In “The Last of Us” recap, Ellie runs into a new group with a terrifying leader while trying to help Joel recover from his stab wound…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Not all post-apocalyptic shows are created equal but if there’s one thing “The Walking Dead” and “The Last of Us” share in common it’s that humanity might be an even bigger threat that zombies or fungal infected killing machines.
Under the best of circumstances, humans are capable of extreme cruelty but now imagine it’s a fight to survive — it’s me or you — now what do you think a person will do to take one more breath, eat one more meal or wake up the next morning? If you answered anything that would be correct.
Throughout “The Last of Us,” we’ve seen there are very few people interested in putting the world back together or trying to eradicate the Cordyceps virus. Instead, the vast majority are just clinging to whatever sliver of survival they can manage, which may result in an uprising in a city ruled by an evil dictator like a power hungry government agency.
Occasionally people are still capable of good — look at what Tommy and his friends built in Wyoming but that certainly appears to be the exception rather than the rule.
Joel and Ellie found that out the hard way two weeks ago when exploring a college campus in Colorado while looking for a group of Fireflies but instead they were attacked. Joel was able to get the upper hand on one of the attackers by killing him but not before he took a stab wound to the stomach.
Ellie helped Joel escape and find a nearby neighborhood where they could find shelter but time is running out on them. Joel is stitched up but his wound is infected and they’re running out of food. That means Ellie is going to have to save both of them this time — but that leads her out into the wide open spaces again and she learns yet again that Cordyceps might be the least of humanity’s struggle to survive.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “The Last of Us” titled “When We Are In Need”…
He Shall Provide
The episode begins with a sermon given by a man we’ll later learn is named David — he’s a charismatic leader quoting the Book of Revelations as he provides a eulogy for a fallen member of his community. He attempts to console those concerned that one of their own has been taken — and David even attempts to provide comfort to the family this dead man has left behind.
A sign overhead reads “When we are in need, He shall provide”
When the dead man’s daughter asks about burying her father, David answers back that the ground is far too cold in snowy Colorado to dig up any ground. So she’ll have to wait until spring and then they’ll give her father a proper burial.
After the funeral finishes, David greets his parishioners outside while offering them each a kind word and a handshake like any preacher might do. He then chats with his right hand man named James — played by Troy Baker, who served as Joel in “The Last of Us” video game — and he’s concerned about dwindling resources.
Wild game has been scarce this winter, which means food supplies are running low.
David’s bigger concern, however, is the lack of faith he’s feeling — but it’s not from the flock that follows him but rather it’s James, who appears less than enthusiastic with his plans for survival. James promises that he’ll support David even if the last six months have been rough.
But if this group is going to make it, they need food — so it’s time to go hunting.
Meanwhile back in the house outside the college campus in Colorado, Ellie continues to play nurse for Joel as he attempts to recover from the stab wound. She tries to give him water but soon realizes that he needs something to fight back an infection and to make matters worse, the food they brought along from Tommy’s settlement is running in short supply.
So Ellie decides she needs to put the skills that Joel taught her to use — she grabs his rifle and heads outside looking for something to kill to provide them food.
After missing out on a rabbit, Ellie actually spots a deer nearby and she gets a beat on the animal, fires a shot and mortally wounds it. Ellie is shocked that she hit her target but the deer is still mobile while clinging onto a little bit of life.
Ellie gives chase to track down the dinner she’ll provide for her and Joel.
Not far away, David and James — with rifles of their own — find the dead dear after it expires. They don’t know who killed the animal or how the deer ended up here, but never pass up on free food. Just as they plot to carry the deer back to town to feed people, a rifle gets cocked and they hear a girl’s voice shouting at them to drop their weapons.
Ellie found her fallen game — and she’s got her rifle trained on the two men who mean to steal her deer.
David introduces himself and tries to calm the situation while astutely pointing out that the deer is far too large for Ellie to drag back by herself. He mentions his group of people and how perhaps she’d be willing to trade with them for some of the food she’s just provided.
That’s when Ellie decides to ask for medicine — and David is happy to trade her two vials of penicillin in exchange for half the deer. He tells James to return to town to fetch the medicine while telling his right hand man that this is no secret code — he needs to retrieve the penicillin and return as quickly as possible.
