>>15575381>Halfway across the countryHalfway across Idaho.
Part of the point is that Ellie is doing something a lot like what Joel did and that it's bad and that she shouldn't do it and Ellie's kind of a bad person for doing it.
>It's a bad idea Ellie!Nope I'm doing it
>I'm pregnant Ellie!Nope I'm doing it
>Tommy is pinned and needs help!Nope gotta get revenge
>Jesse becomes disgusted with Ellie and doesn't even know she's choosing revenge over Jesse's child>Time passes>Ellie we have a child together and built a life together and we already tried this and it just made everything awful! Nope gotta go get revenge
But also, returning from Washington makes Ellie's trauma so much worse. She struggles to function in a simple farm life. When Dina confronts her for the final time, Ellie justifies herself very differently. She does not sleep, she does not eat, she has breakdowns all the time. She MUST resolve her trauma. She has no choice. And that's what it was always about. Joel's daughter trauma. Abby's father trauma. Ellie's father trauma. That's really what revenge is about and it really doesn't work and makes things worse. Abby and Ellie both get their revenge and their trauma is not resolved, it makes things worse. Abby's realization of that crystallizes over the course of her friendship with Lev. Ellie's realization of that until she's seconds away from killing the last of the gang that killed her dad figure, after having years to think about killing the rest of them and how it didn't help. She's doing what Joel did that created this whole mess, but Joel doing that for her isn't why Joel was special and why it hurt to lose him. It's because Joel loved her. Killing Abby won't bring that back, just like killing Abby's friends just increased her trauma instead of decreasing it.
