The Last of Us Episode 9 Ending Explained: All Questions Answered! Beware Spoilers Ahead!!
After 9 weeks of emotions, tears, and suspense; The Last of Us reached the end of its season with the premiere of the ninth chapter this Sunday on HBO and HBO Max. It is that while the Oscars were held at the same time, the fiction starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey had an intense end to the first cycle. And it is that although the action was not a central part of the episode, the plot ended with several doubts for the second season. The first season of ‘The Last of Us‘ has come to an end. And what an end Perhaps those who played the video game expected it, but for those of us who have reached the last chapter of the HBO Max series virgins, the shock has been brutal.
Joel has finally recovered from the wound suffered at the end of episode 6 of ‘The Last of Us ‘, and Ellie has managed to escape David’s community of cannibals, after brutally murdering both him and his assistant James, played by Joel’s original voice in the video game. The characters of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay merged in an emotional hug at the end of The Last of Us Episode 8 and confirmed that, although they do not share blood, they have become father and daughter.
Attention! Spoilers for The Last of Us season finale are ahead. If you still do not see it or do not want to find out, do not continue reading.
The Last of Us Episode 9 Recap: What Happened In the Episode
The episode begins with a pregnant woman running away from an infected man to give birth until he catches up with him and bites her just as her daughter is born. There we find out that she is Ellie’s mother and that this site has something to do with the immunity of the protagonist. Flashing back to the present, Joel and Ellie continue on their journey after escaping the cult from the previous episode, with Pascal’s character much more loving, while the girl is still affected by all the deaths she’s had to survive so far. But the trip has changed Joel, he’s not so reserved anymore, and he even tells Ellie about his deceased daughter, Sarah. Somehow, the protagonist has made peace with his past and his relationship with the young woman has given him a new reason to live.
When everything seems to be fine, the Fireflies capture them both, and when Joel wakes up, he finds out that Marlene planned everything and tricked Ellie into giving her surgery that would find a way to make a cure, but at the same time, it will kill her. Something that Joel did not like at all, without thinking began to kill the Fireflies in the building one by one and thus save Ellie. But while he was escaping, he is caught up by Marlene who tries to make him see that saving the world is what the girl would want, even if it cost her life to achieve it. The chapter ends with Joel killing her and taking Ellie, but lying to her and explaining that there is no way to create a cure and everyone in the place died at the hands of the infected. In the end, Joel tells Ellie more about Sarah, but Ellie, suspecting something of hers, makes him swear that she told the truth. Joel nods and with the “okay” of the protagonist, the episode ends.
The Last of Us Episode 9 Ending Explained: In Detail!! Why Joel Lies To Ellie
Anna, Ellie’s Mother, Makes Her Appearance
The hug is very important to Ellie, an orphan practically from the moment of birth, and the prologue of the last episode is in charge of telling us the story of what happened the day she came into the world. Ashley Johnson, the actress who voiced Ellie in the original ‘The Last of Us‘ video game, runs back to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, visibly pregnant. There she discovers that her water has broken, and that labor is imminent, but also that there is a clicker hanging around the house. Anna, which is the name of the character, does the impossible: she defeats the infected with a stab at the same time that she gives birth to her little girl. but there is bad news. Anna has been bitten in the process. She quickly cuts the umbilical cord, so the infection doesn’t reach the newborn (the reason Ellie is immune?) and prepares for the worst. Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, arrives moments later and meets the calico. Anna asks him to keep the girl (“her name is Ellie”) and gives him the knife with which she saved her life to give to her in the future. Marlene can’t seem to leave Anna, but she finally ends her life and leaves with Ellie.
Finally, The Giraffes from The Last of Us Video Game
A few years later, already in the present of the series, Joel and Ellie are in Salt Lake City, near Saint Mary’s Hospital from which the Fireflies operate. But there is still one last step on the road in which they must cross the city. To do this, the plan is the same as always, climb to the top of a skyscraper and glimpse the clearest path. Because remember, although they have disappeared from the series (Where are the clickers?), the threat of those infected by the cordyceps fungus still exists. Ellie looks quite affected. There are already too many deaths and sacrifices behind her back. Although she usually drives Joel crazy with her jokes and her constant questions, now it is Joel who tries to cheer her up by starting a conversation and trying to make her laugh.
Joel and Ellie go up several floors of a building under construction and there they meet the most anticipated video game character for the entire community of fans: THE GIRAFFE. A herd of giraffes has taken over the area, full of vegetation, and our protagonists have a scene very similar to when in ‘ Jurassic Park ‘ Dr. Alan Grant and the children feed a Brachiosaurus. According to the company behind the game, Naughty Dog, the animal is a symbol of hope amidst all the chaos and despair and seems to bring joy to the young survivor.
