The Saga Of Henry And Sam

Episode 5 of HBO’s The Last of Us marks the midpoint of our nine-episode journey. That’s proper, we’re midway there, and Ellie and Joel are undoubtedly dwelling on a prayer. Look, I’m sorry for the dangerous Bon Jovi reference however man, this episode is The Last 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 least this episode additionally options what I take into account the best refined nod to the sport in the whole season. We’ll get to that in a bit.

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

The Fall of Kansas City FEDRA

At first look, this episode’s starting looks as if certainly one of pure jubilation. Chants of “freedom!” are heard rising from a crowd that’s celebrating within the streets. But virtually instantly, we’re proven the grim facet of this completely satisfied 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, surrender now and you will receive a fair trial.” Hmm, sure, one way or the other I don’t consider you. Maybe it’s the truth that you’re dragging a physique behind you that’s filled with so many blades it seems like a pincushion, I’m undecided.

As 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: Here, Sam is deaf. (Sam is splendidly performed right here by younger actor Keivonn Woodard, who can also be deaf.) In this transient trade, you possibly can already sense Henry attempting to placed on a courageous face for his a lot youthful brother. The two sneak away unseen by the patrolling resistance which, as we realized in final week’s episode, is hell-bent on discovering them.

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 position, coating her feedback in a tone that, on the floor, sounds affordable and sort, however is so transparently chilly and ruthless beneath. “Lucky 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 after all, after which need to do a while, “easy.” She’s obtained her commando assistant Perry (Jeffrey Pierce, who voices Joel’s brother Tommy within the video games) by her facet, his silent presence lending her phrases an added risk of hazard. Finally 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 flip her condescending ruthlessness on him, too. “He’s not my seventh priority, Perry,” she says. “Is that what he is to you?” I’m beginning to really feel like the best way she prioritizes discovering Henry above all different issues could backfire on her ultimately. Remember 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. Of course they’re not. “When you’re done, burn the bodies. It’s faster,” she says, the best way you would possibly ask somebody to select up some milk from the grocery retailer on the best way dwelling.

Henry and Sam stick with Edelstein

Henry and Sam meet up with Edelstein, who takes them into the identical cramped attic area we noticed Kathleen examine in final week’s episode. Here, it’s not but coated with Sam’s drawings, as Henry and the physician focus on their very restricted meals provide and whole lack of ammunition for his or her weapons. Everything 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 form and considerate man, displaying real concern for Sam’s well-being. “He’s scared because you’re scared,” he advises Henry.

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

The delivery of Super Sam

We skip forward ten days, to seek out the attic stuffed with photographs of Super Sam blasting evil FEDRA officers and flying protectively over the town. But 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 the town, making leaving a harmful proposition. They’re in a good spot.

Finally, 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 through which nothing is ever protected or assured. He should be terrified.

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 purple masks on his face, identical 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. Just as they’re about to depart the constructing, a gunfight breaks out exterior. It’s Joel and Ellie’s unceremonious arrival in Kansas City, and Henry observes as Joel kills the hunters attacking him. We see the wheels in his head turning. “New plan,” he tells his brother.

Meeting 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 condo 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 “the most wanted man in Kansas City.”

Over a quiet meal, Ellie asks Sam how outdated he’s, and with Henry appearing as an interpreter between them, he responds that he’s eight. (In the sport, 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 should 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. But Henry has a card up his sleeve. “I’m betting that y’all came up here to get a view of the city and plan a way out,” he says. “And when the sun’s up, I’ll show you one.”

“Welcome to Killa City”

The subsequent morning, Henry gives Joel (and us) with some further context for what went down in Kansas City. Looking out on the metropolis, Joel is struck by the shortage of FEDRA, particularly since he’d at all times heard that KC FEDRA dominated with an iron fist. Henry confirms the rumors. “Raped and tortured and murdered people 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 at present, he doesn’t have a lot selection, “‘cause I live here and you don’t.” They want one another, Henry argues. Only he is aware of the place to go, and solely Joel has the capability for violence to get them out alive.

This is all fairly completely different from the sport, through 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. 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 the 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, now not simply out of obligation however more and more out of real care and concern.

As the 2 discuss, the sound of youngsters laughing could 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 long time,” he says, mirroring a second from the sport through 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.

Perhaps 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 don’t think there’s hope for the world, why bother going on?” I’m as soon as once more glad that the TV sequence no less than supplied us the reprieve of Bill and Frank, giving us one imaginative and prescient of lives lived properly and with which means, to mood how relentlessly hopeless all of it will get for some time.

Henry’s plan

Henry sketches a map of the world displaying how Kathleen’s forces have the world on lock. Still, there’s a manner out, he insists. Sam sits close by sketching, however Henry doesn’t need him overlooked of the dialog. “How do we get across?” he indicators at his brother. Sam writes intently on his pad for a second, then holds it up. “TUNNELS.” It’s a fantastic plan, however there’s an enormous catch. Kansas City could appear unusually missing in Infected, however there’s a purpose for that. “FEDRA drove them underground 15 years ago,” Henry says. He insists, although, that FEDRA cleaned out the tunnels three years in the past. Just 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 gained’t come up once more. Henry admits that the plan is “dicey-as-fuck,” however it’s additionally the one plan they’ve obtained.

