The Last of Us Episode 8 Review: Puts Us On The Exit Ramp For The Season Finale Next Week
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Scott Shepherd, Troy Baker
Director: Ali Abbasi
Streaming Platform: HBO Max
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Review and analysis of The Last of Us Episode 8 entitled “When We Are in Need” with the interpretations of Scott Shepherd and Troy Baker. It’s time for the story to move on after the “canned episode” that was The Last of Us Episode 7. We return to the present, which looks dark for Joel and Ellie, exposed to a harsh winter and with the former in a lamentable state of health. The successful HBO Max series continues to focus on our protagonists in an apocalyptic environment in which the few survivors are as dangerous or more so than the cordyceps itself that caused it. The episode that concerns us today focuses, in fact, on a community that has taken a step further to survive, although they try to hide it under the cloak of faith and therefore in the iron belief in a leader. It does not cease to be, therefore, a sect.
There is only one episode left to the highly anticipated season finale of The Last of Us, and the series of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann increases the pace and tension in a penultimate chapter among the most exciting of those seen so far. The previous one – all focused on Ellie’s past and a traumatic event that marked her – ended with the protagonist’s desperate attempt to save Joel, seriously injured on his side: the situation is still critical and, without medicine and in the cold of the Colorado winter, the chances of humans surviving are getting slimmer. As we will see in this review of The Last of Us Episode 8, the episode directed by Ali Abbasi reiterates a fundamental axiom of this series: even in a world populated by zombies, human beings are the most frightening. It will be the meeting with another group of survivors, led by a charismatic preacher, that will show us the extremes to which people, if hungry and scared, can go. An episode that changes tone compared to the previous ones, which had instilled in us a sense of hope toward humanity, in this one, however, we find ourselves wondering if there is anything left that is worth saving.
The Last of Us Episode 8 Review: The Story
In our lowest hours God will provide the new episode of The Last of Us starts with a group gathered to listen to a preacher read Revelation 21 from the Bible. A woman begins to cry and asks when they can bury her father. They decide that in spring, winter has hardened the soil. Between rabbits and deer, they calculate that food can last a maximum of two weeks. David (the preacher) and James (a hunter) set out to find more food. Meanwhile, Ellie continues to take care of Joel, but she is also hungry, so she decides to take the rifle and try to hunt. She sees a rabbit, but she falls trying to catch it. She later finds a deer and shoots it. She manages to hit him, but he runs away badly injured.
David and James find it, but Ellie doesn’t let them take the prize: she tells them to drop their weapons. They tell you that they are part of a larger group of very hungry women and children; Ellie lies and says that she does too. They negotiate an exchange: half a deer in exchange for two vials of penicillin. James goes for it while Ellie and David build a bonfire and take shelter. David tells him that he found God after the Apocalypse, he was a math teacher. He ran away with a few when the Pittsburgh quarantine zone fell. He explains that they did not expect such a harsh winter: anything grew and there is hardly anything to hunt. He also tells her that nothing happens by chance. That a disturbed man killed the father of one of the women in his community and that he was traveling with a girl, and he knows it was her. James is behind Ellie, pointing a gun at her.
Against all odds, David tells James to give him the medicine. He knows he’s not with a group and he won’t last long alone out there. Ellie runs away and injects Joel with penicillin directly into her wound. In David’s community kitchens, they prepare a meat stew and set the tables in the dining room. Once reunited, he tells them that they have found the girl who was traveling with the man who killed Alec. The idea is to catch him and prosecute him, but his daughter says they have to be killed. David slaps her so hard that he knocks her out of the chair. He tells her that even though she already believes that she doesn’t have a father, she does have one and he must show her respect when he speaks. He then blesses the food, and they prepare to eat.
Ellie continues to take care of Joel and injects him with the medicine. A party of six men approaches the cabin. James wonders what they will do with her when they find her: if they take her away she will be another mouth to feed. David seems to have plans for her. Sensing danger, Ellie tries to wake Joel up: she gives him a knife and tells him there are marauders. She’s going to try to mislead them and get them away, but if they get to him she has to defend herself. She shoots at them and flees on horseback.
David says he wants her alive, so James shoots the horse, causing it to fall heavily into the snow. Ellie is knocked unconscious, but David prevents her from being given the coup de grace. He picks her up in her arms and carries her away. He orders two men to drag the horse. The rest records the place. Joel finds the strength to hide and attack one of them from behind, sticking a knife in his neck. Ellie wakes up in a cell. David tells her that she is afraid of him because she has proven to be dangerous. He asks her out, but she tells him that she’s not alone. He explains that that part of her life is coming to an end for her and that he is offering her a new beginning. She has to make decisions.
Joel attacks another of David’s men. He goes to catch them one by one and interrogates them to find out where Ellie is. He tells them that they have her alive in Silver Lake: a complex that does not correspond to a town as such but to an isolated community. Despite him giving him the information, he wants, he kills them both. David brings Ellie food. He swears that it is deer meat, but despite being hungry, she does not trust her word and is afraid that he will tear her to pieces. He tells her not to judge him but she tells him that she knows he is an animal, and that he eats people. She hides behind the fact that she cannot starve those who have entrusted her with their lives.
