![]() ![]() “Endure and Survive” begins with Henry and Sam teaming up with Joel and Ellie - who unknowingly killed some of Kathleen’s followers - to get out of Kansas City alive, a plan that requires they traverse the city via tunnels that Henry is certain ( pretty certain) have been cleared of the infected.Īlthough tunnels appear in the Last of Us game and its sequel, they’re dotted with threats, making this an opportunity for the TV series to subvert expectations. Rebels have taken over, led by the pitiless Kathleen ( Melanie Lynskey) and her second-in-command, Perry ( Jeffrey Pierce), who are so intent on finding FEDRA collaborator Henry that they choose to ignore a sunken cement basement roiling with unseen infected people. ![]() In the fourth episode, “Please Hold to My Hand,” Joel and Ellie are waylaid in Kansas City, a change from the video game’s location of Pittsburgh. The technical challenge pays off, resulting in a thrillingly chaotic midpoint for the season that was inspired by Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, and Alien and emphasizes a recurring reality of The Last of Us: Nowhere is safe. The 12 minutes of screen time required months of preparation, four weeks of night shoots in Calgary’s tempestuous weather, and 16 VFX teams doing digital postproduction work to escalate the grotesquery of the episode’s infected villains - including the video-game favorite Bloater and the new-to-the-series child clicker. Those divided realms collapse in the climactic sequence of “Endure and Survive,” which pulls elements from the video game to string together one staggering set piece after another: a sniper shootout, a truck chase and crash, an explosion and sinkhole, and hundreds of Cordyceps-controlled bodies swarming out of the ground. That revelation concludes a pair of The Last of Us episodes that built a whole new world in Kansas City, where human threats roam the streets above and the infected lurk in the tunnels and sinkholes below. He cares for Ellie in the same way that he cares for the daughter he could never save, and he’s in deep.” “Joel knows that he’s in emotional quicksand up to his neck. “That’s just life, and you go on,” Webb says. For episode director Jeremy Webb, that “awful and tragic” ending - and the resilience Joel and Ellie display afterward - is the Last of Us way. But by the end of the episode, Henry and Sam are dead, Kansas City is overrun by the infected, and Joel and Ellie are alone again. After fleeing from the rebels that overthrew the city’s FEDRA authorities, Ellie and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) play together, reciting the comic’s motto, as Joel and Sam’s older brother, Henry (Lamar Johnson), recognize in each other the protectiveness they’ll need to make it out of Kansas City. “Endure and Survive” takes its name from the Savage Starlight comic that Ellie and a new friend bond over while hiding out in the Kansas City underground. ![]()
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