With just one episode to go, weâre nearing the end of Joel and Ellieâs long journey together. This weekâs entry, âWhen We Are in Need,â corresponds with the gameâs winter section, though the HBO adaptation isnât using the same seasonal structure of the game, and here in TV land, itâs been winter for a while.
When I first played The Last of Us ten years ago, in some ways the winter chapter felt to me like overkill, the game leaning hard into desperation and depravity just to be as gritty and bleak as it could, in order to help sell itself as a âmature,â serious game. âEnough, I get it. Humanity is awful and given half a chance, weâll all do grotesque, morally reprehensible things.â Replaying the game now alongside the show, the purpose of the chapter within the narrative is clearer to me. Of course itâs common for stories to put characters at their most hopeless and desperate points right before the resolution, but the way The Last of Us does it, separating the characters while both are in dire straits, drives home the importance of their bond to each other. It also, importantly, illustrates that while Joel may have started out as Ellieâs protector on this journey, he now needs her at least as much as she needs him. Letâs take a closer look at this weekâs episode, and its similarities to the same stretch of the game.
Ellie meets David in the show vs. the game
This chapter has its own villain in the form of David, a preacher and a predator whose flock reside in the resort town of Silver Lake and are suffering through a particularly harsh winter. In terms of dialogue, itâs one of the showâs more faithful episodes. In fact, itâs almost as if writer Craig Mazinâs screenplay for the episode just took this section of the game, cut out most of the combat sequences, and from there, sought to embellish the dialogue and build on what the game reveals to us about David and his congregation. It continues to be interesting to me how, in the game, combat is perhaps prioritized as the most important element, while in adapting the game to a series, it becomes the least important.
The winter chapter immediately distinguishes itself from the rest of the game by having you play as Ellie for the first time. (Today, playing through the story in order, youâd play the Left Behind DLC before this, but when the game came out in 2013, this was a surprising shift in perspective.) Desperate for food, Ellie hunts a deer she spots in the woods with her bow and arrows. Nicked and bleeding from multiple arrows, the deer runs, ultimately collapsing, but when Ellie finds it, two others, David and James, have seen it too. Just as in the game, David (voiced here by Nolan North, who plays Nathan Drake in Naughty Dogâs Uncharted games) makes a deal with Ellie: penicillin for some of the deer meat.
Whatâs unique to the game is that while waiting for James to return with the medicine, you have a multi-stage combat encounter fighting alongside David, involving a few standoffs against multiple waves of infected and a climactic battle with a bloater. Through it all, you might think that David is actually a new friend. He seems genuinely concerned for your welfare, and fighting alongside someone can be an experience that develops trust. Naughty Dog knows how to use combat as a tool for relationship-building, and here, they build up your trust in David a bit just to pull out the rug from under you and remind you that, in this world, the trust between Joel and Ellie is a rare and precious thing.
In the show, by the time Ellie first encounters David (played here by actor Scott Shepherd), we already have our reasons to be suspicious of him. The episode begins with him reading scripture to his flock, in the old steakhouse heâs converted into a church and town hall of sorts, a place where the abundant food of the pre-cordyceps past is sharply contrasted with the desperate circumstances of the present. (Itâs an important location in the game as well, one you come to later, and the sign reading WHEN WE ARE IN NEED HE SHALL PROVIDE is a detail straight from the game.) The faces of the congregationâs members are lean and hardened, telling us much at a glance about what a difficult winter theyâre having. A grieving daughter asks when her father can be buried and David says that itâs too cold to do so now, theyâll have to wait until spring. And outside after the service, David chides James (played by Troy Baker, the voice of Joel in the games) for his âdoubt,â giving off the sense of a man who very much wants to maintain control.
Notably, in the show, Ellie hunts the deer not with a bow and arrows but with the sniper rifle, recalling in our memories the moment toward the end of episode six when Joel tried to teach her how to use it. When she takes a moment to focus with the deer in her sights, we can sense her recalling Joelâs words and trying to draw on what he taught her.
Both the game and the show have Ellie talking tough when she sees David and James near the deer she killed, with her calling James âbuddy boyâ and saying that if David tries anything, sheâll âput one right between your eyes.â The show, however, foregrounds Davidâs role as a preacher in their first conversation far more than the game does. In fact, perhaps the only real hint David gives off in the game that he has certain rigid moral standards might come when, after Ellie swears, he absurdly says, in the midst of a life-and-death battle against waves of infected, that she should watch her language. We definitely pick up on the fact that heâs a preacher eventually, but thereâs no real character development done around it.
In the show, however, Ellie asks if Davidâs âhunger clubâ is some sort of cult, and he turns on the folksy charm, saying âWell, you sorta kinda got me there,â but saying that what he preaches is âpretty standard Bible stuff.â When Ellie wonders how he can still âbelieve that stuffâ after everything thatâs happened, he tells her it was actually after the world ended that he started to believe. âEverything happens for a reason,â he says in both the show and the game, and itâs here that whatever sense of trust you might have felt for David while fighting alongside him likely evaporates. His seeming friendliness reveals itself to be a guise for something more threatening, and he tells her that a âcrazy manâ killed someone in their flock recently at the university. A crazy man who just happens to be traveling with a âlittle girl.â
Ellie now understands that David is a threat if she didnât before, but David lets her ride off with the medicine, telling her that thereâs room for her in his group, that he can protect her. Itâs almost as if he has some gross designs of his own for her.
