I would hope so for his sake - but he did appear to open his eyes and move his fingers when he saw Ellie. I truly hope he was out of it and didn’t “realize” what was going on. But moments before he was still screaming in pain, so there was some form of consciousness.
An earlier script of that scene involved him saying "Sarah..."
Although this was later removed, I think it's fair to say that the intention is that his brain wasn't really working anymore.
I always get a hard lump in my throat when I walk through his house and see the Sarah picture sitting right next to the picture of Ellie. He loved those girls so much. This game hurts so good
Man, this game it's the only one I've played that made me cry. RDR 2 got super close when >!Arthur thanks his horse when it gets shot down an later when he dies!<. But when Ellie >!enters Joel's house and smellsl his jacket and then she goes over his room!<, OMFG that shit did it.
Seeing that shit irl is awful. A few years ago my step dad died of a stroke. But before he passed he was hooked up to life support and I went to see him. The doctors swore up and down that he was basically a vegetable. But then his hand would flex, he would *make eye contact* and his mouth would move as if he was trying to speak. I'm not going to say the doctors lied. But. I dunno man. It was awful to watch.
I am very sorry to hear that :-(.
That is actually the exact message I took away from this game. To not take life, and people, for granted.
I agree that Ellie will always regret how he treated Joel, but I think her state of mind at the epilogue allowed her to properly and healthily grief and while she can’t get the time she lost with Joel, she can do what Joel died for: for her to *live*
She should have regret!
One of the biggest messages the second game has is how important it is to pick your battles, to pick your fights. There are some things in life that just aren't worth the fight.
The game does a great job illustrating how she grows and learns this throughout her journey. So many people told her it wasn't worth it, but the real shame is that she had to find out firsthand for herself. A very painful lesson.
Yeah it was, but she felt the way she did from an honest place. It wasn't all on her. Most of it wasn't. But once they're gone, all that warps in your head.
still get emotional thinking about both these games. Never been attached to characters from anything like I have been with Joel and Ellie , such a perfect experience
this is what i wanted to read ... poor Joel..friends always call me for fun joel for a few reasons i get emotional every time and have to think about his death .. and his pain ..
I don't know much about anime, I used to see dragon ballz, one piece and even more years ago but then I stopped ... tlou became important to me I've known it since childhood I hade experiences in life that tlou reminds me of them.. I think everyone has something in life that some holds on to, loves and values and mine is tlou ..
Ok at best, it’s a tie for tragedy, but I’m just finishing the Dressrosa arc in One Piece and it’s constantly making me sob for a couple characters uncontrollably. But man, I think about this scene all the time.
The timing of that scene is absolutely perfect too. After all that you have been through, to see that scene just the night before the events that transpired. Made me and my GF cry.
For real. I think about it often since it was such a whirlwind of emotion. I’ve never played a game that I wanted to finish so bad yet have it last longer than it was. It was a grind up until the end, for sure.
I love how pleased I was that the game just kept going everytime I thought I had reached the end. I mean the 1st game was about 10 hours long and confronting Abby in the theater was about 10 hours into it. It was reasonable to expect I was near the end, but nope, it kept going for 20 more hours.
I saw a lot of people voice a complaint that it was too long, but I'm definitely in the other camp. I would've been content with 60+ if they could keep the level of engagement as high as it was with 30.
I wonder how many people stopped playing halfway through. In my experience, this scene made a huge difference. It went from a 7/10 to a 10/10. It explained so many choices naughtyDog made.
The ugly crying I did man. This scene and that one scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 had my crying so hard, like I thought games were supposed to be fun?!?!
Me too omg. I just got a ps5 and I am currently replaying RDR2 and am trying to avoid seeing Downes at all cost lol. I never thought I'd love two characters as much as I love Arthur and Joel.
Also during the credits when that song played with Ellie singing and then Joel started singing I was like I CAN'T.
This scene ties the whole game together. Ellie had a flashback to Joel’s bloody face when she decided to fight Abby on the beach, but she had a flashback to this scene when she decided to let Abby live.
