Joel Miller
Joel Miller is the man you play for almost all of The Last of Us Part I. A hardened smuggler in the Boston quarantine zone, he takes a job escorting 14-year-old Ellie out of the city, and the drop-off turns into a year-long trip across the country to find the Fireflies.
- Role
- Protagonist
- Affiliation
- Smugglers
Found in
- BostonBoston, Massachusetts is the first region after the time skip and the city where Ellie grew up. You play The Quarantine Zone and The Outskirts here, and Left Behind's flashbacks with Riley take place in the same city. FEDRA holds the North End as one of the last working quarantine zones in the country.
- JacksonJackson, Wyoming is the home of Tommy's community and covers both the town and the wider Jackson County, including the hydroelectric dam and the Hidden Pines Corral ranch. You visit it twice: in Tommy's Dam and in the short closing chapter, Jackson. It is the one safe, working settlement in Part I.
- Miller residenceThe Miller residence is Joel and Sarah's two-story house just outside Austin, and the first place you explore in Part I. You play as Sarah here at the start of Hometown, on the night of September 26, 2013, before the family flees with Tommy.
Good to know
- Voiced and performed by Troy Baker.
- A Texan from the Austin area who worked construction with his younger brother Tommy before the outbreak.
- Turns 32 on the night the outbreak begins in September 2013; the main story picks up twenty years later.
- Still wears the wristwatch his daughter Sarah gave him for that birthday, even though its face is cracked and it no longer works.
- Works the Boston black market with his partner Tess, who calls him Texas.
- Favors the revolver and the shotgun, and grabs a machete whenever one turns up.
- Listen Mode is his: hold it to hear and see enemies through walls.
- Crafts health kits, Molotovs, nail bombs and shivs from scavenged parts, and picks up Firefly pendants, comics and notes along the way.
- Played guitar before the outbreak, and admits to Ellie at the university that he once wanted to be a singer.
Who he is
Joel is quiet, blunt and slow to trust. Twenty years in the quarantine zone have made him a man who does the dirty jobs others refuse: moving contraband, roughing up rivals and asking no questions about the cargo. He refuses to talk about the people he has lost and shuts down any conversation that drifts toward his past. He hints to Ellie in Pittsburgh that he has been on both sides of a roadside ambush, which is how he spots the hunters' trap before it springs.
How he plays
You control Joel from the Boston chapters to the end, apart from the winter stretch and the prologue. He can choke out humans from behind, use them as shields, shiv clickers once you craft blades, and upgrade weapons at workbenches. Ellie and other companions back him up by calling out enemies and throwing bricks, but Joel is the one who has to deal with most fights. He also boosts Ellie to ladders and floats her across water on pallets because she cannot swim.
The road west
After the Boston outskirts, Joel calls in an old favor from Bill in Lincoln to get a working truck, drives to Pittsburgh where hunters ambush the pair, and teams up with Henry and Sam to escape the city. In the fall he finds Tommy at the hydroelectric dam outside Jackson, argues with him about handing Ellie over, and finally decides to carry on with her himself to the University of Eastern Colorado.
Growing close to Ellie
Joel starts the trip treating Ellie as cargo. Things shift in Pittsburgh when she saves him from a hunter: he hands her a hunting rifle to cover him, thanks her, and later lets her carry a pistol for emergencies. At the ranch outside Jackson he tells her flatly that he is not her dad, then changes his mind on the ride back and keeps her with him.
Sarah and the outbreakSpoilerShow
Sarah is shot by a soldier on the highway on outbreak night and dies in Joel's arms, the loss that hardens him. In the years after he and Tommy survive by preying on travelers as hunters, which drives the brothers apart. At the university Joel is impaled on rebar after a fall and nearly dies; Ellie keeps him alive through the winter while he fights off sepsis, and he only recovers in time to cut through David's settlement to reach her.
The hospital and the endingSpoilerShow
In Salt Lake City the Fireflies tell Joel that making a vaccine means removing the fungus from Ellie's brain, which will kill her. He fights through St. Mary's Hospital, kills the lead surgeon and carries Ellie out, then shoots Marlene in the parking garage so she cannot follow them. On the road to Jackson he tells Ellie the Fireflies had given up on a cure, and when she asks him to swear it is true, he does.
- Back in a FlashBack in a Flash is the first chapter of Left Behind. After a short flashback to Riley's surprise visit at Ellie's school in Boston, you play Ellie in the snowed-in Colorado Mountain Plaza, searching the mall for anything that can help Joel.
