Abstract

Joel’s choice to forgo a potential cure for the Cordyceps infection at the cost of Ellie’s life is the key moral decision the narrative in The Last of Us builds up to. The moment forces players/viewers to reflect on the responsibilities of love and care, on what we owe each other, and whether the world is still worth saving. I argue that we miss the moral depth of his decision if we don’t view it through the lens of philosophical pessimism. Philosophical pessimism does not necessarily ask us to expect the worst outcome. Instead, pessimist philosophers ask us to take seriously that for many, life is often not worth living due to pain and suffering (Van der Lugt 2021) and that we should reject false hope and narratives of progress, and learn to expect nothing (Dienstag 2006). Both the former value-oriented pessimism and the latter future-oriented pessimism allow us to situate Joel’s choice as a rejection of philosophical optimism that retains a false hope in the world of the Last of Us, choosing to protect Ellie from suffering instead. I first focus on value-oriented pessimism and whether humanity is worth saving. In the games, the narrative guides us through a world that has fallen not only to fungal infection, but also to authoritarianism, cannibalism s, cults and a general inhumanity of human survivors. The TV series (while also showing these) carefully departs from the games, contrasting these barbarisms with hints of meaningful life beyond mere survival (Bill & Frank, Jacksonville commune). This provides a differing moral background to Joel’s choice: In the games, Joel’s choice can be read as a pessimist evaluation of humanity having lost not only against Cordyceps but also in the struggle for a meaningful human existence not just based on survival. Based on this, Joel decides that humanity is less worth aving than Ellie, who he sees as something more than a means to survive in a world fallen to barbarism. In the TV series, this choice is more nuanced, given that Joel encounters meaningful existence several times in his journey with Ellie, and may not warrant a pessimistic conclusion to the same extend. Related to this, in terms of future-oriented pessimism, Joel’s choice can be seen as a rejection of a narrative of false hope: The Fireflies’ rely on a cure as a solution not only to Cordyceps but as a means to human redemption. However, with the backdrop of humanity already having lost itself, one can see the Fireflies’ hope for a cure as a desperate means to salvation – one that Joel rejects as he learned to not expect anything in a world that defies expectation. Overall, pessimism provides an ethics that can contextualise Joel’s choice not only as an act of care for Ellie, but as a rejection of a hope that has long faded from humanities horizon, acting to preserve of what humanity still has left.