Last of Us: Joel's Origin (Last of Us 2 Spoiler Free) | MojoPlays
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VOICE OVER: Riccardo Tucci
WRITTEN BY: Caitlin Johnson
With a big-budget, HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog's hit game in the works, not to mention the The Last of Us 2 is finally here, it's time to take a look back at one of the characters who got “The Last of Us” to where it is today. Welcome to MojoPlays and today we'll be looking at the origin story of Joel.
Joel (The Last of Us) Origin Story
With a big-budget, HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog’s hit game in the works, not to mention the highly anticipated sequel, it’s time to take a look back at one of the characters who got “The Last of Us” to where it is today. Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’ll be looking at the origin story of Joel.
Be warned, there are plenty of spoilers for “The Last of Us” ahead.
Since “The Last of Us: Part II” is very much going to be Ellie’s game, as she takes the reigns from Joel as the playable character, there’s never been a better time to get to grips with the first installment’s protagonist and antihero. But though Joel led his own story, information is thin on the ground; one thing we don’t know about him, for instance, is the year he was born. We know his birthday is September 26th because it’s the same date the cordyceps outbreak – and the game – begins, but as to what year, all the in-game info we get is that it was the “early-to-mid 1980s”. What we know for sure is that he and his brother Tommy are born and raised in Texas, but their parents have been out of the picture for a long time; Tommy is younger, and Joel was his primary caretaker in their youth. Examining books in Joel’s house during the prologue also reveals some things about him: he was a carpenter, for instance, which explains why he’s so good at crafting tools and weapons.
There’s more than a little debate among fans about how old Joel was when Sarah came into his life because of the lack of substantial information about his birthday. Since Sarah is 12 in 2013 when the game begins, and Joel was born at some point in the early 80s, at the oldest Joel was 16-17 when she was conceived and born, though he could have potentially been as young as 13-14. Considering Joel tells Ellie he had Sarah when he was “pretty young”, these ages or anywhere in between could be correct. Upon approaching the university, Joel also says that because he was so young when Sarah was born, he never had the chance to go to college. Another thing we don’t know is the identity of Sarah’s mom or what happened to her. She and Joel were married briefly and quickly divorced, leaving Joel to raise Sarah as a single father. But going by the affectionate – if heart-breaking – scenes we get of Joel and Sarah in the intro, this was a good thing. Though he had to work a lot, they were clearly very close, and he was a great dad.
But those early scenes become all the more upsetting when Sarah is shot and killed by a soldier trying to contain the zombie outbreak. The game then skips ahead twenty years and does little to fill in the gaps. What we know is that Joel’s life only gets darker. After the first few years of the zombie apocalypse, eventually, Joel and Tommy fight and go their separate ways; Tommy joins the Fireflies, looking for hope and a chance to build a future, sick of Joel’s philosophy of surviving above all else. Joel becomes a hardened criminal, killing indiscriminately and often venturing out of the relative safety of America’s quarantine zones. By the time we’ve caught back up with him, he’s still operating as a smuggler, now living in Boston, and works alongside Tess, who’s the only person he’ll open up to at all. Interestingly, however, Tess had a completely different role in the earliest versions of the script: she was originally set to be betrayed by Joel, pursuing him across the country and ultimately trying to kill him – at which point Ellie would step in and commit her first murder. Considering Tess is a beloved character, despite her early demise, we’re glad they made such drastic changes to create the acclaimed story that eventually went out.
Over the course of “The Last of Us”, Joel finds a surrogate daughter in Ellie when he’s tasked with escorting her to the Fireflies, and slowly begins to recover from Sarah’s violent death. He starts to make better decisions to try and protect Ellie, even teaching her vital survival skills – enough that she can save his life and help him recover when he gets a life threatening injury. But, as anyone who has played the game will know, he eventually makes one very questionable decision that may in the future cost him both his relationship with Ellie and spell doom for mankind.
Due to Joel’s absence in much of the early promotional material for “The Last of Us: Part II”, many fans began to speculate that he was dead. Newer trailers have confirmed that this isn’t the case, Joel is alive and will be back to serve as an ally to Ellie once more – though developers insist that she’s still the only playable character. Because Joel’s still alive and isn’t a figment of Ellie’s imagination, like some suspected, we’ll hopefully get some more information about him. At the very least, we want to know what’s happened in the last five years of the story. And there’s always the HBO adaptation to look forward to; there’s every possibility that the show might tell us some more about Joel’s life before meeting Ellie, even if it’s just a throwaway line or two.
