KATHLEEN’S CHILDHOOD BEDROOM

“I don’t dress for women. I don’t dress for men. Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge.” – Melanie Lynskey, probably.

Nic: Meanwhile, Kathleen is in her childhood bedroom, reminiscing over a time when her toughest decision was probably what game she and her brother Michael would play together. Perry comes in to see how she’s doing, and I gotta say, the juxtaposition of a fully armored soldier standing in a child’s bedroom really got to me. It happens often in this game and show, but the reminder that Outbreak Day affected literally every person, young and old, is devastating.

Valerie: This is neither here nor there but at one point it hit me that the stuff in this room almost definitely isn’t actually from her childhood, because I don’t know how old Kathleen is but she was probably an adult on Outbreak Day. So was this still her house, were these her children’s things? Or a stranger’s? Because as someone whose adult brother now lives in her childhood bedroom like it’s a very small studio apartment, I can tell you your childhood bedroom isn’t quite as nostalgic with someone else’s things in it. I feel like they never officially confirmed if the mother Brian was talking about being nearby was actually Kathleen or not, but if it was, the way she was detached from his death and still focused on her brother makes me think maybe she lost one of her kids early on and just shut down about it? Like think of how cold it would be if she was standing in her dead children’s bedroom but only talking about her brother? Am I overthinking this subplot?? OKAY CARRY ON.

Nic: Kathleen tells Perry that Michael was the most beautiful person in a way that she never was. And she doesn’t mean physically. Michael was the kind of person who helped his sister get through her fear of thunderstorms by pretending her room was an impenetrable box; the kind of person who begged Kathleen to forgive the man who turned him in; the kind of person who Kathleen thinks would be horrified by the things she’s done. Where Michael was soft and beautiful, Kathleen saw herself as becoming hard and ugly. Because all Michael’s beauty got him in the end was death. So fuck her brother’s last wishes I guess, because Kathleen is hell bent on revenge. Or “justice” if she were to tell it.

On the official Last of Us podcast, they described Kathleen as “if a kindergarten teacher were put in charge of the French Revolution.” Melanie Lynskey has brought this quiet power to the role of Kathleen in a way that makes you actually stop and consider things from her perspective… before realizing she has very few morals. But that’s what makes a perfect antagonist in my mind! Someone who gets you to think, “I mean..points were made…” It’s such a fine line, and Melanie toes it beautifully.

Valerie: MELANIE. LYNSKEY.

Nic: We’ve seen Perry’s cautiousness over some of Kathleen’s decisions previously, but here, he doesn’t waver. He tells Kathleen that sure, Michael was a good man, but he’s not the one who changed things; she is. And the city is with her.

THE SNIPER

😈🎶 “Now it’s time for so long. 🎶😈

Valerie: Ellie, Joel, Sam, and Henry get outside, and Henry is bragging about his plan working. Ellie invites them to come to Wyoming with them, and Joel gives her a look. Ellie assures Henry and Sam that Joel is always like this but she can wear him down. She is doing a hilarious Joel impression when suddenly they hear gunfire. They duck behind a car and peek out to realize that it’s a sniper from the window of a house at the end of the street. When I tell you I recognized this street as if I’d been there in real life, that’s how game-accurate this set was.

Joel wants to run to the house to get the sniper from inside, but before he leaves he asks Ellie if she trusts him, and she almost sounds surprised to hear her answer the truth, that she does.

As Joel takes off I get stressed because this part of the game was hard, but Joel must have played this scene on easy mode because he speed runs to the house. (In my defense, the game sniper was a better shot, and there were human obstacles between me and him!)

Joel sneaks up and finds the man who was sniping at them and begs him to just put down the gun. Joel sounds so tired, maybe especially tired of killing people, but of course the man doesn’t listen so Joel shoots him.

Joel hears Kathleen over the walkie saying they’re almost there, and Joel yells at the window for his three kids to run, but it’s too late. A truck with a plow leads a fleet of other cars down the street, and Joel tries to snipe them. (I was actually much better at this part of the game than the running to the house part.) He gets the driver of the lead truck, which veers off the road and crashes into a house. Kathleen gets out and calls out to Henry, and he answers from behind the car, saying he’ll turn himself in if she leaves the kids alone.

To her credit, she doesn’t lie to him. She just tells him no. She says the kids are associated with adults who did things that displeased her, so the kids have to die, too. Kathleen asks why Henry thinks his brother was more important than hers, and Henry tries to explain that Sam was dying. And Kathleen says that kids die all the time. And maybe he was supposed to die. Which sure is one way to look at things.

Nic: One of the scariest things about Kathleen as an antagonist is that she truly believes the validity of what she tells Henry. I’m sure in her mind, they’re not so different; both making tough choices in the name of love.

Valerie: This sort of supports my erratic, irrational theory about Kathleen being Brian’s mom, and maybe having had another kid that died earlier in the outbreak. Henry tells Ellie to watch over Sam and then gives himself up. Kathleen holds a gun up and apathetically says, “It ends the way it ends,” and for a heartbeat I think they’re about to make a wild change from the game, but then the truck that crashed into the house sinks into the basement. There’s a moment of quiet. And then CHAOS. A horde of infected RUSHES out of the basement, swarming like bees, moving simply way too fast. It. is. HORRIFYING. And now we know what happened to that underground community.

After a lot (A LOT) of runners and clickers emerge, slowly a new type of infected emerges. It’s what we call a bloater, and it’s too big and it’s too strong, and it’s covered in so much fungus the mushrooms act as armor. No bullets slow it down, and Perry apparently has not learned how to make a molotov cocktail yet, because before he knows it, the bloater has picked him and torn his head clean off.

