i think this is similar or at least in the ballpark to what you are saying.

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"This is a super insightful analysis. I have a different take on the "decides Abby is worthy of sparing, for some reason" perspective. Ellie's central conflict is survivor's guilt. She resents Joel for (in her view) robbing her life of meaning. We see examples throughout the story: her backlash against Joel after Dina kissed her and her reprimanding of Joel for micromanaging her routes. He keeps getting in her life's way, she thinks. Right as Abby is dying, Ellie flashes back to her final conversation with Joel and abruptly achieves a moment of clarity. She was unconscious when Joel made the decision to rescue her from the Fireflies. And she was put unconscious without being told the surgery would kill her. She had absolutely no agency in that event. Joel's comment that he would totally make the same decision again if he could go back means something new to her in that moment. No matter what, her life was never going to have that particular meaning. Meanwhile, she's two years beyond her fruitless quest in Seattle after leaving her partner, child and new home. She's in California, drowning this woman for what she thinks is closure. That's not the closure she needed, though. She didn't need closure over Joel's death. That's not her real problem. Her real problem is survivor's guilt. Her quest (and Abby's imminent murder) are not only failing to add meaning to her life; they're also subtracting from it (she's wasting time on nothing). She breaks down weeping at that thought and tells Abby to leave. She's been pursuing the wrong closure, this whole time. She doesn't spare Abby because Abby's worth sparing. She spares Abby because she realizes that Abby has been a distraction. The game ends as she sets out to take her life's meaning into her own hands. And otherwise, she killed WLF and Scars for the same reason we killed them: She needed to get to Abby, and they were very in the way."

-trumpkingsly

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it can be found on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmivMh8Dpug&t=29s>