The Last of Us episode 4 got here to HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, with Ellie and Joel (Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal) again on the highway after final week’s heartbreaking diversion. They’re on monitor to attach Ellie to the Fireflies, because the insurgent group desires to duplicate her immunity to the fungal infection that remodeled billions of individuals into monsters.
This episode additionally includes a main deviation from the sport by introducing an unimaginable new villain. Let’s have a look at how that goes down by diving into episode 4 SPOILERS.
A ruthless chief
The marauders on this episode are as terrifying as they’re within the PlayStation recreation, with the preliminary confrontation with them taking part in out similarly to the source material. (Invoice can also be alive within the recreation, however elements methods with Joel and Ellie earlier than this goes down.) The incident takes place in Kansas Metropolis, however it occurred in Pittsburgh within the recreation.
The HBO adaptation additionally offers these marauders a pacesetter — the quietly menacing Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey from Showtime’s unimaginable Yellowjackets). This new character is on a bloody quest for vengeance after her brother was crushed to dying by FEDRA (Federal Catastrophe Response Company), which ran quarantine zones with the remnants of the US navy. It is primarily one of many final remnants of the federal government, however its energy is not absolute — guerilla teams like Kathleen’s have overthrown them in some cities.
Having handled Fedra, her group is searching down individuals who collaborated with Fedra — the names Henry and Sam will seemingly stir reminiscences when you’ve performed the sport. Kathleen is proven a loft they’d been hiding in, and it is stuffed with a child’s artwork of Superman. (HBO father or mother firm Warner Bros Discovery additionally owns DC Comics, hurray for model synergy.)
Melanie Lynskey’s Kathleen makes her debut in The Final of Us episode 4, and she or he’s a personality that wasn’t seen within the recreation.
HBO
The horrors created by the cycle of revenge will likely be acquainted to anybody who’s performed The Final of Us video games and is especially evident in Part 2. It is just like the Kathleen storyline was added to the present so vengeance is a clearer thematic through-line of vengeance between this season and the second.
Kathleen’s bearded goon Perry is performed by Jeffrey Pierce, who voiced Joel’s brother Tommy within the video games (he is performed by Gabriel Luna within the present). How about: He warns her a few sinkhole being created by contaminated beneath a constructing, however she simply orders him to seal it off. Looks like Kathleen is letting her grudge distract her from a extra quick drawback.
Ellie get your gun
Joel is wracked with guilt over Ellie being pressured to shoot Bryan, however she reveals that it wasn’t her first time doing so. Accepting that there is not any hope of preserving his teenage ally’s innocence on this hellish world, he teaches her to make use of a gun correctly.
Joel accepts that Ellie might want to interact in violence to outlive.
HBO
It mirrors a situation in the game through which Joel offers Ellie a handgun after she proves her functionality with a firearm by overlaying Joel with a rifle as he kills a bunch of bandits. It is a subtly defining second of their story in that medium and can show related within the present.
Blasts from the previous
They get some retro popular culture on their highway journey, within the type of a Hank Williams cassette tape. The music is 1955’s Alone and Forsaken, which is utilized in an analogous means within the recreation.
As they’re driving by means of the Kansas Metropolis streets, we additionally catch a glimpse of an deserted movie show that was taking part in two artifacts of 2003 cinema — Kate Beckinsale vampire-werewolf fantasy Underworld and Nicholas Cage darkish comedy Matchstick Men — when the outbreak occurred.
The music that performs over the credit is Lotte Keshner’s cowl of 1987 New Order music True Faith, which was featured in The Final of Us Half 2. The musician was initially uncredited for this use, however recreation director Neil Druckmann acknowledged this and apologized in a tweet. Keshner was subsequently credited accordingly, Polygon reported in 2020.
Huge guide of puns
On a lighter be aware, Ellie finds a guide of puns that she makes use of to lighten the grim temper of their journey. In case you’re feeling like breaking them out in your on a regular basis life, listed below are the jokes she hits Joel with:
- It would not matter how a lot you push the envelope. It will nonetheless be stationary.
- What did the mermaid put on to her math class? An algae-bra.
- I stayed up all night time, questioning the place the solar went. After which it dawned on me.
- Why did the scarecrow get an award? As a result of he was out standing in his subject.
- Do you know diarrhea is hereditary? It runs in your denims.
Joel is aware of the reply to the scarecrow one and laughs on the diarrhea one, hinting that the pair are bonding. Appears harmful to develop into too keen on your “cargo” Joel.
After evading Kathleen’s group, they fall asleep within the obvious security of a room on the thirty third flooring of a constructing. Regardless of Joel’s security measures, they get up to seek out weapons pointed of their faces — they have been found by Henry and Sam (Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard).
Episode 5 of The Final of Us hits HBO Max next Sunday, Feb. 12.