First off, I want to congratulate Naughty Dog for creating the Last of Us. This game has by far one of, if not the best story I have ever experienced in any medium. I loved every second of the game, and cannot wait to talk to my fiance about the ending once she plays it. I have not enjoyed a game like this, sense Red Dead Redemption (which had an equally amazing ending)
10/10
Spoilers one more time before I start.
The ending fresh in my mind was quick and brutal. Joel's willingness to slaughter the fireflies and then bold-faced lie to Ellie about the events that transpired surprised me. However the more I think about the ending, the more it scares me. Joel honestly gets more perturbing as the game goes on. How much Sarah would have just LOVED Ellie and how they would have been best friends. How Ellie gives him these placating, deaf responses, even after he lies to her. She knows full well what happened, about the death of his daughter and the fireflies. At least in an abstract sense. She knows Joel and his history, she is smart, possibly smarter than Joel.
So now Ellie has to accept that she is his new daughter, and that she cannot abandon that role without him hunting her down to "save" her, and that he will try to kill anyone who steps in the way of his delusional object that he can keep on "surviving" for. We know and Joel knows that Ellie would have wanted to sacrifice herself to save humanity, but he saved her to selfishly have his daughter/dad life back. Even his standoff with Marleen is an inversion of his initial stand off with the soldier who kills Sarah. He is prepared to kill, to rewrite that moment even if he becomes the villain. Ellie in my mind, is basically his prisoner now. Sure, he saved her because he did not want to lose someone like he had lost his daughter. By dooming humanity "presumably" he has guaranteed himself an environment where he will always have to protect Ellie and where she will always need protecting.