I both love and hate that Druckmann (and co., but particularly the Druck) allows his characters to be killed so brazenly.
On one hand, so many fictional narratives start out convincing you this is a grisly world where anyone can die -- except, as the story goes on, the main characters somehow get more and more lucky (thanks, plot armor). It's fine in a confined time window, but it becomes apparent in long form fiction that it's just legitimately hard to write a story with building character arcs if the next minute none of it will matter because everyone's dead aaaand cure perspective shift.
Honestly, you can barely fault a writer for caving into practicality. Stories require order; conflicts; beginning, middle, and end. If characters are dying left and right, how do you tell a story without feeling like you're constantly smacking the reset button?
So it's bold to see ND showcase mortality so bluntly. Ahh who doesn't love the feeling of rigor mortis in the mornin'.
But of course, on the other hand, it can cross over to feeling uninspired if the characters aren't actually enriched enough beforehand. Their meaningful deaths must be earned, must go beyond just a heavy story moment. Otherwise it risks becoming part-shock value, as is the case with most examples who the above apply to (killing characters you care about, only to forget about that after a while and eventually just throw plot armor on everyone, inconsistent with the previous supposed tone -- or just killing everybody to the point that it becomes predictable and dull).
In that same vein, if everyone on TeamEllie died, and TeamAbby ended up not just superseding them but actually taking over, I would've loved it, as long as the story was able to reach that level of gloomy, abysmal darkness. Storytellers have the right to do what they want; it's all in the how. It's all in the why.
This is almost impossible to do in the case of fandom -- you'll break too many hearts. But stories of that kind can be told, too. It's not 'reality' -- it's just another way to explore dark narrative territory.
In this case, what ND was trying to do with TLOUPII doesn't quite work, but primarily because of what it is in practice, rather than on paper, iyam. Abby is no villain, and Ellie is as much of a heroine as anybody else. Both deserve to die -- both deserve a better life.