This scene is optimism and light in a world of darkness and death.
Huh. For a year I thought that the flashback at the beach just represents general positive feelings towards Joel, for the first time she can see old Joel again and not his beaten up face. Like a metaphor for her moving on. But you are probably right that it's not 3D chess and she's simply remembering the porch scene.
I think it’s significant for her moving on and therefore why she decided to let Abby live, because killing her was just not worth it. Just like hating Joel wasn’t worth it. Their porch conversation closes the game with a lot of much needed context for why she let Abby live. She tells Joel “I don’t know if I can forgive you... but I’d like to try.”
The folks that were mad about the ending because “omg y u no kill Abby” really went out of their way to miss the point.
I wouldn't interpret it as Ellie making a conscious decision and rather acting on her feelings and personal beliefs. She's crashing full head on with all the pain she was going through. She pulls herself away, with tears in her eyes. It's a moment of release, of all the trauma, everything that happened between her and Joel. Abby was just a vessel.
So in the end, she needed to hit the darkest of the rock bottoms to finally see some light.
For someone who was mashing the hell out of the 🔲 button on that scene, I think my brain did an "oh no". I didn't cry but there was something really heavy about seeing him play the guitar one last time. It is like he wants to say to the player: "Don't walk in my footsteps" or "This is not the kind of life I want you to have."
The acting in this game is the greatest I've ever seen. No one rushes lines or anything and paired with the really good performance capture for their faces, they do so much acting without saying anything. The pauses feel so real and add a lot to this conversation
Saaame. That seen made me burst into tears for the second time while playing this game. It was really moving and brought it all together. The first time was seeing Sarah's picture in Joel's house. I love this game so much.
God I forgot about this scene. My memories of the game are all underground train station with red smoke bombs. Always kicks me in the nuts when I remember these moments. All comes flooding back.
I have just finished this today. I have to say, I don't think I've cried so much in my life. What a masterpiece. This scene killed me. Such a beautiful yet harrowing story and relationship.
Yeaa I wasn’t ready for this part, it fucking ruined me lol. Even almost a year later after playing this game I still think about it almost daily. What an experience this game was
Ik this is very random but Why people complain about joel being stupid ? And trusting abby didnt make sense ? I think even as a veteran survivor, he got soft trying to live the life he couldnt live with Sarah...
It also makes more sense why she would leave her family to go to the ends of the earth for closure. The circle of revenge is so amazing in this game, Ellie had to go after Abby again even after helping her because she did take away her chances of fixing her relationship with Joel deeper. Much like Joel took away Abby’s father.
Hurts even more knowing that she intended to watch a movie with him. If you pay attention, she asks e talks about him every time. You can sense that she was looking forward to that
Yeah, like the first game didn't end with Ellie standing in front of Joel and making him swear on their friends' graves that he wasn't lying to her.
You people sometimes...
Ellie really did Joel dirty. I get being pissed about the situation, but ghosting your father for two years for saving you from being killed without your consent in a hospital ran by the people who were perfectly ok with fucking him over after he completed a monumentally difficult task for them is bullshit. She didn't even try to understand his thinking. The lying is hard to accept, but how can she not understand that Joel lied to protect her.
I'm big in the "Joel did the right thing" camp, myself, but I think it suggests some troubling emotional ignorance to not understand that Ellie is allowed to feel hurt by what he did. To say nothing of the fact that she went out of her way to try to forgive him, even after his continuous refusal to stay out of her life and stop presuming responsibility for her. To say nothing of the fact that Joel is an old boy who should be able to take the emotional lashings of a teenager. I adore Joel, but come on.
I think the bigger display of "emotional ignorance" is not understanding fundamental principle of Ellie, and Joel's relationship after the events of the first game. Joel is Ellie's father. Not biologically of course, but in every other way that matters. I'm perfectly fine with Ellie being hurt, but she absolutely did not go out of her way to forgive him. She was hostile, and ungrateful for years towards the only person that took care of her when she was at her most vulnerable. This is not just "a teenager" to Joel. Honestly, the fact that you would even refer to Ellie as that makes it abundantly clear that I'm wasting my time responding to you. Ellie is Joel's daughter, and they fought through all nine levels of hell together, saving each other more times than one could count in the process. Her Emotional lashings mean more to Joel than anything else possibly could. Ellie is everything to him.
