Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

Episode 5 of HBO’s The Final of Us marks the midpoint of our nine-episode journey. That’s proper, we’re midway there, and Ellie and Joel are undoubtedly residing on a prayer. Look, I’m sorry for the dangerous Bon Jovi reference however man, this episode is The Final of Us at its most relentlessly bleak. I wanted to do one thing to lighten the temper for myself, and in contrast to Ellie, I don’t have a e book of terrible jokes helpful. At the very least this episode additionally options what I take into account the best refined nod to the sport in your complete season. We’ll get to that in a bit.

On the finish of episode 4, Joel and Ellie had been being held at gunpoint by two characters who gamers of the sport probably instantly acknowledged as Henry and Sam. (If you’ll want to catch up, yow will discover my recap of that episode right here.) As episode 5 begins, we flash again a short time to fulfill these new characters and find out about what’s pushed them into such determined circumstances.

The Fall of Kansas Metropolis FEDRA

At first look, this episode’s starting looks as if one in all pure jubilation. Chants of “freedom!” are heard rising from a crowd that’s celebrating within the streets. However virtually instantly, we’re proven the grim aspect of this comfortable event, with FEDRA officers being executed at point-blank or publicly hoisted into the air by the neck as they twitch with their ultimate struggles for all times. An armored car the individuals have reclaimed roams the streets blasting the message, “Collaborators, give up now and you’ll obtain a good trial.” Hmm, sure, by some means I don’t imagine you. Possibly it’s the truth that you’re dragging a physique behind you that’s filled with so many blades it appears like a pincushion, I’m undecided.

Because the armored car passes, we see Henry and Sam lurking within the shadows. Henry (Lamar Johnson, The Hate U Give) makes use of ASL to speak together with his brother, cluing us in to a big change from the sport: Right here, Sam is deaf. (Sam is splendidly performed right here by younger actor Keivonn Woodard, who can be deaf.) On this temporary change, you may already sense Henry attempting to placed on a courageous face for his a lot youthful brother. The 2 sneak away unseen by the patrolling resistance which, as we discovered in final week’s episode, is hell-bent on discovering them.

Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) interrogates a group of "collaborators" while the heavily armed Perry (Jeffrey Pierce) stands nearby in a scene from HBO's The Last of Us.

Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

In reality, even because the celebration rages on, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey), the resistance’s chief, is working, interrogating a gaggle of “collaborators”—civilians who labored with FEDRA earlier than it fell—about Henry’s whereabouts. Lynskey stays chilling within the function, coating her feedback in a tone that, on the floor, sounds affordable and type, however is so transparently chilly and ruthless beneath. “Fortunate for you, I’m not FEDRA,” she tells them, saying that in the event that they cooperate, they’ll be placed on trial, be discovered responsible in fact, after which need to do a while, “straightforward.” She’s obtained her commando assistant Perry (Jeffrey Pierce, who voices Joel’s brother Tommy within the video games) by her aspect, his silent presence lending her phrases an added menace of hazard. Lastly somebody cracks and tells her that Henry and Sam are with Edelstein, the physician we noticed Kathleen interrogate in final week’s episode.

A second later, she orders her males to go door-to-door till her prey is discovered. When Perry reveals some hesitation and advises in opposition to this plan, we see that she will be able to flip her condescending ruthlessness on him, too. “He’s not my seventh precedence, Perry,” she says. “Is that what he’s to you?” I’m beginning to really feel like the way in which she prioritizes discovering Henry above all different considerations could backfire on her ultimately. Bear in mind final week, when Perry confirmed her the ominous, quivering sinkhole within the constructing, and somewhat than coping with it in any possible way, she informed him to simply seal the constructing off and stay centered on discovering Henry? Yeah, I’ve obtained a nasty feeling about this.

Perry asks in the event that they’re actually placing the arrested collaborators on trial. After all they’re not. “While you’re achieved, burn the our bodies. It’s quicker,” she says, the way in which you may ask somebody to choose up some milk from the grocery retailer on the way in which dwelling.

