If there’s one thing that The Last of Us made clear, it is that this is a storyline that dwells on how humans have become people that were selfish and merely out to try to survive a world that has become too difficult to live in due to the effects of the Cordyceps Brain Infection outbreak. Of course, the different people of the world only have each other in such a harsh reality, and that is one of the things that Abby lived by when she spent the events of The Last of Us Part 2 hunting Joel down before killing him. So, why did Abby kill Joel?
Abby killed Joel because he was responsible for killing her father, Jerry Anderson, who was the head surgeon of the Fireflies during the first The Last of Us game. Joel killed Jerry when he rescued Ellie from getting dissected so that her brain could be used to find a cure for Cordyceps.
In a way, the different things that Joel did in his life caught up with him, as he didn’t even stop to consider whether or not the people he killed had families of their own. One such person he killed turned out to be the father of Abby, who carried this vendetta for five years between the first and second games.
Why Did Abby Kill Joel?
Abby Anderson was one of the characters introduced as a playable character in The Last of Us Part 2, which is the hit sequel to the massive success of the original The Last of Us game. She was introduced as a member of the Washington Liberation Front. Still, she was a former member of the Fireflies, the most prominent group of resistance fighters before it disbanded right after the events of the first game.
While Abby may have been a playable character in The Last of Us Part 2, she was anything but friendly toward Joel and Ellie, both the playable characters of the first game. That’s because Abby held a grudge against Joel. Of course, there was a point in the game where she was friendly towards him when they first met.
However, Abby did not hesitate to shoot his leg upon learning that Joel Miller was the man she was talking to. Joel, bleeding to death due to the shotgun wound on his leg, asked Abby who she was. But Abby made Joel guess, which was not something Joel had the luxury of doing because he was dying.
Because Abby didn’t want Joel to die just like that, she asked one of her people to tourniquet his leg so he wouldn’t bleed out. After that, she used a golf club to beat the life out of Joel. Even though Ellie pleaded with Abby to spare Joel’s life, she still smashed his head with the golf club, leading to Joel’s death. So, why did Abby kill Joel?
The reason why Abby killed Joel was that he was the one responsible for her father’s death. Take note that Joel killed many people during the 25-year gap between the start of the Cordyceps outbreak and the events of The Last of Us 2. That means that he killed a lot of fathers during that time.
But Abby was the only one who held a grudge for a long time against the man responsible for killing her father. And it just so happened that Joel’s past caught up with him as Abby killed him as a means of retribution for what he did to her father.
In a way, this represents the entire cycle of hatred that became prevalent in The Last of Us as people lived in a harsh environment where they only had each other. As such, the survivors lived for each other because they no longer had anything to live for. And because Abby only had her father, his death was something she could never let go of, especially because she knew the name of the man responsible for her father’s death.
Who Was Abby’s Father?
The reason why the death of Abby’s father was such a big deal is the fact that he was sort of a big deal as well. And we have to go back to the events of the original game when Joel and Ellie found the Fireflies after a long journey from Boston.
When Joel and Ellie found themselves in Salt Lake City, they were ambushed by the Fireflies, and both were left unconscious. Marlene apologized to Joel when he woke up, as her men didn’t know who he was. But Marlene also told Joel that they were prepping Ellie for surgery because they were going to take her brain out to use it as a way for them to synthesize a cure or a vaccine that could help save humanity from the effects of the Cordyceps Brain Infection.
Joel disagreed with what Marlene and the Fireflies were about to do to the young girl as he had learned to love Ellie as a daughter. As such, Joel went on a rampage that killed almost all of the Fireflies members in the Salt Lake City hospital they were in. And when he got to Ellie’s room, he also killed the doctors about to perform surgery on her.
One of the doctors that Joel killed was Jerry Anderson, the head surgeon of the Fireflies and the only man that could have found a cure for the Cordyceps outbreak. Joel didn’t know who he was but killed him anyway because he wasn’t willing to let Ellie go as he was desperate to find a cure for the outbreak.
Upon learning that her father had been killed, Abby broke down in tears. Meanwhile, the Fireflies disbanded after the deaths of both Marlene and Jerry because there was no longer anyone to lead them and give them hope that a cure could still be discovered. And while Abby left to join another faction of rebels, she held on to her anger toward Joel as he was responsible for her father’s death.
