This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us. Please don’t read unless you’ve seen episodes one through eight…
After threatening it for a week or two, winter is now fully upon The Last of Us.
We open with deep snow and a pastor, David (Scott Shepherd), addressing his haunted-looking congregation. He interrupted his reading to comfort a crying girl and her mother; we later learned that they are the family of the shooter that Joel killed in college. He finished by saying that the ground was too cold to dig and that they would bury it in the spring. Nothing suspicious about that…
“When we are in need, He will provide,” read the banner above the hall door. Who, exactly, is the He in this equation? The way David spoke to Ellie later, expressing his admiration for cordyceps and mocking her followers for believing in the good lord, made me think that He was referring to him, David, rather than Him, God. What at first seemed like a small group of survivors trying their best to get by was more like a cult with David front and center. Venison for dinner, by the way… even though the venison hadn’t arrived yet and supplies of just about everything else, including morale, were low. James (Troy Baker) explained that it had been a particularly difficult six months and that people were beginning to question David’s leadership. How might they have reacted if they had known what David had really been doing? (Was it handfuls of Alec’s that his wife was stuffing into that big pan of stew? What an unbelievably horrible thought.)
Sewing
In the basement, we first meet Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). At the end of last week’s episode, we saw Ellie doing her best cross stitch on Joel’s stab wound. This week, she seemed to have worked, though now the infection was rampaging through her body, probably from the dirty needle she used to stitch it up. (If you thought his stab wound was serious, in the video game, Joel is impaled by a steel bar after falling off a balcony while fighting one of David’s men.)
While Ellie might not know much about sterilization, she did know they needed to eat: what was she chewing on, candy? – So she went to the woods to get some dinner. There we saw the white rabbit, which Ellie managed to scare away, showing her ingenuity as a hunter. However, she is a quick learner and soon she had another, much larger animal in her sights. This attempt was more successful, although the deer escaped before it died.
It was here that he met David and James, and managed to cut a deal for some penicillin. David either knew who Ellie was all along or figured it out as they talked, realizing that if he let her go, she would take him and her men to Joel so they could get justice from her. Surely David couldn’t resist the thought of all that potential meat in a basement.
Back in the basement, Ellie administered antibiotics, and if you listened carefully, you may have heard Alexander Fleming turning in his grave. I’m not a medical professional, but I’m sure just putting a load of penicillin on a wound wouldn’t do much for a bodily infection. What exactly did they teach you at Phaedra’s school, Ellie? It seemed to work, though: Joel got back to his best soon after, taking down three hunters.
The torture scene was particularly gruesome, but it showed exactly what Joel is capable of and how much Ellie means to him. Would he have done that for her a few weeks ago?
cage rage
“You’re eating people, you sick fuck,” Ellie said, now locked up, when she saw what David had been up to, speaking to all who were watching. Then she delivered a monologue about the need for a friend and an equal, and that she would call her men if they hadn’t already reached Joel, before patting Ellie’s hand and outlining her vision of them as a couple, and there this. they were, thinking that cannibalism was their most abominable trait.
Ellie escaped, after lying about being infected and killing James, and confronted David in the burning hall, inflicting a stab before being overpowered. Fortunately, she managed to reach the meat cleaver as he fumbled for her belt and killed him. It was a frenzied attack that matched the level of violence that was about to be inflicted on her, but there was more to this as well: all of Ellie’s anguish and anger showing through every swing of the blade. This was for Riley, for Tess, for Joel, who she probably thought he was dead right now, and for every cordyceps infection on the planet.
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In general
A magnificent episode, perfectly setting up the finale of next week. It wasn’t clear where exactly they were headed at the end of the episode, but let’s assume Joel and Ellie were going to get as far away from that town as possible and spend the winter with the rest of that penicillin for company. They both have a lot to heal, let’s hope they can come out of hibernation in the spring refreshed and relatively refreshed.
One point about that white rabbit that Ellie couldn’t kill. So often used in fiction as a symbol of innocence, the rabbit disappeared once startled, just as whatever shred of innocence Ellie clung to is now gone. She too quickly went from hunter to hunted once David and his goons showed up, and again when she and David were left alone in that burning hall. Despite everything she’s been through, she’s still a child (she looked about 10 years old holding that rifle) and she won’t be the same person after the experiences of this episode. And just as she has softened Joel and awakened parts that he thought were dead, she has absorbed some of her cruelty and she will learn that there are parts of her personality that she has to shut down if she is to survive.
We have one episode left, it’s the big one. See you next week.
Notes and observations
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That verse David was reading from the Bible was from Revelation 21:1, about the New Jerusalem and the founding of “a new heaven and a new earth.” The verse is said to welcome the beginning of a new and better humanity, which seems to be a world away from David’s cannibalism club. I wonder if he got to Revelation 21:8, which sentences liars, murderers, sexual immorals, and presumably cannibals to eternity in hell?
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David’s partner James, played by Baker, was best known for playing Joel in The Last of Us games. He also hosts HBO’s excellent official The Last of Us podcast.
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When Joel found Ellie numb and hugged her, he called her “girl”. The last time we heard him say that was in the middle of episode one, when Sarah died in her arms. One more proof, if necessary, that he now sees Ellie as a daughter.
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Not to dwell too much on the gameplay, but this was a particularly close adaptation, especially the torture scene, which was more or less the same shot for shot and line for line. The most obvious change came at the end, when Ellie killed David: in the game, Joel reaches for her when she’s cutting and he drags her, whereas here she stopped of her own free will. Perhaps Joel’s arrival would have lessened the power of that moment? Everything was Ellie.
What did you think of the penultimate episode? Are you excited for next week’s finale? Give us your opinion below, but please, we are already very close, no spoilers of the game…
