The best possible ending would have been to end Ellies story as she is sitting on the tractor looking into the distance, and then to end Abby's story right after she gets off the radio with (Maybe) the firefly. That ending despite being held down by a horribly written plot would have at least given was all narrative endings need; closure. It leaves some ambiguity like did Ellie and Jew Nose live happily ever after on the farm or get raided by canibals a week later? We don't need to know that. Was it really the firefly or just some cult using a radio to find victims? We don't need to know that.
And the reason Cuckmann went this direction is that he stole the ending to Red Dead Redemption part and parcel. He just had to subvert expectations, but the problem is he subverted every aspect of the plot to such an absurd level that the plot has no legs. The whole point of subverting expectations is building those expectations up. There is not a single plot point in this entire train wreck that builds to a mature enough level to be subverted full fucking stop. It starts by setting up the plot point that Joel and Ellie are kinda having some relationship issues in the beginning but instead of exploring that and letting the audience get caught up in the drama of that NOPE JOEL IS DEAD BECAUSE A TROON WE RETCONNED BEATS HIM TO DEATH.
Then you have a brief moment where Ellie is dealing with her grief and trying to organize a posse to chase down the group responsible, and the game literally has dialogue which spells out what should happen with the adults in the room, where Tommy flat out says "hey Ellie is in a bad headspace, lock her up if you have to but don't let her go", and since this is a "stealth-lite" game you could have this play out in the gameplay by having Ellie and Jew nose have to escape their own community, but no, this is Neil Cuckmann's Citizen Kane movie drama, so they are just going to move the plot for you rather than have you participate.
Then for a brief moment after this it almost because a video game, the linear nature of the game loosens its grip a bit, it lets you actually roam around the world a bit and explore at your own discretion with just a vague goal in mind. But this is short lived and soon you are psycopathically murdering dogs and people in droves and it moves into another stolen plot device from RDR among other titles, killing your way up the hierarchy one lackey at a time. All along the way, but especially with Nora, the narrative is absolutely destroying any empathy the audience can have with Ellie, in such a way that is seems absolutely deliberate that her character is being assassinated with every single narrative moresel. Cuckmann needs you to hate her, subverted expectations, you expected to like the character from the first game. But you cant, you must be subverted, so he killed one and destroyed the other.
Jump to the second half of the game, we play as a character that we immediately hate because she literally beats the original main protagonist to death in front of the fan favorite supporting character, and right before you play as it, it kills yet another character that was only just starting to be developed in the plot. Then it tries to go for the "we are all human beings" trope desperately trying to humanize the characters you just beat to death, which over half of were actually innocent bystanders narativly speaking (Mel and Owen are the only reason Ellie and Tommy are left alive) while the other half are just as big of pieces of shit as Abby (spic and white trash tokens), and it just does not work. Maybe if you had saved Joels death for later in the game, and started the game off from Abby's perspective, maybe then this trope would have functioned properly in the narrative, but you cant literally beat the fan favorite protagonist to death in the first hour and then suddenly become a "misunderstood antagonist" 12 hours later.
As a matter of fact that's the only way the plot works, is if you started the game playing as Abby starting where the midgame picks up with her and playing through the days of Seattle from her perspective. It should be left ambiguous what "mission" they just finished, and she should have the nightmare flashbacks and young Abby flashbacks about her dad, with the one that actually shows who he is being left for the point right after she finds Owen and Mel, and right before she enters the theatre. Then after she says her line about "we let you live" it should flash back to her beginning in the original beginning and finish how it did. That way Joel's death is 12 or so hours in and actually has some build to it. You get to know Abby and her friends before you hate them, and before you hunt them down as Ellie. This adds even more weight to Ellies narrative.
And then after this, it ends exactly how I laid it out above, Ellie and Jewna raise their black baby on a sheep farm and Abby goes and maybe rejoins the firefly. Fade to black, cut to credits.
This game is engineered on every level, in every facet, to fuck you over as a player. As a streamer. As a content creator. It really is impressively meta.
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