For the next four years, Ellie came to resent Joel for saving her life. Refusing to allow this, he killed the head surgeon and escaped with Ellie to settle down in Jackson, his brother's community in Wyoming. Upon reaching the Fireflies in Salt Lake City, Joel learned that only killing Ellie could create the cure.
The simple drop-off turned into a year-long journey across America, and the two eventually formed a close bond.
Marlene tasked Joel Miller, a smuggler, with escorting Ellie outside of the QZ. A friend of her mother's and the leader of the Fireflies, Marlene, believed that she was the key to reverse engineering a vaccine. When Ellie was fourteen, the pair were both infected with the Cordyceps brain infection, where Ellie discovered she was immune. Įllie grew up as an orphan in the Boston quarantine zone and attended a military preparatory school, where she met and befriended Riley Abel. She serves as the protagonist of The Last of Us: American Dreams, the playable deuteragonist of The Last of Us, and the playable protagonist of both The Last of Us: Left Behind and The Last of Us Part II. Ellie Williams is the central character of The Last of Us series.
