Warning: The following article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II and future seasons of the HBO live-action adaptation
If there was ever one character with little to no sense of self-preservation, it would be Joel Miller from The Last of Us series.
In the final moments of the first Last of Us game, and now the TV show finale, Joel went on a rampage and killed all the Fireflies in the hospital where they’d been preparing to extract the Cordyceps from Ellie’s brain and develop a cure from it. When he reached the surgery room, Joel asked the doctors there to release Ellie, but one of them resisted and even picked up a scalpel to stop Joel.
Now, a skilled fighter like Joel may have easily been able to disarm the doctor and knock him unconscious, but everyone’s favorite dad in the post-apocalypse was in no forgiving mood, so he just shot the man and intimidated the others into releasing Ellie.
That one person shouldn’t really make a difference out of the dozens Joel killed, but as The Last of Us Part II will tell you, this particular doctor was the father of a girl. A girl who’ll go on a quest for vengeance against Joel in the next chapter of this grimdark story.
Revisiting this moment in live-action is making a lot of fans panic because they know about all the tragedies to come because of it.
Now, whether you believe in determinism or not, we don’t think there was any way to go about it other than Joel killing the doctor as this very act serves as the linchpin that ties the entire The Last of Us Part II narrative together.
As they say, these violent delights have equally violent ends.