Henry and Sam stick with Edelstein

Henry and Sam meet up with Edelstein, who takes them into the identical cramped attic house we noticed Kathleen examine in final week’s episode. Right here, it’s not but coated with Sam’s drawings, as Henry and the physician focus on their very restricted meals provide and complete lack of ammunition for his or her weapons. All the pieces that transpires right here has an undercurrent of dread for us, since we already know that Edelstein quickly will get captured and executed by Kathleen.

Sam, who can’t hear what they’re saying, sits within the nook, drawing on his little magnetic sketch pad. Edelstein looks as if a sort and considerate man, displaying real concern for Sam’s well-being. “He’s scared since you’re scared,” he advises Henry.

Henry holds a magnetic sketchpad on which Sam has drawn himself as a masked superhero in HBO's The Last of Us.

Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

Henry goes to consolation his little brother, who has drawn a masked superhero on his pad. “Tremendous Sam,” Henry indicators. Sam is understandably afraid, and Henry tries to reassure him that they’re secure right here. “There’s one downside, although,” he says. “This place? Is ugly.” He then breaks out the large bag of artwork provides that Sam makes use of to embellish the house. It’s an endearing second, with Henry creating for his youthful brother an alternate actuality by which the one actual downside going through them is the drabness of their environment, and never the military looking them proper exterior.

The delivery of Tremendous Sam

We skip forward ten days, to seek out the attic crammed with photographs of Tremendous Sam blasting evil FEDRA officers and flying protectively over town. However now, an actual downside is bearing down on them: they’re virtually out of meals, and Sam is hungry. Edelstein’s been gone a complete day, and their hopes relaxation on him returning with some. We already know he’s not coming again. And but proper out the window, Henry can see resistance officers scouring town, making leaving a harmful proposition. They’re in a good spot.

Lastly, Henry has to face the truth that Edelstein isn’t returning. He tells Sam that he’s studied the patterns of the resistance patrols and might information them to security. When Sam asks in the event that they killed Edelstein, Henry is sincere and says they most likely did. Sam clings to Henry for a very long time after that. He’s a toddler rising up in a world by which nothing is ever secure or assured. He have to be terrified.

A child's drawing showing a superhero zapping a cop-like figure in HBO's The Last of Us.

Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

As he holds his brother and appears on the artwork adorning the partitions, Henry has a flash of inspiration. He tells Sam to shut his eyes, and paints a pink masks on his face, similar to the one Sam’s alter ego sports activities in all of the drawings. Seeing it mirrored in his brother’s knife, Sam nods with satisfaction. He’s able to face the world.

They don’t get far, although. Simply as they’re about to depart the constructing, a gunfight breaks out exterior. It’s Joel and Ellie’s unceremonious arrival in Kansas Metropolis, and Henry observes as Joel kills the hunters attacking him. We see the wheels in his head turning. “New plan,” he tells his brother.

Assembly Joel and Ellie

Now we come again to the second that concluded episode 4, when the paths of those two duos intersect. Henry’s clearly been keeping track of Joel since earlier within the day, and he’s tracked him and Ellie to the condominium constructing the place they’ve crashed for the night time.

Joel isn’t precisely thrilled about waking as much as the truth of being held at gunpoint, however quickly they comply with a tentative truce, and Henry introduces himself as “probably the most wished man in Kansas Metropolis.”

Over a quiet meal, Ellie asks Sam how outdated he’s, and with Henry performing as an interpreter between them, he responds that he’s eight. (Within the recreation, Sam is nearer to Ellie’s age of 14, however him being youthful right here makes me much more sympathetic to how overwhelming and terrifying his expertise of the world have to be.) Joel, being Joel, says dryly that they efficiently ate collectively and didn’t kill one another, so they need to name it a win and transfer on. However Henry has a card up his sleeve. “I’m betting that y’all got here up right here to get a view of town and plan a approach out,” he says. “And when the solar’s up, I’ll present you one.”

