The Last of Us | Episode 9 Reaction 

Interesting. Marlene didn't ask Ellie in case she said No. Joel didn't ask Ellie in case she said Yes. I think Ellie knows Joel is lying. And in the end they both just decided to live with the lie.

20:20 Fun fact. The nurse closest to the camera at that moment. That is Laura Baily. She actually voice acted said nurse in the game. Furthermore though she is one of Ellies/Ashley Johnsons best friends. Ashley & Laura have along with 5 other friends build up a multi-million company based on D&D. It is an animated show for grown ups called: "The Legend of Voxmachina" it has been very succesfull two seasons already. 3 one greenlit by the studio. Just saying this because in real life Ellie/Ashley is quite an introverted & shy person. She loved having Laura with her in the production process. So if you want to watch someting awesome with Ellie/Ashley then react to the:" The Legend of Vox Machina". Troy Baker/Joel is there too playing a narsissitic nobel elf

I've had people in my life cut their journey short, and wish they had the opportunity to witness the possibilities that lay ahead of them. Thank you for pausing to give a beautiful message about hope in a difficult situation. ❤

So there's another show that has a similar situation as this opening. It's called All of Us are Dead. and in it a teenage girl who is pregnant gets bitten by a zombie and in order to protect her baby she places it in the office of a store or pharmacy or something like that and ties herself to another door in a separate room. As a zombie she isn't intelligent enough to work a knot so she figures her baby will be safe. It's actually a great Korean show too.

Joel had the parental instict to protect Ellie at all costs that Marlene apparently didn't.

Alicia: baby hands are pretty cute. Also: baby faces, not so much.

A behind-the-scenes showed that the giraffe was real and the actors actually interacted with it...everything around it was CGI.

I actually adore the ending for The Last of Us game and this show. In some other stories or movies, the main character would not hesitate to sacrifice themselves to "do what's right" or to save the world. Ellie, were she given a choice, might have just done that. But in this case Joel, who already has lost his daughter, is now confronted with the fact that it will happen a second time. To him Ellie, who he now considers like a daughter, is "his world" and that is about to be taken away from him. And that counts for many of us. For many our worlds are nothing more than our family and friends. Would you be able to destroy that in order to save the world? It probably sounds easier than it is. Could you sacrifice your child for the greater good? Some probably can. Others cannot. Joel obviously could not and rather be in a broken world with the person who was the most dear to him. It's a selfish choice, but also a very human one. A choice that probably more people would have taken than one might think. (though most would have probably been shot before getting to the surgery room lol)

if marlene had told ellie the situation, and gave her a choice, i 100% believe she'd have chosen the greater good, and joel would have respected her decision. but since she was kept in the dark, he killed everyone to save her

