Week by week The Last of Us, the HBO Max series, is becoming one of the greatest exponents of streaming thanks to a story told with the precision of a surgeon, very seductive characters and a forcefulness in production design that we rarely see .
So it is not surprising that the audiences increase, its popularity does so in parallel and we are dedicating a review to each episode. The one that concerns us today, “Endure and Survive” places us beyond the equator of this first season, which consists of nine and serves as the conclusion to the journey through Kansas that started in the previous episode “Please Hold on to My Hand”.
From this moment on, you will find spoilers for episode 1×05 of The Last of Usentitled “Endure and Survive”, in such a way that it is preferable that you do not continue reading if you are not up to date.
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Trailer for The Last of Us 1×05, which will arrive on HBO Max ahead of schedule
What happens in The Last of Us 1×05?
The Last of Us 1×05 starts moving us a few days back in time to show the turns in the streets of Kansas, cries of freedom and of death to Phaedra. The corpse of a stabbed man is exhibited and pressured so that the collaborationists (FEDRA allies) show your face.
Kathleen y Perry They go to see prisoners who are accused of selling their neighbors to FEDRA in exchange for alcohol, food and comfort. She asks for their collaboration to find out the whereabouts of Henry. One of them says that he is with a certain Edelstein.
Kathleen orders them to go door to door looking for him since she now knows that he and Sam are still in town. Also that they finish off the informers and burn the bodies.
Henry y Sam meet with Edelstein who turns out to be the doctor. They have food for approximately eleven days. Sam is deaf and very scared, so Henry tells him that he doesn’t have to worry, they’ll be fine there. They paint together on the wall.
Ten days later the food supplies are almost gone, they only have one can left and Henry is aware that they have to go out for supplies. Sam asks if they’ve killed Edelstein, and Henry tells him that they probably have, but they still have to find food. He asks her to close her eyes and paints a mask on her with paint to instill self-confidence.
Just as they are about to leave, that’s when the car Joel y Ellie it crashes and what we saw in the previous episode happens, which causes Henry to have to change his plans. And so we come to the moment where Henry points the gun at Ellie and Sam at Joel. Henry says that he is going to trust them but not to try anything, they are armed.
Joel asks who they are and explains that he and his brother Sam are being wanted, just like they are. They share their food with them and introduce themselves. In the morning Henry tells them that the survivors of Kansas have been killing for twenty years and that they have managed to drive Phaedra out for eleven days.
He’s a collaborator, which sounds awful to Joel since he doesn’t want to deal with snitches. However, he will not have any other choice. Henry knows a way out but needs Joel to clear it. He explains that Kathleen is in charge and makes them a rudimentary plan: the idea is to leave through the maintenance tunnels until they cross a bridge that will take them to freedom.
The problem is that Phaedra buried all the infected underground, so the underground route is very risky. Henry has information that one of the tunnels was purged three years ago, and it’s his best asset.
Thus, they head into the tunnel with weapons drawn and ready to defend themselves. Joel asks them to light up, stay quiet, and prepare to run if necessary. They come to an area decorated with children’s drawings where Sam feels in his element, but Joel urges caution.
The Place Is Abandoned: Joel says he’s heard about those places where people used to hide. They don’t know what happened to them, they probably got infected. Ellie and Sam find comics they both like. Ellie repeats the motto: “to the ends of the Universe and back, resist and survive”.
The boys find there everything they need to have a good time: a ball, reading books and toys. Ellie asks them to spend the night there to come out on the other side warm at night. There the boys play and relax.
Joel and Henry take the opportunity to catch up: he tells him that if he was helping to take care of his brother, he understands even if he doesn’t share it. Henry comes clean and tells him that he has killed a man: it was when he found out that the boy had leukemia and learned that Phaedra had the medicine, so he handed them over to the resistance leader in Kansas, who was Kathleen’s brother. .
He tells her that he thinks he understands him because even though he’s not Ellie’s father, he was someone’s and it shows. Thus, he puts the personal conflict between Kathleen and Henry on the table.