While we’ve been with Ellie for some of the key points of her life, we still have a lot to learn about Joel, and hopefully, he starts to become less enigmatic in the near future.
With a big-budget, HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog’s hit game in the works, not to mention the highly anticipated sequel, it’s time to take a look back at one of the characters who got “The Last of Us” to where it is today. Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’ll be looking at the origin story of Joel.
Be warned, there are plenty of spoilers for “The Last of Us” ahead.
Since “The Last of Us: Part II” is very much going to be Ellie’s game, as she takes the reigns from Joel as the playable character, there’s never been a better time to get to grips with the first installment’s protagonist and antihero. But though Joel led his own story, information is thin on the ground; one thing we don’t know about him, for instance, is the year he was born. We know his birthday is September 26th because it’s the same date the cordyceps outbreak – and the game – begins, but as to what year, all the in-game info we get is that it was the “early-to-mid 1980s”. What we know for sure is that he and his brother Tommy are born and raised in Texas, but their parents have been out of the picture for a long time; Tommy is younger, and Joel was his primary caretaker in their youth. Examining books in Joel’s house during the prologue also reveals some things about him: he was a carpenter, for instance, which explains why he’s so good at crafting tools and weapons.
There’s more than a little debate among fans about how old Joel was when Sarah came into his life because of the lack of substantial information about his birthday. Since Sarah is 12 in 2013 when the game begins, and Joel was born at some point in the early 80s, at the oldest Joel was 16-17 when she was conceived and born, though he could have potentially been as young as 13-14. Considering Joel tells Ellie he had Sarah when he was “pretty young”, these ages or anywhere in between could be correct. Upon approaching the university, Joel also says that because he was so young when Sarah was born, he never had the chance to go to college. Another thing we don’t know is the identity of Sarah’s mom or what happened to her. She and Joel were married briefly and quickly divorced, leaving Joel to raise Sarah as a single father. But going by the affectionate – if heart-breaking – scenes we get of Joel and Sarah in the intro, this was a good thing. Though he had to work a lot, they were clearly very close, and he was a great dad.
But those early scenes become all the more upsetting when Sarah is shot and killed by a soldier trying to contain the zombie outbreak. The game then skips ahead twenty years and does little to fill in the gaps. What we know is that Joel’s life only gets darker. After the first few years of the zombie apocalypse, eventually, Joel and Tommy fight and go their separate ways; Tommy joins the Fireflies, looking for hope and a chance to build a future, sick of Joel’s philosophy of surviving above all else. Joel becomes a hardened criminal, killing indiscriminately and often venturing out of the relative safety of America’s quarantine zones. By the time we’ve caught back up with him, he’s still operating as a smuggler, now living in Boston, and works alongside Tess, who’s the only person he’ll open up to at all. Interestingly, however, Tess had a completely different role in the earliest versions of the script: she was originally set to be betrayed by Joel, pursuing him across the country and ultimately trying to kill him – at which point Ellie would step in and commit her first murder. Considering Tess is a beloved character, despite her early demise, we’re glad they made such drastic changes to create the acclaimed story that eventually went out.
Over the course of “The Last of Us”, Joel finds a surrogate daughter in Ellie when he’s tasked with escorting her to the Fireflies, and slowly begins to recover from Sarah’s violent death. He starts to make better decisions to try and protect Ellie, even teaching her vital survival skills – enough that she can save his life and help him recover when he gets a life threatening injury. But, as anyone who has played the game will know, he eventually makes one very questionable decision that may in the future cost him both his relationship with Ellie and spell doom for mankind.
Due to Joel’s absence in much of the early promotional material for “The Last of Us: Part II”, many fans began to speculate that he was dead. Newer trailers have confirmed that this isn’t the case, Joel is alive and will be back to serve as an ally to Ellie once more – though developers insist that she’s still the only playable character. Because Joel’s still alive and isn’t a figment of Ellie’s imagination, like some suspected, we’ll hopefully get some more information about him. At the very least, we want to know what’s happened in the last five years of the story. And there’s always the HBO adaptation to look forward to; there’s every possibility that the show might tell us some more about Joel’s life before meeting Ellie, even if it’s just a throwaway line or two.
While we’ve been with Ellie for some of the key points of her life, we still have a lot to learn about Joel, and hopefully, he starts to become less enigmatic in the near future.
