Something Odd About The Last Of Us Debates

[DivinePaladin]

BraLoD said:

I believe Joel's wife/lover died giving birth to Sarah, that she never met her mother and it's not a subject Joel or Sarah bring up too often between themselves, as you noticed, Joel doesn't react well to loses.

Also, if not that, it may be that her mother is a foreigner, which may have also died or left Joel and Sarah long ago, because Sarah has a connection to Argentina, her football taste comes from Argentina which is a country where the sport is very predominant, so Joel might have had Sarah at a casual relationship where he ended up getting her with him back to USA from Argentina for several reasons.

The thing is, Sarah mother was not very connected to Joel or Sarah by a decent time already when the game starts with the infestation of the fungus.

That second part is a good theory but speaking honestly the plot isn't deep enough to have had that thought out. Everything is very hand-holdy and pseudo-choice based, and the plot even shows that quite often; Neil Druckmann wrote a very average, predictable plot that survives solely on the character interaction between Joel and Ellie (mostly the development of Ellie if I'm honest, because Joel is essentially a flat character for most of the game). Sarah herself is just a plot device to give Joel reason to have long term issues that are brought to the forefront by Ellie, and I'm being 100% honest when I say that because of this I doubt they gave any thought to Sarah besides daughter to Joel's single father trope.