The Last of US part II is a masterpiece?
I’ve played The Last of US Part II recently and i loved it. It was so visceral, intense, but also hopeful. It showed that characters can move on from their grief or trauma. Ending this constant back and forth over revenge. I loved it and despite thinking it can be a bit contrived at points I think the underlying story and growth these characters go on is profound. I wrote an essay on Abby and her journey. By no means am I talented writer but I did try to interepret the core ideas of her character. So if I got things wrong I would love for people to tell me or if you just plain disagree that would also be great. I love this story and maybe my perspective is wrong please tell me!
The Last of Us Part II is fundamentally about the cycle of violence. the continual back-and-forth, what drives people into it, why inflicting pain fails to provide the closure they think it promises, and how empathy can offer a way out. Abby and Ellie move through this cycle from different directions. Abby is initially driven by a dogmatic worldview where she reduces people to the their faction or core traits. Ellie, meanwhile, is driven by grief and the unresolved nature of her relationship with Joel.
After her father’s death, Abby’s worldview becomes organized around the belief that people can be reduced to their most basic qualities. Joel is the monster who killed her father. The Seraphites are the evil enemy. The WLF are the moral hero’s fighting zealots. By stripping people of their complexity, Abby makes perpetuating violence vindicating and easier to justify. For years, she convinces herself that killing Joel will finally resolve her trauma. Killing him does fulfill her deep seated desire for revenge, but it does not give her peace. Her nightmares continue, her relationships deteriorate, and she returns to Seattle only to find that the conflict she has devoted herself to is becoming increasingly destructive.
By this point, Abby is emotionally burnt out. She has achieved the revenge she thought would give her closure, yet she has nothing meaningful to replace it with. Owen conversation is key in challenging her tribalistic worldview. He and another Wolf named Danny were going to kill an older Scar. But when Owen went up to the task he didn’t see a memeber of the opposing group. He just saw a guy who was tired and done with this. He looked beyond the factional line that had previously defined the encounter. His story is instrumental as it forces Abby to reckon that her outlook on life isn’t conducive to growing beyond her past.
That realization begins to manifest in her relationship with Yara and Lev. Abby initially sees them as Seraphites and therefore as people outside her concern. Even after they save her, she leaves them behind, believing that helping them is not her responsibility. But when she later chooses to return, helping them becomes her first real attempt to go beyond the arbitrary factions that define her. However, that motivation is to some extent self serving. Abby wants to “lighten the load.” Helping Yara and Lev gives her something consequential and meaningful to work towards. Her actions are compassionate, but they are also tied to her desire to escape the burden her drive for retribution has become.
Mel is a key character that often gets ignored. She is the only one that exposes this contradiction. She recognizes that Abby’s actions do not automatically absolve her of the harm she has caused or prove that she has fundamentally changed. She’s helping these kids because as Mel points out correctly she doing it gain a sense of improvement and redemption. Abby is hurt by this criticism precisely because there is truth in it. While She has begun to move away from her prior outlook , she has not completely escaped it.
The real test comes on the Seraphite island. Abby is forced to choose between the WLF conflict she has spent years participating in and the two people she has come to care about. She chooses Yara and Lev. More importantly, she chooses them despite the factional identity that originally made them enemies. For perhaps the first time, Abby acts without allowing the categories of “WLF” and “Seraphite” to determine who deserves her loyalty. She is now on a path to understand that people cannot be reduced to the sides they belong to.
However, that change is immediately tested at the theater. Abby arrives and discovers Owen and Mel dead. In an instant, the eye for an eye mentality she has worked to walk away from feels like the only path to make up of these deaths. Instead of going to Santa Barbara, she goes to pursue Ellie. Abby attacks her, kills Jesse, injures Tommy, and prepares to kill Dina. The cycle that Abby had begun to escape is about to consume her again.
Levs presence forces Abby to confront the contradiction in what she is doing. Abby has just spent days learning to look beyond the identity of the people she once considered enemies. She was able to see Yara and Lev as human beings rather than simply as Seraphites. Yet now, faced with Ellie, she is once again reducing another person to what she believes they represent, the person who killed her friends. Many people wrongly describe her decision to spare Ellie and Dina was because she saw her moral compass that being Lev. No, what she realized is she is a hypocrite. How can she look beyond the group that defined Lev, when she can’t do so with Ellie who she knows she hurt. She does not suddenly forgive Ellie, nor does it erase what she has done. What it means is her refusal to continue this back and forth. She has finally reached the point where revenge is no longer something she is willing to let dictate her actions.
Her decision to spare Ellie is therefore not an act of absolution, but an act of recognition. Abby cannot undo the violence she has committed, but she can choose not to perpetuate it. More importantly she can learn to move and grow. Abby is a selfish character. Who makes chooses based on her desires whether that be for vengeance or moral redemption. Her development lies in the ability to realize she was wrong and can admit so. How she moves on is what defines her character. An individual who was driven by her righteous sense of vengeance is forced to walk away from the cycle of the violence. She does so by being empathic. She learns to understand that people are beyond the moral and factional boundaries she draws.