Season 1 of the series The Last of Us on HBO gave rise to many debates: those of us who play the video game have been talking about its end for more than 10 years. The series brought with it more opinions, revived the topic and science was used again to guide the conversation.
Before you start, you should know that this post contains spoilers from the serie The Last of Us and the video games The Last of Us Part I and The Last of Us Part II. In the case of the sequel, the spoilers are focused on the beginning of the game. Continue reading at your own risk.
From here on there are spoilers.
What happens at the end of The Last of Us?
The end of The Last of Us It is exactly the same in the video game and in the series. Joel and Ellie finally reach their destination and are found by the Fireflies. Joel wakes up in the hospital after being unconscious and discovers that he is with Marlene and two soldiers. They have a conversation that turns into confrontation.
Marlene tells Joel that they have begun to intervene on Ellie to perform the extraction of Cordyceps, which is a promise of immunity for humanity. Does it stick? In theory, Cordyceps resides in the brain, so Ellie will have to die during the operation. Needless to say, Joel is not amused by this in the slightest.
The rest, as they say, is history: Joel frees himself from the soldiers, grabs his equipment and begins to kill everyone in the hospital systematically, even to soldiers who surrender. He makes it to the operating room, kills the surgeon (No, Joel!), and leaves two nurses alive…although in the video game you can kill them. Finally, he kills Marlene and takes Ellie away in a car.
Before arriving in Jackson County, Joel tells Ellie that things have not gone well: that there are more immunes and it has not worked on any of them, that the Fireflies have stopped looking for a cure and that the hospital was attacked, causing many casualties including Marlene. Needless to say, everything is A big lie, but Joel still swears it’s true. Ellie chooses to believe… but with doubts.
The detail of Episode 9 of The Last of Us on HBO
The beginning of Episode 9 of The Last of Us adds a very important point of lore to the matter: Ellie’s mother was bitten by an infected
The Cordyceps in The Last of Us functions as a hive mind. Just like mushrooms in real life, it communicates through the fungal network to transport food and send information. For this reason, those infected they do not attack each other deliberately. This is explained in Episode 3 of The Last of Us on HBO.
The question is: Why do the infected attack Ellie? The ideal is that Ellie could go unnoticed among the infected… but neither the video game nor the series would have been so exciting. My theory is that Cordyceps wants to finish the job and completely infect Ellie as if she were another human, but it doesn’t get infected because her body has “messengers” or “defenses” that prevent the fungus from activating inside her, to explain it simply.
Remember that Cordyceps not aggressive by nature. Tess’s death in The Last of Us is proof. Its objective is the same as any fungus: to release its spores to reproduce before dying. When this happens, the body joins the fungal network and serves as food, which is why we see dead corpses that are surrounded by fungi and branches.
What does science say about Codyceps?
In case you didn’t know, the Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis o Cordyceps It is a parasitic fungus that exists in real life and that is precisely why the debate we see in the first episode of The Last of Us It’s so scary. We can use real studies to make certain comparisons and discern whether Jerry Andersonthe doctor who claims to know the key to making a cure in the game, was right or wrong.
David Hughes, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University, studies the relationship between carpenter ants and the Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis. The objective of his study was to understand how the fungus controls the host. He medium Arstechnica explains scientific findings. You can also see it in the Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi and in the following video.
In 2017, Hughes and his team investigated what happened at the cellular level in ants when they were parasitized: the cells concentrated outside the brain, without ever penetrating it. Cordyceps maintains the brain, but forms a communication and food transport network that controls the host.
The ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Her brain is still in the driver’s seat, but the mushroom has the steering wheel. – Ed Yong en The Atlantic
These data coincide with the data we have of those infected with The Last of Us and how the fungus acts in humans. As we already explained, the fungus basically keeps the host alive long enough to take control of its body, although it eventually ends up dying. That’s why we have several types of infected!
The matter does not end here. The bite is a method of transmitting the spores of the fungus both in ants and in those infected with The Last of Us from HBO (in the video game they add the spores in the air). The fungus breaks the membranes of the muscles to cause the biting movement, among others. In fact, if the ants responsible for accessing the anthill detect an infected one, they intercept it, take it to a remote place to kill it and then never return to protect the group from possible spread.
