The Last of Us Episode 5 recap

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The hit HBO Max show “The Last of Us” is off to a great start. The show has been getting nothing but praise from its audience about the flawless writing. Episode 5 displayed some of the most remarkable scenes lifted directly from the show, giving viewers a new point of view with a few changes. In this article, I am going to be reviewing what some might call the most emotional episode.

The episode opens up a flashback with Henry hiding with his little brother Sam (I explain this later) during a protest turned violent. The group’s leader Kathleen resents him for selling their secrets out to FEDRA. Katheleen was on a path of vengeance and wants to find Henry. In episode 4 it ended with Henry and Sam holding guns to Joel and Ellies faces telling them to not make a sound. In episode 4 we are also seeing Kathleen for the first time, as she interrogates a family doctor asking where Henry was, when the doctor doesn’t cooperate, she sends his life, sending a message to viewers that she is not afraid of resorting to violence. In episode 5 Kathleen gets together a search party for Henry as he and his brother Sam are now on the run. And this is how Ellie and Joel meet them, realistically they are running from the same people because in episode 4, Ellie and Joel are ambushed by people from the group Kathleen runs, and Joel being Joel, he defends himself and Ellie killing mulitple people. That sets Kathleen off, wanting to find the ones that killed her friend now.

Henry and Joel did not start off liking each other. Joel attacks Henry’s manhood by calling him a rat and questioning why he was running. Henry eventually tells Joel why he is on the run, and the bond that Ellie and Sam are building in the background causes Joel to snap out of anger and finally agree to team with the two brothers. The two come up with a plan to escape through the sewers and take the bridge out of the territory. Joel, hearing the sound of sewers, questions the amount of infected they may encounter, Henry counters this by explaining to him that there are no  infected in the sewers, not because he’s been down there, but because a guy he knew has. Henry wasn’t exactly that wrong but later on the group take their journey and find themselves in a new POI. The team is walking then gets attacked by a sniper from a house about 110 meters away. Joel uses his protective instincts to take over and go take out the sniper, but when he kills the guy help is already on the way, Kathleen’s search party pulls up and a brief attack happens and Henry Sam and Ellie hide as shots fire off. Shots stop with Joel still at the sniper’s vantage point not knowing what to do. Henry is cornered with Sam and Ellie. As Kathleen gets closer a truck falls into the ground due to the attack, and hundreds of infected come running out of the ground. Everyone defends themselves and eventually Henry and Sam try hiding under a car and get attacked by some infected. Ellie sees this and helps. Due to the amount of infected Kathleen’s search party loses the group and they flee to a hotel or office or whatever it is. It’s revealed later on that Sam was infected but doesn’t tell anyone but Ellie. Ellie tries to use her blood to cure Sam and they share one of my very favorite emotional scenes in any show I’ve seen. The two go to bed hoping to wake up together the next day. They do, but Sam is facing the window. Ellie approaches Sam and is attacked and thrown into the next room. Joel immediately pulls his gun to shoot Sam but Henry denies Joel’s actions by shooting at the ground to scare him. Henry takes it upon himself to shoot his brother dead. Filled with instant guilt Henry turns the gun on himself, Ellie screams. And it all happened in just a matter of seconds.

What makes this episode stand out from every other episode is the way the story is changed to deliver a feeling that almost can’t be explained. It’s like waking up and your phone is charged to 100%, but then sometimes it’s like waking up and your phone is dead. The emotional value in this episode was insane, from the cinematography to the face shots to explain different groups of people through multiple one-sided emotional perspectives.

Really what I think ties it all together was the portrayal of key characters and brothers Henry and Sam. In the game, Henry is a 25-year-old who isn’t afraid of killing. Sam, his younger brother, is 13 and just a regular kid following his brother. In the show Sam is deaf and a very artistic-minded kid, and Henry’s age is not specified and he is what they call a “collaborator” who gives info to FEDRA. Making Sam a deaf artistic-minded kid turned the show into good to VERY good. Doing this caused for less dialogue, which was the entire point of Sams’s revamped character. And not just Sam, Henry’s character change was amazing to, turning him to an innocent-looking early adult who is afraid of killing. The two really went together perfectly and it delivered a heartbreaking feeling when they were suddenly cut short of their lives showing how literally anything can happen in just a blink of an eye.

The acting in this show continues to impress me and if my skipping straight to episode 5 to show you how good the show is doesn’t tell you anything, just see it for yourself.