HBO’s post-apocalyptic series delivers a masterful episode filled with heartbreak and one of the show’s most thrilling action set piecesTHIS POST CONTAINS spoilers for this week’s episode of The Last of Us, “Endure and Survive.”“Endure and Survive” takes its title from the catchphrase of a comic book that Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her new friend Sam (Keivonn Woodard) find while traveling out of Kansas City with Joel (Pedro Pascal), plus Sam’s older brother Henry (Lamar Johnson). Like a lot of comics language(*), it sounds more dramatic than it actually is, since “endure” and “survive” have roughly similar meanings. But it also speaks to the larger question of the series, and of many post-apocalyptic dramas(**), which is whether mere survival, even in the face of the apocalypse, is enough to make life worth living. Of our two main characters, Joel has clearly settled on this as his motto, but Ellie wants more. She wants to have fun, wants to explore all the artifacts of the before times, wants to live a life.(*) Or, for that matter, HBO drama language. Remember when Rust Cohle on True Detective explained that time is a flat circle?(**) Station Eleven, with which Last of Us has a surprising amount in common, was entirely about this theme. There’s a similar split between Henry and Sam — and, for that matter, between their pursuers, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) and Perry (Jeffrey Pierce). Sam is sweet and curious and creative, even as he is keenly aware of all the danger that surrounds him and Henry. Henry, on the other hand, just wants to keep Sam alive at all costs, even if it meant selling out Kathleen’s brother and FEDRA’s other subjects, even if it now means they have to leave the only home Sam has ever known. With Kathleen and Perry, it’s a bit different: he seems content to bask in the victory they won over FEDRA and enjoy life as best they can in a city that’s largely free of infected. She needs more, though, even if that more is vengeance for her brother at all costs. Sam (Keivonn Woodard) and Henry (Lamar Johnson) in ‘The Last of Us.’Liane Hentscher/HBOAnd boy, does it cost her, as well as all of her followers, Henry, Sam, and even Joel and Ellie. Editor’s picksThis is just a masterful episode — not as lovely or focused as the Bill and Frank spotlight, but a great example of how strong an on-format Last of Us can be. It takes all the dominoes that were set up last week and knocks them over, one by one, in devastating fashion. It efficiently sets up the brothers and Kathleen as three-dimensional characters whose deaths matter. It’s so potent in its human conflicts, in fact, that it’s easy to forget about the infected at all(*), until Kathleen’s revenge mission inadvertently releases all of them from the underground places they’d been trapped by FEDRA for the last 15 years. (When Joel and company were so hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by Kathleen’s forces, it did not even occur to me that the infected would prove to be their salvation.


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