Here's why a 14-year-old Ellie cannot make the decision to sacrifice her life for the "greater good". First there's just the factual matter that her frontal lobe, her brain's decision-making ability is not fully developed until she's 25. No matter how smart and mature for her age due to circumstances she may be, physiologically she is still a child. But there is another reason why she cannot make this decision. She has up to this point never had a family. She has been essentially alone without anyone who cares about her or who she cares for. She knows very little of what life can be. The only people, aside from Joel she has formed connections with have all been killed. Killed by an infection that she is immune to. That is a huge amount of survivors' guilt being dealt with by a child who has no support system. She wants to alleviate her guilt and is looking for something to do that with. In her mind she is doing this through passing on her immunity to others through what she believes will be a process of turning a blood sample into a vaccine. She thinks this will make her life matter. If she knew it would kill her and went ahead it would be because she is driven by guilt, by thinking because she's immune she doesn't deserve to live while those she cares for die. Only her sacrifice will make her life matter and remove the guilt she has taken on for herself. At 14, with the kind of life she has led to this point she has no concept of what sacrificing her life really means. No concept that there will be other lives she touches by going on. People she will love, people who will love her. The possibility of family, friends, a life. Joel once told her, when she asked him why go on if the world and life are so shitty, that she hasn't seen the world (meaning the world before the outbreak) so she doesn't know. That you go on for family. Then she says, I'm not family. This is how she sees herself and the world. Her ability to understand what sacrificing her life really means is stunted by her life to that point and frankly her child's mind trying to reason its way through something it isn't prepared or equipped to do Then there's Marlene. Anna gives her Ellie, but not to raise. She has known Marlene all her life and she knows Marlene is not maternal, she would never be a good mother for Ellie. We can see this in Marlene's negative and even horrified reaction to even taking Ellie at all. She is entirely focused on being the Che Guevara of Boston, on saving the world. Not only is she not capable of raising Ellie, but Anna also knows it wouldn't be fair to ask her to. But Marlene does not make the right choices when deciding what to do with Ellie. Instead of placing her with a family who will love her and can give her what she will need emotionally as well as physically, she places her in a FEDRA orphanage/military school. She does this ostensibly for her safety and protection. Protection from who? From FEDRA? By being raised to in an institution to become a soldier in the fascist dictatorship Marlene is fighting to overthrow. To be a soldier who will kill Fireflies or be killed by a Firefly or in one of their bombing attacks. We saw how Ellie was seeing FEDRA as the only thing standing in the way of anarchy and the Fireflies as terrorists who were just as bad as FEDRA in their own way. We see how this bad decision by Marlene didn't even manage to keep Ellie safe, she got bitten like her mother anyway. Which leads to the only conversation she has had with Ellie in 14 years. It lasts all of 5 minutes and then Marlene is working to send Ellie not somewhere to be safe but to be used in Marlene's plans to save the world. Then Marlene has the nerve to tell Joel that she loves Ellie more than anyone in the world. That she has known her since birth and though it pains her has the right to sacrifice her. She has known of her since birth, but she hasn't known her at all. She doesn't know how Ellie loves puns, doesn't know Ellie dreams of going to space. She doesn't know about Mortal combat, comics or Ellie's fear of ending up alone. She claims to know what Ellie wants but she has to be out of her mind if she thinks that Ellie sacrificing herself is what Anna would want. Just as Joel as a father reacts the way a father would so too Anna, who dies by being bitten would still react as a mother. Marlene might say that she understands that, but she really doesn't. She can't. When Anna saw Ellie the bond that a parent feels for a child was there, instantly. When Marlene saw Ellie, she was upset by the problem this represented. She wasn't feeling the fierce need to protect her, she was trying to not have that responsibility even for just that moment. I can't, was her first and honest reaction. Even though Joel lies to Ellie after the fact and people see him as selfish, in this moment he is the only one acting from a place of honesty. He only cares about family, he always has. On outbreak day 1 when he tells Tommy to drive by a family with a child who need help it's because of Sarah. He's acting as a parent in the only way he knows how. It's not that Joel is afraid of knowing what Ellie might want given the choice to sacrifice herself. It's that as a parent you would never give your child that choice to make. Because as a child they can't. As an adult child you may try to talk them out of it but in the end, you will have to let them do what they will do. But not as a child, no way no how. Marlene and the doctor on the other hand not only don't give Ellie the choice that Marlene insists that Joel must do but they don't really care what her answer would be. If she said no, they would have sedated her and done the operation. They have already decided for her that her life is worth sacrificing for their idea of the greater good. They believe that they occupy the moral high ground and will be justified in the immoral act of murder. Just like Joel killing innocent people and justifying it as doing what was needed to survive so too are Marlene and the doctor doing the same thing. There are no heroes here, maybe varying degrees of villains but no gold-plated heroes. Just people doing what people have always done when dealing with the complexity of the dark and light side of love, especially a parents love for a child.

It's so wonderful, caring, and loving that you paused at the med camp scene to let your audience know to keep going. Thank you. It's been a great journey with you both covering this series. I look forward to more of your content.

OMG belle! I felt the same way, with the primordial scream at the cold open and the full on euphoria that is GIRAFFES! Also, I fully agree with you that Alicia needs more red wine. Love you guys! See you in a few years!

Talk about a morally ambiguous ending. On one hand, I get it. Humanity took away what mattered most to Joel and after finding something that close in Ellie again, he wasn't going to let it happen again. I don't know what it's like to be a a father but I would like that someday and having to put myself in Joel's shoes, I'd probably do the same? Not to mention, the Fireflies weren’t giving her much of a choice in the matter. But then again, neither was Joel. It was still a…..selflessly selfish choice that not only doomed the entire world but robbed Ellie of whatever hope she had left for it as well as the choice to choose. It might be refreshing to some people, seeing them finally be together in this "new beginning" but keep this in mind: it's based on a lie. All of it.

I don't usually comm... ya know what? I will ALWAYS comment on your reaction videos. I also ugly cry Bells. I was so happy with this series. When Joel said, " It wasn't time that saved me." I lost it. The ending to the series is just as polarizing as the ending in the game. It's a rare occasion that you can split an audience pretty evenly and at the same time everyone can "Understand" everyone else's opinions. Luv you guys, see you in a couple years!

