Violetta Abby Winters ✦ Premium
Suddenly, the monster is a daughter. The brute is an orphan. Abby’s story is a brutal inversion of Joel’s. Where Joel lost a daughter (Sarah) and damned humanity to save a surrogate daughter (Ellie), Abby lost a father (Jerry) and damned her own soul to avenge him. The genius of The Last of Us Part II is the "Seattle Day 1" switch. Just as the narrative reaches a fever pitch—Ellie is hunting Abby down—the game resets. You are back to square one, controlling the villain.
The moment Ellie lets Abby go—drowning her, then sobbing as she sees a flash of a peaceful Joel—is the climax of both characters' arcs. But for Abby, it is liberation. She rows away into the fog with Lev, the last remnants of the Fireflies. She is broken, but she is free. The controversy around Abby isn't really about her muscles or her actions. It is about structure . We love Joel because we spent 15 hours surviving with him before he made his selfish choice. We hate Abby because we saw her crime before we saw her justification.
Violetta "Abby" Winters is not a villain. She is the ghost of consequences. And in the ruthless ecology of The Last of Us , she deserves to survive. violetta abby winters
But if you finish her half of the game and still feel pure hatred, Naughty Dog would argue you have missed the point. In a world ravaged by a fungal apocalypse, there are no "good guys" or "villains." There are only people.
Yet, nearly six years later, the discourse surrounding Abby has shifted. She is no longer just “the woman with the golf club.” She has become one of the most complex, divisive, and ultimately human characters in modern video games. To understand The Last of Us Part II , you have to stop seeing Abby as an antagonist, and start seeing her as the protagonist of her own tragedy. Our first introduction to Abby is purely physical. She is a walking fortress of muscle—bulging biceps, a thick neck, and the gait of a professional wrestler. In a medium where female characters are often designed for the male gaze, Abby’s body was a statement. It was practical. She lives in a post-apocalyptic militia (the Washington Liberation Front, or WLF) where protein is scarce and combat is constant. She didn’t get that body from a gym; she got it from years of obsessive training for a singular purpose. Suddenly, the monster is a daughter
What follows is a masterclass in forced empathy. We watch Abby pet a dog (Alice) that Ellie later kills. We see her banter with her friends (Manny, Owen, Mel) and develop a fear of heights. We learn she is loyal to a fault and carries the emotional weight of her father’s death like a stone in her chest.
The brutal irony is that killing Joel didn’t fix her. She still had nightmares of her father’s body. It wasn’t until she saved Lev—a helpless child—that the nightmares stopped. She didn't need revenge; she needed purpose. The game’s final confrontation on the beach is not a boss fight; it is a study in exhaustion. Ellie, starved and bleeding, forces a crucified and emaciated Abby into a knife fight. There are no acrobatics. Just two people who have lost everything: their friends, their lovers, their fingers, and their innocence. Where Joel lost a daughter (Sarah) and damned
When players first take control of Abby Winters in The Last of Us Part II , the feeling is almost universally visceral: disgust. After the shocking, brutal death of Joel Miller—the beloved protagonist of the first game—being forced to walk a mile in his killer’s boots felt like a cruel joke by developer Naughty Dog.