‘The Last of Us’ Chapter 8 Analysis: ‘In Our Lowest Hours’

SPOILERS WARNING!

*This article contains spoilers for Chapter 8 of “The Last of Us”.

‘The Last of Us’ begins its final stretch by prolonging our agony. Episode 8 begins and we still don’t know what will become of Joel (Pedro Pascal), who we leave in worse shape than ever despite Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) efforts to stitch up the wound suffered in college. Before listening to them, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann introduce us to a new character. One that with his name alone will arouse very strong sensations in those of us who have played the video game: David.

In what looks like a snowy resort, a man reads a bible passage. “Revelations, 21”. Whoever reads it, with a cadence worthy of any priest, comforts a girl who bursts into tears. “God will wipe the tears from your eyes”. The girl just wants to know when they can bury her father. The man, clearly the boss, explains that the ground is too cold to dig. A fairly large group of people is gathered in the dining room of a restaurant converted into a chapel, crowned by a banner that reads “In our lowest hours, He will provide”. Everyone listens to him solemnly, but a certain unease is felt in the group. David, played by Scott Shepherd (very convenient for being called ‘shepherd’), scolds one of his men about him, James, played by Troy Baker, an actor who brought Joel to life in video games. James is worried because he has almost no food left. David asks her if she doubts him. It can’t be that your flock is going astray.

Finally we meet again with Ellie and Joel. The wound looks very bad and food is becoming scarce. He has no choice but to take Joel’s shotgun and leave the house. After trying to hunt a rabbit (which will bring back memories of the video game), she manages to hurt a deer. But it is David and James who find him first, already dead. Before they steal it, Ellie threatens them, lying assuring them that she too is from a large group that is starving. David and his snake tongue manage to bargain with Ellie when she desperately asks for medicine. He orders James to take penicillin and is left alone with the young woman.. To escape the cold, he tells her to build a fire in a nearby cabin.

From the very beginning David sees potential in Ellie, he is very interested in this 14-year-old girl who can stand up to two men on her own. He tells her to join her group. She’s not interested, but she wants to know more about her new company than hers. David is from Pittsburgh, but left the Quarantine Zone when the Fireflies liberated it from Phaedra. He was a math teacher before the outbreak and became a believer after the apocalypse hit. His mantra is this “luck doesn’t exist, everything happens for a reason”and you can prove it to the girl. The man Joel killed in college is revealed to have belonged to David’s group. He knows the killer was with a girl. Ellie becomes alert, but it’s too late: James is behind him pointing a gun at her. But David tells him to put down the gun and give him the meds. Ellie takes them and leaves. She’s willing to sacrifice the deer to get out of there. Scary music plays in the background. Ellie joins Joel and injects penicillin directly into the wound. She stays curled up in her arms and Joel swallows hard. At least hold on.

Back at the resort, David’s people count the food they have, and it’s not much. The kitchen manager asks what meat another man brings. “It’s deer”. David and James enter with the deer (which can’t be in the pot, then), but nobody flinches. David is losing them. He announces that he saw the girl who was with the man who killed one of them. The daughter of the deceased, the one who cried at first, she doesn’t want to hear about justice, she wants to see the two dead. David crosses her face and reminds her that she still has a father and that she must respect him when she talks about her. It is increasingly difficult for him not to lose his temper, the meeting with Ellie moved him.

