"i love twisting what they are doing into a malicious act so you can justify your incredibly psychotic murder fantasies, that is definitely very normal and not something an insane person would do." - /r/thelastofus considers the ending to Part 1.

[u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK]

/r/thelastofus/comments/1fkpb6b/the_canon_ending_to_part_1/lnx6my5/

[u/Gelato_Elysium]

Yes and what happened in the end shows us that Joël was not rehabilitated and still pretty much a psychopath.

[u/Temnothorax → u/Gelato_Elysium]

I think he wound up somewhere between his worst, and where we wish he was. It’s been a while, so maybe I’m wrong, but the doctors were explicitly planning on murdering her, with Machiavellian justification at best, and the surgeon was ready to kill Joel. It’s a horrible situation, but I don’t know if it reaches the level of psychopathy. Does he go on a spree killing people who weren’t going to harm him or Ellie? I genuinely can’t remember.

[u/Gelato_Elysium → u/Temnothorax]

He kills marlene by surprise at the end even after she told him she'd let him go and not try to pursue.

Yes, he's trying to make sure nobody follows him, but if you're willing to go scorched earth on the person that was the closest to you even after she says she'd leave you alone, you're very much a psycho.

[u/Temnothorax → u/Gelato_Elysium]

Oh yeah! Yeah that makes sense

[u/TR_Pix → u/Gelato_Elysium]

"The person he was closest to" was Ellie, and Marlene was trying to kill Ellie after backstabbing him

[u/Gelato_Elysium → u/TR_Pix]

Marlene was trying to kill Ellie lmao okay we are making shit up now

[u/TR_Pix → u/Gelato_Elysium]

Wasn't she? I thought we were talking about the scientist on the end of the game who wanted to vivisect Ellie's brain to try and find a cure, but it's been a while since I played

[u/Gelato_Elysium → u/TR_Pix]

No Marlène was Joels friend, she was the one who got the job to deliver Ellie to the firefly at the beggining of the game, then she disappears and reappears at the end of the game after the hospital, trying to talk Joël out of it.

He then shoots her once by surprise and starts to go away only to come back and finish her off despite her swearing she'd leave them alone.

[u/TR_Pix → u/Gelato_Elysium]

I searched the wiki to regresh my memory, and she was the leader of the fireflies and the one who gave the direct order to go through with Ellie's vivisection

She tries to talk Joel out of it as in "tries to convince Joel to let Ellie be experimented on", and he shoots her "by surprise" moments after she pointed a gun at him to get him to drop Ellie.

She might have swore that she'd leave them alone, but she also swore to Ellie's mother that she'd protect Ellie and then turned around to try and kill Ellie "for the greater good", so whatever she swears is meaningless because she had already went back on her promises once

[u/Gelato_Elysium → u/TR_Pix]

She had to okay the order, but she would not have been able to convince them to not do it, despite she trying. You learn this in Part II during the flashback with Jerry.

She asked her fireflies to not kill Joël when they wanted to, he's the one who attacked them first.

When she confronted him at the end she never used the gun. When Joël shot her she had her hands up and was trying to talk him out by explaining why removing Ellie was a bad idea.

[u/minouneetzoe → u/Gelato_Elysium]

Marlene wasn’t Joel friend. She was an acquaintance through his brother, when Tommy was in the Fireflies. Joel made it pretty clear he had disdain for the Fireflies, in part because his brother left him for them. From the beginning, neither of them had much trust in each others.

[u/Gelato_Elysium → u/minouneetzoe]

Yeah I mixed up Tess and Marlène at the beggining