Ellie’s (lack Of A) Character Arc & Why The Result Is An Unsatisfying Story

Ellie’s (lack of a) character arc & why the result is an unsatisfying story

Let’s state the obvious: Ellie does not have a character arc in The Last of Us Part 2. A character arc is defined as a gradual transformation or inner journey of a character in response to changing developments in the story. And you may argue that Ellie from the beginning of the game is not the same as the one at the end of the game, and I would agree with you. She went from a woman consumed by revenge (not really but we will stick with that for now) to a woman able to forgive her aggressor and move on. However, there are problems with this supposed inner change on multiple levels. a) the change is not gradual b) the change comes out of nowhere c) the change is not informed by anything I don’t think there’s any need to thoroughly explain the first statement. Ellie has the same goal from the beginning to the very last second before attaining her goal. At no point in the story is she self-reflective, questions her methods, there’s no moral dilemma for her, no inner conflict, no doubt that causes her to put her own actions into a new perspective and possibly change her motivation. From beginning to end she believes to be 100% justified in her goal to kill Abby. Subsequently, if Ellie were actually consumed by revenge, the only logical conclusion to her story would be for her to eventually drown Abby.

Which neatly leads me to the next point: her change comes out of nowhere. The decision to let Abby go, as is implied by the narrative, is triggered by a random, arbitrary flashback of Joel. First of all, the timing here is outright comical. For what reason is she having this specific flashback at this very moment? Sounds like contrived, convenient bs to me to give the appearance that her decision is informed by something (which it isn’t, and we'll get to that in a moment). Second of all, getting a flashback to the most important person in your life that has been brutally murdered in front of you, seeing an image of what could have been and what was unjustly taken from you, is not gonna inspire you to forgive your aggressor. If anything, it would make you more determined and sadistic. And third of all, I hear you all yelling "but it was a flashback to their conversation about forgiveness and that inspired her to forgive Abby." And I have multiple qualms regarding this line of thinking. Number one, forgiving the person you love most in this world for having lied to you cannot be compared to forgiving the person who brutally took said person from you. This actually further accentuates my previous point, this is the person that robbed you of your opportunity for reconciliation. Implying that Ellie's thought process here is „I wanted to forgive Joel, but this person robbed me of any opportunity to, so I have to forgive her” is muddled, nonsensical and quite frankly unrealistic. And number two, is the implication here that this is the first time Ellie has thought back to that conversation? That’s a whole new level of nonsense. She will have reflected on all moments with Joel, including this one, and yet at no point prior to this moment had she considered even the possibility of forgiveness, as I have illustrated earlier. So why now? Very obviously to get a payoff, which was neither set up nor properly developed. And moving on to my last point: it is not informed by anything. I know a lot of players didn’t want Ellie to kill Abby, and even I felt that way at first, albeit presumably for entirely different reasons (I was so drained and removed from the narrative by that point that I only thought to myself "just go home, you psychos"). But upon reflection, I concluded that that would have been an unsatisfying conclusion narratively speaking. Nevertheless, Abby seems to have grown dear to many players. After all, they have spent several hours with her, they have seen her struggle, overcome her obstacles, fight for what she believes to be right. Their feelings towards Abby are informed by the person they have seen her to be and by the experiences they went through with her. Yet Ellie is missing all of that context. She has not been with us throughout our three days in Seattle, she doesn’t know Abby outside of her having horrifically killed Joel and she has not gained any new information that would lead her to change her opinion about her. And so, we have another example of the story making characters do things that are not informed by anything, for the sake of a poor payoff. And since we're talking about characters acting nonsensically, let's talk about the roughly three minutes leading up to Ellie nearly drowning Abby, shall we? Ellie approaches the beach absolutely determined to find and kill Abby (repeatedly murmuring Abby’s name to herself). Yet when she reaches the pillars, she cuts Abby down, letting her free Lev and follows them to the boats, indicating that Ellie has changed her mind, showing pity/empathy upon seeing Abby a mere shadow of her former self. And yet again, we have Ellie acting in a way she never has before. She didn’t have pity for Nora who was coughing her lungs out, or for Jordan who had advocated for letting her live, or for any other innocent WLF or Seraphite that came in between her and killing Abby. But the one person she holds a grudge against to the point of killing hundreds of innocent people without batting an eye, that is the person she is suddenly