- HometownHometown is the prologue chapter of The Last of Us Part I, set in and around Austin, Texas, on the night the infection breaks out in September 2013. You play as Sarah Miller exploring her house, then as her father Joel as the family tries to flee the city with his brother Tommy.
The Quarantine ZoneThe Quarantine Zone starts the story proper 20 years after the outbreak, inside Boston's military-run zone in August 2033. As Joel, now a smuggler, you and his partner Tess slip outside the wall to track down Robert, a dealer who owes them guns, and end up taking a new job from the Fireflies.- The OutskirtsThe Outskirts takes Joel, Tess and Ellie out of the Boston quarantine zone and across the ruined city toward the capitol building, where Fireflies are meant to collect Ellie. It is where you meet clickers and learn to slip past them with thrown bricks and bottles, on a route through downtown, the Goldstone Building and a history museum.
- Bill's TownBill's Town brings Joel and Ellie to Lincoln, Massachusetts, a small town that Joel's paranoid contact Bill has rigged with traps to keep the infected out. Bill owes Joel a favor, so you team up with him to find a working car, which means a trip through a clicker-filled graveyard and an infected high school.
- PittsburghPittsburgh is the chapter where hunters take over: armed locals who drove out the military and now ambush anyone passing through. Joel and Ellie are forced off the road downtown, fight through the Hotel Grand and the Financial District, and join brothers Henry and Sam to reach the bridge out of the city.
- Escape from Liberty GardensEscape from Liberty Gardens is the final chapter of Left Behind: Ellie and Riley run from a horde of runners through the Boston mall, climbing scaffolding to find a way out. It has no collectibles, and finishing it unlocks the gold trophy Don't Go.
- The SuburbsThe Suburbs picks up on a riverbank outside Pittsburgh, with Joel, Ellie, Henry and Sam heading for a radio tower where Henry hopes to meet his group. You cross a flooded sewer that was once home to a community of survivors, then fight hunters and their Humvee on a quiet street in Waverly Township.
- Tommy's DamTommy's Dam brings Joel and Ellie to Jackson County, Wyoming, months after Pittsburgh, where they find Joel's brother Tommy helping run a hydroelectric plant for his wife Maria's settlement. It is a short chapter built around a reunion and two fights with bandits, one at the dam and one at an old ranch house.
- The UniversityThe University sends Joel and Ellie on horseback across the University of Eastern Colorado near Boulder, looking for the science building where Tommy says the Fireflies are based. It mixes quiet exploration with a dorm full of infected and a fight against armed looters inside the lab building.
Lakeside ResortLakeside Resort jumps to winter and puts you in control of Ellie near Silver Lake, Colorado, hunting with a bow and searching for medicine. She runs into two strangers, David and James, and for part of the second half the game switches you back to Joel.
Bus DepotBus Depot opens in the spring of 2034 as Joel and Ellie walk into Salt Lake City, aiming for the Fireflies at Saint Mary's Hospital. The route runs along a highway full of dead cars, through the Logan James bus station and an abandoned quarantine zone, and down into a flooded tunnel full of infected.- The Firefly LabThe Firefly Lab is the second-to-last chapter, set inside Saint Mary's Hospital in Salt Lake City, where the Fireflies have their base. It is a single section played as Joel, and its five collectibles include the recordings that explain what the Fireflies have learned from Ellie.
- JacksonJackson is the short closing chapter of the main story: you play as Ellie, walking through the woods with Joel toward Tommy's settlement in Wyoming in the spring of 2034. It has one section, the Epilogue, and one collectible, the comic Singularity.
Related characters
- Protagonist
Ellie Williams
Ellie Williams is the 14-year-old girl Joel is hired to smuggle out of Boston, and your companion for most of The Last of Us Part I. She was bitten weeks earlier and never turned, so the Fireflies believe her immunity could lead to a vaccine. You play as her in the winter chapter and in the Left Behind DLC.
- Companion
Callus
Callus is the horse Joel and Ellie ride from Jackson County to the University of Eastern Colorado and beyond. He first carries Joel when Ellie runs off in Tommy's Dam, and Ellie names him on the road to the university.
- Supporting
Tommy Miller
Tommy Miller is Joel's younger brother, a former Firefly who now helps run the settlement at Jackson, Wyoming. He drives Joel and Sarah through the chaos of the prologue, and twenty years later Joel tracks him down at a hydroelectric dam in the chapter Tommy's Dam, hoping he will take Ellie to the Fireflies.
- Minor
Jimmy Cooper
He is the first infected you see in the game, during the outbreak night in Hometown.