Was Joel Right To Save Ellie? The Last Of Us HBO Creators Reveal Their Honest Thoughts

At the end of season 1 of "The Last of Us" (the massively popular apocalyptic drama based on the similarly popular video game), Joel (Pedro Pascal) made a seemingly impossible choice. After transporting his young ward Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to a group of rebel Fireflies on the orders of their leader Marlene (Merle Dandridge, reprising her voice role from the game), Joel realizes something gutting. See, Ellie is immune to the cordyceps infection sweeping the world (which is turning the people it infects into bloodthirsty zombies), so the Fireflies assembled a team of medical professionals to see if they can use her genetic material to create a cure. In order to do this, Ellie has to die, and Joel, who lost his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) at the very beginning of the game and show, can't bring himself to let Ellie give her life for this cause. Shooting his way through the makeshift hospital, Joel carries an unconscious Ellie out of the facility ... and when she asks what happened later, he doesn't give her the full story.

It was a stunning end to the blockbuster first season of "The Last of Us" and set up the impending second season perfectly; Ellie still doesn't know the full truth about what Joel did to save her, and Joel now carries this secret with him. In an interview with IGN, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann sat down with some of their stars — Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, and Young Mazino (who play Ellie, Joel's brother Tommy, and new characters named Abby, Dina, and Jesse, respectively) — to figure out if Joel made the right call.

"We have different opinions about this," Druckmann said when asked about Joel's choice, and Mazin agreed. So, where do they fall? "I believe Joel was right," Druckmann revealed. "If I were in Joel's position, I hope I would be able to do what he did to save my daughter." 

"That's so interesting, because I think that if I were in Joel's position, I probably would have done what he did," Mazin contributed. "But I'd like to think that I wouldn't. That's the interesting push and pull of the morality of it. And that's why the ending of the first game is so provocative and so wonderful. It just doesn't let you off the hook as a player."

Obviously, the choice given to Joel in this moment absolutely sucks. In the wake of losing Sarah, the gruff Joel turned inward until he met Ellie, and in season 1, episode 8 (the season's penultimate chapter), he helps save her from a cannibalistic murderer and, during their emotional reunion, calls her "baby girl," a term of endearment he once reserved for his own daughter. It's clear that, despite closing himself off from the world after Sarah, Joel grows to love Ellie like she's his own daughter, and the feeling seems to be mutual. The idea that the cordyceps infection could be completely eradicated by Ellie sacrificing her own life to find a cure is also incredible in a world ravaged by this virus, and Joel knows full well that Ellie would, without question, agree to die if the infection could be stopped in its tracks as a result.

So, what did the actors, returning and new, have to say about Joel's decision? They all agreed it's not black and white. Gabriel Luna, who plays Joel's younger brother Tommy, spoke both as his character and himself, saying, "I'm biased. I'm his brother and I understand and you can't see the scope of the whole world. You can only see your world, and Ellie is his world. And so I mean, I can't personally fault him as Tommy and maybe not even as Gabe, so I don't know." Young Mazino, the Emmy-nominated breakout star from "Beef" who plays Ellie's friend Jesse in season 2, gave an answer that honestly makes the most sense regarding Joel's decision to not just save Ellie, but also kill anyone trying to stop him: "I feel like he was on autopilot. I think he was kind of just ... he blacked out and it was just all hazy until he came to."

Later in that same IGN interview, Craig Mazin said that both forms of "The Last of Us" — the game and TV show — essentially force you to consider what you would do in this situation. (In this scene in the game, you do play as Joel.) "People get to the end of 'The Last of Us' [the game] and there is that question, what would you do? What should you do if faced with the opportunity to save the world, if you sacrifice your child. That goes back to Abraham and Isaac. It's so profound. The notion of sacrifice to save the world," the "Chernobyl" writer mused.

"It's like death begets death begets death and I think that's just a perfect example," Young Mazino added. "And yeah, it's his world. Who cares about the world if your world isn't there?" Again, Mazino basically hits the nail on the head; in a damaged and frankly terrifying dystopian world, Ellie is Joel's everything, and it would frankly betray his character, in a lot of ways, if he let her die. Still, this issue is sure to come up in season 2. We already know that Kaitlyn Dever's character Abby has a specific reason to go looking for Joel after his hospital massacre — if you're unfamiliar with the plot of season 2's source material, "The Last of Us Part II," I won't elaborate on that — and there's no question that, if and when Ellie finds out the truth, she'll be extraordinarily angry at Joel for making the decision in her stead.

Season 2 of "The Last of Us" premieres on HBO and Max on April 13, 2025, and viewers will see the aftermath of Joel's choice across the season's seven episodes.