“Welcome to Killa Metropolis”

The subsequent morning, Henry supplies Joel (and us) with some extra context for what went down in Kansas Metropolis. Searching on the metropolis, Joel is struck by the shortage of FEDRA, particularly since he’d all the time heard that KC FEDRA dominated with an iron fist. Henry confirms the rumors. “Raped and tortured and murdered individuals for 20 years,” he says. So if Henry wasn’t a part of this monstrous FEDRA, Joel wonders, what, then, was he? When Henry replies that he was one thing even worse, “a collaborator,” Joel protests and says he doesn’t work with rats. Henry insists that right now, he doesn’t have a lot alternative, “‘trigger I dwell right here and also you don’t.” They want one another, Henry argues. Solely he is aware of the place to go, and solely Joel has the capability for violence to get them out alive.

That is all fairly totally different from the sport, by which Henry and Sam weren’t native to Pittsburgh (the place the sport’s model of this storyline takes place), however had simply come there from Hartford, Connecticut searching for provides. That they had no connection to the resistance that had risen up in Pittsburgh, however simply occurred to be individuals who may assist Joel and Ellie get out of town. In each tales, although, Sam lets us see new sides of Ellie by giving her a fellow child to geek out with and play with, and having one other duo touring with them for some time illuminates Joel’s rising attachment to Ellie and his sense of himself as her protector, not simply out of obligation however more and more out of real care and concern.

As the 2 speak, the sound of youngsters laughing may be heard close by. Ellie is displaying Sam her tattered e book of jokes, and a real smile stretches throughout Henry’s face. “Haven’t heard that in a very long time,” he says, mirroring a second from the sport by which Ellie and Sam playfully eat blueberries collectively and Henry says it’s been a very long time since he noticed Sam crack a smile.

Maybe counterintuitively, I discover these moments of fleeting happiness among the many most devastating in each the sport and the present, as a result of I understand how issues finish for Henry and Sam. Their destiny is so terrible, so bleak, that it makes me suppose again to Ellie’s query to Joel in episode 4: “If you happen to don’t suppose there’s hope for the world, why hassle occurring?” I’m as soon as once more glad that the TV sequence at the least supplied us the reprieve of Invoice and Frank, giving us one imaginative and prescient of lives lived nicely and with that means, to mood how relentlessly hopeless all of it will get for some time.

Henry’s plan

Henry sketches a map of the realm displaying how Kathleen’s forces have the realm on lock. Nonetheless, there’s a approach out, he insists. Sam sits close by sketching, however Henry doesn’t need him omitted of the dialog. “How can we get throughout?” he indicators at his brother. Sam writes intently on his pad for a second, then holds it up. “TUNNELS.” It’s an ideal plan, however there’s an enormous catch. Kansas Metropolis could appear unusually missing in Contaminated, however there’s a motive for that. “FEDRA drove them underground 15 years in the past,” Henry says. He insists, although, that FEDRA cleaned out the tunnels three years in the past. Simply what which means or how precisely they did that continues to be ominously unstated, virtually as if the present’s writers need to plant a seed in our minds about it. Nah, I’m certain it received’t come up once more. Henry admits that the plan is “dicey-as-fuck,” however it’s additionally the one plan they’ve obtained.

A child's drawing of two men in tactical gear with rifles, reading "Danny Ish Our Protectors" is taped to a wall in HBO's The Last of Us.

Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

As they head down into the tunnels, Joel tells Ellie to get her gun out, and it appears like Ellie has to suppress a smile as he’s lastly absolutely shifted from relentlessly denying her a gun to asking her to be prepared to make use of one. Nonetheless, the tunnels do certainly seem empty, vastly, surprisingly empty, stretching hollowly earlier than them so far as the attention can see. Joel stays on guard however nothing is stirring in these subterranean passageways, and finally they arrive to a spot that appears fairly totally different, the place the partitions are adorned with the varieties of colourful drawings you may see at a preschool. Passing via a door, they discover an deserted place the place individuals—adults and kids—clearly as soon as lived. Amidst all the main points—the toys, the posted indicators laying out guidelines, all the opposite indicators of life—one factor stands out: a toddler’s drawing of two smiling males in physique armor, with rifles, labeled “our protectors,” Danny and Ish. And right here’s the place we come to the episode’s nice little nod to the sport.