David tells her that she reminds him of him, that she is a nothing, loyal and violent leader. She also tells him that she reveres cordyceps: she doesn’t think it’s a bad thing, but something that multiplies and is violent if necessary to survive, like himself. He tells her that he is honest with her because he is a shepherd surrounded by sheep and he sees her as an equal with whom he wants to have a future. David tells her that he will stop following Joel but that he needs her help. He shakes her hand through the bars and she breaks his finger, bites it, and tries to steal his keys. Her move backfires, she misses them, and he slams her face against her bars.
Joel finds a trail of blood and follows it: it leads him to the place where they keep the meat. And, of course, he finds not only the deer but also human corpses hanging from the ceiling, decapitated. David and James are about to cut off Ellie’s head, but she stops them by telling them that it is infected and showing them the wound. Since she bit David she tells him that he is too. She attacks James, kills him, and flees by setting fire to a curtain: everything starts to burn. David tells him that they are locked up and he has the keys. She suspects that she is not truly infected by his way of fighting for her life. She attacks him from behind and stabs him with a knife. He climbs on top of her and tries to rape her but she reaches for the knife and stabs him to death. She manages to get out of there bloody, sore, and very scared. Joel finds her. He takes off his coat, covers her, and hugs her as they walk away, comforting her that everything is okay.
The Last of Us Episode 8 Review and Analysis
As we anticipated at the beginning, When We Are in Need confirms once again that the people, not the infected, are truly scary in The Last of Us. If we had previously encountered groups fighting for their independence and freedom (such as the community of Kansas City), but who had maintained their humanity even in barbarism, here we find ourselves in front of a community that violates one of the worst taboos, namely, to feed on human flesh. The Silver Lake group lives in extremely precarious conditions, exacerbated by an extremely harsh winter, and relies completely on David’s guidance to keep them going. The man is a charismatic preacher, able to narrate his “followers” with words taken from the Bible but infused with a personal creed (as he later explained to Ellie,
The man sees in Ellie the strength of a leader and for this reason, he is extremely fascinated by her, so much so that he immediately puts her aware of the cannibal practices adopted by him and his family. The clash between the two triggers a profound change in Ellie, the girl – who until now had been protected and guided by Joel – is forced to fend for herself and give vent to the most violent and wild side of herself to survive. Even Joel, who recovers thanks to the penicillin brought by Ellie, shows us an aspect of himself that until now we had only been able to imagine, namely the ruthless and merciless man (in this case willing to do anything to save Ellie) who it had been in the past.
The Last of Us Episode 8 is therefore a fundamental episode to get to know the protagonists of this story even more, who, although in the extreme violence they implement, have never seemed so vulnerable and human. The relationship that binds Joel and Ellie is shown in all its strength in comparison with the madness of David and his family: the love between a father and his daughter (although not biological, it doesn’t matter) who, in its purity and genuineness, it survives the most extreme ugliness that human beings are capable of.
The interpretations of its cast contribute as always to making The Last of Us so convincing: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey prove to be perfect in the roles of Joel and Ellie, extremely convincing also in the exploit of ruthless coldness and ferocity of which they are respectively the protagonists. Also striking is Scott Shepherd’s acting performance, which gives life to an extremely ambiguous character, who is honest and reliable but hides a crazy and depraved side.
When We Are in Need is in our opinion the episode with the tensest and most disturbing atmospheres among those seen so far, and it amazes how once again the infected – who should be the main concern in a post-apocalyptic world like this –don’t even make an appearance. It is something that could dissatisfy the public looking for the elements of the more classic zombie movie, but it makes the series by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann even more engaging and fascinating because it is capable of telling the human being in its worst aspects but also in the best ones. If we initially wondered what is worth saving in this now destroyed and degenerate world, the hug between Joel and Ellie in the finale shows us how, even in the darkest moments, there is always something very important to protect.
One of the leitmotifs of any apocalyptic fiction is that situations of maximum tension test people’s strength of character and some are weaker than others. In this type of context, it does not matter whether it is about epidemics, environmental catastrophes, extreme weather conditions, or the arrival of aliens: nothing is worse than what some are willing to do to survive. Cannibalism is one of the most extreme ways of showing this moral drift down to hell.
As is the trend in the series, The Last of Us Episode 8 is an episode that takes its time to introduce the characters and make us understand who they are and what their role is in their community. And here the actor Scott Shepherd gives the chest playing the abject David: a religious fanatic whose God is the cordyceps since he has put him in a position of power unheard of. But it also very well reflected the role of the different figures around him. He is the ideologue that others follow out of sheer necessity, denying the obvious reality (that deer meat that they well know belongs to a person) while he has executing arms and even a “daughter” that he sexually abuses as try Ellie.
For the rest, structurally within the series, this episode repeats the scheme of burning the ships: it is an encapsulated story that serves to show human horrors, portray fanaticism (and see that it is based on the mere need to survive), and that it serves of extra time to a Joel whom we believed to be at the gates of death and who has managed to partially recover. It’s true, the series is a non-interactive video game: Joel and Ellie have passed the cannibal screen, but what will the last episode of the season bring them? It is to start trembling…
The Last of Us Episode 8 Review: The Last Words
The Last of Us Episode 8 is one of the most tense and exciting of those seen so far: in When We Are in Need, we discover a new side of the two protagonists that prepares us for the upcoming season finale. The Last of Us puts us on the exit ramp for the season finale next week, once again emphasizing that the greatest evil is not cordyceps but human communities. With a shocking ending, he shows that he knows how to create tension and complex characters. The development of the characters and how it presents a self-deceived community with a despot leader who feeds them. The portrait of fanaticism.
