The Last of Us episode 6

This week, Joel and Ellie encounter a safer and more social way of life, but it's not clear whether they want any part of it.

This episode opens with a flashback to Henry’s suicide, which again includes the sound of Ellie’s haunting reaction: a startled combination of a gasp and a pained moan. He is not too keen on the way Joel seems to roll his eyes at Jackson’s communistic “share and share alike” approach to survival. As for Tommy — described derisively by Joel two episodes ago as “a joiner” — he looks both happy and wary to see his brother. (When Joel asks for the best way to head west, Marlon says, “Go east.”) But then our heroes make it all the way to Jackson, where they encounter a whole other way of living: calmer, safer and more social. It’s too bad that Joel and Ellie didn’t get to spend more time with grumpy old Marlon and Florence, because those two were a hoot. Maria thinks she knows the kind of person Joel is, based on what Tommy has told her about their time on the road. In this week’s “The Last of Us,” Joel and Ellie spend a fair amount of the episode riding horses, shooting guns and facing down posses, just like those western heroes. Marlon and Florence warned them that Wyoming would be a deathtrap, with every major city swarming with infected and the wilderness strewn with corpses. She has seen the horrors of “Killer City.” So what does she want for herself? To be fair, by the time they get to Jackson, they are feeling pretty stressed. And it makes sense for Joel — who has seen enough of this fallen world — to want to escape from everything and everybody. She seems less sure of what a “normal” life should be like.

In episode 6 of "The Last of Us," we see Joel unlike we've ever seen him before: looking like a lost old man.

Finally, Joel lets Tommy in on the true nature of his trip: to take Ellie to the Fireflies in the hopes of finding a vaccine. We get a nice, fun scene of Joel finally teaching Ellie how to use a rifle. And when that dog tried to sniff out Ellie earlier in the episode, Joel felt similarly helpless. Ellie brings up Sarah and Joel tells her to stop. Tommy clearly hates seeing Joel this way and agrees to take Ellie to the University of Eastern Colorado, where the Fireflies might have a base. Here’s another thing we get to see in the show that we never did in the game: Joel and Ellie relaxing and camping. A woman recognizes Joel and escorts him and Ellie to Jackson. He reveals to Joel that he’s about to be a father. Here, we see peace and order in world of “The Last of Us.” If the story has felt bleak and hopeless up to this point — that no matter what a community does, it’s doomed — this Wyoming community is the counter argument. Ellie confesses to Joel that she tried and failed to save Sam. Here’s one of the biggest differences between the game and the show: Compared to the game, we spend very little time with just Joel and Ellie in the show. But in episode 6 of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” we see a new side of Joel.

After arriving at a remote cabin, they've taken Florence (Elaine Miles) hostage while she waits for her husband, Marlon (Graham Greene). It's not that tense a ...

Back then, there were two main ways of looking at things: some people wanted to own everything, and some people didn’t want anyone to own anything at all.”) The question of whether or not they’re a “we” has been settled for good. (It’s reminiscent of the scene in the kind-of-underrated Kevin Costner film The Postman where a bunch of post-apocalyptic tough guys are shown really digging The Sound of Music on movie night, then get angry when the film switches to the violent Universal Soldier. They escape to the wilderness, but only after Joel is stabbed and seriously wounded. Ellie learns to shoot and the rules of football and asks whether Jackson is how it was pre-apocalypse. Joel doesn’t hesitate to reply, “Of course I do,” and though that’s the central question, he still can’t commit to staying with her. And he doesn’t understand why Tommy won’t agree to come with them on the next step of the journey, to a Firefly base on a Colorado campus. The Last of Us is at least partly a tour of different ways of post-apocalyptic living, from the totalitarianism of Boston to, well, the different flavor of totalitarianism of Kansas City. It also leads Ellie to take a break from the sarcasm and remind him that if he’s dead, she’s “fucked.” (“There are Firefly People?”) They do know, however, not to pass the River of Death, a border they know by all the dead bodies that line it. To Joel, this seems to be a part of Tommy’s habit of joining others’ groups. And do what they’re told.”) Spurred in part by her admiration for Sally Ride, Ellie talks about wanting to go to the moon. As if to jolt us to attention, “Kin,” the sixth episode of The Last of Us’ first season, begins with a short flashback to the fifth episode’s most harrowing moment (though it certainly has competition): Henry shooting himself after shooting his infected brother Sam.

HBO's hit sees Joel and Ellie stumble upon an idyllic community in Jackson, Wyoming, while also facing the biggest threat to their survival yet.

