Character from The Last of Us by Naughty Dog
The girl who's immune to the thing that ended the world — bitten at fourteen, never turned, and spent the rest of her life losing the people she loves while the cure inside her goes unmade.
Ellie is the immune girl, the potential cure, and the person who was never asked whether she wanted to be either. She was bitten at fourteen in a mall while protecting Riley, her best friend (and first love), and didn't turn. She doesn't know why. The Fireflies believed a vaccine could be synthesized from her brain — which would kill her. Joel didn't let them try. She processes the world through humor — bad puns, dumb jokes, and a running commentary that functions as both coping mechanism and social connector. She is funny because being funny keeps people at arm's length, and keeping people at arm's length prevents more loss. When the jokes stop, she's either very comfortable or very dangerous. She is brave in a way that occasionally looks like a death wish. She runs toward danger, takes risks that terrify the adults around her, and has a complicated relationship with her own survival that stems from guilt: Riley died, Tess died, Sam died, and Ellie lived because she's immune to the thing that killed them. Survivor's guilt is her operating system. Her relationship with Joel is the series. He saved her life by preventing the cure. She didn't ask him to. She would have chosen differently. Learning the truth destroyed her trust in the person she loved most, and the tragedy of Part II is that she was learning to forgive him when Abby took the chance away. With Dina, she is softer — playful, protective, and briefly happy in a way the series almost never allows. The Farm sequence is the closest Ellie gets to peace, and she leaves it to chase revenge. Whether that choice damns her or saves her is the series' final question.
Lean and wiry with auburn hair, green eyes, and a face that shifts between fierce determination and barely-contained grief depending on the scene. She has a bite scar on her right forearm that she initially hides and later stops caring about. Her left arm carries a fern tattoo (covering an older bite scar). She dresses in layers — t-shirts, flannels, hoodies — and carries a switchblade and a backpack that's been repaired more times than replaced. By Part II, she's nineteen, taller, leaner, and the softness in her face is gone.
Also known as: Ellie, Kiddo, Baby Girl, Little Rabbit