The Last Of Us – Season 1 Episode 6 Recap & Review

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Episode 6 of The Last Of Us cuts forward three months in time. Joel holds a couple up at gunpoint and asks for the whereabouts of his brother Tommy. Ellie shows up too, ignoring Joel’s commands to stay away, and learns that the path west of the river is full of death and something potentially far worse than the infected. Joel tends to believe them but there’s something wrong. He clutches his chest and struggles to catch his breath momentarily before pressing on.

Much like we’ve seen across the season, Joel and Ellie trek across the landscape, eventually stopping to build a fire and discussing what’s going to happen in the future between them. They also discuss Sam too, including how Ellie tried to save him with her blood.

The pair eventually make it to the dam and the “river of death”, where they’re surrounded by a bunch of men on horses. With guns drawn, they force Joel to drop his gun and command Ellie to step back. The leader checks them both for infection through a dog trained to sniff out infection, but miraculously, the mutt doesn’t sense anything from Ellie.

When they learn Joel and Ellie want to meet Tommy, they’re led to a settlement where numerous people are working. Among them happens to be Tommy, who’s just off doing construction work. The pair hug it out and are eventually brought in to eat.

Ellie is immediately hostile, hitting out at anyone who so much as looks at her and demanding her gun be brought back. She also orders Joel to congratulate Tommy, who’s now married to a woman named Maria. She goes on to explain the wonderful benefits of communism, before Joel points out his mission to go and take Ellie to the Fireflies in exchange for a car battery to see Tommy. However, that mission has now complicated somewhat given what we know about the characters.

Joel continues to press for help in taking Ellie further along to her destination, but Tommy refuses. He admits he’s expecting a child with Maria and won’t be moving on with him. Joel clenches his teeth and eventually agrees to be out of his hair in the morning after grabbing some supplies. Before that though, Joel points out that Ellie is immune.

Maria tells Ellie in confidence about Sarah and as a result, Ellie and Joel have a big conversation about their journey and what loss is. Eventually Joel promises they’ll be parting ways once their journey is done.

In the morning, Joel decides to take off with one of the horses. He gives Ellie the choice of staying with Tommy or joining him, and she chooses the latter option. Out in the wilderness, Joel and Ellie do some target practice before pressing on through to the university, where the Fireflies are supposed to be holding up. There are no guards around, and as they press on inside, all they find are monkeys… and a map with a whole bunch of pins pointing toward Salt Lake City.

Unfortunately, four scavengers show outside too, and Joel and Ellie are forced to flee. I mean, they had the vantage point, they could have probably shot them. Alas, they head outside and when one attacks Joel, the man stabs our protagonist in the gut. he other three hunters show up and Ellie fires blindly to protect him and thankfully none of them have guns so they get away without further conflict. However, Joel is injured and he clutches his stomach in pain, eventually falling off the horse.

The Episode Review

Anyone else feel like this world is devoid of threat and completely empty? I’m all for landscape shots but The Last Of Us has this strange pattern to it where we listen to the wonderful score and spend 15/20 minutes just looking at large stretches of land with no infected or other humans anywhere.

Unfortunately, the episode is also rather boring too. While I appreciate this is a human drama, the amount of action and key scenes from the game that have been completely cut out and stripped really doesn’t do the source material justice.

In the game, the university is full of hunters, with Joel and Ellie forced to try and navigate perilously through the corridors to escape. There are tons of them, it’s tense, suspenseful and absolutely nail-biting. It’s also a very crucial part of the game as it eventually ends with Joel injured and the pair just about making it out alive. Here though? There are four hunters outside and both Ellie and Joel have a gun, up high, and could have got the jump on them.

We know Joel is a good shot and has experience firing different guns (hence the target practice scene just before) and they could have probably taken them out. Instead, we get a rushed and pretty unsatisfactory ending to this episode, while the infected have barely featured in this show at all.

The Last of Us is a decent enough video game adaptation (Arcane and Edgerunners are far better), it’s not a particularly memorable zombie series. There are far better options in this genre on the market. Let’s hope the episodes ahead pick up the pace and do stay true to the source material, as those scenes are ironically the best parts of the whole series.