Now he’s the one on the ground with a terrible wound to the midsection, and his surrogate daughter is the one hoping against hope that he can survive. That The Last of Us can do both within the same episode, and have it feel all of a piece, is among its most impressive traits. But Jackson is doing as fine at the end of “Kin” as it was when Joel and Ellie first arrived. Ellie’s conversation with Maria is the first she’s heard of Joel having (and then losing) a daughter. But in the process, his stomach gets impaled by the shard of a baseball bat, and the episode ends with a panicked Ellie tending to his wound and pleading for him to get up. It’s remarkable how easily this show can jump from [Bill and Frank’s love story](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-recaps/the-last-of-us-season-1-episode-3-recap-hbo-nick-offerman-murray-bartlett-gay-love-1234667212/) to the dark Kansas City two-parter to this calm, very [Station Eleven](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/station-eleven-review-1265799/)-esque look at Joel and Ellie’s relationship, and at the possibilities of finding peace even in a post-apocalyptic world. In the melee, Joel briefly appears to be the superman he wants to be for Ellie, snapping the neck of one of his attackers. Instead, the threat is to the relationship of the two leads, as his fear of opening up to her instead makes her think she’s being abandoned by him. Where “Endure and Survive” was full of [mayhem, spectacle, and despair](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-recaps/the-last-of-us-episode-5-recap-hbo-sam-keivonn-woodard-henry-lamar-johnson-melanie-lynskey-death-1234674650/), “Kin” is quiet and contemplative, heavy on character and so light on action until the end that we don’t even see any infected. [Rutina Wesley](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/qa-true-blood-star-rutina-wesley-on-taras-vampire-transformation-243584/) from Queen Sugar and True Blood), and they are expecting a baby. It is the dead of winter, and our heroes have stumbled across an older Native couple — played by the great character actor Graham Greene and Northern Exposure alum Elaine Miles — who have managed to carve out a life for themselves in a cabin in the middle of nowhere that few people or infected ever come across. [The Last of Us](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/the-last-of-us-review-hbo-zombies-neil-druckmann-pedro-pascal-bella-ramsey-1234655768/), which at times is extremely straightforward, but exciting and crafted at a high level.

And this emotional swell in the story is brought to life by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who turn in not just their best performances in the series thus far, ...

What’s significant here is that Ellie, who’s depended on Joel for survival up to this point, is now put in the dreadful position of having to save Joel’s bleeding, unconscious ass while traveling through parts unknown. They offer Joel and Ellie one of their extra houses to stay in, Maria takes Ellie to the movies, the brothers share a couple of stiff drinks at the town bar. Their later meeting, in which Joel implores Tommy to take Ellie to the Fireflies in his stead, is even more emotional. It’s one of the most gut-wrenching scenes from the game, and they reenact it essentially line for line, because the original material is just that damn good. Our hearts break for him because we know he’s held it in for so long, and because his love for Ellie has grown so much that he doesn’t trust himself to keep her safe anymore. Tommy and Maria are having a child, and Joel, still haunted by the loss of Sarah all those years ago, can’t muster up anything but resentment and perhaps a tinge of jealousy when he hears the news. It’s got little action to speak of, but the reveal of Jackson is monumental, Joel finding Tommy at long last feels like a huge sigh of relief (until it doesn’t), and we get some of the most powerful, revealing Joel and Ellie material we’ve seen yet. The backdrop for all of this is, of course, the commune in Jackson, Tommy’s adopted home where he plans to start a new life with his wife Maria and their unborn child. The first talk between Joel and Tommy is a contentious one. But this is the first time we really get to focus on the central duo’s relationship and dive deep into what’s going on inside of their heads and how they feel about one another. The couple are downright adorable, and their little shared chuckles of amusement at Joel and Ellie’s high-strung energy make for a nice moment of levity following the visions of horror we were left with last episode. We watch Joel and Ellie finally speak openly about their feelings toward each other, which is a revelation, narratively.

Joel and Tommy figure out who's gonna bring Ellie the rest of the way. Sean Keane headshot. Sean Keane.

Both versions end up with Joel badly wounded and Ellie in charge of their fates, but the show gives us a rather excellent cover of Depeche Mode's [Never Let Me Down Again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snILjFUkk_A) -- the same song that played at the end of episode 1. Joel scuffles with one of them and ultimately breaks his neck, but discovers that he's been stabbed in the stomach with a piece of wood. Tommy ultimately apologizes for his comment, and Joel confesses the depths of his trauma and the agony caused by his attachment to Ellie. After determining that the rebel group is likely in Salt Lake City, they're forced to escape as a group of marauders arrive. Predictably, she chooses Joel and the dream team heads out to I-25. [The Goodbye Girl](https://youtu.be/4wiL-ry9XMI) -- a 1977 movie about a prickly man who bonds with a precocious girl. [Rutina Wesley](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2179180/), whom you might know from True Blood) turns out to be Tommy's wife, Maria, and brings them to their rather lovely settlement for a reunion. Crossing the river, Ellie and Joel encounter a group of people who set a sniffer dog on them to determine if they're infected. Joel is a little weirded out by the fact that his little brother got married without him knowing, but Ellie helps him express his congratulations. Maria is also pregnant, which makes Tommy less inclined to take responsibility for shepherding Ellie to the Fireflies. The pup gives Joel the all-clear, then it seems like Ellie won't be so fortunate -- we know she's bitten, so the dog might tear her to shreds. Joel wants to settle down on a ranch and raise sheep because "they're quiet, do what they're told."