Sarah Miller

Sarah Miller is a playable supporting character in The Last of Us Part I. She was the 12-year-old daughter of Joel before the outbreak.
== Biography ==
=== Background and early life ===
Sarah was born in late 2000 or early–mid 2001, to Joel Miller and an unknown mother. Prior to the outbreak, she lived a regular, everyday life in the Austin, Texas area with her father Joel. She was on a youth soccer team called the "Defenders", playing in the number 14 position, and won an individual award in a game, as evidenced by several pictures in their house, especially one of her and Joel together. She also enjoyed hiking with her father and skateboarding, as shown by a skateboard leaning against the wall in her room at the start of the game. She was a fan of the rock band "The Bash", having a poster of them on her bedroom wall. She also liked the "Dawn of the Wolf" films, a play on the , as seen by a poster in her bedroom. It is implied she made Joel take her to see the film."Pittsburgh" Sarah's mother and Joel were married "for a while""The University" but she left Joel shortly after Sarah was born.Druckmann confirms fan theory about Joel's wife, Reddit, (Accessed 29 November, 2021)
=== Events of The Last of Us Part I ===
Sarah is first seen waking up on a sofa to find Joel talking on the phone to her uncle Tommy. Afterwards, Joel sits down on the couch and Sarah gives him a birthday present, a new wristwatch where she jokes that she bought it with the money she got from selling "hardcore drugs". After watching some TV with her father, she eventually falls asleep again and Joel carries her back to her room and puts her to bed.Goodnight, baby girl 
Later, she is awakened in the middle of the night by an urgent phone call from Tommy who instructs her to get her dad. The line goes dead, prompting her to search for Joel, passing the birthday card she made for Joel, in which she likened him to a dinosaur though remarked he was the best dad in the world. She checks his room, seeing a news report about a gas leak that cuts dead as an explosion in the distance startles Sarah before she proceeds downstairs, seeing several police cars rush past her house."Hometown"
She finds her father's cellphone with eight missed calls and a text from Tommy saying "where the hell are you? CALL ME!", along with "On my way". She enters her father's study, just as Joel runs in through the open sliding door to the backyard; he is covered in blood and extremely nervous. Joel retrieves his revolver from his desk and says that their neighbor Jimmy Cooper is "sick". The man in question appears, running towards the sliding door, smashing his way through the glass and into the room, causing Sarah to jump back in fright; Joel instinctively puts himself between her and Jimmy. The man charges at the pair, forcing Joel to shoot him and Sarah is in disbelief at what had occurred, but is quickly calmed by her father.
Suddenly, Tommy pulls into their driveway and they jump into his car where they begin driving out of town to get to safety, but some routes are blocked and others clogged with traffic. With no alternative, Tommy diverts into town, narrowly avoiding an infected patient trying to enter the vehicle. In the mayhem, a car crashes into them, injuring Sarah's leg and impairing her movement. With the car now wrecked, Joel carries her whilst Tommy protects them, looking for a safe place. They enter a bar with some infected hot on their heels. Tommy instructs them to get to the highway and he'll hold the infected back and catch up with them. They flee, closely followed by other infected.
As they approach the highway, with infected closing in on them, a soldier saves them by shooting the infected. The soldier radios for orders on what to do with Joel and Sarah, only to be instructed to eliminate them despite Sarah's presence. Although Joel tries to reason with him, the soldier reluctantly opens fire and Joel dives for cover, barely shielding Sarah; the girl cries out in pain as they fall down. The soldier walks up to Joel and prepares to kill him, but he falls to the ground before he can do so, shot by Tommy. The relief is short lived as Sarah begins crying; Joel sees that Sarah was shot in the abdomen, and pleads with her to hang on. She clasps her father, Joel trying to stem the bleeding to no avail and she dies in his arms.Twenty Years Later Sarah died in the early hours of September 27, 2013.
=== Legacy ===
The loss of Sarah had an adverse effect on Joel as he is still unable to move on from her death even twenty years later. He doesn't even speak of his daughter to anyone if he can help it, and he still wears the watch she gave him, despite it breaking over the years."The Quarantine Zone" After Joel's adventures with Ellie, the man notes several similarities between her and his deceased daughter, believing they would have been good friends. He even affectionately calls Ellie "baby girl", which is the same endearment he used for Sarah, suggesting that Joel views his relationship with Ellie as similar to what he had with Sarah."Jackson (Part I chapter)"
While living in Jackson, Joel reframes the torn picture of him and Sarah, keeping it by one he had with Ellie on in the windowsill of his bedroom."Jackson (Part II chapter)"
== Design and appearance ==
Sarah was a small girl with short highlighted blonde hair, blue eyes and she wore a wooden cross necklace. She wore purple-checkered pajamas, a grey T-shirt over a darker-grey longer sleeved top. She was barefoot throughout her segment of the game. 
== Personality and traits ==
Sarah shares Joel's sense of humor as she trades jabs with her father during the prologue without missing a beat. She cares about him, as she somehow manages to scrounge up enough money to buy him an implied expensive birthday present.
Like Ellie, Sarah is mature for her age as she is calm and collected when she claims she's 'fine' to Tommy, mere minutes after Joel shot their infected neighbor. She seems to possess above-average intelligence for her age given there is an Honor Roll certificate and an additional academic award hanging above the computer in her room.
Sarah is also caring and selfless as she was worried over Tommy's safety instead of her own and said that they should have stopped to help the family they passed in the road. Another possibility is that she was in shock because of the whole ordeal, and was able to compartmentalize it.
== Behind the scenes ==
* Sarah is the first playable character in the The Last of Us series, but her interaction is limited only to moving and looking around. However, she can still interact with five items in her household. Furthermore, in Sarah's room, there is a giraffe toy where it foreshadows Ellie and Joel's encounter with giraffes in the later stages of the game. 
* stated in one of his interviews that it was intentional to open the game with Sarah's face and end it with Ellie's face. He further explains that it was their purpose to create a story that linked the two girls.Venture beat - Creators talk
* In the prologue, if the player removes the models of Joel and Tommy, the game will crash after Sarah gets into the vehicle with them and restarting the checkpoint will allow the player to venture as Sarah into the open, passing the crashed car and Louis' burning farm.One notable example, YouTube, Accessed May, 2018)
== Gallery ==
Sarah.png|Sarah's profile shot from the original The Last of Us.
Sarah Part I infobox.png|Sarah's model from the model viewer in Part I.
Sarah Miller.jpg|Sarah's in-game model.
Joel and Sarah Photo.png|Sarah and Joel at soccer.
Joel_and_Sarah_frame.jpg|Joel and Sarah's picture preserved in his house.
Joel and Sarah.jpg|Sarah with her father, Joel.
THELASTOFUSTHEBASH.jpg|The Bash, the band Sarah likes.
Joel Gift Sarah.jpg|Sarah gifting Joel a new watch.
Pay morgage.jpg|Sarah and Joel watching television.
Sarah1.png|Sarah watches her father fight a runner.
JoelSarah.jpg|Sarah being carried by Joel.
Saved.jpg|Joel and Sarah being found by a soldier.
Baby stay with me.jpg|Joel's final moments with Sarah.
Baby Sarah.jpg|Photo of Joel with Sarah as a young child.
== References ==
de:Sarah Miller
es:Sarah Miller
pl:Sarah Miller
fr:Sarah Miller
pt-br:Sarah Miller
ru:Сара Миллер
Category:Deceased characters
Category:The Last of Us Part I characters
Category:The Last of Us: One Night Live characters
Category:The Last of Us Part I playable characters