In accordance with Mazin, “It was a joke then, however right here we sort of reply the query of who the mother is. And in a method, Marlene was her mother as a result of from mainly two hours after she’s born, Marlene turns into the girl who takes care of her.” However as Druckmann factors out later within the interview, if Marlene does have a maternal form of love for Ellie, it is tempered by her sense of responsibility for the better good. “They each sort of have accepted this child, and so they’ll do something they should defend them,” Druckmann says. “However for Marlene, her love is way more outward and broad for all of humanity, that she’s keen to sacrifice her personal morality and what she believes is correct.” Joel, as he factors out, “is the precise reverse of that.”
There are many different causes Druckmann and Mazin cite for placing Ellie’s delivery scene within the present on the final minute. It “hurts extra,” as Mazin says, plus it factors to “the character of [Ellie’s] immunity.” It additionally hearkens again to a degree of innocence, nevertheless temporary, in Ellie’s story simply after we see her most upsetting, innocence-shattering second. Plus, from a author’s standpoint, Mazin factors out that we start this story with Joel because the closest factor we get to a important character, and solely study Ellie because the pair get to know each other. “We’re discovering her by means of him,” Mazin shares. “It is higher to observe her turning into who she is with him and let that relationship be its personal factor.