Recap of Episode 4 of “The Last of Us”: Two more tragic deaths

HBO’s The Last of Us In Episode 5, we are given another heartbreaking storyline by Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and Keivonn Whiteard.

If you’ve been following the social media commentary around Lynskey, after Adrianne Curry, the Season 1 winner of America’s Next Top Model, wrote in now-deleted Twitters “her body says life of luxury … not post apocalyptic [sic] warlord.” Episode 5 The Last of Us Just reinforces how phenomenal Lynskey plays the role.

“I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am,” Lynskey tweeted in response. “I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”

This episode of The Last of Us, we find out more about Kathleen’s life and backstory, and how she got to be the leader of the revolutionary movement in Kansas City, Missouri.

We also learn that the boy and man who held Ellie (Ramsey), and Joel (Pascal), at gunpoint, are actually brothers Henry (Johnson), and Sam (Woodard). It’s their storyline that is particularly heart wrenching.

Here’s all you need from Episode 5 of HBO’s The Last of Us (spoilers ahead).

The episode takes us back to the Kansas City QZ, with civilian revolutionaries chanting, “f-ck you FEDRA.”

Kathleen and Perry (Jeffrey Pierce), enter an ex-FEDRA cell together with a group they rounded up, all informants working with FEDRA.

“You know Perry, I used to be so scared of these people. Now look at them,” Kathleen says. “Did it feel good, betraying your neighbours to FEDRA? … Watching us hang so that you could get medicine, alcohol, f-cking apples. It made you feel better. Did it make you feel safe?”

“Well I’m not FEDRA, lucky for you. Nobody here should die. We could put you on trial … and you’ll do some time, easy.”

Kathleen questions Henry’s whereabouts. When no one answers, she instructs Perry to kill them, but then someone speaks up and says he’s with Edelstein (Kathleen’s doctor that we met in Episode 4). They had a place in the open city, but he doesn’t know exactly where it is.

Perry and Kathleen leave. Perry confirms that these informants will be executed.

“When you’re done, burn the bodies. It’s faster,” she says to Perry.

This episode takes us back in time to Episode 4, where Perry and Kathleen found the attic. Harry was there just before they arrived with Sam and Edelstein. They are able to survive for approximately 11 days. Seeing that Sam (who is deaf) is scared, Henry goes over to him and signs that they’re OK and no one is going to find him, before handing Sam crayons to draw and decorate the space. Henry also painted on a superhero-type mask over Sam’s eyes.

Just then, Henry looks out the window and sees Joel’s altercation with the hunters at the laundromat. Henry and Sam follow Joel and Ellie.

Why Kathleen is on the lookout for Henry

Now we’re back where we left off at the end of Episode 4. Joel and Ellie hear Henry telling them that they are here to help them, not harm them. Henry and Sam introduce their selves and the group starts talking.

Henry explains that he was a FEDRA collaborator, which initially concerns Joel, who doesn’t work with “rats.” Henry stresses that Joel needs him. Henry knows the city and knows how to help them out, but he needs Joel’s fighting power.

Henry explains how many buildings in the city were constructed by the same developer. They share a series underground maintenance tunnels. It will lead to an embankment that eventually leads to a pedestrian bridge crossing a river. Clarifying why, seemingly, there aren’t any infected in Kansas City, Henry says FEDRA drove the infected underground, so Kathleen won’t go there, but he was told that all the Clickers cleared out three years ago.

“OK, maybe there’s one or two, but you handle them,” Henry says to Joel.

Joel, Henry and Ellie all go underground after accepting that this is the best chance to escape.

They eventually reach an area that looks a bit like a daycare or classroom for children. On a whiteboard is a set of rules that read: “Make sure doors are locked. Ask for the password if you don’t know the visitor. No loud play or shouting. Run to the hiding spot when you hear the alarm.”

“People went underground after outbreak day, built settlements,” Joel explains as they enter this space.

When Ellie asks what happened to them, Joel responds, “Maybe they didn’t follow the rules and they all got infected.”

Ellie and Sam start playing together with some abandoned items in this underground area, Sam picks up a “Savage Straight” comic, something the two kids have in common, as they share which editions they owned, by writing on a paper attached to a clipboard. The comics’ slogan is “Endure and Survive”.

While Henry and Joel are together, Henry reveals that he wasn’t telling the truth about not hurting anyone before. He talks about a “great man” that was “the kind of man you would follow anywhere, and explains that when Sam was sick, with leukemia, there was one drug that worked well but there wasn’t much of it, and what was left belonged to FEDRA. In order to get that drug, he gave FEDRA something “big,” that “great man,” who was Kathleen’s brother Michael, the then-leader of the resistance in Kansas City.

“I am the bad guy because I did a bad guy thing,” Henry says to Joel. “You get it though, you may not be her father, but you’re someone’s … I could tell.”

A glimpse into Kathleen’s past life

Back to Kathleen: We find her in her childhood room as Perry comes in to talk to it.

“When Michael and I were little, this room seemed so big,” Kathleen says. “I was really scared of thunder so when there was a storm Michael told me that this wasn’t a room at all, that this was actually just a big wooden box.”

“He said as long as we were together, in our perfect box, we would be safe. He did this for me. He was so charming, doing such things all the time. I’m not. I’ve never been. He would be horrified by the things I’ve done and if you’ve come to tell me that Michael wouldn’t want me to hurt Henry, that he would want me to forgive, I know that too. He said it to me. He told me to forgive him the last time I saw him alive in prison. What did he get for this? Is there justice in this?

Perry responds by saying that her brother was a “great man” but “he didn’t change anything.”

“You did,” Perry says. “We’re with you.”

Two of the most tragic deaths in “The Last of Us”

This is the place where the action begins in episode one, which includes an adrenaline-filled scene with attacks.

Henry, Sam, Joel, and Ellie emerge from the tunnel. Kathleen leads them as they hide behind an abandoned vehicle. Joel sprints towards a nearby house and tells the others not to move.

Kathleen encourages Henry to get out. He eventually accepts, but wants Kathleen and the children to be free. Kathleen doesn’t agree.

“Kids die Henry. They die all the time,” she says.

Kathleen draws out her gun and points it at Henry, but just as Kathleen is about to pull the trigger, a tank crashes through the ground. A swarm clicker attack appears and begins attacking everyone in the vicinity, including Henry.

Joel is shooting monsters at them to clear their paths as Ellie, Henry, Sam run. They are separated, Ellie and Henry alone, and Sam and Sam together. Henry and Sam are being attacked, but Ellie manages to stab the Clickers, releasing the brothers.

Eventually Kathleen catches up to them but just as she’s about to shoot, a Clicker jumps on her, taking the resistance leader down.

Ellie and Sam run away from the area and reach a motel. Joel now has a friendship and invites Sam and Henry to join them in Wyoming.

Ellie discovers Sam had been bit and has a leg mark. Ellie knows she could be the cure and cuts her hand to apply her blood to his bite mark.

“My blood is medicine,” she says, promising to stay up with Sam because he’s scared.

The next morning, having fallen asleep at some point, Ellie goes to put her hand on Sam’s shoulder, who’s sitting up on a bed facing away from her, and he starts to attack.

Ellie is chased into the main bedroom, where Joel and Henry sleep, Henry tells Joel that he should put his gun down but he ends shooting Sam.

“What did I do?” Henry keeps repeating at the end of the episode.

He then points the gun to his own head and shoots himself, as we see Ellie’s shocked and terrified reaction.

Ellie and Joel bury their bodies, and Ellie leaves the clipboard with the words “I’m Sorry” written on the paper.