The farmhouse. The guitar. The fingers that can no longer play it. Ellie sitting with everything that is gone — Dina, JJ, the life that was possible, the music that was possible, the Joel that was possible and then was not. The not-stopping is not hope, exactly. It is the survival instinct stripped of all justification, the body continuing because the body continues, the self remaining even after the reasons for the self to remain have been removed one by one.

The Last of Us Part II ends here and does not offer resolution. It offers only the fact of continuing, and it leaves open whether that fact is enough. Ellie leaves the farmhouse. The door stays open behind her. The game has the honesty not to show where she goes.