WARNING: This article mentions weaponry, drugs, and murder. Please do not read if you are easily triggered by such things.

This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Parts I & II and Uncharted.

If you ask any gamer whose played The Last of Us (or LOU for short), who their favourite character is, I can guarantee it’s Joel, the protagonist of LOU itself (if your favourite character is Ellie, then let’s just pretend for the five minutes you’re reading this that it’s actually Joel, and if your favourite character is Abby, well, then stop reading and get out of here. I am an avid Abby hater). This comes as no surprise since Joel Miller is very well a loveable character; a protective father-like figure for our leading girl Ellie, a sarcastic hermit who can bring a laugh to any gamers’ face, and an ambitious man who kicks ass and then takes names later. Our protagonists travel across the United States to deliver Ellie safely to the rebellious group of the Fireflies. A noble man, eh? I think not.

Even with our love for Joel, we can all agree that this man is far from noble. Perhaps even less of you will agree with me when I say that Joel Miller is absolute scum, the true antagonist of LOU for the following reasons: He is a smuggler, a cold-blooded killer, and is the villain who deprived the world of a cure for the infected.

To start off, Joel Miller is a smuggler, which means he illegally moves ammunition, supplies, and even people who lack certain identification, preventing them from getting into quarantine zones, to other places (Smugglers…). He does this with his close friend (maybe even lover?) Tess, which allows them to get by in this now infected-and-military run world. What are the repercussions of this in society? He definitely has been involved in the black-market, dealing with even more scummy guys like Robert (seen in the beginning of the game), who is known for dealing weapons. Joel takes his job a little TOO seriously, as he and Tess end up killing Robert for not providing the firearms he promised. This takes me right to my next point…

Joel is a cold-blooded killer. I feel like this is such an overlooked part in Naughty Dog games, where the protagonists shoot any person who stands in their way, whether the NPC is considered a henchman or is somehow connected to the villain, without any large feelings of guilt or care (I see this issue particularly in Nathan Drake from Uncharted, but that’s a whole other blog post for another time). Especially in the beginning of the game when Joel and Tess are looking for Robert, they are blocked by his henchman. Three times Tess asks them to let them through to talk to Robert. THREE TIMES the smugglers reply telling her and Joel NO and to go HOME, which provokes Tess to shoot the main henchmen, thus pushing her and Joel into a shooting match with them. Scenes like this are shown across the game, Joel shooting anyone who stands in his way. It feels a little bit excessive for me, especially since he shows no remorse over it. Those people like Joel are doing their best in the world, also taking part in dealing arms and drugs to survive. Joel kills these people for doing what he does himself. A little hypocritical and a little scummy, isn’t it?

Finally, the biggest reason for Joel winning the title of villain is because he saved Ellie from her fatal surgery- the surgery which would have found a cure for the infected and save the world. I hear what you’re about to say:

“But in the game, it wasn’t even confirmed that that cure was going to work. It was only a theory.”

LISTEN, the game made Marlene sound very reasonable, and this whole debacle was literally one of the main key points in LOU2 so I will not be partaking in such nonsense.

But can one even think of that act as being scummy? 

If you think of the bigger picture, than yes. Sacrificing one girl for the sake of humanity sounds more than fair to me. But, then again, we were all loudly cheering for Joel as he carried Ellie’s limp body out of that hospital and left behind all those dang Fireflies. At that moment, we all saw ourselves as Joel; if our own family was lying on a hospital bed about to die for the sake of the world, I think we’d all agree that we’d let the world burn to let that one person live. But was killing all those doctors and nurses a little excessive and unnecessary? Yes. In the bigger picture, is trading one girl for the good of humanity worth it? No. But, are we glad Joel saved Ellie? That’s an even bigger YES! But will Joel be going to heaven anytime soon? I don’t think so.

Even a loveable character like Joel can be labeled as a bad person. But that asks us, the audience, what does it mean to be bad? To fight in a world to survive? To save our loved ones from death? Games like The Last of Us really dives into the grey world of morality and asks each of us what it means to be the hero or the villain.

Contributed by Katarina Kojic

Works Cited

• “Smugglers.” The Last of Us Wiki, https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Smugglers. Accessed 17 March 2022.
• The Last of Us Part I. Developed by Naughty Dog, Playstation 4, Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2014.
• The Last of Us Part II. Developed by Naughty Dog, Playstation 4, Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2020.
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Developed by Naughty Dog, Playstation 3, Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2013.