The worst of us

Is TLOU’s Joel a survivor or a sociopath?

What stings most is the deception. At the end of The Last Of Us she begs for the truth, asking him to swear that what he said to her that night – the night – was true. He hesitates briefly, rocking his weight from one foot to the other, but looks her straight in the eye as the lie rolls smoothly off his tongue: “I swear.”

We’re not used to playing as men like Joel. While videogames are stuffed with flawed protagonists, Joel’s dubious morality and shocking propensity for violence make him even more flawed than most. It’s not that he doesn’t know wrong from right; he just no longer cares whether his actions count as the latter. Joel watched as those he loved most died, some succumbing to the very disease he’s been indirectly tasked to cure, others by the new world order now in place as a result of it. Grief has overwhelmed his humanity like a cancer replacing the soft, warm parts of him. All that’s left now is this hard, cold shell.

Playing the game, most of us expect him to come good at the end, to save the day just like fiction has taught us to expect. He doesn’t, though. Joel’s final, unflinching choice is the most self-serving of them all, but it’s not even up for debate. This is no RPG; Joel makes the decisions, even if what we want and what he wants are no longer aligned. That’s why the final, crucial lie is worse than all the actions that got him there: we thought he was changing. We thought he was becoming the hero we needed him to be. Belatedly, we realise he’s too damaged by everything that’s gone before and his pain is too great… and we strongly suspect that his smooth lie will come back to haunt him.