The study of the bites had another objective: to determine the spore dose for infection to occur. Hughes’ team discovered that the fungus needs to introduce a minimum spores. If there are few of them, it is very likely that the body will fight them. This explains why there were survivors at the beginning of the outbreak in the series: anyone who ate too little flour could have dodged the Cordyceps bullet.
How would science proceed in real life? Ellie would have been subjected to a lot of tests to have as much information as possible, in the same way that the relationship between ants and Cordyceps has been studied. Knowing the behavior and patterns of Cordyceps in humans would be essential to be able to develop a cure for humans or a weapon to combat it. The investigation could have taken months or years.
Last but not least, Ellie would know what’s going on at all times and could decide whether to give his life to make a remedy. The Fireflies never told him that he was going to die in the operation. In any case, we would have to see how we would react in real life to such a case.
The debate over the end of The Last of Us: Jerry Anderson’s study and Joel’s decision
The debate over the end of The Last of Us It is a tricky issue, because several ethical and moral issues come into play. Unlike Joel, Ellie, Marlene and Jerry, we have data on studies of Cordyceps behavior to rely on to discern whether or not it is worth opening Ellie’s skull in search of a cure.
Jerry Anderson, a surgeon who investigates Cordyceps in the game, collects in his audios (Hospital recorders) of The Last of Us Parte I who has never seen a case like Ellie’s before: the antigens (substances capable of generating the production of antibodies and triggering an immune response) of Cordyceps are high in both the “serum and cerebrospinal fluid.”
He adds that there is “no fungal growth in the limbic regions that normally accompany the prodrome.” [señal o malestar de una enfermedad] of infected patients”. The limbic system is responsible for the formation of memory, the control of emotions, motivations, various aspects of behavior, initiative, individual survival and learning.
We know that Jerry Anderson performed tests on Ellie and we assume that he has studied infected people, but his findings are not revealed, his methods and his conclusions are based on the fact that the key to combating Cordyceps is found in the brain. In real life doesn’t act that way
Jerry Anderson I could be wrong and it is likely that he was hasty in proceeding with Ellie’s operation. Perhaps things would have changed if they had known the nature of her birth, but her mother takes him to the grave out of fear. The Last of Us from HBO. In the end, everything leads us to the same point: lies.
On the other hand, the Fireflies They never told Ellie who could die in the process. The ethical decision would have been to propose the operation when Jerry was absolutely certain (with a lot of data) that Ellie was going to give up her life for a sure cure… and for a possibility. Furthermore, she would have had to give her consent after saying goodbye to Joel.
That being said, was Joel right to stop Jerry Anderson from opening Ellie’s head in search of a cure? Was Joel right? The answer is yes, although with some buts. In the strictest sense: Joel has reasons to do what he does, but not reason as such because he has no idea about medicine. He rescues Ellie not because he believes Jerry is wrong, but because he doesn’t want to lose her.
Based on the data we have, Joel did well to rescue Ellie. He is right in saving her as she could not have been right. The medical result for him is irrelevant. He is somewhat right in saying that there is no cure, but his words are still not entirely true. Since the operation was never carried out, we will never be 100% clear of doubts. Also, he never took Ellie’s wishes into account…something that costs him her relationship with her in The Last of Us Parte II.
Ellie: He should have died in that hospital. My life would have fucking meaning. But you stopped me.
Joel: If God decided to give me a second chance… I assure you he would do it again.
Ellie: Already. The thing… is that I don’t think I can ever forgive you. But I would like to try.
Joel: It would be great.
That was the last conversation between Ellie and Joel.
The other side of the debate is Joel’s decision: how he rescued Ellie. Joel is an antihero who reaches the level of villain during the end of The Last of Us. Not because it deprives the world of a possible cure, but because He tortures and kills to get to Ellie. She executes a surrendering soldier and kills a dying Marlene (who had taken her gun down) in cold blood just to make sure she wouldn’t follow them.
The ends do not justify the means, this includes the Fireflies and Jerry Anderson, and Joel. We must all answer for our actions, even if we have the noblest goal. Jerry does it at the hands of Joel and the latter at the hands of Abby, and to be surprised by it is to be naive. We can understand Joel and maintain that we would act the same, but accepting that His actions are neither heroic nor justifiable.. This and more is what makes Joel a sublime character and one that moves away from the heroic and neat character that we are used to in other works.
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