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While I published my Chrono trigger clock, I wanted to hold one part of the discussion for a separate piece. While the game has been out for nearly a week now, I think it’s important to devote some resources to discussing the entire thing, including the ending, including the main issue that all detractors seem to have with the game.

Abby.

While everyone assumed that The Last of Us Part 2 would be the further adventures of Joel and Ellie, that isn’t what we got. And instead we spend half the game focused on Abby, a completely new character.

I am going to preface this entire article with a full spoiler warning. As in yes, I’m talking about that big thing that happens early on, but I’m also going to fully get into the ending. I think more people need to see the events of the game through Abby’s eyes and not be so blinded by their love for Joel and Ellie via TLOU1 that they don’t understand what Naughty Dog was doing here.

So yes, Abby kills Joel. It is awful. She does it cruelly, beating him for a long time before killing him in front of his surrogate daughter. She also does it shortly after he and Tommy have just saved her from a massive horde of infected.

Is this enough justification for Ellie to seek revenge? Sure, absolutely. And yet I want to go through both TLOU1 and TLOU2 from Abby’s perspective to try and prove the point that Abby, like her or not, suffered way more than Ellie ever did, and in the end, is probably a lot more morally justified, albeit there are no true heroes in this game.

We’ll start with The Last of Us 1.

The entire impetus for Abby hunting down Joel is that he killed her father. Not just that he killed her father, who appears to be a kind man who had to make a tough decision when Ellie showed up, but Joel butchered an entire hospital full of Fireflies, totally shattering Abby’s life. And by doing this to save a single girl, he may have also doomed the entire human race since Ellie is the only immune person anyone has ever seen or heard of, and Abby’s father is the only person left alive (that we know of) who could have potentially derived a cure from her. So yes, that alone certainly feels like enough reason to want to hunt down Joel.

Abby’s plan to find Joel does not involve storming Jackson and slaughtering anyone who gets in her way. At worst, she talks about intercepting a patrol and potentially roughing them up until they give up Joel. When Joel instead just falls into her lap, she does kill him, brutally, but she intervenes to spare the life of Tommy and Ellie, who despite being loose ends, she has no specific quarrel with. This obviously comes back to haunt her.

In the events of the rest of the game Abby is yes, kind of an a-hole. She has some friends, but is something of a controversial figure, and her complicated relationship with Mel and Owen does make her out to be kind of the bad guy in that trio, as she and Owen have sex while Mel is pregnant with his child and the two of them are together. Not great.

And yet it’s also not mass murder, either.

By the end of Ellie’s section of the game when we switch back over to Abby, Ellie has killed:

All of Abby’s friends, the former Fireflies that were there when Joel died.

Dozens, potentially hundreds of WLF members that for the most part, seem like fairly normal people who were veterans of the Seattle Civil War.

Abby’s ex Owen whom she clearly still loved, and Mel, who was pregnant.

Abby’s dog, Alice.

Again, at this point, Abby has killed nobody on Ellie’s side but Joel and did so for reasons that yes, could be considered pretty justified, given his murder of her father, all those Fireflies and the erasure of a potential cure.

So sure, by the time you reach the end of Abby’s section and you’re fighting Ellie as a “final boss,” it does make a lot of sense. Ellie is the clear villain from Abby’s perspective. Abby injures Tommy and kills Jesse in this conflict, but how many “Jesse’s” did Ellie (and Tommy) kill by this point? Probably 5-6 alone in Abby’s close friend group, and dozens more in the larger WLF.

And what does Abby do once she gets the upper hand?

She lets Ellie go. Again.

And what does Ellie do once Abby resurfaces, despite having an idyllic life with Dina and a new baby?

Goes to try to get revenge. Again.

Despite trying to redeem herself for her (pretty minimal) sins by saving Lev, Abby is once again cast into hell by the universe when she’s captured by the Rattler gang in California. By the time Ellie reaches her, Abby has been imprisoned, likely abused in every possible way, for months. She’s a shell of her former self, and yet Ellie still wants to fight her after already killing all her friends and being spared by Abby twice. All for Joel. Again, perhaps still justified from her perspective, but still feeling like a villain to Abby. This is why Ellie’s last-minute change of heart is her only redeeming moment and “makes sense” for the story. Her killing Abby in that moment instead of letting her go would have been the final nail in her coffin, and I’m glad she didn’t. But she returns home having lost her old, perfect life regardless because she simply couldn’t let what happened go.

Yes, Abby does some terrible things. But Ellie does much, much worse, shows far less mercy and causes much more collateral damage. I don’t think either are heroes, but I do not believe Abby deserves nearly the amount of hate that she’s getting as people play the game. No, she may not have the charisma of Ellie or Joel and may not be one of gaming’s all-time great characters, but she is the only thing saving this story from being a very dull, stock revenge tale, viewed entirely from Ellie’s side.

Keep this in mind as you finish the game, or if you decide to play it again. Abby deserves more consideration than she’s being given.

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