With James running back to town, David offers to light a fire so he and Ellie can at least stay warm while waiting.
With a fire burning, David continues to probe Ellie for her name and where she came from while also telling her all about how he ended up here. It seems David left the Pittsburgh quarantine zone after things there just turned too volatile as the fighting between FEDRA and the Fireflies escalated. David’s group started making their way out west and they picked up more people along the way before eventually landing at this settlement in Colorado.
David also informs Ellie that he’s a preacher who used to be a math teacher. It seems David didn’t find god until the Cordyceps apocalypse broke out but now he’s filled with faith and he’s using that as spiritual guidance to lead his group through a perilous winter.
None of this seems to impress Ellie all that much but then the conversation takes a strange turn when David starts telling her that he believes their introduction was meant to happen because he trusts that everything always happens for a reason. Ellie scoffs at that suggestion but David promises that he can prove it to her.
“We didn’t expect this winter to be so cruel. Nothing will grow, game’s been hard to find so I sent four of our people to a nearby town to scavenge what they could and only three of them came back. The one that didn’t was a father he had a daughter just like you. Her dad was taken from her. Turns out he was murdered by this crazy man and get this … that crazy man was traveling with a little girl. You see? Everything happens for a reason.”
~ David
At the same time David finishes his story, he tells James to lower his weapon because he’s got a rifle pointed directly at the back of Ellie’s head. Rather than killing the girl, David orders James to make the exchange so he throws the package of medicine over to Ellie.
David tries to convince Ellie that she’s never going to survive on her own — she’s not with a larger group and the fact that she’s the one out there hunting for food seems to suggest that her friend isn’t physically able to do it on his own. He offers to protect her but Ellie just grabs the medicine, keeps the rifle trained on David and James before finally running away.
Them That Follow
When Ellie makes it back to the house, she rushes inside to load up the syringe with medicine before taking it upon herself to stick Joel and hope the penicillin can fight back the infection. She ends up crawling next to Joel on the bed and falling asleep.
As for David and James, they make it back to the community with the deer that will provide the people another day of food.
The cooks preparing dinner that night are handed a tub full of raw meat — and there’s a very obvious pause before they’re told that it’s venison. They start cooking a stew that’s served up to the people living at this settlement.
When David enters the room, he informs them that they’ve found the man responsible for killing Alec — the member of their scavenging group who never returned — but he first wanted to bring back the deer they killed to provide sustenance. He promises the next morning he’ll lead a hunting party to track down the little girl and by extension the friend who killed Alec and they will bring him to justice.
Just then, Alec’s daughter shouts out that they should kill the man and the girl with him.
David approaches the young girl and without saying a word, he slaps her so hard she goes flying out of her chair. When her mother stands up, David calmly tells her to sit down again with just the motion of his hand. He then leans down and offers his other hand to the girl — and as she takes it, David tells her that she still has a father and he’s always going to watch over her.
The congregation might think that David is talking about God but it’s rather obvious that David is actually talking about himself.
The next morning, Ellie wakes up and gives Joel another injection before heading upstairs to feed and water Shimmer the horse. While outside, Ellie sees a flock of birds fly into the sky as if they’ve been spooked. She sneaks around the neighborhood until she spots a group of men carrying guns — led by the same person she met yesterday.
Ellie rushes back to the house, runs downstairs and puts a knife in Joel’s hand while trying to wake him from his slumber. She tells Joel that she’s going to lead the hunters away from the house but if anybody gets inside, he needs to kill them.
Ellie then mounts Shimmer and trots out into the neighborhood where she spots the hunting party, fires a few shots at them and then races off on horseback. She doesn’t make it very far, however, as James is able to get off a shot with his rifle that takes out the horse, which in turn sends Ellie flying to the ground.
When the hunters approach the girl, James is ready to put Ellie out of his misery when a shot rings out — David instructed his men that the girl was not to be harmed. He intends on ensure Ellie is not harmed so David picks her up while telling two of his men to drag the horse back to town and then instructing the rest of them to go hunting for the man responsible for killing Alec.
If they want justice, now is the time to dish it out.
When Ellie wakes up, she’s sitting in a caged cell in the back of a steakhouse and butcher shop where the townspeople convene everyday for dinner. David is there waiting for her.