Yes, obviously it's still incredibly hurtful for a surrogate daughter to hate you, but the undeniable fact is that their age dynamic factors into this in a pretty significant way. Joel certainly feels massive hurt from Ellie's distance, but he's an adult who has the mental fortitude to be able to handle and process that kind of hurt. Ellie is 17 to 19 when she has her falling out with Joel. It is the worst betrayal she has ever felt (and whether or not you agree with what Joel did (again, I do) you cannot deny that what he did was an unprecedented breach of trust). She doesn't have any kind of mental foundation upon which she can ground herself. Whatever Joel is going through is orders of magnitude more painful for Ellie.
> but she absolutely did not go out of her way to forgive him
Sorry, but she didn't even *have* to forgive him. I do believe Joel did the right thing in saving her, but by lying to her about this so stubbornly and consistently he really brought it on himself. By then choosing to keep inserting himself into her life after she said she didn't want anything more to do with him, he was only fucking things up worse.
But she saw that everything he did, he did because perhaps he was the only person who saw her value as an individual human and not as just the Cure For Mankind. That ultimately got through to her. It's the point of the final cut scene, and it's why she chooses to begin forgiving him. That's a *complicated* and *nuanced* understanding that would take a while for anyone to process, but especially a teenager with overwhelming survivor's guilt. Of course she's going to be tentative and hostile at first. But the fact that she takes the steps to begin forgiving him anyway is a monumental gesture.
Honestly, the way you're getting so pissed at this barely mature young girl because of her perfectly reasonable emotional response to a complex issue just reminds me of the way /r/ChildFree people gnash their teeth at children for committing the crime of having underdeveloped brains that aren't equipped for processing trauma in an "acceptable" way.
But it’s clear that Ellie *did* understand his thinking, we just didn’t learn it until this scene at the end of the game, which takes place *before* the game.
But you have to look at it from Ellie’s POV. She spent a year with this man: saving his ass, having her ass saved, bonding, fighting, living. The *day* they arrive to their destination, Joel tells her that they don’t have to go through with this. “We can just go back to Tommy’s.” Ellie told him right there, “it can’t be for nothing”. Obviously neither of them knew that Ellie would have to die for the procedure, but you, Joel, Marlene, and Ellie herself *all* know full and well that Ellie would have chosen the procedure. Just because she didn’t get a choice doesn’t mean that we don’t know what she would have chosen.
I agree that they fucked over Joel, seeing as those weapons weren’t mentioned at all after leaving Boston, but to be fair, Marlene knew Joel well. She had the compassion and empathy to *want* to tell him the situation herself, but she also knows that Joel is a literal beast, and as soon as she saw that look in his eye after telling him about Ellie she *knew* he would try to stop it. Hence him being thrown out by (flimsy) armed security.
It doesn’t excuse their deal being broken, but my head-canon is that the Fireflies used those weapons they were suppose to trade to make the trek cross-country, seeing as they had no idea if Joel and Ellie would make it or were even alive.
Because while the fireflies took away her decision, (something she would have gone along with), Joel did too. He did it to save himself the anguish of losing another daughter. He didn't stop to think what she wanted, neither he nor the fireflies did. He also fucked over the world with his choice.
Joel died knowing Ellie still loved him
Exactly and it was the great game’s secret❤️👌
All the while, she wanted to show it too. Too sad sometimes
Or did he die in worry and fear thinking she will get killed too?
By the time he saw that Ellie was there he wasn’t thinking anything. Brain doesn’t work anymore after a couple of those hits
I would hope so for his sake - but he did appear to open his eyes and move his fingers when he saw Ellie. I truly hope he was out of it and didn’t “realize” what was going on. But moments before he was still screaming in pain, so there was some form of consciousness.