As a person I think one life in exchange for possibly saving the human race is a good sacrifice. As a father I would burn the entire goddamn planet to the ground for my kids. Joel didn't do the right thing. He did the only thing a parent could.

Everytime i see Ashley Johnson, all i think of is "show me that smile again. Show me that smile. Don't waste another minute on your cryin'."

They got Ashley out there 26 months pregnant on a full sprint through the woods. Ellie had fighter DNA.

A lot of people think Joel screwed the world by not letting Ellie be operated on, however, he did her a favor cause the fireflies realistically would never have made a successful vaccine. 1.) they stupidly decide to kill her and remove her brain, why not do CT scans on her first or a spinal tap to collect the spinal fluid from her body that could grow the cordyceps they need to make a vaccine. 2.)the doctor looks like an old resident wouldn’t he have been around since the beginning and had better knowledge of the very least common sense to do actual testing to see if it would work? Ellie tried her blood on Sam and nothing happened so shouldn’t the doctor know better than to do actual trials before deciding right away to kill the only immune person they had? 3.)none of them had their stuff together, Marlene got shot by Robert, ROBERT!!! In the beginning and lost more than half her crew on the way there. Say what you will but the fireflies would have killed Ellie for nothing and Joel was in the right to save her and not Ellie die for an ideal that was not gonna work.

Can't have it both ways, can't be all "Daddy Joel!" and then be surprised when he treats her like a child. He isn't her Dad, his problem is now he wants to be so he made a decision for her future like he would for a young child. She might be young but she has grown up fast, and she isn't stupid.

Just like in the game, this final part was a rollercoaster. Painful and beautiful. Thank you for the hard work, we'll be here with you for season 2.

20:22 the nurse behind the table is actually the voice of Abby from the game!! (Laura Bailey)

They should have kept Joel sedated then told him he had a bad concussion and that Ellie had been under going surgery to remove to shrooms and she died on the table.

Alternate title of the episode: Why informed consent is an important law.

In the podcast, Niel mentions the reason for the sad music during the massacre - Joel is 'burning up his soul' to save Ellie - He's killing a lot of good people for a cause that would only be good to him, and maybe the viewer.

Alicia's reaction was freaking priceless! I loved it.

With the focus on mental health I'd recommend Hi Ren by the artist Ren a really powerful piece of art.

Marlene didn't ask, Joel knew she would go with it. "There is no half way"

i really wish they had a few more episodes to really tell the whole story. they got all the important things, they hit all the beats, they got the tone right. but pacing was a little rushed, and a lot of the small moments were cut out. such a huge part of the game was how to deal with a partner who cant swim, with lots of water around, and they didn't show basically any water, and so many of the teamwork moments where it took two people to figure out how to solve a problem were missing. which i get that tons of water levels would complicate shooting, and a lot of the other stuff was just in the game for gameplay reasons, but they felt important to the character growth, and the show didn't have them

14:45 way to talk over the most intense dialogue of the whole season. Woosh...

His name.......is Joel Wick.

It has been an honour and a privilege to ride along with you on this journey 😊

thank you for sharing this journey with us, its been a pleassure and i have cried way to many times lol

Love is Despair.

When I first played it in 2014 I was never angry with Joels decision and stand with his decision 100 percent.

y'all are so good at this.

I love how this rounds up the sediments of a lot of characters along the way. Is Joel a bad guy? "after all he did a bad guy thing" (Henry) but we get it, he is a father. Joel, "saved who he could save" (Tess) He "had a job to do, and god help any mother frakker who gets in the way" (Bill) "remember that Im bleeding out" (marlene)...

If a fan of zombies, watch "One Cut of the Dead". One of the most unique zombie themed movies ever made. However, it is one of those movies (like The Sixth Sense) that is so easily spoiled. It's best to go into the movie completely cold, no trailers, no synopsis, no nothing. Just a single word can spoil the movie. If interested, a couple suggestions for the best experience... watch it with the original Japanese dialogue with English subtitles, and second suggestion... don't Google it, again it's so easily spoiled, and can ruin the unique masterful experience this movie has to offer. 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, for a very good reason.