Who’s Ish?

First, somewhat background. Within the recreation, Joel and Ellie’s journey with Henry and Sam briefly takes them alongside a seashore the place you may enter a battered outdated boat and discover a notice. (Contemplating that that is close to Pittsburgh, that most likely makes about as a lot sense as the start of episode two being set “10 miles west of Boston.”) The notice is signed by somebody named Ish (maybe a reference to Moby Dick’s sea-faring narrator Ishmael) and particulars how, after spending a while at sea to cover from the outbreak, he finally discovered himself operating low on provides and his boat in disrepair, and returned to shore to take his possibilities with humanity once more.

An old boat rests on a beach in the game The Last of Us.

Ish’s boat on the seashore close to Pittsburgh, which, yeah, most likely doesn’t make a number of sense.
Screenshot: Naughty Canine / Kotaku

From there, you head into close by sewers, the place yow will discover a small space the place Ish lived alone for a while after coming ashore. A notice of his yow will discover there mentions that he met some individuals who had children with them and who didn’t need to shoot him on sight. “Surprising I do know,” he feedback. The encounter places the concept in his head that perhaps it’s higher for him to attempt trusting different individuals than it’s to proceed residing alone. “What’s the purpose of surviving when you don’t have somebody to snicker at your corny jokes?” his notice reads, a query that cuts to the guts of The Final of Us’ themes. “Tomorrow, I’m going searching for them.”

Quickly, you come to a spot that’s very very similar to the one the social gathering finds within the TV sequence, the place Ish lived with different adults and kids. In reality, the exact same drawing of Ish and one other grownup named Danny that we see within the present is seen right here within the recreation. Sadly, environmental clues additionally inform us that in some unspecified time in the future, contaminated did get into the settlement, and the outcomes had been tragic, with one other grownup named Kyle and some youngsters getting trapped in a room by contaminated, and Kyle killing the kids himself to spare them a good worse destiny. One other notice that yow will discover within the suburbs upon leaving the sewers reveals that he and a lady named Susan obtained out, however it’s excruciating to learn. “She misplaced her youngsters,” it says, “and I’ve no clue what to say to her.”

It concludes with Ish writing that each a part of his being desires to surrender, however he simply can’t. “I’ve seen that we’re nonetheless able to good. We are able to make it. I’ve to remain robust… for her.” What occurred to him after that continues to be unknown.

Fairly often, I really feel that Easter eggs are form of exclusionary. They wink and nod to these people who find themselves within the know, letting these viewers maybe really feel smug about selecting up on cool particulars that fly over the remainder of the viewers’s heads. This drawing on the wall, although, works both approach, I feel. If you happen to haven’t performed the sport, it gives some perception into what life was like right here on this underground settlement at one time, and when you do realize it from the sport, it opens up a complete different narrative to you. A tragedy nested inside a tragedy. Proper about now, The Final of Us simply seems like tragedies all the way in which down.

Savage Starlight

Sam finds a replica of a Savage Starlight comedian, which within the recreation serves as a collectible Joel can discover all through and provides to Ellie. Ellie is instantly stoked at Sam’s discover, and the 2 of them bond over their shared enthusiasm for the sequence, buying and selling particulars about which points they every have. One notably candy second sees Ellie quoting the hero’s catchphrase of “Endure and survive” and Sam educating it to her in ASL. God, I need these children to make it. (Round this similar stretch of the sport, Ellie will often say “Endure and survive” after Joel has completed taking out a gaggle of enemies and it looks as if the 2 are secure in the meanwhile.)