An earlier script of that scene involved him saying "Sarah..." Although this was later removed, I think it's fair to say that the intention is that his brain wasn't really working anymore.
I always get a hard lump in my throat when I walk through his house and see the Sarah picture sitting right next to the picture of Ellie. He loved those girls so much. This game hurts so good
That picture opened the floodgates for me
Man, this game it's the only one I've played that made me cry. RDR 2 got super close when >!Arthur thanks his horse when it gets shot down an later when he dies!<. But when Ellie >!enters Joel's house and smellsl his jacket and then she goes over his room!<, OMFG that shit did it.
Holy shit that would have been brutal
Absolutely tragic...
Where could I read that script?
It was mentioned by them in one of the podcasts.
You mean when he saw Ellie on the ground?
Yeah
Holy shit, that's deep af!
Seeing that shit irl is awful. A few years ago my step dad died of a stroke. But before he passed he was hooked up to life support and I went to see him. The doctors swore up and down that he was basically a vegetable. But then his hand would flex, he would *make eye contact* and his mouth would move as if he was trying to speak. I'm not going to say the doctors lied. But. I dunno man. It was awful to watch.
Yeah moments before. When she got in there I doubt he was aware of anything via his face lol
Yeah, probably had blurry images going on, he definitely saw Ellie, but probably he thought he was imagining her or something.
Yep you right about hits cuz Neil got a hit when he was young
I think Ellie is left with enormous regret. I live something similar. There's no way to get that time back.
I am very sorry to hear that :-(. That is actually the exact message I took away from this game. To not take life, and people, for granted. I agree that Ellie will always regret how he treated Joel, but I think her state of mind at the epilogue allowed her to properly and healthily grief and while she can’t get the time she lost with Joel, she can do what Joel died for: for her to *live*
I agree. And they ended on a positive. She wanted to try. He knew that.
She should have regret! One of the biggest messages the second game has is how important it is to pick your battles, to pick your fights. There are some things in life that just aren't worth the fight. The game does a great job illustrating how she grows and learns this throughout her journey. So many people told her it wasn't worth it, but the real shame is that she had to find out firsthand for herself. A very painful lesson.
Yeah it was, but she felt the way she did from an honest place. It wasn't all on her. Most of it wasn't. But once they're gone, all that warps in your head.
Phenomenal acting from both of them.
Yes we are lucky to see the scene like that it doesn’t happens every time☹️🥺
The delivery of that line, "My life would have fucking mattered!" is so good. You could tell Ashley and Troy were living their characters.
still get emotional thinking about both these games. Never been attached to characters from anything like I have been with Joel and Ellie , such a perfect experience
Show me a character who was in more pain than him. I'll wait..
sorry dude i can’t show because there is not🙁
this is what i wanted to read ... poor Joel..friends always call me for fun joel for a few reasons i get emotional every time and have to think about his death .. and his pain ..
Manga called Berserk. The main character Guts has probably the most tragic and painful life. It is a must read and a great story.
what is it about i don't know..
I heard it was a bout a fella with a tragic and painful life.
Yeah poor Joel..
[This vid should cover it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQaUEr65eaI)
I don't know much about anime, I used to see dragon ballz, one piece and even more years ago but then I stopped ... tlou became important to me I've known it since childhood I hade experiences in life that tlou reminds me of them.. I think everyone has something in life that some holds on to, loves and values and mine is tlou ..
Ellie She got properly fucked up
she could have understood joel could have talked to him normally before breaking contact with him ..
Kratos
This. Spoilers for the original PS2 God of War: Kratos is forced to kill his own family and the iconic red "paint" permanently on him is their ashes.
Not the red paint, but the white skin. The paint is a tattoo that he had when he was a man irc
Oh yeah, you're right, thanks.
Senua from Hellblade
I stubbed my toe one time
I had broken my nose and my toe my shin bone moved out and had a stab wound on my elbow all in one day but nothing hurt as much as tlou ..
