As it turns out, the Fireflies – even Marlene (Merle Dandridge), who’s known Ellie since she was a tiny baby – viewed the teenager as the very same thing that Joel has been pretending to all this time: cargo. Which means that, in their eyes, Ellie’s body is the disposable package, her soul is collateral damage, and her beautiful zombie-proof brain is the only thing that matters.

Hmm.

The trolley problem

Once again, apocalyptic fiction has offered us up its own version of the classic ‘trolley problem’: would you kill one person to save five others? Or, in this case, to potentially save the entire world?

Well, in our world, studies have shown that 90% of people would, like Marlene, intervene and kill just one person.

If that one person was your child, parent, or sibling, however, then it drops down to a third. And so, when Joel is informed of the Fireflies’ plans to scoop the brains out of his beloved “baby girl”, he wastes no time in deciding that it’s entirely unacceptable.

The Last Of Us finale underlines an uncomfortable home truth about love