David tells Ellie that he knows she’s not with a larger group but he can also tell that she cares very much for the man responsible for killing his friend Alec. But if Ellie wants to survive, she’s going to need his help so it’s time to let go of her friend and realize that this is a chance at a fresh start — otherwise she’ll never make it.
“If you can’t find a way to trust me, then yes, you are alone”
~ David
David has a serious God complex and he clearly believes everyone needs to depend on him and now he’s got designs on Ellie joining his group.
Back in the neighborhood where Joel is resting and David’s men are hunting, they are going house by house looking for Ellie’s friend. One of the hunters finally gets inside the house where Joel is currently in the basement and he awakens to the sound of footsteps over his head.
The footsteps get louder and louder until the hunter sees the cabinet blocking the basement door, which Ellie put there as a last line of defense to protect Joel. He moves the cabinet and makes his way downstairs but he only finds a bloodstained mattress.
He begins looking around the basement but before he finds anything, Joel finds him first.
Joel stabs the man in the neck and twists the knife until the blood starts flowing — and a moment later the man is dead. It seems the infection around Joel’s stab wound has been defeated and he’s on the mend.
Outside another one of the hunters continues to look at the various houses until he happens upon one of his friends laid out on the ground. He goes to check on him but just as he sits down, he turns and Joel smacks him with his rifle.
When the man wakes up, he’s bound by duct tape and his friend is being savagely beaten by Joel, who wants to know what happened to Ellie. The man confesses that Ellie is still alive so Joel demands to know her location.
When the man balks, Joel jams a knife through his leg and promises to pop off his kneecap unless he tells him about where Ellie was taken. The man finally reveals the name of the settlement is Silver Lake but it’s not exactly a town — it was a resort and that’s where his people are stationed.
Joel puts the knife in the man’s mouth and commands him to point on a map where Silver Lake is located and he tells him to be honest because if his friend doesn’t point to this same exact spot, both of them are dead. The man reluctantly points to the map where Silver Lake is located and a second later Joel stabs him to death with the knife.
The other man screams in terror while telling Joel that he’ll never confirm the location of Silver Lake.
“It’s OK. I believe him”
~ Joel
Joel then proceeds to beat the man to death with a lead pipe before loading up his supplies to go looking for Ellie.
A Violent Heart
Ellie looks for a way to break out of her cell but as she tries to find a way to open the door, she notices a human ear laying in the corner of this butcher shop where she’s being held prisoner. A second later, David returns with a tray full of food with a cup of water that he slides through the fence to provide Ellie with some food.
Ellie looks at the meat swimming in tomatoes and the looks back to the corner of that room and David soon does the same.
His secret is out.
It turns out the venison, rabbit and other wild game ran out a long time ago so David has been feeding his people with human meat. He’s turned them all into unknowing cannibals because that’s what David had to do to help them survive.
David says he’s not proud of the choices he’s made but these are the choices that were required when his people needed to eat and they needed food. He then tells Ellie that only a few people know about the human meat being served up for dinner but he would have told her eventually.
Why exactly?
Because David sees an equal in Ellie — a leader, a strong minded person capable of doing whatever it takes to survive and she’s not afraid to pull the trigger if that’s what’s necessary. As David continues talking, it’s clear he’s not viewing this 14-year-old girl as a daughter he might want to raise but rather a wife he’d like to marry.
Part of the reason this sick twist wants to indoctrinate Ellie into his cannibal cult is because he sees a lot of himself in her — it’s a side of himself he only discovered after the Cordyceps infection broke out.
David: “You remind me of me. You’re a natural leader. You’re smart. Loyal. Violent.
Ellie: “You don’t know anything about me.”
David: “But I do. If I let you out of that cage right now, put that knife of yours in your hand, you’d stick me in a second. You have a violent heart. I should know. I’ve always had a violent heart. I struggled with it for a long time but then the world ended and I was shown the truth.”
Davis confesses that his violent heart was discovered after he found faith but it turns out his preacher act is exactly that — he’s not a true believer. He’s just using the bible as a way to manipulate the people following him because he actually follows a much higher power … the Cordyceps infection.
He tells Ellie that the Cordyceps virus is nothing more than a shepherd trying to protect a flock, which is exactly what he’s taken upon himself to do with this group of people. If anything, David almost sounds envious of the Cordyceps infection and the efficiency with which this virus has almost completely wiped humanity off the map.