A screenshot from the game The Last of Us shows Joel looking on as Sam stands in a soccer goal holding a ball and Ellie faces him.

Ellie and Sam play soccer within the recreation in a second referenced within the present.
Screenshot: Naughty Canine / Kotaku

Different moments listed here are direct nods to the sport, like one when Ellie and Sam play soccer utilizing a makeshift aim painted on the wall. Nonetheless, a dialog between Joel and Henry that sheds additional mild on his connection to Kathleen is completely new. Joel apologizes for having referred to as Henry a rat earlier than, saying that if Henry did what he did for Sam’s sake, he understands. Henry lastly tells Joel precisely what it’s he did do, and why. He paints an image of an ideal man, one who “was by no means afraid, by no means egocentric, and he was all the time forgiving.” He’s clearly speaking about Kathleen’s brother, who he wished to observe, and would have adopted, if solely.

“However Sam, he obtained sick. Leukemia.” And wouldn’t you already know it, FEDRA had management of the very restricted provide of the one drug that would deal with him. So he made a deal, and gave FEDRA what they wished. He’s nonetheless wracked with guilt about it, however the world introduced him with an inconceivable alternative that he by no means ought to have needed to make within the first place. Fairly than supply any phrases of consolation or understanding, although, Joel simply says “We’ve waited lengthy sufficient.” It’s time to maneuver on.

Kathleen and Michael

We discover Kathleen standing in her childhood bed room, in a clearly deserted home. And as she tells Perry about her brother—who we be taught right here was named Michael—and the way he’d all the time consolation her throughout thunderstorms after they had been children, all I may suppose was, “Oh my god, shut up.” She’s the kind of one that’s so satisfied that her ache and struggling matter a lot greater than everybody else’s, that looking down Henry is nice and righteous as a result of he took her brother from her, although he solely did it as a result of it was the one option to save his personal brother. After all her ache and grief are actual, however the extremes she’s going to in her pursuit of Henry make me lose all sympathy for her. She’s an egomaniac.

In reality, even her personal brother’s needs don’t matter to her, a lot as she may fake to be honoring his life or his reminiscence on this act. “He was so stunning,” she says about Michael. “I’m not. I by no means was.” She is aware of Michael would need her to forgive Henry. He outright informed her that when FEDRA had him locked up proper earlier than they killed him. However her ache is simply too essential to her for her to do this. And Perry is comfortable to validate her worst impulses. “Your brother was an ideal man. All of us liked him,” he says. “However he didn’t change something. You probably did. We’re with you.” Thanks, Perry. Large assist. I’m certain that received’t encourage Kathleen to do one thing much more egocentric and reckless than all of the issues she’s already achieved.

Sniper on the road

Joel and the gang emerge exterior of Kathleen’s territory in a suburban neighborhood that appears secure at first look, and the temper is comparatively mild as Ellie begins does her greatest Joel impression and encourages Henry and Sam to come back with them to Wyoming. (Within the recreation, Henry and Sam are already planning to trace down the Fireflies, however right here, they simply need to get out of Kansas Metropolis for starters.) The calm is damaged, nevertheless, when a sniper bullet strikes the bottom close to them they usually sprint behind a wrecked automotive for canopy, plunging us right into a sequence that owes loads to the sport.

Joel stands facing old, dirty, overgrown houses on a grass-covered street in the game The Last of Us.

The Pittsburgh suburbs part main as much as the sniper encounter is probably the sport at its most ruinously stunning.
Screenshot: Naughty Canine / Kotaku

Sniper bullets proceed to rain down on them, and simply as within the recreation, Joel opts to sneak round and attempt to come on the sniper from behind. Within the recreation, although, what you discover within the sniper’s perch is a younger man with a knife, prompting a grisly button-mashing sequence by which you finally flip the blade on the person and stab him with it repeatedly. Right here, Joel finds an older man, one in all Kathleen’s trustworthy, who refuses Joel’s plea to simply drop the gun, as an alternative cementing his personal demise by turning the gun on Joel. Simply then, Kathleen’s voice crackles over a radio. “Maintain them the place they’re,” she says. “We’re virtually there.”

