It’s just a few more hours until the premiere of “The Last of Us” Episode 8, and after the tearjerker that HBO brought us last week, this week’s trailer promises an hour of adrenaline-filled action. Ellie takes the helm of the next episode as Joel is left bedridden, still recovering from the stab wound in Episode 6, and the massive responsibility of keeping her guardian alive falls on her teenage shoulders. With just one week left for the massive finale, the tension is soaring, and Ellie has a lot of growing up to do and will have to learn the ways of the world all by herself until Joel is back on his feet. She gets a slice of how malicious this world can be this week, and if the teaser says anything, humans are always way worse than any beasts or infected. Here’s a quick breakdown of the trailer before you get ready for the premiere.
The latest episode teaser introduces David, one of the most significant characters in the game, because of his particular proclivities. The teaser begins with Ellie checking on Joel’s temperature as he lies wrapped in a blanket, mirroring the way we saw him in the game, as a man tells Ellie that she won’t survive for too long out in the wilderness. Instead, she’s welcome to join their group, which can accommodate Ellie as she aims a rifle at the man and his assistant. The man in question is David, the leader of a group surviving in the wilderness, while his right-hand man, James, is played by none other than Troy Baker, who voices Joel from the games.
In a wide-angle shot, we get to see David’s camp at the foot of snowy mountains near a frozen lake, and inside a restaurant, a few people can be seen praying as David is found probably in the middle of delivering a sermon with a Bible-like book in hand. In the game, we barely got any backstory on David other than his nature and food habits, but like most other characters, HBO aims to flesh out his backstory as well. The restaurant that we see Ellie in at the end of the chapter in the game is the one that has been changed into a makeshift church where members of David’s camp gather to pray. We also see a handwritten sign hung up on the wall, and it reads, “When We Are In Need, He Shall Provide,” and it’s the same poster that the restaurant featured in the game.
While David, James, and a few other armed men walk somewhere with purpose, James says that he doesn’t want to refute David’s merciful side, but ‘she’ will be just another person who’ll need food. The ‘she’ in question is, of course, Ellie, and the men are going to capture her after she manages to escape them following the first interaction. When Ellie first met David and James in the game, she agreed to give them the entire deer she had hunted in exchange for some antibiotics for Joel, and then Ellie and David had to fend off a band of infected that attacked them. David then explained that, after a particularly bad winter, he had sent some men to the nearby university to gather supplies when a strange man rampaged on David’s men and murdered them all. This man had a teenage girl with him, and this is Ellie’s cue to flee. Ellie woke up the following morning in the safe house to find David’s men searching for her. The shot of David and his men approaching with guns in hand is probably based on this scene, although David doesn’t accompany his men in the game.
As David says that Ellie will perish if she’s left all on her own in the wilderness, James says that’s probably what God wants, but Ellie seems more than capable of handling herself. We see her leaving a house, rifle in hand, and aiming the rifle at a deer. It’s the scene from earlier where Ellie had to hunt a deer for food just after she had managed to nab a rabbit, but instead of the bow and arrow like in the game, she uses the rifle here. Before leaving, she pulls the blanket around Joel a little tighter to make a little extra sure that he’ll be okay while she goes hunting.
As the Hunters close in on the area Ellie and Joel had taken refuge in, we see her fleeing on horseback. While trying to escape the Hunters, Ellie’s horse, Callum, was shot by the Hunters, and she ended up being shoved inside a prison cell. We see David sitting down and saying that the others want to kill her, so he asks to let him protect Ellie while the metal bars in front of him are kept out of focus. He’s speaking to her while she’s caged in prison, and this is soon before she’ll learn about the truth behind him. With building music and tension, a flurry of scenes shows David standing with his back to the camera as the restaurant burns down, Ellie grabbing a knife, and Ellie shooting back at the hunters as a building catches fire. As with most teasers, the chronological order in this one is all messed up, so the events shown appear in a haphazard manner. Ellie fires at the Hunters while fleeing on horseback before she tumbles down and is captured and ends up as David’s prisoner. The restaurant burning down is all thanks to the young girl. David, as we see him here, has fully exposed his evil side by now. We can draw a similarity between David watching his makeshift church burn and Kathleen watching her men being ripped apart by Infected because both leaders let their bad decisions impact their entire group. The teaser ends with Troy Baker’s James approaching something, gun in hand, and this is probably the downed Ellie after her horse is shot down by his men.
Overall, this episode establishes Ellie as an equally adept survivor in a world of violent and deranged psychopaths who resort to all sorts of crazy things once the rule of law goes out the window. It’s gangs like David’s that make you miss the autocratic fascism that FEDRA established because they made sure perversions like the ones David engages in or the cold-blooded violence that Kathleen’s men employed was kept away. As Ellie is forced to hunt for food and gather meds for her surrogate dad while he recuperates, the episode shall prove to be her biggest test yet, so make sure to tune in tonight!
