We Finally Understand The Story Of The Last Of Us

Neil Druckmann was working on The Last of Us when he was in college. In a way, anyway. At the time, he had this idea that he just couldn't get out of his head: a game where a grizzled survivor — sometimes a police officer, other times a criminal — worked to protect a young girl — perhaps mute — in a world filled with flesh-eating creatures. Over time, this idea metamorphosed into the story of Joel, a grizzled survivor with a dubious history, and Ellie, who is anything but mute. 

When Druckmann put the finishing touches on The Last of Us as the game's creative director, he had cut his teeth on many games while working at Naughty Dog, a developer owned by Sony. The Last of Us, however, had a significantly different tone than any Uncharted or Jax game. Would it be too dark? Would players get the story that had been stewing in Druckmann's head for years? 

The Last of Us has been called one of the greatest video games of its generation. A huge part of that achievement was owed to the intensely compelling, and sometimes heartbreaking, narrative that Druckmann wove. He has earned no shortage of awards for his well-rendered story of survival, fungi, and father-daughter bonding.

Here, we've laid out that entire story for you. It's often pretty bleak, but it's also brilliant.

The four-part comic series American Dreams tells us that Ellie was born six years after the world was ravaged by CBI. All alone she is shipped to the Boston Quarantine Zone. It's not exactly a warm welcome for a 13-year-old — her Walkman is stolen within her first ten minutes there. The thief in question is Riley, an older girl with a penchant for trouble, just like Ellie. She takes Ellie to an abandoned mall where Ellie learns how to ride a horse of all things. 

Riley is something of a dreamer, thinking of the future while Ellie is enamored with the past: namely all the video games in the arcade she'll never get to play. An explosion shakes their reverie as the military and the Fireflies, a revolutionary force, clash. Riley thinks that the Fireflies are pretty cool, and she and Ellie throw a few smoke bombs at the military to help them escape. This just draws attention to themselves, and they are soon captured by the Fireflies. This is how she meets Marlene, who we know from the game as the "queen" Firefly. She has a switchblade and a note, both from Ellie's mother, who she was friends with.

In 2033, 20 years after the night he lost his daughter, Joel has become a different person. In those decades, Joel did whatever it took to survive, even if that meant hurting innocent people. As we learn, Joel is actually and unfortunately adept at the brutal skills of torture and killing. Out in the wild, he and Tommy lived as hunters, kill or be killed. After smuggling themselves into the Boston Quarantine Zone, Tommy decided that he couldn't live that way anymore and joined the Fireflies, much to Joel's ire. 

In his brother's absence, Joel took up smuggling with a woman named Tess. They sneak illegal supplies and people around the military, killing those who get in their way. One such unfortunate man was Robert, a fellow smuggler who double-crossed them, selling a promised cache of guns to the Fireflies instead of them. They torture this information out of him before killing him. Before they can go to the Fireflies, the Fireflies come to them. "Queen" of the Fireflies, Marlene, has a deal for them: smuggle something to the city's capitol building, and they can have their guns, with interest. The pair reluctantly agree.

Upon entering the capitol building, all that hope that Tess had fizzles. The Firefly extraction team is dead and the military, howling for their blood, is on the way. Worst of all, Tess has been bit. Comparing her bite — red and festering — to Ellie's makes Joel give some thought to the idea that Ellie is truly immune. Tess demands that Joel take Ellie to Tommy; surely his Firefly connections can help get Ellie to where she needs to be. That's her (final) hope anyway. 

Joel is resistant, and so is Ellie, but time runs out. Refusing to succumb to the infection, Tess goes out fighting, holding off the military while Joel and Ellie escaped. They make it out of the city and head to a town packed with booby-traps made by the ultra-paranoid Bill. Bill owes Joel a favor; they're going to need a car to make it out to Wyoming, where Tommy is. Easier said than done, especially when navigating an infested town filled with explosives and just one precious car battery.

That Humvee? It's got some serious firepower. Joel and Ellie manage to get off the streets and into an apartment, but they are not alone. In the apartment is another survival duo, Henry and Sam. Joel nearly kills Henry, but Ellie notices Sam, Henry's 13-year-old brother, with a gun. They were waiting for nightfall, when the gang guarding the bridge out of town would be reduced down to a skeleton crew. They're also looking for Fireflies, so they team up to make a break for a radio tower outside of the city. 

That Humvee is very determined to gun them down for good. They find (relative) safety in the sewers before the unlikely band are forced into the suburbs, where a sniper and that dang Humvee make their chances look slim. But hey, they make it to the radio tower. Unfortunately, there isn't anyone waiting there for Henry and Sam. Even more unfortunately, when morning dawns, Ellie is horrified to find that Sam has turned, bitten the night before. Henry puts him down with a bullet to the head, but he can't cope without his little brother. He kills himself right then and there.

Ellie is small, but mighty. She manages to get Joel to safety and stitch up his wounds. But there's not much she can do about infection without medicine. Weeks pass, and Ellie has Joel holed up in a resort cabin in Colorado. She manages to kill a buck for food, but she then runs into a pair of men. They try to placate her, but she is (rightfully) mistrustful. She says she'll trade her kill for medicine, which leaves her alone with one of the men, David, while the other goes to find the penicillin. 

Not without incident (an attack by the Infected, go figure), Ellie is able to get the antibiotics to Joel scott free. But that night, Ellie is rudely awakened to find that David sent men to track her down, and they're more interested in killing her out of vengeance for the bandits at the university than bringing her back alive as David ordered. Escaping them, Ellie runs right into David who knocks her unconscious. Here's the bad news: David is creepy. Even worse, he's a cannibal. Even worse than that, he seems to have a thing for Ellie. She breaks one of his groping fingers. You go, girl.

Joel is back on his feet and back in action. Without their horse (another victim of the cannibals), they have to hoof it on foot to Salt Lake City, where the Fireflies have supposedly relocated. Ellie is fairly traumatized by what she went through that winter, quiet and withdrawn. She brightens upon seeing a herd of wild giraffes. Yes, you read that right. Their ancestors were likely zoo animals. Seeing Ellie happy, acting her age, Joel offers to take her back to Tommy's settlement, where she can have a semblance of a normal life. However, after all they've been through, Ellie is keen to finish their mission. 

The city is overrun with Infected, and they hop from bus to bus in a flooded tunnel to escape. Ellie can make big jumps — Joel congratulates her — but still can't swim. She nearly drowns as a bus sinks beneath the water. Joel pulls her out, but while he is administering CPR, they are found by the Fireflies. And they aren't interested in listening to Joel as he begs for them to let him save Ellie. They knock him unconscious.

Marlene is waiting for him there with a gun. She pleads with Joel to think of the greater good; after all, how long will Ellie last in this world, anyway? She tells him that he's being selfish, but Joel is unwilling to let Ellie die. Ultimately, he chooses Ellie over a cure for humanity. He shoots Marlene in the stomach before loading Ellie into a truck. He returns to Marlene, bleeding out onto the pavement. She begs for her life, but Joel says (perhaps correctly) that she'd just come after Ellie. He kills her. 

When Ellie wakes up, they're on their way out of the city. Joel claims that there are dozens of immune people, but that they've had no success. Joel says that they have stopped looking for a cure. So much for a light in the darkness. They go back to their new home at Tommy's settlement, and on the outskirts, Ellie tells Joel about Riley and the survivor's guilt she carries everyday. She demands that Joel swear to her that everything he said about the Fireflies was true. Joel swears.