“It ends the way in which it ends”

Within the recreation, the one repurposed Humvee the Pittsburgh resistance claimed from FEDRA quickly arrives, however right here, Kathleen’s forces are far more well-equipped, and numerous autos are quickly barreling down on Ellie, Henry, and Sam. Simply as within the recreation, Joel supplies cowl with the sniper rifle, and right here he takes out the motive force of the truck main the cost, sending it careening into a close-by home the place it promptly explodes.

Learn Extra: HBO’s The Final Of Us Simply Nailed One Of The Sport’s Finest Moments

Nonetheless, Kathleen’s forces shut in. Perry sends males after Joel, and Kathleen begins to handle Henry, revealing that her hypocrisy and self-importance know no bounds. “I do know why you probably did what you probably did,” she says, “however did you ever cease to suppose that perhaps [Sam] was imagined to die?” When Henry protests that Sam is only a child, she replies that children die “on a regular basis.” That could be true, however it doesn’t change the truth that by her ethical calculus, Sam’s life ought to have been completely disregarded, whereas Michael’s life ought to have been prioritized above all. In a single really staggering second of cognitive dissonance, she says “You suppose the entire world revolves round him?” as if she isn’t performing like the entire world revolves round her quest for vengeance.

Lastly, Henry emerges. “It ends the way in which it ends,” Kathleen says as she raises her gun to kill him. This requires a deus ex machina, child!

One thing depraved this fashion bloats

Simply then, the truck close by teeters and falls because the earth beneath it yawns open, and an absolute tidal wave of speedy contaminated stand up out of it, a form of cosmic retribution for Kathleen’s hubris. (A mob of contaminated additionally bear down on the group throughout this sequence within the recreation, however it’s nothing like this.) Huh, I assume FEDRA didn’t actually take care of the contaminated downside in any case, they simply tried to brush it apart. Showrunner Craig Mazin is aware of a factor or two about writing tales the place establishments do this, I assume, having labored on Chernobyl as nicely.

A hefty, menacing infected stands against a backdrop of flaming wreckage.

Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

All of the sudden Kathleen’s appreciable present of pressure feels fairly impotent, because the assault rifles have little impact in stemming the tide of demise. Joel does the very best he can to cowl his allies amidst the chaos, however Ellie will get separated from Henry and Sam and climbs into an outdated SUV. Simply then, a guttural growl in contrast to any sound we’ve heard an contaminated make to this point is heard, and a really totally different beast emerges from the sinkhole, a formidable, fungus-encrusted chonker of an contaminated referred to as a bloater, a boss-type enemy from the sport. Kathleen’s forces don’t have any of the molotov cocktails or nail bombs I normally use to take these dangerous boys down, so I feel they’re just about fucked.

Learn Extra: What Was That Big Contaminated In Episode 5 Of The Final Of Us?

Perry peppers the factor with bullets however they clearly have little impact apart from making it mad. Because it bears down on him, he urges Kathleen to get to cowl, then turns to face his destiny, which is having his head ripped clear off in a demise per one of many recreation’s most horrifying demise animations.

In the meantime, Ellie has a visitor in her little SUV sanctuary: a creepy contaminated who was additionally a teenage lady earlier than getting turned. Ellie heads out onto the road the place she sees Henry and Sam pinned down by contaminated underneath a close-by automotive. With Joel’s assist and some stabs of her trusty switchblade—her signature weapon within the recreation—she will get them out they usually make a run for it. Kathleen stops them but once more, however her success is short-lived, as a younger contaminated—who I feel however I’m not sure is identical one which chased Ellie out of the car a second earlier than—leaps on her and completely shreds her to bits. It ends the way in which it ends.

As Joel leads them away from the chaos, we see the mob of contaminated, together with the bloater, lurching its approach again towards Kansas Metropolis. Good going, Kathleen. Nice job.