The fact that Joel starts and ends with lying to his kids though (he tells Sarah she’ll be okay as she’s dying, and he lies to Ellie about what happened). Joel revealing that he failed at his suicide attempt hurts even more for 2 reasons: 1) it adds more weight to him trying to get Henry to not do it (he knew what Henry was thinking/feeling because he had been there) and 2) Pedro has shared in several interviews that he lost his mom to suicide when he was younger…I’m sure it was hard going to that dark place even though it was acting. Had Joel lost Ellie that day in the hospital, he would have probably attempted again and not missed. 💔 Joel was “lost in the darkness”, and Ellie was his “light”. That conversation hit home for me as someone who deals with depression and has contemplated that many times. For those who can relate, your purpose, your Ellie is right around the corner. You never know the people you will impact. Keep going! ❤

This is THE LAST of Us

My question for you. in the end, did JOEL make the right choice..?

Sorry everyone, but if we’re my daughter I would have done the same thing as Joel. Because I think staying alive is best you can do. So you’re gonna have to kill me too, because I’m not living in a world without my baby girl.

Bella Ramsey just starred in a short horror film called Requiem, on The Alter Channel on RU-vid, a spectacular performance!

Waaaaaaaay off topic, can you imagine the destructive combined power of both Niki's and Bells' screams? Holy crap!

When I played the game the first time, I wasn't a parent and I hated Joel's choice. I've been a dad for two years, and now I can't imagine doing it any differently.

also the second game starts with Ellie and Joel on bad terms because she knows he lied about the Fireflies and it slowly breaksdown their relationship. So the set up is great for a season 2.

4:12 If you want to see the real life example of someone being f'd up who have children, Kelesea's Comments is an excellent case in point.

Any parent would pick their child, end of story.

never played the game, but the show was well done and an amazing crazy ride and I can't wait till season 2

RIP Doctor will change everything..... 0_0

Dis episode just had me in my feels for many reasons.🤔

Dammit ladies! Leave some glamour for the rest of us gals!

Marlene lied to her and then Joel did. BUT if Marlene had of given her a choice and spoken to her like an adult just as Tess did and let Joel see her, given her the time to decide I think she would have chosen to do it. Joel would have respected her and then probably ended himself afterwards (let's be honest here). But nah, that doesn't make a good story so we gotta make sure everyone is in the wrong when it comes to Ellie's body autonomy. Cause we all love to torture ourselves by watching shows that make us cry every week. 🤣

Laura Bailey is one of the nurses

Alicia taking a sip every time someone dies 😅

Part Giraffes amazing 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

Mmmmm I bet you're ready for Abby to come threw huh!?

Also, it feels to me Marlene's crime is worse here in the show than in the game. In the game, Ellie was brought in unconscious and was never woken up to be told the cure would cost her life. Here, Marlene had a chance to tell Ellie....and lied to her face before putting her under.

Awesome news incoming! TLoU Part 2 is going to span more than one season. It's super exciting to hear that Neil and Craig are going forward with an expanded storyline for it. Now I need to play part 2 ASAP! lol

I just imagine Neil emailing Marlene's actor like "Hey, remember that thing you voiced and mo-capped a few years ago, yeah can you do all that again but without the mo-cap suit?" 😂

I'm with Joel %1000, I would have done the same, the only thing is I would have been honest with Ellie right in that moment and let the chips fall where they may, if Ellie's pissed at me so be it, I'd rather have a pissed off Ellie instead of a dead one 🙏 ef the fireflies ef Marlene and every other mf that stands in Joel's way 😁

I think Marlene,Tess, and even Tommy all know this side of Joel we saw at the hospital and Tommy left because of it. Joel can be monstrous and the one thing that humanized him imo is Ellie.

Season 2 hinges on... I SWEAR

Wow, nice work Girls Play

It was actually reall giraffres name was Nabo.

looking forward to this one

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Thank you for inviting us to watch this & weep with you, a lot of this really hurts but I`m glad you were with me.

Nice content you have on your channel

React to SCP: Ghost Town

I do think that the show made Joel just a bit trigger happy with the doctor. In the game the doctor actually attacks Joel so Joel kills him. That fits Joel's character. But to just Han Solo him, when the doctor didn't even move?? Sure he grabbed a scalpel, but Joel had a damn Gun. What did the doctor REALLY think he could accomplish??

My ears thank the editor for adjusting the volume on those screams ❤

YEAH JOLE FOR THE KILLSTREAK

Love this video

we don't talk about tess

Are you really adults?

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WOW

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I love your content

20:24 Enjoy, enjoy 🤭

I just subscribed

13:23 Loveee thiss!

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Enojoy the day

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Awesome girls

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