capable of feeling pity/empathy for? Is it really that surprising that Ellie's actions here feel forced, uncharacteristic, and illogical? But it actually gets worse. In an additional display of Druckmann not knowing how humans work, we have Ellie putting her backpack with all her gear in the boat, looking at her bloody hand and then remembering "Oh yeah, that's the woman who killed Joel. I almost forgot.” And at this point in my playthrough I was laughing out loud. And so, we have Ellie all of sudden determined to kill Abby again, so much so that she is willing to threaten an innocent child’s life (this by the way was the final nail in the coffin for me, they thoroughly obliterated Ellie’s character throughout the entire game, but this goes against the very core of her being). And we know the rest, they fight, Ellie nearly kills Abby but eventually lets her go. To summarize what happened in the three minutes before our big emotional payoff to our 25 hour-long journey of playing this epitome of misery porn: Ellie has 3 - count them 3!!! - changes of heart. Her motivation does a perfect 180 almost every minute. This is not how people work! That’s lazy, contrived beyond believe, and borderline comical levels of writing, because Druckmann prioritized having a final boss battle on a beach over organic, coherent, and logical storytelling (but I guess it was worth it for the goddamn visuals). However, what’s most infuriating is that there are such easy fixes if one only thinks about it for more than two minutes that could erase nearly all for the major issues I just illustrated while maintaining the plot points of the two fighting on a beach and Ellie letting Abby go. If we have Ellie walk to the beach immediately, finding Abby there untying the boat (Lev nearly passed out in the boat, Ellie not seeing him) and she then attacks Abby, immediately we have erased two of Ellie’s changes of heart, she remains consistent in her goals/motivation, not jumping back and forth between two extremes. The two women fight much like we see it in the game, and then as Ellie is about to finish it, we hear Lev calling out to Abby. And there we have our motivation for Ellie to not kill her. Not because she gets a random, convenient flashback, not because she forgives Abby (Abby has done nothing to earn Ellie’s forgiveness), not because Abby has earned her redemption, but because Ellie cannot find it in her to put an innocent child through the pain Abby has put her through. Because at the end of the day, Ellie’s hatred for Abby does not outweigh her capacity for compassion and empathy for those deserving of it (a core characteristic of hers that was established in the first game). Because Ellie would rather let an individual live that is undeserving of it than cause the same pain she was put through to an innocent child that is undeserving of it. Granted, if we were to go with this ending, we would still have to build towards it properly and therefore would have to tweak the rest of the game, mainly by showing Ellie being self-reflective, merciful towards innocents, and even doubtful about her goals at times to make her final decision informed by prior developments in order to have the character arc actually be a gradual transformation leading to a logical conclusion. I have been a writer for nearly 4 years now, which means I am in no way an expert, or the most creatively talented person around and yet I would argue that this ending would be much more satisfying to most players than the alternative we were presented with. Because as it stands, none of our actions or decisions (and yes that is something important to consider when we are working within the medium of video games), or Ellie’s for that matter, lead up to this conclusion. The conclusion to this story, the final moment, the big emotional payoff hinges on a random flashback, not on any other developments that previously occurred in the story. Subsequently rendering all of the 25 hours entirely pointless, none of it had an influence on the finale, none of it mattered narratively speaking. So, is it even a surprise that many found this to be dissatisfying? I noticed a few people who are fond of Abby accusing people feeling differently of having too much of an emotional bias or even going as far as to say they are less emotionally intelligent. This is problematic for two reasons, a) different people have different reasons for disliking Ellie’s final choice. Some still hate Abby as much as in the beginning, others feel drained and indifferent, and others still feel similarly to how I feel in that it’s mainly narratively dissatisfying. And b) the same story can have a different effect on any amount of people (otherwise, we would have settled the discussion about what the greatest movie all of time is long ago). My point being, that no matter how you feel about this particular story you are 100% justified in feeling this way, and yes that includes people that by the end of the game still hate Abby just as much as they did the moment she bashed Joel’s skull in. That does not necessarily have to be personal bias, more often than not it’s the ability to see through the storytelling techniques used, rendering them mostly ineffective for these people (and I include myself in this). I wanted Ellie to kill Abby not because I was unable to empathize with her or couldn’t see past my own personal bias, but because that would have been the logical, narratively satisfying conclusion to this specific story.