As they head down into the tunnels, Joel tells Ellie to get her gun out, and it seems 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. However, 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 eventually they arrive to a spot that appears fairly completely different, the place the partitions are adorned with the sorts of colourful drawings you would possibly see at a preschool. Passing via a door, they discover an deserted place the place individuals—adults and youngsters—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 is Ish?

First, somewhat background. In the sport, Joel and Ellie’s journey with Henry and Sam briefly takes them alongside a seashore the place you possibly can enter a battered outdated boat and discover a notice. (Considering 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 ultimately discovered himself operating low on provides and his boat in disrepair, and returned to shore to take his possibilities with humanity once more.

From there, you head into close by sewers, the place you will discover a small space the place Ish lived alone for a while after coming ashore. A notice of his you will discover there mentions that he met some individuals who had youngsters with them and who didn’t need to shoot him on sight. “Shocking I know,” he feedback. The encounter places the concept in his head that possibly it’s higher for him to strive trusting different individuals than it’s to proceed dwelling alone. “What’s the point of surviving if you don’t have someone to laugh at your corny jokes?” his notice reads, a query that cuts to the guts of The Last of Us’ themes. “Tomorrow, I’m going in search of them.”

Soon, 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 youngsters. 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 sport. Unfortunately, environmental clues additionally inform us that sooner or later, contaminated did get into the settlement, and the outcomes have been tragic, with one other grownup named Kyle and some kids getting trapped in a room by contaminated, and Kyle killing the youngsters himself to spare them a good worse destiny. Another notice that you will discover within the suburbs upon leaving the sewers reveals that he and a girl named Susan obtained out, however it’s excruciating to learn. “She lost her children,” it says, “and I have 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 still capable of good. We can make it. I have to stay strong… for her.” What occurred to him after that continues to be unknown.

Very usually, I really feel that Easter eggs are type 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 manner, I believe. If you haven’t performed the sport, it gives some perception into what life was like right here on this underground settlement at one time, and if you happen to do comprehend it from the sport, it opens up a complete different narrative to you. A tragedy nested inside a tragedy. Right about now, The Last of Us simply seems like tragedies all the best way down.

Savage Starlight

Sam finds a replica of a Savage Starlight comedian, which within the sport serves as a collectible Joel can discover all through and provides to Ellie. Ellie is straight away 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 instructing it to her in ASL. God, I need these youngsters to make it. (Around this identical 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 protected in the intervening time.)

Other moments listed here are direct nods to the sport, like one when Ellie and Sam play soccer utilizing a makeshift objective painted on the wall. However, a dialog between Joel and Henry that sheds additional gentle on his connection to Kathleen is completely new. Joel apologizes for having known 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 a fantastic man, one who “was never afraid, never selfish, and he was always forgiving.” He’s clearly speaking about Kathleen’s brother, who he needed to comply with, and would have adopted, if solely.

“But Sam, he got sick. Leukemia.” And wouldn’t you understand 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 needed. He’s nonetheless wracked with guilt about it, however the world offered him with an not possible selection that he by no means ought to have needed to make within the first place. Rather than provide any phrases of consolation or understanding, although, Joel simply says “We’ve waited long enough.” 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 study right here was named Michael—and the way he’d at all times consolation her throughout thunderstorms after they have been youngsters, 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 searching down Henry is sweet and righteous as a result of he took her brother from her, despite the fact that he solely did it as a result of it was the one option to save his personal brother. Of course 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 would possibly fake to be honoring his life or his reminiscence on this act. “He was so beautiful,” she says about Michael. “I’m not. I never 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. But her ache is simply too vital to her for her to try this. And Perry is completely satisfied to validate her worst impulses. “Your brother was a great man. We all loved him,” he says. “But he didn’t change anything. You did. We’re with you.” Thanks, Perry. Big assist. I’m certain that gained’t encourage Kathleen to do one thing much more egocentric and reckless than all of the issues she’s already performed.

Sniper on the road

Joel and the gang emerge exterior of Kathleen’s territory in a suburban neighborhood that appears protected at first look, and the temper is comparatively gentle as Ellie begins does her finest Joel impression and encourages Henry and Sam to return with them to Wyoming. (In the sport, Henry and Sam are already planning to trace down the Fireflies, however right here, they simply need to get out of Kansas City for starters.) The calm is damaged, nonetheless, when a sniper bullet strikes the bottom close to them and so they sprint behind a wrecked automotive for canopy, plunging us right into a sequence that owes lots to the sport.

Sniper bullets proceed to rain down on them, and simply as within the sport, Joel opts to sneak round and attempt to come on the sniper from behind. In the sport, although, what you discover within the sniper’s perch is a younger man with a knife, prompting a grisly button-mashing sequence through which you finally flip the blade on the person and stab him with it repeatedly. Here, Joel finds an older man, certainly one of Kathleen’s trustworthy, who refuses Joel’s plea to simply drop the gun, as a substitute cementing his personal loss of life by turning the gun on Joel. Just then, Kathleen’s voice crackles over a radio. “Hold them where they are,” she says. “We’re almost there.”

