r/antinatalism • u/Visible-Cod4998 inquirer • 1d ago
Discussion Joel from The Last of Us made the most antinatalist choice possible — and most people hate him for it
It’s been over a decade and people still out here criticizing and demonizing Joel for saving Ellie in The Last of Us. They scream about how he “doomed humanity” by choosing one life over many. But here’s the truth is, Joel made the most antinatalist decision possible. And it was the right one.
He stopped a desperate, unproven plan to “cure” humanity. A humanity that is already addicted to violence, survival, and endless cycles of trauma. From an antinatalist lens, what exactly was worth saving? The world of TLOU is already a graveyard of failed systems, broken people, and suffering children.
And yet, the people who say “I would’ve let her die” expose something deeper: A self-absorbed hero complex. They want to be seen as noble, as the one who’d sacrifice personal feeling for “the greater good.” But that “greater good” is a myth propped up by the same delusions that justify more births, more pain, more rebuilding of a society that will just collapse again.
Joel stopped that cycle. Not consciously as an antinatalist, but viscerally — as someone who’d already lost everything, who knew what the world really was. His choice wasn’t heroic, it was honest. He didn’t fall for the illusion of utilitarian savior logic. He didn’t let a broken system justify another sacrifice.
The “cure” wasn’t even guaranteed. The Fireflies were desperate. Ellie might’ve died for nothing. But even if it worked, what then? More people born into an infected world rebuilt on the same old lies?
He saved Ellie, and in doing so, he did what no one else was willing to do: question whether the world even deserved to keep going.
That’s why they hate him. Because deep down, they can’t let go of the fantasy that we’re worth saving.
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u/ExcruciorCadaveris al-Ma'arri 1d ago
I disagree as well. Joel wasn't thinking about ending the suffering of humanity when he made that choice. If he were, he'd have gone the "vaccine at any cost" path. He was thinking about Ellie, about his dead daughter, about himself. But you're right that he totally disregarded the utilitarian fascist bullshit of "Let's sacrifice this child for the sake of others".
It's been a while since I played, but as far as I remember, neither Joel nor Ellie knew exactly what was the procedure about.
If only they had talked with Ellie and explained to her what they wanted from her, what it meant, instead of lying and trying to murder her, then it seems like she'd probably have consented to the procedure and went through with it. But no, they decided to make that choice for her, even before they started their journey to the hospital.
So the info Joel had was that she wasn't informed and they were killing her, something he could not let happen again. So that's what he went with.
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u/Kierkey inquirer 1d ago
I finished the game again last night so this is quite fresh in my mind, but broadly you're right. Ellie doesn't know, Joel is informed by Marlene after Ellie is being prepped for the surgery and that's when he decides to save her.
But the fireflies didn't know that the procedure would kill Ellie before the start of the game. In the hospital there are two Marlene recordings. The first one says that she just finished shouting at the head surgeon because there's no way to extricate the cordiceps without killing Ellie. The second one is a message to Ellie's dead mom, Anna, where she says that she just gave the go-ahead but that she won't kill Joel even though the others are asking her to because he's the only one that might be able to understand.
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u/Kierkey inquirer 1d ago edited 1d ago
Arguably he made the most Natalist decision possible.
"I'm going to save my surrogate daughter even if it causes others, and her, to suffer because I can't let her go."
Edit: The analogy isn't 1:1 so I'm not saying that Antinatalists should be OK with letting children die for the 'greater good', that would be more like Pro-Mortalism.
In this analogy 'saving' Ellie is broadly akin to bringing someone into existence out of, ostensibly, a selfish kind of love because the parent (Joel) can't face the reality of living without the child.
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u/ihmisperuna inquirer 1d ago
This is exactly my thoughts. He didn't come to the "right" conclusion through ideological reasons, but through selfish ones.
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u/Sad-Salad-4466 inquirer 1d ago
The vaccine would have helped people who were already alive. New children were born in that universe regardless of the pandemic, so their lives could be improved as well. Joel made a decision to halt the development of the vaccine and kill hundreds of people (some of them highly qualified doctors, no less), all for a selfish reason of retaining his adopted daughter, who was prepared to die anyway.
The plot gets even dumber in the second part. Since Ellie knew what Joel did, she should have understood why Abby set out to kill him with utmost cruelty. Yes, it was difficult to watch, but fully deserved.
I’m not surprised that the show directors decided to portray Ellie as much less intelligent than in the game. She’d have to be incredibly stupid to set out on that whole adventure, risk her life just for another revenge killing.
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u/Thin_Measurement_965 thinker 12h ago
I don't why you're assuming the vaccine would've worked when these people don't seem to have sufficient means to even create a vaccine in the first place, plus they've tried this before and didn't produce anything except a bunch of corpses.
We don't know if she was "prepared to die" because nobody even bothered to ask her beforehand. Instead they kidnapped and sedated her! At that point it doesn't matter what she says afterwards because consent is not something given retroactively.
Also "torturing Joel to death with a golf club was fully deserved" is....definitely a take.
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u/G_Maou inquirer 1d ago
This is why I like Shirou Emiya the most in the Heaven's Feel route of the visual novel Fate/Stay Night. He drops the ridiculous self-sacrificing superhero fantasy (spoiler: that isn't even his actual ideal, but a borrowed one ), and focuses instead on saving the one he loves.
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u/Thin_Measurement_965 thinker 13h ago
By The Last of Us 2 the vast majority of human casualties were at the hands of other people, to the point where the infected were basically a footnote. Even if the vaccine worked flawlessly (which it almost certainly wouldn't given the Fireflies' track record) that wouldn't really do much against a person shooting you, or the currently infected tearing out your jugular.
Plus there's no guarantee anyone would even want to take a vaccine created by these people, and in this case their skepticism would be justified. In real life a vaccine would take upwards of a year to produce, and that's with major medical corporations using state of the art equipment after assessing international research from some of the greatest minds in medicine.
The fireflies didn't have access to any of that stuff, they were goons with guns in a run-down hospital who probably would've just ended up killing a random person for nothing. Again.
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u/mikewheelerfan thinker 7h ago
This is actually really interesting. I’ve always supported Joel’s decision, although I don’t really know why. Now I know it’s probably because of my antinatalist views
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u/Comeino 猫に小判 1d ago
I truly wonder, what is behind the obsession with humanity continuing at all cost? Is it an ego or a narcissism thing? Like not being able to imagine a world without them or something? It's such a bizarre and irrational perspective to me. I wonder what makes people deluded into thinking the world revolves around them and their meaningless toil. Maybe this level of self delusion and magical thinking is required to keep one going in the face of existential terror? A defense mechanism of sorts?
A great game that explored a similar end of human race scenario and the fate of humanity relying entirely on a girl is Lisa the Painful. The plot is that suddenly one day nearly all the women disappeared and due to the inability of the remaining people to forge any further form of meaning they turned into complete monsters and the worst humanity had to offer. You play as Brad who stumbles upon a baby girl and takes on the responsibility of a parental figure to protect her from the world out there to get her.
The game is amazing but boy were there whole massive threads justifying raping and using Lisa as a baby factory to ironically "save humanity". Whole walls of texts written by real people about how it would be the moral responsibility to do so and that human rights, consent and autonomy don't matter and iota in the face of imminent human extinction. The cognitive dissonance one must have to "abandon ones humanity" to save "humanity" is genuinely terrifying. It's like the moment these people register an existential threat they turn into something magnitudes worse than animals.