To avoid competition with Super Bowl LVII, HBO premiered The Last of Us episode five, “Endure and Survive,” two days early, meaning that fans of the series get two episodes in one week! This one’s a doozy as Joel and Ellie must team up with two fugitive young men to escape Kansas City.
Survival | Flashback to Kansas City some time ago, a riot breaks out as people execute FEDRA members in the streets and drag their corpses through the road on the back of a Humvee. In the chaos, the young men (Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Woodard) who held up Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) last episode, one of whom is deaf, avoid the rioters and sneak away to a building. Meanwhile, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) rounds up a group of people and once again demands to know where Henry is. One of them tells her that he is still in the city and Kathleen orders her men to find and kill him.
The men hide out in an attic for ten days and the deaf boy, named Sam, sketches superheroes on the walls to pass the time. A helpful man gives them supplies, but doesn’t return for some time, leaving them out of food. The older one communicates through ASL to Sam that they need to leave and try to survive before he paints a mask on Sam’s face, like a superhero.
As they try to leave the building, the older one sees Joel shooting at the looters from the previous episode. After seeing this, he tells Sam that there’s a new plan and they wait until nightfall and sneak into the room where Joel and Ellie are sleeping. Now that we’re caught up, the older one spares Joel and Ellie and introduces himself as Henry.
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Not a Good Guy | After Joel agrees to feed them, Henry offers to give him and Ellie a way out of the city. He explains to them that they can sneak out of the city through the maintenance tunnels underground. The bad news is big: FEDRA drove all the infected into those tunnels years ago. Henry claims that it’s free of infected, but Joel isn’t convinced. Regardless, the group has no choice.
They make their way into the tunnel through a bank and find a room that looks like a daycare with children’s doodles all over the walls. Joel says that some people made a home underground after the outbreak, as Ellie and Sam bond over a found comic book. They decide to wait it out in there until sundown as Ellie keeps Sam busy and Joel finds out that Henry sold out Kathleen’s brother to FEDRA in order to get access to a medicine that could help Sam and FEDRA killed him as a result.
Kathleen confesses to one of her men that the last time she saw her brother alive, he asked her to forgive Henry, but she ignored his final wish and is still hellbent on killing Henry. Joel, Ellie, Henry and Sam make it through the tunnels unscathed and emerge onto a street, but a sniper starts shooting at them from a house. With the house right by the river they need to cross to escape, Joel sneaks into the house and kills the sniper, but Joel hears Kathleen over a radio saying that she’s on her way.
It All Goes to Hell | Joel manages to kill the driver of one of the trucks chasing after Ellie, Henry and Sam, and it crashes into a house. Kathleen comes out and demands that Henry come out, which he does, but not before a massive horde of clickers emerges from the house the truck crashed into. Chaos erupts as Kathleen’s army gets slaughtered by the truckload and Joel shoots clickers coming for Ellie. Ellie grabs Henry and Sam and runs for it, but Kathleen corners them- until a freaky clicker little girl rips her to pieces!
After that nightmare, the group hides out in a motel and Joel offers to take Henry and Sam to Wyoming. As Ellie and Sam bond, Sam reveals to her that he got infected when a clicker cornered him. Ellie cuts her hand and rubs her blood on the infected wound. The next morning, Ellie wakes up and Sam goes berserk and tries to kill her, having been fully infected. Henry grabs the gun before Joel can, but kills Sam in cold blood. Henry immediately is horrified at what he’s done- so much so, that he kills himself with no hesitation. Joel and Ellie bury them and Ellie takes the notepad Sam was using to communicate, writes “I’m Sorry” on it and drops it on Sam’s grave before they head out.
The Last of Us airs Sundays on HBO.