavy spoilers ahead for the finale of "The Last of Us."

"The Last of Us" is a dark show; one set in a world almost as bleak as that of "Attack on Titan," where horror is a daily occurrence and hope and romance are harder to come by. You can expect the likes of nightmare-fuelled child clickers, the death of everyone you hold dear, and even extremely dumb cannibalism.

While "The Last of Us" doesn't seem to differ too drastically from other zombie media of recent years, the games and now TV adaptation get by thanks to their more scientific exploration of a fungal zombie apocalypse, and a rather charismatic, sympathetic cast. The story of Joel and Ellie traveling through an apocalyptic American wasteland on their quest to deliver Ellie to a revolutionary group is compelling, but it's the characters themselves keeping us glued to the screen week after week.

Of course, after so much pain and misery, after seeing so many friends die, there was no chance the "Last of Us" ending would be a happy one. Once they reach the Fireflies, Joel discovers that the only way to create a cure for Cordyceps would also kill Ellie, so he freaks out and starts killing every single Firefly before taking Ellie with him back to Jackson. It's a heartbreaking moment, one exacerbated by the fact that the player has no say in the matter — we're just forced to play out Joel's decision and live with the consequences.

But that's not what happens in the alternate ending.

Yes, there is an alternate ending to "The Last of Us," at least the game version. Shortly after the game premiered a year ago, Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann released a behind-the-scenes look at how the final chapter of the game (the scene in the hospital) was made, showing the performance capture used for the game, highlighting the incredible work done by Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker before making the jump to the live-action adaptation.

But then, they revealed a surprise alternate version of that same hospital scene. Introducing the scene, Druckmann reveals how he hid the alternate scene from Troy Baker, only giving him notes about his performance, but telling him just to play out the entire scene without breaking. Turns out, he had something else planned for the scene, which only Marlene's actor, Merle Dandridge, knew about.

The scene has Marlene and Joel arguing over Ellie's fate, pointing guns at each other. In this version, Dandridge just breaks into song like she was part of "Les Misérables," singing lines like "she'll be raped and murdered" with more gravitas than Hugh Jackman or Anne Hathaway. Then Troy Baker responds, improvising his own song version of the dialogue, and the two have a fantastic musical duet.

This is the sort of alternate ending I'm all about. Forget simple changes like a character making it out alive or Bill Paxton and Suzy Amis' characters in "Titanic" making out; take advantage of your actors' incredible singing voices and record impromptu musical alternate endings to your stories. What if the final duel between Ben and Luke in "The Last Jedi" was a musical number? What if the reveal of the killer in "Knives Out" was done through song? We deserve to know.