Kathleen is in her childhood room, where she lived with her brother Michael. Perry goes looking for her and she explains that he used to protect her by telling him that her room was impregnable while they were together. She believes that he was a very nice person but that she is not and that she would be horrified by what she is doing.
Perry tells her that they are on her side, that her brother was not able to change things and she was, and that therefore they will continue on her side.
Joel, Ellie, Herny and Sam come out of the tunnel on the other side. Ellie tells them that they are going to Wyoming. When they think they are safe, they shoot at them. Joel decides to surround the house and attack from behind, taking advantage of the darkness.
The guy who is stalking them is a very old man. He asks her to put the gun down but doesn’t listen to reason and Joel shoots him. A radio alerts the man that they’re almost there, let him hold on so Joel has just enough time to lean out the window and tell the others to run.
Events precipitate: Joel fires from inside the house at the motorcade of vehicles in which Kathleen and Perry are. Joel manages to finish off the driver of the first vehicle and a huge explosion occurs when he crashes into a house.
Kathleen asks Herny to turn himself in but he tells her to let the kids off something which she refuses. In fact, she knows the reason why she betrayed her brother and she doesn’t care: she considers that perhaps Sam should die as so many children have done and that he is not special. Henry asks Ellie to grab Sam and run when he turns himself in.
As Kathleen loads the gun, they see a hole open in the ground and the burning vehicle falls through, followed by a tangle of infected speeding out. Kathleen’s men open fire and Joel from his position too, but all is chaos. Ellie gets into a car where an Infected is then introduced.
Perry sees a gigantic clicker come out of the gaptells Kathleen to take cover and not stop running just before the clicker pounces on her and rips her head off.
Ellie manages to escape from the vehicle and helps Henry and Sam. They try to run away, but Kathleen finds them. She is jumped by an Infected at the last second and they run for the embankment as the Infected continue to emerge from the ground. Already under cover, Joel meets with them and they decide to continue together until Wyoming.
Sam asks Ellie if she’s never afraid but she tells him that she’s afraid all the time, especially of ending up alone. Sam asks if you’re still inside your body if you turn into a monster and shows him a bite mark on her leg. She shows him her scars and tells him that her blood is medicine. He cuts her hand and applies it to the wound.
Sam asks her to stay up with him and she promises that she will. They hug. The next morning, Sam has transformed and attacks her. After a few moments of confusion, Henry shoots him, and in despair to see what he has made of her, he then shoots himself in the head. Joel and Ellie bury them and she leaves a note saying “I’m sorry” before leaving.
A new beginning to “resist and survive”
Goosebumps watching the new episode of The Last of Us: it serves as a perfect combo with the previous episode, to the point that perhaps it would have been more satisfying to join both episodes or share the story by expanding the previous one a little more.
Be that as it may, it has it all: drama, action, character development and moral dilemmas that are exposed to the viewer to make them think what they would do if they found themselves in the place of the survivors.
The production design, the quality of the special effects and the specialists at the service of the story make this episode completely climatic, it could almost have corresponded to a season finale of any other series in use.
Additionally, the main plot continues to develop: Ellie’s failed experiment by applying (in a somewhat naive way) her blood to a bite from an infected person, already gives us a clue that it will not be so easy to find a cure for the plague. of cordyceps.
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Preview of the next episodes of The Last of Us season 1
But not only have we faced the most brutal face of the infected, also seeing very well the differences between them, but the hopelessness of the people and their moral depravity have become clear. Kathleen has been one of the epitome of that condition to the extent that she has not minded desecrating the memory and desires of her beloved brother for revenge.
It’s sobering, since Kansas was one of Phaedra’s few free fiefdoms, which is why Kathleen, despite her expeditious methods, had so much support. So the big question is if only another form of fascism can end the military dictatorship, ergo there is no way out.
The Last of Us 1×05 is an amazing episode: it gives you something to think about, it shows the darkest corners of the human soul and it doesn’t pay attention to the tension when it comes to showing the gallery of infected, making it clear who the “final bosses” will be. Best of all, it also does it on its own terms, making a great adaptation of the video game, but with its own identity language. Chapeau!
