This article contains SPOILERS de The Last of Us Parte I y de The Last of Us de HBO.
HBO’s The Last of Us Weekly Double Session Completed! As anticipated at the beginning of the week, the fifth episode of the series has been released a little earlier… And so it has been! With the chapter recently finished and very fresh, I’ll tell you what are all the references, winks, differences and similarities. Hold on, this time there are many curves!
All the references, winks, differences and similarities of the fifth episode
The episode 1×05 of The Last of Us en HBO It continues the events in Kansas City/Pittsburgh from the previous chapter and covers a considerable amount of time from The Last of Us Part I:
Planning and escape from Pittsburgh (Kansas City in the series). Abandoned maintenance tunnels. Sniper Street. Death of both brothers, one due to Cordyceps infection and the other by committing suicide.
The series respects this basic structure, but its 59:04 minutes do not allow for so much action and dialogue. In addition, many minutes are spent on add depth and lore from both the brothers and the Kansas City bandit faction. Having clarified the matter of structure, we proceed to examine the chapter point by point.
Bandits, Phaedra and Henry
The fifth episode spends almost a quarter of its time showing how the bandit faction defeated Phaedra in Kansas City through unrestrained brutality. We can see in Kansas City the same hangings to soldiers than in Pittsburgh.
The bandits took control of the city and have ruled ever since, using force and killing anyone who opposes them and all the “tourists” who arrive. More or less what FEDRA did at the time.
The leader motivations of the bandits and why Henry is persecuted: he collaborated with Phaedra to catch members of the resistance, the current bandits. He also delves into the Henry’s relationship with his brother Sam, who suffers from deafness in the series. This all links up to Joel and Ellie being ambushed by the bandits.
Joel and Ellie with Henry and Sam
All the references, winks and similarities in episode 1×05 revolve around this new friendship. Their first meeting in the series is similar to the one in the video game, with the difference that Joel and Henry don’t fight clean punch
The first steps of this foursome’s relationship evolve in a very similar way to the video game: Joel and Henry planning how to get out of town and Ellie and Sam having a good time and laughing. Henry utters a similar phrase that the namesake of him says in the game:
Serie: “It had been a long time since he laughed.”
Videogame: “I haven’t seen the boy smile like that in a long time.”
The escape plan and the comics
The escape plan from Pittsburgh/Kansas City is very different: while in the video game they evade a checkpoint, try to cross the bridge, fall into the river and end up in the tunnels; in the series they go directly to the maintenance tunnels. The most disappointing part of the episode occurs in the tunnels: they find the shelter for the survivors with children’s areas and painted walls, but not a single infected.
The series not only misses the opportunity to add tension with the infected, they also do not show the terrifying room full of corpses of children covered with an adult and a suicide note. However, she is not completely untapped:
Ellie and Sam talk about the famous comics of Savage Starlightspecifically the title Accretion who appears in The Last of Us Part I and Part II. It’s exactly the same cover! Finally, the famous mantra of the game is pronounced: “Resist and Survive”.
The sniper, the sinkhole and the chaos of infected
The last part of the episode is in charge of showing us what the encounter with the sniper behind the maintenance tunnels. Although in the game it is a group and in the series it is only one man, the result is the same: the bandits of the city are alerted and arrive with the heavy artillery. Henry, Sam and Ellie fight to save themselves, while Joel covers them with the sniper rifle.
The events are essentially the same: fight against bandits, followed by a great chaos of infected. While the series fails to measure up in the maintenance tunnels, the sniper section of the series far surpasses the video game.
Remember the mysterious sinkhole I mentioned last week? Well, it did hide a nest of infected. We now know that the Kansas City underground area is a mega nest of infected. They don’t come out of that particular hole, but… they do come out of a hole.
The armored truck that is crashed by Joel’s shot plunges into the ground, releasing a horde of a hundred of them. dozens of infected: runners, stalkers, clickers, and a bloody bloat. The scene is monumental chaos. There are two clear nods or references in this scene:
The execution (or fatality) of the Bloated to one of the bandit soldiers is the same one that we see in the game when he performs the grab attack on Joel. It’s not nice. The series recreates the scene in which you have to help henry and samwho are being attacked by infected, while you cover Ellie.
The heartbreaking denouement of Henry and Sam
The fate of Henry and Sam is the same in both the video game and the series… with one small difference. In the video game, Ellie doesn’t know that Sam is infected. In the series, Sam confesses to Ellie that he is infected. Ellie tries to cure him with his blood, but the medicine doesn’t work like that. Ellie stays with Sam and they talk about fears and the infected.
The death of both brothers is just as heartbreaking. Henry shoots the infected version of Sam and ultimately kills himself, unable to process the situation. The Joel’s stolidity contrasts horribly well with Ellie’s expressiveness, which is significantly more traumatized in the series than in the video game. Now, heading to Jackson County…
In case you’re interested, the credits song is called Fuel To Fire by Agnes Obel. There seems to be no special connection to the events of the episode.
These are all the references, references, differences and similarities of the fifth episode of The Last of Us en HBO! We have a long wait until the premiere of chapter 1×06, which returns to its usual schedule: the night of February 19 to 20. What did you think of the episode? Did you see any other hidden wink?
