Joel is one of the main characters in the game The Last Of Us. There is some debate about whether Joel is a hero or villain. Some say that he is a villain because of his actions. So, is Joel a good guy in The Last Of Us or the other way around?
Is Joel a good guy in The Last Of Us? Joel is a good guy in the eyes of the people he saved like Ellie. For the fireflies and the world, Joel is a villain because he prevents the cure from being made to save Ellie. It really depends on one’s perspective whether Joel is a good guy or not. It depends on your morals. If you are a pro-world, then Joel might be a villain for you. But if you are pro-family then Joel might be a good guy for you from doing selfish things to save his loved ones.
10 Reasons Why People Think Joel Is A Villain
Many people think that Joel is a villain. However, for me, I think he is not. Joel is not a perfect human being. He makes some selfish acts sometimes out of his instincts. But, what are the reasons why some people think that Joel is a villain? Let’s find out the reasons why!
Kicked His Brother Out
It’s not clear what made Tommy and Joel stop talking for good, but when they saw each other for the last time in years, Tommy said he never wanted to see Joel again.
This was because he and Joel had to do horrible things to stay alive, which Joel saw as more of a favor than helping his brother. Joel knew that Tommy could have died out there when they split up, but he didn’t seem to care that his own brother was being eaten by zombies.
Willing To Let Ellie Die
Joel only put up with Ellie in the first place because of Tess. When they were apart and Joel had to take care of Ellie without Tess for a while, he made it clear to Tess that he didn’t care about her in the least.
When things got really bad, Joel was ready to leave Ellie if it meant he would have to put himself in danger for her otherwise. Even though he didn’t have to help her, she was still just a little girl. At one point, he led Ellie into a place full of spores, even though he didn’t think she was immune. If she hadn’t been immune, she would have died right there.
Refuse To Let Ellie Cope With Grief
As a father figure, you should be able to make a child feel comfortable around you, especially when life or death is at stake. Joel instead saw what was going on with Ellie as a job and didn’t care about how it affected her mind.
Ellie wasn’t sad at the end of the game because nothing good came out of their journey. Instead, she was sad because Joel never let her deal with her grief all year. For example, when Tess and Sam died, Joel just told her to forget about their deaths and act like they never happened. If you ask us, that’s a pretty bad case of mental abuse.
His Past As A Bandit
Joel was a lot better at fighting than a guy his age should be, and it turned out that was because he used to be a hunter. These people set up traps for people who didn’t know what was going on, then killed them and took their things.
Joel didn’t say yes or no when asked if he had killed innocent people. This made it clear that he was guilty. From our point of view, Joel was a survivor because that’s what the game wanted us to think, but in reality, he was just as bad as the many men who tried to kill him and Ellie during the game.
Slaughtering The Doctors
At the end of the game, the climax, Joel went to save Ellie from an operation that would have killed her and taken the cure for the zombie outbreak out of her. Before he got to the surgery room, Joel had killed more than a dozen men, but you could argue that they were trying to kill him first.
In the case of the doctors, however, Joel is responsible for their deaths. When Joel walked into the room, the head surgeon was using a knife to try to hold him back. Joel didn’t just knock him out; he violently stabbed him in the neck and probably killed the other doctors as well.
Being Selfish
You might think that Joel save Ellie in the end because he loved her as a father, but that’s not really what happened. The truth is that Joel is just as selfish as everyone else in that world full of zombies.
When he first met Ellie, he didn’t care if she died, but as his feelings for her grew, he put his own life in danger for her. Basically, he didn’t want to be alone, which is why he looked out for Ellie. Also, Joel never did anything for anyone out of the goodness of his heart. He only did things that would help him.
Intending To Put His Brother’s Life In Danger
When Joel realized that he was starting to think of Ellie like his own daughter, he decided to get rid of her by giving her to Tommy. He did this so he wouldn’t have to leave her with the Fireflies and avoid heartbreak, but he didn’t care that Tommy would have probably died instead.
Tommy’s wife was furious with Joel because he didn’t care that he left her a widow, which Joel couldn’t argue with. We later saw how Joel and Ellie were caught off guard, and it was possible that Tommy was behind it. Joel was sending his own brother back to what was probably going to be his death.
Killing Marlene
Marlene thought there was no other choice but to kill Ellie, but she went out of her way to let Joel live. She showed this more than once, and each time she could have killed him without much trouble.
Joel, on the other hand, didn’t treat her the same way. When he saw that Marlene was in his way, he shot her. He could have let her live, but he didn’t. Instead, Joel took care of this problem by shooting Marlene in the head. This was just a cold-blooded murder, since Marlene wasn’t a bad person to begin with.
Lying To Ellie Sometimes
In the last few seconds of The Last of Us, a sad Ellie made Joel promise that he hadn’t made up the story about the Fireflies letting them go. This was the best proof that Joel was selfish.
Even though Joel knew that Ellie would hate him for life if she ever found out the truth from someone else, he looked into her eyes and swore that he wasn’t lying. And no, he wasn’t trying to protect her. It was clear that he was lying to keep the girl who was now his daughter from leaving him.
Dooming The Future
The world in The Last of Us Part II will be even darker than in the first game, and all the tragedy and blood that will be shed could have been avoided if Joel had left Ellie.
We can be sure that Ellie would have chosen to die if she had been given the choice between living or letting people take the world back from the zombies. However, none of that could have happened because Joel killed everyone who could have found a cure. We don’t know if he’s still alive in the sequel, but he made sure that everyone who was going to die did die because he doomed humanity.
Wrapping Up
People like Ellie think that Joel is a good person because he helped them. Joel is a bad guy for the fireflies and the world because he prevents the creation of the cure to save Ellie. Whether or not Joel is a good person depends on how you look at things. It depends on what your values are. If it is okay for you to save the world and lose your daughter, Joel could be a villain for you. Aside from that, he is a good person.
Joel loves Ellie too much even though at first, he does not want to take Ellie with him. Because of that, Joel tried his very best to prevent Ellie from being sacrificed for a cure, which made the cure impossible to make. Like I have said, it depends on your values whether you think Joel is a good guy or not.
