Did Ellie give consent right from the beginning?
I always had a question in my mind about why Part 2 would blame Joel for what happened in that hospital. And not blame the doctor for operating on an unconscious child without her consent. Obviously most of us think Part 2 is a retcon from the first game to the second, done by Neil. But to me it is very shamelessly hypocritical & illogical that Neil directly ignored the wrong doings of the doctor & went full attack mode on Joel.
It simply doesnt make any sense why Joel is to be blamed here. Neil in an interview was making Joel out to be some ruthless evil demon hell bent on killing innocent angels in the hospital. It doesnt make any sense.
So i was confused why Neil was making Joel the only evil guy whos the reason for every bad thing that happened. I always thought why is Neil like this? Then i thought may be his POV is different from us. Thats why hes so confident about Joel being evil.
Heres the thing. Neil probably thinks Ellie wasn't taken advantage of & got close to being murdered by a lunatic doctor. He probably thinks Ellie already gave the consent to Marlene long before Joel even met her. Right from the beginning when she was with Marlene. So the consent was already assumed & which is why she was being operated on without asking once again, by the doctor.
This also explains why Abby is not shown as evil for encouraging her dad to go through with the operation & is justified to kill Joel like a true Hero. Neil thinks Ellie has always given consent to 'do whatever it takes' to save the world. Thats why Part 2 doesnt address some issues in the continuity of the story & breeze past everything like Ellie's consent was never an issue.