Dinnertime at the steakhouse
One of the luxuries of HBOâs adaptation has always been that it can leave the perspective of Joel and Ellie behind entirely when it wants to, and here, we get more development of Davidâs congregation. In the kitchen, members of the flock lament their dwindling food supplies, and when a man brings in some fresh meat, one of them asks, âWhat is it?â âVenison,â he replies hesitantly, in a way that may have you asking, âIs it though?â Nonetheless, they put it into the eveningâs soup.
David and James haul the deer Ellie killed into the restaurant, but the room still seems quiet. Sensing what the tension is about, David tells them that yes, itâs true, âwe found the girl who was with the man who took Alec from us.â Come morning, he says, theyâll track her trail, and âbring that man to justice.â The grieving girl from the opening scene raises her voice, saying they should kill both of them. David walks over and, in a moment that shows us just what kind of congregation leader he is, backhands her across the face. Things get worse still a moment later when he tells her that although she may think she doesnât have a father anymore, âthe truth is, Hannah, you always have a father. And you will show him respect when heâs speaking.â Kenneth is not wrong when he says the show makes David even more disturbing than he already was.
The scene ends with shots of these hungry people eating their dinners, the thought lingering in our minds that it may be Alec theyâre eating.
HungryâŠfor vengeance!
The next morning, Davidâs men do indeed come a-huntinâ. In both the show and the game, Ellie does the only thing she can think to do: try leading the men away from Joel, who sheâs injected with penicillin but who is still hovering on the edge of consciousness. In the show, she presses a knife into his hands and tells him to kill anyone who comes into the house, though he doesnât even look like he has the strength to sit up.
The show gives us another brief exchange between David and James, as David insists that Ellie be brought in alive. James says he doesnât mean to question Davidâs âsense of mercyâ but the girl would just be another mouth to feed, and that yes, she may die if left alone out here, but perhaps thatâs Godâs will. David simply gives him a withering look, but itâs abundantly clear that Davidâs interest in keeping Ellie alive has nothing to do with mercy.
Ellie rides through the neighborhood on her horseâthe neighborhood which, in the game, has a small army of Davidâs men on the streetsâand eventually, her horse is shot out from under her. In the show, itâs James who does this, and David has to stop him and some other men from killing Ellie. Carrying her off himself and ordering a few men to haul the horse carcass, he tells the remainder of his men to go door to door hunting Joel. âYouâre so hungry for vengeance? Deliver it.â
In the game, however, another extended combat sequence begins, as Ellie must sneak by or kill a number of Davidâs men. What we get here that we donât get so much in the show is a lot of deep dissatisfaction among the flock with Davidâs leadership, with many men expressing doubt in David and suggesting that soon, his role as leader be put to a vote. Despite your best efforts, though, David does eventually capture and subdue Ellie, while his own delusions of grandeur about his own benevolence continue to manifest. âIâm keeping you alive here,â he says, as he jokes the consciousness out of her.
Ellie left Joel behind
In both the show and the game, Joel finally comes back to life, as if awakened by the cosmos just in Ellieâs hour of need. The Police have a song about that called âSynchronicity I,â but I digress. In the show, some poor bearded sap enters the house where Joel is stashed in the basement. Ellie was smart and hid the door to the basement behind an old piece of furniture, but the poor bastard rolls well on his perception check and notices somethingâs up. It would have been better for him if he hadnât.
As he comes down the stairs, spotting the bloody mattress Ellieâs had Joel on for days, we know Joel has finally regained awareness, and is hiding down there somewhere. Yes, it turns out Joel has regained the strength not only to move, but to stab and choke the life out of a man. Thatâs the Joel we know and love!
Meanwhile, Ellie wakes up in a cageâin the game, to the sight of a man butchering a human body right in front of her, though in the show, itâs just David sitting there, waiting for her to wake up. In the show, which continues working to make David more overtly disturbing than he is in the game, he tells her that sheâs in a cage because âyouâre a dangerous person, youâve certainly proven that,â and thereâs an unmistakable hint of amusement and even admiration to his comment.
Joelâs back in action
Joel, desperate to find Ellie, tortures two of Davidâs men to get her whereabouts. Itâs a startling juxtaposition with an exchange between Ellie and David in the game. When Ellie calls David an animal, he protests that she and Joel have killed a great many people too. âThey didnât give us a choice, itâs a video game,â she says. (Well, okay, she doesnât say that second part.) âAnd you think we have a choice, is that it?â David says. âYou kill to survive. So do we. We have to take care of our own, by any means necessary.â
I donât really subscribe to that logic, but his words do on some level indict Joel, I think. Some may feel that Joel and David are points of contrast, oneâs violence rooted in hate and delusion, the otherâs in love and necessity. I certainly donât think Joel and David are the same, but I also donât think thereâs anything innocent or acceptable about what Joel does here. And Iâm fine with that. I want characters in my media who sometimes do awful things. Whatâs always troubled me about the reaction to Joel, though, is just how many people who played the game seem to think that everything he does is totally justified, while recognizing that the actions of others in the world arenât. Itâs as if we donât want to closely interrogate the actions of the person we play as, the one we most closely identify with.