Ellie knows they will be looking for her, so she tries to wake Joel up and leaves him a knife so he can defend himself (if he can pull himself together). She leaves with the horse to trick them. In the pursuit, James manages to knock down the horse and Ellie falls and is semiconscious. The mob wants to kill her right there, but David won’t let them. Their faith may waver, but they still have some power in them. They go looking for Joel, who has disappeared from the basement. The penicillin and adrenaline kick in (perhaps the biggest leap of faith ‘The Last of Us’ will ask of us) and he manages to neutralize one of his pursuers. A few scenes later we see him attacking other men and taking two of them hostage to torture them until they tell him where the girl has been taken. Old thief Joel returns. As soon as he gets the information, he kills them both.

violent heart

Ellie wakes up in a cage located in a large kitchen. David is there. She tries again to get him to join them. “Let me protect you. I offer you a fresh start”. After watching Joel torturing David’s men, we go back to Ellie and see her face of genuine terror at her. We still don’t know what she saw. David brings him a plate of meat and that’s when the camera shows us a human ear on the ground. David assures him that what he brings is just a deer. He tries to justify himself: the winter was very hard, his people are hungry and have put their lives in his hands. It is your duty to take care of them, even if you are ashamed of the methods. Ellie is horrified, but David keeps trying to charm her: “Do you know what I see in you? I see myself: a loyal, intelligent, violent leader. You have a violent heart and I always have.”. It is compared to Cordyceps and its ability to do so “take care of” their own with violence if necessary. He is your true god. He also tells her that he needs her because he is a shepherd, like him, and may need the help of many sheep. “I want someone like me, a friend”. He assures her that he will convince his people to let Joel go alive if he joins them. “Think what we could do together”. David makes the most desperate move: he puts his hand in the cage and brings it close to the girl’s hand, hoping that Ellie reciprocates. Yes, besides being a cannibal, he’s attracted to a minor. Ellie humors him… and breaks his finger. “Tell them Ellie is the little girl who broke your fucking finger!” says Ramsey, recreating the video game. David is so furious that he threatens to serve her for dinner that night. The man has projected an image of what he is looking for in the young woman who has completely exposed herself to Ellie, much smarter than him, and who has completely soaked him. He knows which buttons to push to drive you crazy.

Joel arrives at the resort and finds Ellie’s backpack. He also finds human corpses which they pass off as venison. They are to be joined by Ellie, who is moved to the butcher’s table. The girl uses her last resort: “I’m infected! And now you too”pointing to David’s hand with a bite. “Everything happens for a reason, right?”. Ellie takes advantage of the confusion to plunge the butcher knife into James’s neck and run away. David chases her. Ellie throws a burning log at him from the kitchen, but she misses. The restaurant begins to burn, and just like in the video game, a wicked game of hide and seek ensues when a deranged David goes from negotiation to threat. He is loving the situation. “The fight is the part I like the most” he says with all the creepiness in the world after Ellie attacks him from behind with her knife. In the scuffle, the girl manages to reach the machete and vent all her anger on the worst person she has ever met in her life. At one point, when David is already obviously dead, she stops, but continues. In utter rage she discharges the disgust David gives her, the terror of being sexually assaulted and the fear she has of losing Joel, the deaths of Tess, Sam, Henry, Riley.

When there is nothing left but a piece of meat, Ellie gets out and starts wandering in the snow. Ellie is actually gone. What she just went through is so horrific and so traumatic and so dehumanizing that it could be the absolute point of no return for her. But Joel finally comes to her rescue. With a hug and a “Calm down, little girl, I got you”recovers for a few seconds the girl she once was. He may never be his old Ellie again after this episode, but he’s once again ready to be his protector, father to him. No one will hurt him again as long as he lives. He doesn’t even remember defeating death by a hair’s breadth. Joel has now fully activated Papa Bear Mode. He takes off his coat, puts it on the girl and they walk off into the snow, leaving behind the greatest horror they have ever faced.

‘The Last of Us’ prepares us for the end by facing the darker side of despair. David is a man who became a leader with words, not actions, and those words eventually lose their power when hunger strikes. But it’s impossible to empathize with that desperation when we see that David is also a narcissist and a power-hungry fanatic, and just thinking that he taught children makes your hair stand on end. Naughty Dog has managed with him to create an enemy much more terrifying than any clicker or bloat. Because, again, the infected have never been the real problem..

The last episode of the first season of “The Last of Us” will be released Monday, March 13 on HBO Max.