‘The Last of Us’ Understands the Toll of Revenge

This article contains spoilers for Season 1 of The Last of Us and the first three episodes of Season 2.

HBO’s post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us tests the audience’s endurance for bleakness. Based on a pair of video games, highly acclaimed for their nuanced storytelling and complex characters, the series finds human society collapsed in the wake of a mass fungal infection that turns its victims into rage-filled zombie-like creatures (the “infected”). Without the structures humans have built in order to live together, the characters are forced to find ways to survive and rebuild. The result is a challenging meditation on the nature of justice and community.

At the end of the first season, the protagonist, Joel, succeeded in his mission of bringing the other lead character, Ellie, to the Fireflies (a revolutionary militia group) in Seattle. The Fireflies believe that Ellie — the only known human who is immune to the fungal infection — might be humanity’s only hope for a cure. But only after Joel delivers Ellie to the Fireflies’ hospital does he learn that they plan to extract a potential cure from Ellie’s brain, killing her in the process. While Ellie is unconscious from anesthesia, Joel makes the executive decision to rescue her and shoot his way out of the hospital, killing the unarmed operating doctor and a number of soldiers in the process.

They make their way to Jackson, a newly formed outpost in Wyoming where Joel’s brother has also settled. Through the course of all these travels, Joel and Ellie have developed a close — if often contentious — parent-child relationship, filled with moments of genuine tenderness.

The beginning of season two jolts viewers with a gut punch: Joel dies. In the season first episode, we meet Abby, who’s on a mission of vengeance to find the man who killed her father — later revealed to be the doctor who Joel shot at the Fireflies’ hospital. There’s a moment in the second episode when we think maybe Abby will change her mind about vengeance. When she’s about to be overcome by a hoard of infected, Joel, who has no idea who Abby is, rescues her, at no small risk to his own life. But as soon as they are safe, Abby returns to her original plan instead of letting Joel’s action open up the possibility of forgiveness.

After she and her posse capture Joel, Ellie is forced to watch helplessly while Abby beats Joel to death. It’s one of the more brutal ends for a main character that I can remember seeing in mainstream entertainment, made all the more jarring by its location in the story arc. When main characters die near the end of the story, we can view their death as a necessary sacrifice that moves the plot toward its conclusion. When it happens near the beginning, we don’t know how to process it. Neither, it seems, does Ellie. Before escaping, she vows vengeance on Abby and the rest of her group.

So far, this escalating feud is a rather depressing back-and-forth, a cycle of violence for which there doesn’t seem to be any way out. But instead of letting us bask in Ellie’s righteous violence a la John Wick, the series questions the line between justice and revenge, asks whether mercy has any part in the equation, and doesn’t offer any easy answers to these reflections.

The outpost of Jackson has grown into a thriving town in the wilderness, with a sustainable food supply, basic infrastructure, and even a representative system of government. Joel had become an important part of the community; Ellie was not the only one who mourned his loss. During a town council meeting, different community members appeal to the council to decide on whether to send a group of 16 people to avenge Joel’s death. One speaker, a visibly angry man named Seth, presents an argument of pragmatic self-defense: If we do nothing, “they’ll come back because we didn’t make them pay.” 

This voice is countered by a gentle man named Carlisle. “Why wouldn’t we want to take our vengeance?” he asks rhetorically. “Well, because we’re not supposed to. Forgive and be forgiven. No grudges. No revenge. And I’m not even a Christian. I’ve always seen the wisdom in that. That’s what separates us from the raiders and the murderers — our capacity for mercy.” The camera pans to a quiet but dissatisfied Ellie.

When it’s her turn to speak, Ellie stays uncharacteristically calm. “It’s not about revenge,” she says, “I want justice.” And she wants the community of Jackson to be involved in this justice, so that she will know she is supported by them, just as she would support any of them if she were needed. If the town does “nothing,” the result will be “a whole world of people who won’t lift a finger if something bad happens to me or you.” In the end, the council votes against sending a posse after Abby, and Ellie sets off with a companion against the council’s wishes.

It’s an unsettling scene, made even more upsetting by all the violence that spirals out as a result of Ellie’s choice. But it raises numerous questions that Christians struggle with today. What does mercy look like? What is the distinction between justice and revenge? How do we live out our commitments to peacemaking and still keep ourselves and our loved ones protected?

In the Bible, justice is always relational. Justice requires the righting of wrongs, but it also requires the restoration of the community to wholeness. The classic story of forgiveness in the Hebrew Bible revolves around Joseph and his brothers. His brothers throw Joseph into a pit, then sell him to traders heading to Egypt. Through a series of events, Joseph rises to become Pharaoh’s most trusted advisor. When Joseph recognizes his brothers in Egypt, he puts them through some ordeals — he’s clearly got issues to work through — but in the end chooses to forgive rather than punish. “It was not you who sent me here,” he tells them, “but God.” While their actions against Joseph were harmful, Joseph is able to step back and see them as part of something larger.

The Hebrew word shalom means much more than “peace,” as it is often translated — it means wholeness, and it’s both a noun and a verb. When a wrong has been done to someone, the remedy is for the perpetrator to “do shalom,” to restore wholeness. (“Shalom” is used as a verb this way in Exodus 21:34, 2 Samuel 12:6, Ezekiel 33:15, Isaiah 57:18, Psalm 37:21, and many other passages.) This is a simple answer to the distinction between revenge and justice that Ellie raises: Revenge is for the individual, justice is for the community.

Of course, it’s not quite that simple to parse out in real life. Seth tries to voice his concerns in terms of the community’s future safety, but it’s a rather strained argument. The band who killed Joel left, even leaving Ellie alone when they could have killed her as well. In contrast, Carlisle’s plea for mercy is a tepid one; he is seemingly only able to imagine mercy in terms of the refusal of vengeance — there’s a reason why Ellie, who was forced to helplessly watch Joel’s death (one of many traumas she endured), is unconvinced.

In all of these presentations, what’s lacking is any sense of restorative justice, any path toward healing the wounds that Jackson has suffered. The community of Jackson is clearly grieving in the wake of episode two’s terrible battle, but the town hall meeting doesn’t ask how the community might find healing. And herein lies one of the most important questions that The Last Of Us asks over and over again: How can we restore our communities after such unimaginable tragedies?

Over and over, The Last Of Us shows characters who try to find a way forward in this new and broken world. They prioritize survival and struggle to trust each other. But throughout the series, we are continually reminded that human connection isn’t a luxury that must be discarded when the world shatters around us. These communities are what we must hold on to, and what we must heal.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article mistakenly identified the Fireflies base as being in Seattle; it is in Salt Lake City.