The Last of Us Part II Is About Something Worse Than Revenge
The greatest lie in the history of the United States and Latin America is that the struggle for independence represented a shift away from colonialism. On the contrary, the creation of new independent liberal nations such the US and Argentina actually led to an even greater slaughter of indigenous peoples in order to steal their land and give it to white settlers so they could exploit the land, which is ultimately the main goal of economic liberalism.
The British Empire actually restricted the expansion of settlements in the American continent, and so US independence was largely about these colonies setting themselves free to increase settlement expansion in order to increase economic development, which often involved genocide. And so the United States Declaration of Independence was a death sentence for the Indian nations that still controlled most of the territory in North America.
The Last of Us Part II introduces the player to a post-apocalyptic settlement that’s modeled after the many colonial settlements that littered the American frontier as the United States army advanced forward in their campaign of ethnic cleansing against Indian nations. This settlement is where Ellie and her family lives in relative peace, even though they have to constantly patrol the border in order to protect their own frontier from enemy incursions.
The game opens up with an act of revenge, but Ellie’s mission is not revenge, it’s an invasion of enemy territory in order to enact systematic extermination of a group of people that she deemed as not worth living. Her incursion doesn’t fully follow the pattern of an archetypical revenge story, instead it’s more reminiscent of a colonial commando raid in which a two-woman death squad has set themselves to slaughter as many enemies as they can.
In my mind, I thought, ‘Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people.’ — Neil Druckmann, The Evolution of Ellie
She is completely dominated by this feeling of extreme hatred towards an entire group of people who wronged her and her community. This is not mere revenge, but rather a drive to enforce a twisted version of justice and to enact biblical judgement and divine retribution on an entire group of people.
Ellie is an example of what kind of person would be raised in a community that exists in a state of endless war, paranoia of the outside world, and fear of the otherness that surrounds them. This is very much the case for colonial and “post-colonial” countries such as the United States of America. Countries where hatred, spite, and fear have been at the core of the culture itself for hundreds of years. Which is why it has been easy for the powers that be to push the society into self-destructive internal and external wars such as the Vietnam War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror.
It’s also good to remember that US army was not created in order to fight for independence. Washington’s Continental Army was disbanded after the American Revolutionary War ended. The current United States army was actually created in order to carry out the American Indian Wars, so it was a genocidal army from the very start.
However, that’s not the central theme in The Last of Us Part II either. The game is actually about something that’s beyond wars, conquest, revenge and emancipation.
It’s about the beach.
The beach in Death Stranding represents the end of the world, and it also represents a similar thing in The Last of Us Part II, but it’s a different type of ending. The first The Last of Us game was also about the end of the world, an end that was caused by human selfishness, and it wasn’t because of the actions of one man either. The first game shows over and over again how human society collapses in the middle of a crisis due to people’s refusal to cooperate with each other. Joel’s selfish actions at the end of that game are just a microcosmos of the entire crisis, as he chooses to save the people that are closest to him, rather than to hope it’s possible to save everyone else.
The Fireflies put all their hope in creating a vaccine in order to save humanity from the collapse. But humanity isn’t collapsing due to the lack of a vaccine, it’s due to people’s refusal to work with each other, it’s due to despotic governments and disorganized revolts that fail to bring people together. A vaccine shouldn’t be necessary to solve the crisis when proper organization and cooperation to fight the plague should be enough to deal with the crisis and ensure human survival.
The Fireflies are one of three emancipatory movements that are examined during the second half of The Last of Us Part II, with the other two being the Washington Liberation Front and the Seraphites. These three groups can be compared with many emancipatory and revolutionary movements that have existed through the history world. There is a lot of potential comparisons, including independence movements, civil rights groups, anti-colonial guerrillas, religious fundamentalists, and socialist revolutionaries.
In the second half we see all of these groups from the point of view of Abby, who unlike Ellie has a broader perspective and a more open mind. This is because unlike the protagonist she still has hopes in the future, she still believes in something, even if it’s the vain hope that the Fireflies still exist. Abby believes that the world can be saved, which is a more heroic perspective, but it’s also naive. Ultimately Abby’s hopeful perspective is wrong.
During Abby’s chapters we get to see how and why all these emancipatory movements have failed. The Fireflies collapsed after they failed to deliver the promise of curing the pandemic. The Washington Liberation Movement fails because of its militaristic culture and over-reliance on military victories rather than diplomacy. And the Seraphites fail because of religious fundamentalism, bigotry and paranoia.
At the end of the game Abby keeps desperately clinging for hope, desperately trying to find the remnants of the Fireflies, but she just finds more suffering.
Because there is nothing.
The end of the world that we see at the end of The Last of Us Part II is an end that’s caused by losing all hope in the future. Without hope, without ideals, without dreams, without anything. That’s the position that Ellie finds herself in at the end of the game’s story. But that’s not really a wrong position to take, although her attitude about it is not good. Because in the end there is nothing, all these are mere constructs created by humans to justify their behavior with some external idea, and to give meaning to their lives or something.
Such a external justification is necessary for anyone who wants to hold political or military power. All the empires and nations have at the root of their power a fundamental belief in one’s own absolute certainty. This moral absolutism can be rooted in religious dogma like we see with the Seraphites, revolutionary fervor like with the Washington Liberation Movement, or simply in the promise of a better future that the Fireflies promised.
Ellie doesn’t have any of this. In the past she had the hope of saving the world, but her father took that from her and then lied about what happened, and maybe the lie itself was worse as it led to her becoming even more resentful and alienated, creating a permanent trauma from which she cannot escape. She then tried to find meaning somewhere else, first in the community in Jackson, then in revenge against Abby, then in a family with Dina, and yet at the end she is still caged in the clutches of trauma and hatred, while desperately grasping at the memories of her dead father.
In the end she gives up on revenge, either because it’s all pointless, or because she realizes it will not take the pain away. Either way it doesn’t even matter.
Ellie doesn’t have any hope of creating a better world, and doesn’t have any hope for herself either. At the end she has completely lost all purpose and meaning in life. The last scene of the game shows her leaving her guitar behind, abandoning the last vestiges of her old hopes and dreams.
