The Last of Us’ best alternate ending is its musical ending

polygon.com:

The post-apocalypse of Naughty Dog's survival-action game (and TV show) The Last of Us is a bleak and hopeless one. But one of the game's scrapped alternate endings, which took a turn for the improvised and musical, provided a swelling, romantic sense of hope (and plenty of laughter).

Way back at in 2013, at PAX Prime in Seattle, The Last of Us game director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann walked Naughty Dog fans through the original pitch for the game, offering a very early look at the game's story, combat mechanics, and influences. They also showed off a surprising alternate ending to the game that’s far less bleak.

[Spoiler alert: This post discusses the events of the ending of The Last of Us, both the video game and the HBO series.]

Straley and Druckmann showed a version of the game's ending that turned a playable scene into an extended cut scene. In an earlier version of the game, the story ended with Joel bringing Ellie to a medical facility where doctors researched her unusual gift: her immunity to the infection that all but wiped out the planet. In the scene, Joel learns that the surgery that would be performed on Ellie in search of a cure would also result in her death. Joel takes the news poorly, killing the entire lab staff and escaping with an unconscious Ellie.

Naughty Dog played video of a motion capture session from the take, showing how actors Troy Baker (Joel, in the video game; James in the HBO adaptation) and Merle Dandridge (Marlene in both), decked out in mocap suits and armed with toy guns, played out the early version of the scene. Joel takes a hostage, they argue and, despite Marlene's pleading that Ellie would be better off dying on a surgical table than possibly being raped