“I’m petrified of ending up alone”

Joel and the gang have discovered shelter in an outdated motel for the night time. Within the recreation, there’s a pleasant second right here the place Henry presses Joel for particulars in regards to the time Joel and his brother Tommy rode Harley-Davidsons on a cross-country journey. That element’s been omitted from the present, however the basic arc of how issues play out right here is fairly related.

“You suppose they’ll be okay?” Henry asks in regards to the children as they learn Savage Starlight collectively within the subsequent room, and Joel, in his personal taciturn approach, gives a form of consolation to Henry, as a fellow protector of a younger cost. It’s simpler once you’re a child, he says. “You don’t have anyone else counting on you. That’s the laborious half.” Then comes a little bit of playful meta-dialogue as Joel says, “What’s that comedian e book say? ‘Endure and survive’?” “Endure and survive,” Henry says. Then, after a second: “That shit’s redundant.” “Yeah, it’s not nice,” Joel agrees.

And now, as Ellie jokingly predicted earlier, Joel does certainly invite Henry and Sam to affix them on the journey to Wyoming. It’s one other a type of seemingly nice, hopeful moments that I discover all of the extra painful as a result of we’ll by no means get to see what may need come to cross if solely the world they lived in had been rather less harmful and merciless. “Yeah, I feel it’d be good for Sam to have a buddy,” Henry says. “New day, new begin.” Okay, writers. Now you’re intentionally twisting the knife, jeeze.

Ellie reads something Sam has written on his sketchpad in HBO's The Last of Us.

Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku

Although Henry urges Sam to get some sleep, he and Ellie wait for a bit, Ellie doing totally different voices as she reads Savage Starlight aloud. However Sam is preoccupied. “Are you ever scared?” he writes on his pad, a query he successfully asks her aloud within the recreation. (“How is it that you just’re by no means scared?”) Similar to within the recreation, Ellie first jokes that she’s afraid of scorpions, earlier than admitting that what actually scares her is the potential of ending up alone.

Within the recreation, when Ellie asks Sam what he’s petrified of, he brings up contaminated. “What if the individuals are nonetheless inside?” he asks, and it’s the primary time that the sport straight engages with a terrifying concept that the present brings up early on: whether or not the particular person an contaminated as soon as was stays by some means current and conscious, whilst they lose all management over their physique. The sport’s Ellie dismisses the concept, saying “that particular person isn’t in there anymore.” Her counterpart within the present, nevertheless, appears a bit extra troubled by the concept.

The sport’s Sam retains his chunk a secret, however within the present, after asking Ellie, “If you happen to flip right into a monster, is it nonetheless you inside?” he lifts the leg of his denims to point out her the nasty wound. Ellie right here does one thing unusual and candy and hopeless: she cuts her personal hand to attract blood and press it into the chunk, telling Sam, “My blood is medication.” If solely it had been that easy.

What occurs the following morning is so terrible, I don’t even need to deliver myself to write down it. If you happen to’re studying this recap, you most likely know, and when you don’t, I feel you may guess.

Image for article titled The Last Of Us Episode 5 Recap: The Saga Of Henry And Sam

Screenshot: HBO

As they bury the our bodies close to the motel, Ellie units Sam’s sketchpad atop his grave. On it, she’s written the phrases “I’m sorry.” She’s withdrawn and simply desires to depart. It’s a must to surprise if she isn’t beginning to surrender on the world herself. In the meantime, as he appears on the message she’s written, Joel appears, if something, extra dedicated to Ellie than ever. One thing in his face means that he desires to spare her an existence made up of this type of relentless struggling. He collects his gear, picks up the sniper rifle (new weapon unlocked!), they usually head west.

As I stated above, I discover this week’s episode excruciating, so depressing in its consequence that on reflection, even the few vibrant spots make it extra agonizing. I don’t learn about you however good lord, in any case this, I certain hope these two catch a little bit of a break quickly.

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