“It ends the way it ends”

In the sport, the one repurposed Humvee the Pittsburgh resistance claimed from FEDRA quickly arrives, however right here, Kathleen’s forces are far more well-equipped, and a variety of automobiles are quickly barreling down on Ellie, Henry, and Sam. Just as within the sport, Joel gives 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.

Read More: HBO’s The Last Of Us Just Nailed One Of The Game’s Best Moments

Still, Kathleen’s forces shut in. Perry sends males after Joel, and Kathleen begins to deal with Henry, revealing that her hypocrisy and self-importance know no bounds. “I know why you did what you did,” she says, “but did you ever stop to think that maybe [Sam] was supposed to die?” When Henry protests that Sam is only a child, she replies that children die “all the time.” That could also 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 one really staggering second of cognitive dissonance, she says “You think the whole world revolves around him?” as if she isn’t appearing like the entire world revolves round her quest for vengeance.

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

Something depraved this fashion bloats

Just 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 type of cosmic retribution for Kathleen’s hubris. (A mob of contaminated additionally bear down on the group throughout this sequence within the sport, however it’s nothing like this.) Huh, I assume FEDRA didn’t actually take care of the contaminated downside in spite of everything, 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 properly.

Suddenly Kathleen’s appreciable present of drive feels fairly impotent, because the assault rifles have little impact in stemming the tide of loss of life. Joel does one of the 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. Just then, a guttural growl not like any sound we’ve heard an contaminated make to date is heard, and a really completely different beast emerges from the sinkhole, a formidable, fungus-encrusted chonker of an contaminated known 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 often use to take these dangerous boys down, so I believe they’re just about fucked.

Read More: What Was That Giant Infected In Episode 5 Of The Last Of Us?

Perry peppers the factor with bullets however they clearly have little impact apart from making it mad. As 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 loss of life in line with one of many sport’s most horrifying loss of life animations.

Meanwhile, Ellie has a visitor in her little SUV sanctuary: a creepy contaminated who was additionally a teenage woman earlier than getting turned. Ellie heads out onto the road the place she sees Henry and Sam pinned down by contaminated beneath a close-by automotive. With Joel’s assist and some stabs of her trusty switchblade—her signature weapon within the sport—she will get them out and so they make a run for it. Kathleen stops them but once more, however her success is short-lived, as a younger contaminated—who I believe 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 best way it ends.

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

“I’m scared of ending up alone”

Joel and the gang have discovered shelter in an outdated motel for the night time. In the sport, 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 common arc of how issues play out right here is fairly comparable.

“You think they’ll be okay?” Henry asks in regards to the youngsters as they learn Savage Starlight collectively within the subsequent room, and Joel, in his personal taciturn manner, gives a type 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 anybody else relying on you. That’s the hard part.” Then comes a little bit of playful meta-dialogue as Joel says, “What’s that comic book say? ‘Endure and survive’?” “Endure and survive,” Henry says. Then, after a second: “That shit’s redundant.” “Yeah, it’s not great,” Joel agrees.

And now, as Ellie jokingly predicted earlier, Joel does certainly invite Henry and Sam to hitch 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 move if solely the world they lived in have been rather less harmful and merciless. “Yeah, I think it’d be nice for Sam to have a friend,” Henry says. “New day, new start.” Okay, writers. Now you’re intentionally twisting the knife, jeeze.

Though Henry urges Sam to get some sleep, he and Ellie watch for a bit, Ellie doing completely different voices as she reads Savage Starlight aloud. But Sam is preoccupied. “Are you ever scared?” he writes on his pad, a query he successfully asks her aloud within the sport. (“How is it that you’re never scared?”) Just like within the sport, Ellie first jokes that she’s afraid of scorpions, earlier than admitting that what actually scares her is the potential for ending up alone.

In the sport, when Ellie asks Sam what he’s petrified of, he brings up contaminated. “What if the people are still 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 individual an contaminated as soon as was stays one way or the other current and conscious, whilst they lose all management over their physique. The sport’s Ellie dismisses the concept, saying “that person is not in there anymore.” Her counterpart within the present, nonetheless, appears a bit extra troubled by the concept.

The sport’s Sam retains his chew a secret, however within the present, after asking Ellie, “If you turn into a monster, is it still you inside?” he lifts the leg of his denims to indicate 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 chew, telling Sam, “My blood is medicine.” If solely it have been that easy.

What occurs the following morning is so terrible, I don’t even need to deliver myself to jot down it. If you’re studying this recap, you most likely know, and if you happen to don’t, I believe you possibly can guess.

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. You need to surprise if she isn’t beginning to surrender on the world herself. Meanwhile, as he seems on the message she’s written, Joel appears, if something, extra dedicated to Ellie than ever. Something 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!), and so they head west.

As I stated above, I discover this week’s episode excruciating, so depressing in its end result that on reflection, even the few shiny spots make it extra agonizing. I don’t find out about you however good lord, in spite of everything this, I certain hope these two catch a little bit of a break quickly.