This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us TV series. Please do not read unless you have seen episodes one to five …
We’ve had two very solid introductory episodes, the stellar episode three and then a rather more action-based fourth instalment – perhaps to be expected after the emotional heights of Bill and Frank’s tale. This fifth episode, brief flashbacks aside, followed a more traditional linear narrative and nicely moved the story along, with our duo now a foursome, trying to get out of Kansas City in one piece.
We saw more brutality, more moral ambiguity and Joel and Ellie’s bond becoming tighter. Then, after two virtually infected-free weeks, more of the pesky things than you could shake a big stick at.
Maybe Fedra weren’t so bad …
After the gun-toting alarm clock cliffhanger of last week, we opened with a flashback sequence in Kansas City. “The city belongs to the people. Collaborators, surrender now and you will receive a fair trial,” said the person riding on a truck with a megaphone. Something about the Fedra soldiers being executed and their tortured bodies being dragged through the streets made me think a fair trial wasn’t going to be in anyone’s future …
This bloody take-back of the city was gruesome, but perhaps no more so than the fragile peace established by Fedra. If the Kansas QZ was anything like the Boston one, it will have been rotten with corruption, extreme violence and ruthless control. But, based on what we saw in episode four, with Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) shooting someone she viewed as a collaborator and the rest of the militia hunting down a teenager and his kid brother, you might say the new order wasn’t exactly a bowl of cherries, either.
“You’re informers. Inform. Where is Henry?” Kathleen demanded of the prisoners she’d rounded up, telling them to their faces that they’ll face trial and should expect jail time, before stepping next door and instructing Perry (Jeffrey Pierce) to kill them all and burn their bodies when he’s done. “It’s faster.” Bring back Fedra, I say.
Still in flashback, we then saw Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) meet with Dr Edelstein (John Getz), the doctor Kathleen killed in episode four, to plot their escape from the city.
Ten days later, and the boys are still alive, holed up in the attic, surviving on rationed soup. In some ways, their situation mirrored that of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) – an older carer doing his best to look after his younger companion. Only Henry and Sam’s predicament is even more desperate as they’re actively being hunted, with Sam, just eight years old, even more vulnerable than Ellie, and Henry, having been born after the outbreak, not nearly as blessed as Joel with experience and survival skills.
We heard the car crash signalling Joel and Ellie’s ambush, and then we were back to the present, with the two pairs finally meeting and deciding to join forces.
Going underground
After Joel and Henry sussed each other out and Ellie and Sam made each other laugh, this new makeshift family made their way into the network of tunnels beneath the streets. Henry’s reasoning that Fedra had secretly cleared out the tunnels of infected – meaning Kathleen and her hunters wouldn’t venture down there – seemed sound enough, but then he didn’t know what we knew about the swelling ground. The infected might not have been in the tunnels, but they were down there, somewhere, lurking.
Kathleen come home
While I didn’t warm to Kathleen – or particularly buy into her mission to find Henry and Sam – hearing what Henry had done and seeing her in her childhood bedroom did at least offer some humanisation and motive. Had a flashback shown Kathleen and the betrayal of her inspirational brother, we might have felt differently about her actions and ... oh, who am I kidding? – she was awful and got what was coming to her. There are shades of grey and doing what it takes, and then there’s actually enjoying killing people and hunting down children. Good riddance.
Hooray for the tiny infected girl!
Now then, to the meat of the episode. Just when they thought they were in the clear – coincidentally, the exact moment we viewers knew they were in terrible trouble – the four-piece were fired upon by a sniper. For once, the abandoned cars came in handy, providing great cover from the shooting until Joel could get up into the tower to, albeit reluctantly, take care of the sniper.
No sooner had he done so, Kathleen and the revolutionaries arrived – the sniper was a lookout – and very quickly, all hell broke loose. There were vehicles ploughing into things, flames, explosions and the kind of speech from Kathleen that made me almost cheer when that tiny infected girl chewed on her neck.
Best of all, as the truck was consumed by that big hole in the ground, we finally got to see where all the infected had been hiding and what might have been behind those undulations last week – the bloater. We didn’t see much of it, but, oh my … huge, ridiculously strong and totally undamaged by bullets from an assault rifle. What weapon could stop such a creature?
And finally
After such excitement, a real moment of tragedy to finish on as it was revealed that, in the fracas, Sam had been bitten. By morning, he’d turned – despite Ellie’s best attempts at a sort of blood transfusion – and he attacked her. After a brief pause, Henry was left with no option but to shoot his brother before turning the gun on himself. “What did I do?” he said, perhaps referring not just to the act of shooting him, but the whole sorry story and failed attempt to keep his baby brother safe.
Notes and observations
John Getz, who played Dr Edelstein, is a veteran TV and film actor with scores of credits to his name, including Stathis Borans in The Fly and The Fly II. He also played Templeton Peck in 2007’s Zodiac, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a man who gave his name to a character in The A-Team.
“To the edge of the universe – and back. Endure and survive”. That line from the comic Sam and Ellie were reading made me think of a very bleak version of Toy Story. Endure and Survive, incidentally, was the title of this episode, a phrase repeated by Ellie, Joel and Henry and a mantra to live by.
Henry’s confession, in which he told Joel just why Kathleen was so hellbent on finding him, only hammered home the moral ambiguity of this world. Some information for his brother’s leukaemia medicine seems a fair price. “I am a bad guy because I did a bad guy thing,” said Henry, and while Joel only offered a small amount of reassurance – “all things considered it seems kinda cruel” – his expression definitely wasn’t one of judgment. It was more the look of a man who has done far worse for far less.
Unlike a good few commenters, I generally don’t think Ellie is that annoying in this adaptation, but I would struggle to keep my cool if she started kicking a football about when we were hiding from hordes of hunters and clickers. Quiet, please.
As the big fight finished, I immediately thought of Hardhome, the Game of Thrones episode from season five, which ended with Jon Snow and an assortment of free folk and the Night’s Watch narrowly escaping being overwhelmed by wights. Joel’s horror here as he saw the true face (and size) of the fungal enemy was reminiscent of Jon Snow’s as he finally glimpsed the scale of the Night King’s army and realised what he was up against.
The song that closed the episode was Fuel to Fire by Agnes Obel.
Take a bow Jeremy Webb, director of this excellent episode and last week’s more downbeat episode four. His varied CV includes The Punisher, The Umbrella Academy, Masters of Sex, Merlin and Grange Hill.
What did you make of that? How about that bloater! Have your say below …
