Spoiler Warning: This article will contain major spoilers for HBO’s The Last of Us and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us video game from 2013.
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In a town that seems to be close by to where Ellie and Joel are hiding out, a large group sits inside of a lodge and mourns the loss of one of their people. The leader, David, meets outside with another man named James (played by Troy Baker, who also played Joel in the video game) and talk about their food situation, which seems to be dire. David confronts James about seemingly starting to lose faith in the group, but James reassures him that he’s still ride or die. They grab some guns and head out hunting for food.
Back in the abandoned house, Ellie is trying to ration a tiny, tiny scrap of food between her and a still badly injured Joel. Realizing they will starve, she takes Joel’s rifle and wanders outside to go hunting on her own. She ends up shooting and killing a deer on her first try, but finds David and James have beaten her to its corpse when she tracks it to its final resting place. She holds them up with her rifle, telling them to just leave, but David tells her that his group is starving and needs it. Ellie responds by lying, saying she’s also part of a large group and they need the food too. David offers to trade her for some of the deer and she asks for medicine that can help with an infection. James runs off to get the medicine while David and Ellie make a fire with the deer.
David and Ellie
Ellie confronts David about being a leader of a cult, questioning why he is still preaching about God after the world ended. He notes that he found God after the world fell apart and formed a flock with people who were deserted after a QZ fell in Pittsburgh. Ellie tells him that he’s been lucky to survive this long with his group, but he says there’s no such thing and that everything happens for a reason. He then tells her about how they sent a small group out for supplies earlier in the winter, but one of them died at the hands of a “crazy man” who was traveling with a little girl. Ellie realizes the men who attacked them at the university were part of David’s group and begins to panic as James walks in with a gun drawn to her. David still tells James to give her the medicine and then she runs away while David tells her that he can protect her. Ellie then returns to Joel and injects him with the medicine.
Back at David’s lodge, the group prepares to eat a meal that they’ve been told is venison. David and James then return with the deer Ellie shot and David announces they’ve found the man who killed their friend. The daughter of the dead man then speaks up and says that they should kill Joel and Ellie, prompting David to slap her in front of the entire group for speaking out of turn. They then pray and scarf down their food as if they hadn’t eaten in days.
The next day, Ellie walks outside of the house and sees a small group of people led by David and James wandering through the neighborhood. James insists to David that they just let Ellie die so they don’t have another mouth to feed. Ellie runs back inside to wake Joel up, but he’s barely functioning. She stresses to him to not fall asleep and gives him a knife before barricading the basement and running outside with her horse. Ellie then opens fire on the group and attempts to lead them away from Joel, but is quickly bucked off her horse when James shoots it. James then runs up to finish Ellie off himself, but is stopped by David. David carries Ellie back to his town while the group goes door to door hunting for Joel.
Joel’s Return
One lone man from the group finds Joel’s hiding spot and wanders down the stairs, finding an empty bloodstained mattress. As he searches the basement, he finds nothing, but Joel emerges from the shadow and drives his knife into the man. Still feeling weak, Joel rests on the floor for a moment, but knows he has to find the strength to get up and find Ellie.
Ellie awakens in a cage at David’s town where he tells her he wants to let her out, but he’s afraid of her retaliating and the others want to kill her. He offers her protection and the ability not to be alone, as Joel will soon be dead. Back in the neighborhood, another lone man stumbles into a backyard and finds a man laying in the snow. Joel then jumps out of a bush and knocks him out with the butt of a rifle.
The man regains consciousness inside of a house and sees one of the other men taped to a chair, being tortured. Joel sticks his knife into the taped up man’s knee, threatening to break off his kneecap if he doesn’t reveal the location of David’s town. The man points to a location on the map before Joel stabs him in the chest and kills him. The other man lays on the floor, saying he isn’t going to tell him anything, so Joel brutally kills him with a pipe.
“It’s Okay, Babygirl”
Back in the cage, Ellie sees an ear on the ground. David confesses that they’ve been secretly cutting people up and feeding it to the group due to how desperate the situation is. He admits he’s not proud of it, but can’t let the people who trust him to starve. David continues to try and convince Ellie that she should just join his group as he sees a lot of himself in her, hoping that she’d help lead the group with him. He tells her he can even get the group to let Joel go if she does what he asks. David then softly grabs Ellie’s hand through the cage, she plays along for a moment before breaking his finger. David slams her face into the cage before leaving the room and threatening to eat her.
David returns with James and pulls Ellie out of the cage and slam her on a table. She tells them to stop because she’s infected. They investigate her bite and debate its authenticity, giving Ellie a chance to grab a knife and kill James with it. She flees the room and throws a piece of wood from a fireplace at a curtain, spreading a fire through David’s lodge. She hides from the cannibal while he calls out to her, trying to lure her out. Ellie grabs a knife from a kitchen as the entire building continues to get engulfed in flames around them.
Ellie stabs David in the gut, but he hits her in the process. He manages to get the upper hand and mounts her before suggesting he’s going to rape her. Ellie then kicks him off before grabbing another knife and violently hacking David apart while screaming. She leaves the lodge in distress and Joel immediately grabs her, seeing the look of trauma in her eyes and the blood on her face. She cries in his arms while he tries to comfort her and then guides her away from the town while the lodge burns behind them.
Differences Between Game and Show
This episode plays out very, very similarly to the game, except there’s one key difference. When David and Ellie meet, they’re attacked by infected very shortly after James leaves. Ellie is able to gain trust in David as they fight alongside each other and David is able to see just how capable she really is. Everything else plays out pretty much exactly you see it in the show.
The Last of Us will continue to air every Sunday on HBO at 9PM ET. What did you think of the eighth episode? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder. For more Last of Us content, check out ComicBook and Entertainment Tonight’s new podcast: The Last of Pods. The podcast will include breakdowns of each episode, interviews with special guests from the show, and more. The podcast will release after every episode of the show on Sunday nights.
