Why TLOU Fans Need to Accept Abby as a Hero, Not a Villain
The character Abby from The Last of Us Part 2 Video Game
When a game is done well, it is exciting, engaging and draws you in by making you feel like you are living as the main character of the adventure. The storytelling capabilities and inclusiveness video games give to the player are what makes it superior to all other forms of entertainment. That’s one of the things fans love about the medium, but it also cuts both ways, making video games fans potentially the most toxic.
One game that has amazing storytelling is The Last of Us. However, for fans who want a more complex story, the Last of Us part 2 is even better.
As a huge fan of the games, when a first set of certain scenes leaked, I understood the hatred for Abby. But after actually playing the game and experiencing her story for myself, my opinion changed. Eventually, after everyone played the game, I thought they would see the light too.
That’s why I was disheartened to read that Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Abby in the upcoming second season of HBO's The Last of Us, needed additional protection during filming due to the toxicity surrounding her character (Kotaku). After all this time, clearly these toxic “fans” are still missing the point of the second game: Abby is a Hero in the story and here’s why.
This is my opinion. I’m sticking to it. Major TLOU 2 spoilers ahead.
The first game was almost completely black and white, except for that fun ending. The second story, however, is much more complex. It shows good and bad deeds of all the characters, except maybe for Joel. And that’s the beauty of the game, it shows people aren’t perfect.
In the first half of the game, toxic fans are correct. Ellie is the hero and Abby is the villain. We know this after Abby and her gang take Joel hostage. We know this after Abby’s team surprise and beat up Ellie. And we really know it after she makes Ellie watch as she brutally murders Joel with a golf club in one of the most heartbreaking scenes ever.
We see and feel Ellie’s need for revenge. We see her take care of her community, fall in love with Dina, and risk everything to save Tommy after he leaves to get revenge for his brother Joel’s death.
Then, with one amazingly bold storytelling change, the story snaps from black and white to morally grey.
The moment that changes everything is when we move from Ellie’s perspective to Abby’s. Suddenly she becomes more than a one decisional cartoon villain. We meet her family, her first love and what her life was like before the clickers.
And we also learn, from her perspective, that some stranger named “Joel” walks into the operating room with a gun and kills her father. On top of that, this “Joel” character has not only killed her father, but all of humanity with him killing any chance we had for a cure.
This switch in storytelling flips the narrative on it’s head and is what makes the game so unbelievably mature and more than just a zombie shooter.
Suddenly Abby is our hero. We jump forward in her timeline when she’s out for revenge, not just for her father, but everyone. I’m not the first to point out that her famous arms are the physical manifestation of her bottled up anger and need for revenge, but it’s true. It show’s how Joel’s actions have not only shaped who she is mentally but physically as well.
Meanwhile Ellie, starts her bloody quest to find Tommy. She starts with stabbing a WLF member in the neck (while she played a PS Vita!). Then finds the doctor, Nora, and tortures and brutally murders her. And at the peak of her most villainies arc, she shoots Abby’s boyfriend Owen.. And THEN stabs his unborn baby’s mother Melanie in the neck.
The scene is one of the most masterfully tragic gut punches in video game history.
Yes, Joel’s death was awful, but here we see our hero Ellie is wrong. We know her victims now personally. These are not justifiable revenge killings anymore. Ellie is committing murder. There is a difference. And the storytellers emphasize that with the needless death of Mel and her unborn child at the hands of Ellie.
Meanwhile, at this point in the story, Abby is falling (back?) in love with Owen. She’s saving Seraphite children. Even near the end of the game, Abby has a chance to kill Ellie and pregnant Dina and she doesn’t. We see she’s a good, kind person. Something we didn’t see in the first half of the game and something we can’t exactly say for Ellie in second half of the story.
Even more striking, we see the parallels between both women. They both lost love ones to each other, they both try to save innocent people, they both fall in love and they both want revenge.
And it’s precisely at this point, the audience should understand, both women are the stories real “heroes” and “villains” at the same time.
The Last of Us 2 is one of the best told narratives in any medium. Yes, it has explosive action and fun/gross violence, but at the heart it’s anchored with a heartbreaking story with complex characters that you can both root for and want to just stop and talk it out at the same time. And it ends with a showdown between the two that was one of the toughest but most amazing sequences to playthrough. Definitely a classic that I can only hope the HBO series does justice.
After the ending of The Last of Us 2, when people say they hate the character Abby, I can only assume they aren’t real fans of the series, and they didn’t really play it. And IF those people did get to end of the game and still hate Abby, then they are clearly more misunderstood and lost than both Ellie and Abby ever were.