Joel Gets Serious with Ellie and Opens His Heart
However, Joel is worried, so he lets his partner know. Pascal’s character argues that they don’t have to keep looking for the Fireflies, why don’t they just go on their way and live their life in Tommy’s community without worry or unnecessary risk? “After everything we’ve been through,” Ellie replies, ” everything we’ve done hasn’t been in vain. I know you want the best for me. I know you want to protect me, and you have. And when we’re done, we’ll go to wherever you want. To Tommy’s, to a sheep farm, to the moon… I’ll follow you wherever you go. But we can’t stop halfway through this. Let’s finish what we started”.
And this isn’t the only momentous talk of a chapter in which Joel has just opened up completely to Ellie. A few seconds after confirming the young woman’s determination, the survivor confesses to Ellie that he tried to commit suicide at the beginning of the pandemic, desperate for the death of her daughter Sarah. And he does it so that she is aware that it is the reason that has given her back the desire to fight and survive. ” I guess time heals all wounds,” she says. “No, it wasn’t time that cured them,” he replies. After almost breaking down in tears, Joel proposes to take out Ellie’s joke book, and, distracted, they do not see how the Fireflies ambush them, knocking them unconscious.
The Hospital of the Fireflies
Joel wakes up in the hospital, unarmed and dazed, asking for Ellie. Marlene, the leader of the rebel group, informs him that she is fine and ready for surgery. What surgery? The one that will extract the cordyceps fungus from her brain to analyze it and try to find a cure that saves the planet. Joel immediately understands that Ellie will not make it out of the operating room alive and, although that sacrifice means the salvation of the future of all humanity, he does not agree. Two men take Joel away, pointing their guns at him, with the intention that he will leave Ellie behind. But of course, that can’t be. Joel scrambles and manages to get away from the paramilitaries, finishing them off in cold blood with a point-blank shot. And here begins a sequence in which Pedro Pascal stops being Joel to become John Wick, facing dozens of Fireflies and killing them one by one, without regard and without mercy, it doesn’t matter if they are shooting him or if they are bleeding to death in the process unarmed ground.
The spiral of violence and blood is such that Joel has no qualms about murdering with apparent serenity even the doctors who are about to operate on Ellie in the operating room. Joel takes a sedated Ellie in his arms and prepares to flee by stealing a car from the Hospital garage, but Marlene is waiting there as a last option to convince him that he has to do “the right thing”. “You can’t protect her forever. How long do you think she’ll survive the attacks of the infected or the raiders when you’re gone? Because she’ll live in a broken world that you could save,” she exclaims. “Maybe, but it’s not you who should decide,” he replies. ” We’re going to let her decide,” Marlene tries to settle. “Because I’m sure she would choose to do the right thing. And you know it. Yes, Joel knows. But he doesn’t want to accept it. That’s why he shoots Marlene, executes her while she pleads for mercy so she doesn’t go after them, and flees with Ellie.
The Final Conversation
Ellie wakes up in the car confused and asks what happened. Joel explains (lying) that they had to escape from the hospital because there was an attack, but that it’s okay because the Fireflies had more people immune to the fungus and that, anyway, they had stopped looking for a cure because they couldn’t find a solution. Finally, the surviving couple reaches Tommy’s community but, before entering, Ellie confesses to Joel that the first person she killed was Riley, her best friend (The Last of Us Episode 7) and that she is tired of all the deaths around her: Tess, Sam, Henry… Joel replies ” I know that sometimes things don’t work out as you would like and that you find yourself lost, not knowing what to do… But if you push ahead, you’ll find something new to fight for”.
“Swear to me,” Ellie interrupts. ” Swear to me that everything you’ve told me about the Fireflies is true“.
“I swear,” Joel replies.
Ellie makes a “hmmmm I don’t quite believe it” face, but responds, “Ok.”
Without getting into what happens in the video game and only taking the series as a reference, the end of part 1 of The Last of Us is quite intense, not in the action but in the plot and relationship between Joel and Ellie. The first has finally managed to forget the trauma of losing his daughter years ago, has made peace with it, and has found in Ellie a new person to care for, love, and who somehow replaces his daughter Sarah. On the contrary, the girl is not the same, and the deaths that have left her way have changed Ellie forever. About everything that happens in the episode and the lie that Joel tells her, in order not to reveal to her that he killed everyone because they were going to perform a surgery that would end her life to find a cure; he tricks her into that there is no way to save the world and everyone including Marlene died.
This was a hard blow for Ellie who was convinced that her path would lead her to save the world for her immunity, and now she finds herself in a context in which she has no goal to achieve. The lie that Joel tells him, on the one hand, it is selfish but also because he does not want to lose a girl he loves again; It will surely cause problems between the two of them for the second season. Joel and Ellie’s relationship, so far, the strongest we’ve seen in the development of the series, could be in doubt if she finds out. For now, there is no major news of the second season with the exception that production and recordings would soon begin. Still, fans will have to wait until 2024 or even 2025 to see the new chapters.
