What Joel Did

Now, let’s talk about what Joel did at the Firefly base. Once Marlene, the leader of the group and the one who tasked him with bringing Ellie to the base, informs Joel that Ellie needs to die in order to produce a cure for the virus, she orders her men to escort Joel out of the building and to kill him if he tries to fight. They begin to lead him out of the hospital base until he’s suddenly able to get the upper hand and steal their guns. And what happens next is exactly what he lies to Ellie about: he goes on a rampage throughout the hospital, killing everyone in his path to the operating room where Ellie is being prepped for surgery. He enters the room, kills every doctor in there (canonically speaking), and heads to the parking lot to take the car that Ellie found herself in when she awoke. However, not before Marlene confronts Joel, gun raised and willing to use it if she needs to. She instead tries to plead with Joel, however, and begs him to reconsider. He feigns sympathy and shoots Marlene in the head, killing her instantly.

Understanding Joel 

Now, let’s talk about why Joel did what he did. Throughout the course of the game and the TV show, for that matter, Joel and Ellie become dependent on each other—for strength, stability, and, eventually, love. Their initial relationship as nothing more than simply cargo and carrier transforms into something neither of them can really express or understand but that they can acknowledge exists. So, with that being the case, Joel eventually does find a way to express his love for Ellie, but in perhaps the darkest way possible that someone can express their love for someone else. But, at the end of the day, can you really blame him?

Joel lost his daughter to a senseless, hopeless violence that came about as a result of, for all intents and purposes, the “end of the world”. Consequently, he lived his life without any purpose; unable to kill himself, as the TV series revealed, and unable to cope with the loss of his daughter, he lived in a constant state of flux, unable to see what the point of living was yet unable to end it all due to his inability to just pull the trigger. Until, of course, he found Ellie. Of course, any logical person would be able to see that, at the end of the day, Ellie isn’t his daughter and that Joel had no right to make a decision for her that she wasn’t able to consent to. However, what has to be acknowledged is that Joel doesn’t care about that. To him, Ellie is his daughter, and God help anyone who tries to take her away from him. You have to realize that this is a broken man who’s already lost a daughter before and isn’t willing to lose another one—blood or not. His massacre of the Fireflies exemplifies the dark side of his love for her—the part that brings out the inherent murderer in him who will stop at nothing to protect her from any and all forms of harm. And while you can agree or disagree with his actions that day at the hospital—in fact, that’s exactly what the creators of the game and the TV show, for that matter, want you to figure out for yourself—what you cannot disagree with is that Joel loves Ellie and that, in his shoes, any parent would’ve done exactly what he did.

So, while his actions may exist in a gray area that may never truly be able to be colored in with a definite right or wrong answer, what cannot be argued with is that love will make you do crazy things in life, and that Joel is a prime example of that.