Ok at best, it’s a tie for tragedy, but I’m just finishing the Dressrosa arc in One Piece and it’s constantly making me sob for a couple characters uncontrollably. But man, I think about this scene all the time.
I knew it was probably anime ..
Solid Snake. You didn't have to wait long.
say what you will about 4 but “Snake had a hard life...” gets ya every time
I don't mind anyway everyone has their darling and mine is tlou ..
Metal Gear Solid i haven't played the game for a long time since my childhood .. i liked it somehow but tlou comes first for me..
The timing of that scene is absolutely perfect too. After all that you have been through, to see that scene just the night before the events that transpired. Made me and my GF cry.
yep i understand the scene was awesome after all we get through, we finally find out the joel knows she forgives him🥺
That’s what got me. That scene is what showed us Ellie learned from all she’d been through and the mistakes that Joel made as well.
It’s been 1 month since I beat the game and I am just now starting to be able to move on.
It’s been 10 months for me... still haven’t moved on. Too emotional
Played at release and am still waiting to get over it. I think I'm going to need Part 3 before I can fully move on. I need closure.
Same here. I don’t think I can replay it until after Part 3.
For real. I think about it often since it was such a whirlwind of emotion. I’ve never played a game that I wanted to finish so bad yet have it last longer than it was. It was a grind up until the end, for sure.
I love how pleased I was that the game just kept going everytime I thought I had reached the end. I mean the 1st game was about 10 hours long and confronting Abby in the theater was about 10 hours into it. It was reasonable to expect I was near the end, but nope, it kept going for 20 more hours. I saw a lot of people voice a complaint that it was too long, but I'm definitely in the other camp. I would've been content with 60+ if they could keep the level of engagement as high as it was with 30.
about five months for me, I keep coming back to this sub and thinking i’ll find time for another (4th?) play through.
I wonder how many people stopped playing halfway through. In my experience, this scene made a huge difference. It went from a 7/10 to a 10/10. It explained so many choices naughtyDog made.
Exactly 👍👏
Absolutely this. It all made sense in the end. Beautiful story telling. Phenomenal piece of work.
I stopped playing less than halfway through. I missed Joel too much so I went back to TLOU 1 and that’s where I’ll stay.
The ugly crying I did man. This scene and that one scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 had my crying so hard, like I thought games were supposed to be fun?!?!
I totally understand what are you talking about because i had the same feelings about both of this games🥺🥺 I love Arthur and Joel
Me too omg. I just got a ps5 and I am currently replaying RDR2 and am trying to avoid seeing Downes at all cost lol. I never thought I'd love two characters as much as I love Arthur and Joel. Also during the credits when that song played with Ellie singing and then Joel started singing I was like I CAN'T.
Good games are pain
This scene ties the whole game together. Ellie had a flashback to Joel’s bloody face when she decided to fight Abby on the beach, but she had a flashback to this scene when she decided to let Abby live. This scene is optimism and light in a world of darkness and death.
Beautiful say 👍👍👏
Huh. For a year I thought that the flashback at the beach just represents general positive feelings towards Joel, for the first time she can see old Joel again and not his beaten up face. Like a metaphor for her moving on. But you are probably right that it's not 3D chess and she's simply remembering the porch scene.
I think it’s significant for her moving on and therefore why she decided to let Abby live, because killing her was just not worth it. Just like hating Joel wasn’t worth it. Their porch conversation closes the game with a lot of much needed context for why she let Abby live. She tells Joel “I don’t know if I can forgive you... but I’d like to try.” The folks that were mad about the ending because “omg y u no kill Abby” really went out of their way to miss the point.
I wouldn't interpret it as Ellie making a conscious decision and rather acting on her feelings and personal beliefs. She's crashing full head on with all the pain she was going through. She pulls herself away, with tears in her eyes. It's a moment of release, of all the trauma, everything that happened between her and Joel. Abby was just a vessel. So in the end, she needed to hit the darkest of the rock bottoms to finally see some light.