This may be a conversation for next weekâs finale, but it seems clear to me that the game, and the show, at least want us to think about the lengths Joel goes to here, lengths that include brutally murdering one man after he tells Joel what he wanted to know, and then killing the other, too. When the second man declares that he wonât tell Joel anything, both the game and the show give us the chilling and memorable line in which Joel, referring to the man he just killed, says âThatâs okay, I believe him.â
Cordyceps showed David the light
The show expands significantly on Davidâs conversation with Ellie, and makes it much more unsettling. He speaks to herâa 14-year-old girlâas if he sees her as some kind of equal, a kindred spirit, because they both have âa violent heart.â He fought to restrain his violent heart for a long time, he says, before he was shown the light, not by God, but by cordyceps. âWhat does cordyceps do? Is it evil? No. Itâs fruitful. It multiplies. It feeds and protects its children. And it secures its future with violence, if it must. It loves.â I appreciate the expansion of Davidâs ideas here, because I think the notion that love and violence can overlap is at the core of The Last of Us, and while David is clearly deranged, the debate over whether Joelâs violence is a manifestation of love rages on.
David, plainly a man who is used to having people respond to his charisma, makes the mistake of thinking that Ellie might be seduced by him as well, when, in both the game and the show, he puts his hand on the bars of the cage and makes it clearer still that his ideas about her are, to put it mildly, inappropriate. Itâs a deeply sad moment to me, the realization that even in this world where society as we know it has collapsed, Ellie, like most women in our world at one time or another, in one way or another, still has to deal with the threat and the supreme bullshit of predatory men. Both versions punish David for his arrogance and delusion, as Ellie, briefly playing along, takes his hand and then snaps something in it before finally telling David her name. Tell the others, she says, that âEllie is the little girl that broke your fucking finger!â
Here the game begins to employ the effective device of having us switch back and forth between Joel and Ellie at intervals, as Joel heads into town to find her, killing plenty of Davidâs men along the way while a blizzard gathers strength, raising the sense of drama and letting you pick off your prey in the low visibility. Yes, of course heâs doing it for her sake, to protect her, to help her, but by now, it also feels very much like heâs doing it because he doesnât know what he would do without her. Of course historically, games once relied too often on putting underdeveloped women in peril and just focusing on the men who had to rescue them, but The Last of Us earns this setup by humanizing them both, by developing their connection, and by presenting their relationship as one of mutual care and benefit. By now, Ellie has taken care of Joel and saved his life about as much as heâs done for her.
The show also now switches back to Joelâs perspective, showing him heading into town and finding Ellieâs stuff, not to mention human bodies strung up on meathooks. Better hurry, Joel.
The trick up Ellieâs sleeve
In both versions, David (with Jamesâ help, in the show) hauls Ellie out of the cage to cut her up into âlittle pieces,â since she didnât take him up on his excellent offer. Just as theyâre about to start cleaving, however, she announces that sheâs infected, prompting David to roll up her sleeve and reveal the wound on her arm. David says it canât be real, James says it looks pretty fucking real to him, and thatâs the last thing heâll ever say, as Ellie takes advantage of their moment of hesitation to sink a meat cleaver into Jamesâ neck and dash out of the room.
Here, the game becomes a kind of boss fight, as Ellie must sneak around the restaurant and stealthily attack David while a fire begins to spread. In the show, his ego more evidently implodes as the restaurant, his church, burns down around him. Itâs a breakdown on multiple levels, with this deluded, awful, terrifying man shouting âYou donât know how good I am!â In both cases, itâs up to Ellie to protect herself, to defeat this supremely shitty, predatory man, whose intentions to inflict sexual violence on Ellie, implied but still clear in the game, are made much more explicit in the show. And in both cases, itâs immensely cathartic and satisfying to see her finally kill him, and not just kill him but stab him again and again until she herself is a blood-spattered survivor, a horror movie final girl. But part of what gives the final girl trope its awful potency is that the kinds of sexualized violence these women so often fight against canât be killed by killing just one bad man. Itâs a threat we all face, all the time. Ellie survives, of course, but the stare she gives in the wake of it, the way she reacts at first when Joel approaches her, suggests that sheâs forever changed by the experience. Ellie is all of us.
Itâs okay, baby girl
Joel shows up just after her fight is won, and as subtle a detail as it is, the fact that in the show, just like in the game, he calls her âbaby girlâ in the wake of the horror sheâs just endured is tender and very meaningful. It tells us that thereâs no longer any pretense of division or obligation between them, of Joel doing this just as a job, of her just being cargo.
By putting both characters in such desperate circumstances, and then having them finally come back together in the end, this episode and this stretch of the game are the cementing of the connection between Joel and Ellie that the story needs before it heads into its final chapter. Thatâs next week, when weâll finally settle the discourse about whether or not Joelâs actions are justified once and for all. See you then.