“It’s fruitful, it multiplies, it feeds and protects its children and it secures its future with violence if it must. It loves.”
~ David
David then offers Ellie the opportunity to join him as he reaches out his hand and places it inside her cage. Ellie approaches as David continues blathering on about his method to save the world and how she could be the perfect counterpart to help him save more people.
Ellie happily accepts his hands as she wraps hers around his — but then quickly manipulates his fingers and snaps one back. David cries out in pain as Ellie desperately tries to reach for his keys but he’s able to grab her and slam her into the cage.
As Ellie lays there bleeding, David promises to tell his group something entirely different about her than he initially planned. It seems his creepy marriage proposal has been retracted but at least she finally tells him her name in rather emphatic fashion.
“Ellie … tell them that Ellie is the little girl that broke your fucking finger!”
~ Ellie
As for Joel, he gets close to the town where Ellie has been taken but he first spots a blood trail leading into a building. He cracks open the lock on the door and gets inside where he finds Shimmer the horse laying dead.
Joel looks around and he’s soon horrified to find several decapitated bodies hung upside down on meat hooks, wrapped in plastic as if they’re being preserved. It doesn’t take much for Joel to figure out that he’s stumbled upon a group of cannibals and he gets to find Ellie sooner rather than later.
Back at the butcher shop, David returns but this time he’s got James with him and they quickly snatch Ellie out of her cell and decide that she’s no longer worth saving. Instead, they will chop her up into little pieces, just as she initially feared, and she’ll provide food for the community to keep them alive through the winter.
As Ellie struggles trying to break free, she bites Joel before he finally throws her on top of a chopping table and grabs a cleaver to kill her dead. Before he can swing the weapon, Ellie tells him that she’s infected — and now that he’s been bitten, David is infected, too.
They don’t believe her but Ellie has them roll up her sleeve and they see the bite mark and the remnants of the Cordyceps infection. David still doesn’t buy that he’s actually been infected because Ellie would have already turned into a fungal zombie by now.
It turns out Ellie wasn’t trying to convince anybody she’s infected — she just needed enough distraction to grab the cleaver from the table and swing it directly into James’ neck. James starts bleeding out as Ellie runs away with David firing several shots of his gun trying to stop her.
James falls dead and David gives chase to try and find Ellie as she hides in the front part of the building, which is the steakhouse. She grabs a piece of wood from the fireplace and tosses it at David but misses — she does manage to hit the curtains, which immediately ignites the entire building on fire.
None of that seems to concern David too much as he continues preaching to Ellie about the method to his madness and how he’s become god to these people. David even relents on his desire to make Ellie his equal because now he wants to raise her in his image as her father.
Ellie manages to find a knife in the kitchen and she sneaks out to stab David in the stomach but she doesn’t kill him and he quickly turns the tables on her. David savagely kicks Ellie before jumping in top of her and promising that he won’t hurt her — at least not very much and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out the vile acts he wants to carry out.
Thankfully, Ellie is able to wiggle free just enough to snatch the cleaver from the ground that David dropped — and then she swings it up and hits him directly in the face. As David falls backwards, Ellie jumps on top of him with the cleaver and she begins chopping away at him until there’s likely nothing left but a bloody stump.
Ellie now covered in blood herself jumps up to escape the burning building as she bursts through the front door but then somebody grabs her from behind. She struggles and tries to break free but the person holding onto her is Joel.
He turns her around and tells Ellie that she’s going to be OK as he looks at this poor girl who’s been tortured and forced to fight for her life to survive. Joel finally embraces Ellie as she hugs him back and he comforts her in a way that he hasn’t done for anybody since his daughter died 20 years ago.
“It’s OK baby girl, I got you.”
~ Joel
Joel wraps up Ellie in her jacket and pulls her tight close to him as they walk away from the burning building together almost like a father and daughter reunited. The aftermath of this ordeal will likely haunt both of them for some time to come but particularly for Ellie, who may have despised everything about David but he might have managed to spit out one bit of truth.
Perhaps Ellie really does have a violent heart beating in her chest.
“The Last of Us” season 1 will come to an end next week with the season finale at 9 p.m. ET on HBO!