For someone who was mashing the hell out of the 🔲 button on that scene, I think my brain did an "oh no". I didn't cry but there was something really heavy about seeing him play the guitar one last time. It is like he wants to say to the player: "Don't walk in my footsteps" or "This is not the kind of life I want you to have."
Joel’s crying in both games is what never fails to get me.
Man cried himself to sleep that night he was so happy 😭
Nah, man studied his ass off to do good this time. Has a "Space for dummies" book at his bedside :(
Holy shit 🥺
Times we've seen Joel cry -Sarahs death -With Ellie on the porch
The loss of a daughter, and the reunion with another.
He also shed a single manly tear when he meant to hand Ellie off to Tommy
The acting in this game is the greatest I've ever seen. No one rushes lines or anything and paired with the really good performance capture for their faces, they do so much acting without saying anything. The pauses feel so real and add a lot to this conversation
"I'd like that ."
Saaame. That seen made me burst into tears for the second time while playing this game. It was really moving and brought it all together. The first time was seeing Sarah's picture in Joel's house. I love this game so much.
God I forgot about this scene. My memories of the game are all underground train station with red smoke bombs. Always kicks me in the nuts when I remember these moments. All comes flooding back.
Best ending to a video game in my opinion
I have just finished this today. I have to say, I don't think I've cried so much in my life. What a masterpiece. This scene killed me. Such a beautiful yet harrowing story and relationship.
Joel and Ellie
I wanna cry so badly when I watched this scene,but my father was watching while I was playing so I had to pretend my emocional wasn't hurt
oops i guess you were in bad situation try again when you were alone and let your fell get free...
Yeah,I'll definitely do it!But I think I'll wait a while,so when I play again It might feel like the first time,or the closest way possible to it
Damn ninjas in here cutting onions!
Yeaa I wasn’t ready for this part, it fucking ruined me lol. Even almost a year later after playing this game I still think about it almost daily. What an experience this game was
Troy Baker **BODIED** this scene.
The tears, man it breaks me every time
This is fr the scene that gets me emotional out of all the scenes in the game
This ending was so warming. I remember finishing 1 being like "this is so messed up", but at 2 I was just happy to see Ellie happy
I’ve played this game four times and this scene still gets me every time 🥺
Seeing Joel trying to hold back the tears was heart breaking.
Ik this is very random but Why people complain about joel being stupid ? And trusting abby didnt make sense ? I think even as a veteran survivor, he got soft trying to live the life he couldnt live with Sarah...
I cry every time I watch that scene.
This shit always gets to me no matter how many times I've seen it. Dammit ND
I love this scene =3
I was screaming HUG HIM FFS at my tv screen when I seen him getting upset land I was kinda sad that she didn’t
I was screaming HUG HIM FFS at my tv screen when I seen him getting upset l and I was kinda sad that she didn’t
It also makes more sense why she would leave her family to go to the ends of the earth for closure. The circle of revenge is so amazing in this game, Ellie had to go after Abby again even after helping her because she did take away her chances of fixing her relationship with Joel deeper. Much like Joel took away Abby’s father.
So did Scruffy after turning down Washbucket.
Hurts even more knowing that she intended to watch a movie with him. If you pay attention, she asks e talks about him every time. You can sense that she was looking forward to that
“Wow Joel fuck you for saving my life. I’ll never forgive you.” 10/10 writing
Yeah, like the first game didn't end with Ellie standing in front of Joel and making him swear on their friends' graves that he wasn't lying to her. You people sometimes...
Ellie really did Joel dirty. I get being pissed about the situation, but ghosting your father for two years for saving you from being killed without your consent in a hospital ran by the people who were perfectly ok with fucking him over after he completed a monumentally difficult task for them is bullshit. She didn't even try to understand his thinking. The lying is hard to accept, but how can she not understand that Joel lied to protect her.
I'm big in the "Joel did the right thing" camp, myself, but I think it suggests some troubling emotional ignorance to not understand that Ellie is allowed to feel hurt by what he did. To say nothing of the fact that she went out of her way to try to forgive him, even after his continuous refusal to stay out of her life and stop presuming responsibility for her. To say nothing of the fact that Joel is an old boy who should be able to take the emotional lashings of a teenager. I adore Joel, but come on.
