Life Questions with “The Last of Us”

Note: Spoilers ahead! Do not read if you haven’t finished the season finale of “The Last of Us” or have never read Watchmen.

Tonight, my husband and I caught up with the final episode of the first season of “The Last of Us,” the excellent HBO series based on the post-apocalyptic video game of the same name. Joel and Ellie have finally reached their destination: a Fireflies-controlled hospital where doctors will attempt to create a vaccine using Ellie’s immunity. The problem? Ellie will have to be killed in order for them to attempt to produce this cure.

So Joel has a choice: potentially save all of humanity, or save Ellie, a girl he’s fallen in love with over the course of the season?

For Joel, it’s an easy choice: save Ellie, escape, lie to her about it later, even though she knows he’s lying and her heart will break for it. (Bringing us back to that moment in episode 6 when Ellie’s told it’s only the people we trust who can truly hurt us.)

But this question had me wondering. And it also reminded me of the end of the famous comic, Watchmen — Veidt plans to save humanity from nuclear war by faking an alien invasion in New York, which kills almost half of the city’s population. His plan works, but he ends up wondering if he did the right thing in the end.

I don’t have the answers, but it’s got me wondering on this Monday eve.