Does Ellie find out Joel lied in ‘The Last of Us?’

Warning: Spoilers for The Last of Us to follow.

For every word, phrase, or emotion that could define HBO Max’s resident Emmy contender The Last of Us, perhaps the most apt is the fact that the show is not for the faint of heart. Indeed, with every passing episode, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin made it starkly clear that our emotional states were their personal playgrounds, and we may never know a whiplash quite like what The Last of Us has left us with.

The season finale was no exception, swelling ours hearts beyond comprehension before sticking in the most morally grey knife imaginable, with Joel and Ellie’s awkward aftermath adding the necessary blade twist to make this one a finale to remember.

For those of you not in the know, the season finale sees Joel and Ellie complete their season-long mission of reaching the Fireflies’ hospital, where the cure for the Cordyceps infection can be removed from Ellie and subsequently save the world. However, before the surgery is set to begin, Joel learns that the surgery will kill Ellie in the process, and, needless to say, he’s not too keen on letting that happen. So, he promptly grabs the nearest gun and proceeds to murder just about everyone in the building, including the surgeon, before retrieving Ellie and heading back to Wyoming so the both of them can live a happy, quiet life, or as happy and quiet of a life as one can get when the Fireflies are gunning for your head.

That’s not what he tells Ellie, of course, who wakes up confused in the backseat of a truck, wondering what became of the surgery and their quest to save the world. Instead, he lies to Ellie, telling her that there are other folks like her who are immune, meaning the fate of the world doesn’t fall to her, and that the surgery had to be abandoned after a group of raiders attacked the hospital.

But, though Joel may be used to having a stony face, he’s not the best liar, and this could easily come back to bite him. This, of course, assumes that Ellie managed to pick up on Joel’s decision to lie to her, but given that Ellie is, among other things, a master at detecting baloney, it’s apparent that this isn’t so much a question of “if” as it is “how.”

Does Ellie find out Joel lied in ‘The Last of Us?’

The short answer is yes, but it’s a fair bit more complicated than that. What we can infer for certain is that Ellie doesn’t believe Joel’s lie for a second, but the way in which she’ll go on to handle the lie in an emotional sense is open to a wide array of possibilities.

Druckmann and Mazin, along with host Troy Baker and special guest Ashley Johnson, broke down these nuances exhaustively in the latest episode of the official Last of Us podcast, covering just about every possibility, from Ellie allowing the lie to change her relationship with Joel for the worse, to Ellie choosing to entertain the lie for no other reason than the truth being too horrible to acknowledge, to Ellie just doing her best to wave away the fact that Joel lied about something so important. And each of these prospects are only further complicated by how much Ellie takes Joel’s need for her safety into consideration; does her recognition of what’s important to him soften the blow, or might her selfless, and now compromised, desire to save the world make her that much angrier?

Whatever the case may be, the season finale accomplished its purpose to near-perfection; not only did it tie up the main conflict without leaving any noticeable loose ends, but, more importantly perhaps, it set up a brand new, emotionally captivating tension between Joel and Ellie that will no doubt play a big role in the second season. And, as much as we love watching karma wreak havoc on a lie, the exact effect it might have on Ellie and particularly Joel might be a bit too much for the heart to handle.

The first season of The Last of Us is available to stream on HBO Max.