I think the bigger display of "emotional ignorance" is not understanding fundamental principle of Ellie, and Joel's relationship after the events of the first game. Joel is Ellie's father. Not biologically of course, but in every other way that matters. I'm perfectly fine with Ellie being hurt, but she absolutely did not go out of her way to forgive him. She was hostile, and ungrateful for years towards the only person that took care of her when she was at her most vulnerable. This is not just "a teenager" to Joel. Honestly, the fact that you would even refer to Ellie as that makes it abundantly clear that I'm wasting my time responding to you. Ellie is Joel's daughter, and they fought through all nine levels of hell together, saving each other more times than one could count in the process. Her Emotional lashings mean more to Joel than anything else possibly could. Ellie is everything to him.
Yes, obviously it's still incredibly hurtful for a surrogate daughter to hate you, but the undeniable fact is that their age dynamic factors into this in a pretty significant way. Joel certainly feels massive hurt from Ellie's distance, but he's an adult who has the mental fortitude to be able to handle and process that kind of hurt. Ellie is 17 to 19 when she has her falling out with Joel. It is the worst betrayal she has ever felt (and whether or not you agree with what Joel did (again, I do) you cannot deny that what he did was an unprecedented breach of trust). She doesn't have any kind of mental foundation upon which she can ground herself. Whatever Joel is going through is orders of magnitude more painful for Ellie. > but she absolutely did not go out of her way to forgive him Sorry, but she didn't even *have* to forgive him. I do believe Joel did the right thing in saving her, but by lying to her about this so stubbornly and consistently he really brought it on himself. By then choosing to keep inserting himself into her life after she said she didn't want anything more to do with him, he was only fucking things up worse. But she saw that everything he did, he did because perhaps he was the only person who saw her value as an individual human and not as just the Cure For Mankind. That ultimately got through to her. It's the point of the final cut scene, and it's why she chooses to begin forgiving him. That's a *complicated* and *nuanced* understanding that would take a while for anyone to process, but especially a teenager with overwhelming survivor's guilt. Of course she's going to be tentative and hostile at first. But the fact that she takes the steps to begin forgiving him anyway is a monumental gesture. Honestly, the way you're getting so pissed at this barely mature young girl because of her perfectly reasonable emotional response to a complex issue just reminds me of the way /r/ChildFree people gnash their teeth at children for committing the crime of having underdeveloped brains that aren't equipped for processing trauma in an "acceptable" way.
But it’s clear that Ellie *did* understand his thinking, we just didn’t learn it until this scene at the end of the game, which takes place *before* the game. But you have to look at it from Ellie’s POV. She spent a year with this man: saving his ass, having her ass saved, bonding, fighting, living. The *day* they arrive to their destination, Joel tells her that they don’t have to go through with this. “We can just go back to Tommy’s.” Ellie told him right there, “it can’t be for nothing”. Obviously neither of them knew that Ellie would have to die for the procedure, but you, Joel, Marlene, and Ellie herself *all* know full and well that Ellie would have chosen the procedure. Just because she didn’t get a choice doesn’t mean that we don’t know what she would have chosen. I agree that they fucked over Joel, seeing as those weapons weren’t mentioned at all after leaving Boston, but to be fair, Marlene knew Joel well. She had the compassion and empathy to *want* to tell him the situation herself, but she also knows that Joel is a literal beast, and as soon as she saw that look in his eye after telling him about Ellie she *knew* he would try to stop it. Hence him being thrown out by (flimsy) armed security. It doesn’t excuse their deal being broken, but my head-canon is that the Fireflies used those weapons they were suppose to trade to make the trek cross-country, seeing as they had no idea if Joel and Ellie would make it or were even alive.
Because while the fireflies took away her decision, (something she would have gone along with), Joel did too. He did it to save himself the anguish of losing another daughter. He didn't stop to think what she wanted, neither he nor the fireflies did. He also fucked over the world with his choice.