Joel does his best to keep Ellie safe from the sniper’s nest, but when she gets into a truck there’s one clicker that escapes Joel’s gun. One tiny clicker. It’s the worst clicker I’ve ever seen. It’s a small child wearing Blue’s Clues pajamas and she is twisting and bending and flipping like a zombie gymnast and is profoundly upsetting on so many levels.

Nic: I haven’t stopped thinking about Gymboree Gemma™ in DAYS. Too flippy! Too bendy!

Valerie: I haven’t seen something so upsetting in a long time. Like on an emotional level thinking that she probably once read the same comics and played soccer in the same fake net as Ellie did just a few hours ago, and also viscerally upsetting to look at.

Ellie shivs two clickers that have Henry and Sam cornered under a car, and the three of them make a break for it. Kathleen stops them, but before she can shoot Henry, the terrible tiny terror attacks. I didn’t have “Melanie Lynskey gets eaten by a tiny gymnast” on my 2023 bingo card, but life comes at you fast.

Joel, Ellie, Sam and Henry run away from the chaos. Kansas City isn’t the people’s city anymore. It belongs to the fungus now.

HENRY & SAM

🎶“We can face this thing together. We can change this thing together. And everything will be alright!”🎶

Nic: After the chaos of the previous scene, it’s almost jarring when we’re met with the sounds of silence and the image of an abandoned motel. Inside, the surrogate dads are bonding over being caretakers of kids who are lucky enough not to worry about the wellbeing of another person, and those very kids are in the bedroom reading their favorite comic. Though, I’d argue that Ellie and Sam have a level of emotional intelligence beyond their years, and they know exactly what it’s like to worry about the only other person they can count on.

Joel quips about “endure and survive” before inviting Henry and Sam to travel to Wyoming with them. Henry agrees because it would be nice for Sam to have a friend on the road. What he doesn’t say is that it would probably be nice for him, too.

Henry signs to Sam that it’s time for bed, but as soon as Henry closes the door to the room, Ellie gets right back to reading to him. But Sam’s got a lot on his mind; namely the question of why, against all odds, Ellie doesn’t seem scared. Using Sam’s notepad, the two have a conversation during which Ellie admits that she’s scared all the time. At first, she takes a page out of my book and makes jokes about what she’s afraid of, but she eventually gets vulnerable with her new friend and admits that she’s scared to end up alone.

Valerie: The fact that she had been kind of quietly reading her answers out loud to herself as she wrote them until she actually got vulnerable and couldn’t say that part out loud was RELATABLE TO ME.

Nic: She asks Sam the same question, and he replies wanting to know if the person is still there under the monster when they turn. Ellie’s face is slightly confused and wary, so Sam quickly confirms her fear by showing her a bite on his leg.

Now, I played the game. I knew that Sam got bit. The way these scenes play out in the game is devastating enough, but the addition of this interaction between Sam and Ellie?? HEARTBREAKING. Ellie immediately shows him where she was bitten and explains that her blood is medicine. Before he can stop her, she cuts her hand and tries to rub her blood into his wound. Since Tess grabbed Ellie, everyone has told her that she is the key to this whole thing. If she’s supposed to be a hero, then dammit she’s going to try to be one right now, the only way she can think of. (PS… Gustavo?? Sir? We need to talk about your score because the music during this whole scene is RUDE.)

Valerie: It’s one of those rare moments where you remember that even though she’s precocious and smart and that she’s had to be stronger than anyone her age should have to be, she’s still just a kid. Of course she thought that’s how this would work.

Nic: The last thing that Sam writes for Ellie is “stay awake with me”, and she promises that she will. This kid, y’all. He’s been THROUGH it. He knows what’s coming for him, yet his innocence allows him to believe that maybe, just maybe, he won’t completely lose himself.

But the next morning, Ellie wakes up and Sam is sitting at the edge of the bed. She approaches him, but the Sam she so briefly knew is gone.

Valerie: I saw a TikTok that said probably once Ellie fell asleep, Sam faced the window because he knew if he turned he wouldn’t be able to hear her so keeping her out of his sightline was the best way to keep her safe until she woke up. If you need me, I’ll be crying forever.

Nic: Sam lunges at Ellie and they tumble through the door, waking up the adults. Ellie screams for Joel’s help, but Henry gets to the gun before Joel can. He freezes, not knowing whether to shoot Joel or stop his brother from killing Ellie. Because in Henry’s mind, that’s still his brother; you can see it all over his face. Before he can think any longer, he shoots Sam and immediately goes into shock, asking out loud, “what did I do? What did I do?” We see Henry bring the gun to his head, and the camera pans over to Ellie’s face as we hear the shot.

Valerie: I can still hear Ellie’s sob-yells ringing through my ears. She was scared, yes, but she was also so SAD.

Nic: Knowing what was coming did little to assuage my fears of how the show would handle it. Because yes, in the game, Henry and Sam are also Black brothers. But in real life, we are regularly inundated with depictions of violence against Black bodies and I hoped the inevitable devastation wouldn’t be egregious. I really appreciated that 1) we did not watch Henry pull the trigger at the end and 2) the camera lingered on the pool of blood next to Sam, and never on his little body. Considering the incredibly painful nature of their deaths, it was the best I could have hoped for.

The next morning, Joel buries Henry and Sam while Ellie packs up and gets ready to continue their journey. She sits at the grave and leaves one last message for her friend before walking away: “I’m Sorry.”

Valerie: The fact that Joel “We Have to Go” Miller took the time to bury Henry and Sam really did a number on me. Also the fact that Ellie was the one to hurry them along this time. She finally got to laugh and play again just to be reminded that this world is fast to rob her of joy. She’s younger than this pandemic; she’s been losing people her whole life, no wonder she’s afraid of ending up alone.

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