The Last of Us season 1, episode 5, "Endure and Survive" picks up right where the previous episode left off, and the action doesn't stop until the credits roll. In The Last of Us, season 1, episode 4, "Please Hold to My Hand", the formerly FEDRA-occupied city of Kansas City, Missouri is introduced alongside one of the most important new characters introduced in the show, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey). Kathleen is the iron-fisted leader of the "new" Kansas City. She and her brother liberated the city from a corrupt and dictatorial FEDRA only recently.
However, what they replaced it with does not seem to be all that much better, and Kathleen's idealism for equality seems to have been lost in her bloodthirsty quest for revenge. Number one on her hit list is someone named Henry, who betrayed the rebels, leading to her brother's death. The audience isn't introduced to Henry until the final moments of the episode, when Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who have snuck into the city, are held at gunpoint by a younger-than-expected Henry (Lamar Johnson) and his little, deaf brother, Sam (Keivonn Montreal Woodard).
A Flashback Reveals The Fall Of FEDRA In Kansas City
Kathleen Led Violent Reprisals Against The Government
Though the rebel's victory over FEDRA in Kansas City was mentioned in the previous episode, The Last of Us, season 1, episode 5, opens with a flashback to the moment the people won the war. It's clear that FEDRA was a violent, tyrannical organization that ruled less like a government and more like a dictatorship and that a change was needed. However, The Last of Us is quick to show that some of the actions taken by the rebels in their reprisals are just as violent as anything Kathleen mentions the government was guilty of.
FEDRA supporters are dragged through the street, lynched on the sides of the road, and beaten and shot in full view of cheering drunk crowds. As the leader of the rebellion, Kathleen visits the FEDRA prisoners in their holding cells and promises they will all be killed if they don't give up the location of Henry, who she holds personally responsible for getting her brother killed and setting the rebellion back. She coldly interrogates and tortures them, before suggesting their bodies should be burned. It would be faster than mass burials as she sees it.
The pain of losing her brother has driven her to the brink and, despite his last words to Kathleen being to "forgive", time has only seemed to make her wounds worse.
The pain of losing her brother has driven her to the brink and, despite his last words to Kathleen being to "forgive", time has only seemed to make her wounds worse. The scene comes to a close with Kathleen discovering the violent handiwork of Joel and Ellie, alerting her to their presence.
Joel Agrees To A Partnership With Henry
Henry Knows A Way Out Of Kansas City
The Last of Us season 1, episode 5, "Endure and Survive", then cuts to where the previous episode left off, with Henry pointing a gun at Joel and Ellie. After Henry learned of Joel and Ellie's presence in the city, he got the bright idea of coercing them into taking them out of the city. Joel gets the drop on Henry, but Ellie convinces everyone to calm down, and over a hot meal, Henry and Sam's first in a while, the quartet comes up with a plan. Joel will provide protection and food. Henry will show them a secret way out of the city through underground tunnels.
There's a problem though, Henry was a FEDRA collaborator, and Joel hates collaborators. He was a smuggler after all. In fact, he'd likely be in support of Kathleen's rebels taking back the city if they had not tried to kill him in the previous episode. Henry's way is the only way it seems though, and they come to a tenuous agreement. The new group treks into the tunnels beneath Kansas City, tunnels Henry thinks are not filled with infected, as everyone else does. He's not certain, however.
Ellie, Joel, Henry, And Sam Nearly Escape The City
Joel Finds Common Ground With Henry
As it turns out, The Last of Us season 1, episode 6, pulls a trick on the audience, and the tunnels are, in fact, infected-free. As they travel to the outskirts of the city, they find a daycare, built when people were hiding down in the tunnels from the infected above. It's a cute room, filled with toys and books, and Ellie and Sam immediately investigate a world neither of them has ever known. There's no need to explain why that daycare is now empty, however, the silence is an unsettling hint enough.
Sam and Ellie find a comic book that they are both fans of. In it, the superhero pledges to the citizens to "endure and survive." While they read together, Henry tells Joel why Kathleen hates him. Her brother was once the leader of the resistance, and Henry was one of his greatest supporters, willing to follow him to the end. However, when Sam began showing symptoms of advanced leukemia, FEDRA promised Henry medicine if he revealed the location of Kathleen's brother, which he did.
Joel may not have been a collaborator, but he recognizes part of himself in Henry.
Joel may not have been a collaborator, but he recognizes part of himself in Henry. He, too, has been willing to do things he would have at one point considered unthinkable, to protect someone. Henry made a choice, and in his mind, making a bad choice makes him a bad guy. Joel doesn't always think that way, considering the bad he's done is always a means to an end. It's diverging ways of thinking for two men who aren't so different.
Kathleen And Her Forces Are Ambushed By The Infected
The Infected Under Kansas City Erupt Out Of A Sinkhole
Henry's tunnel expedition works, and he, Sam, Joel, and Ellie make their way to the Kansas City suburbs. As they walk through the town, shots ring out. One of Kathleen's snipers on the perimeter has spotted them, and by the time Joel gets to his nest and kills the man, Kathleen and her militia are on their way. Looking back at the street where he left Ellie, Henry, and Sam, Joel lines up his rifle to shoot Kathleen before she can kill Henry.
Kathleen takes her time and makes a poignant point that while Sam lived, so many more died for it, and who is Henry to make that decision? It's not an easily dismissed argument. She has a right to be angry, and there is a question of whether what Henry did was fair. The philosophizing ends when a truck behind Kathleen loudly falls into a widening sinkhole. From that sinkhole comes the former citizens of Kansas City, covered head-to-toe in Cordyceps, and they're hungry.
Joel manages to snipe a path for Henry, Sam, and Ellie. The KC militia are all killed, including Kathleen's strong and kind protector, Perry (Jeffrey Pierce), who comes face-to-face with a bloater infected who reenacts one of the more horrifying kill animations in The Last of Us video game franchise. Kathleen herself isn't long for this world and meets her end with a child infected. The quartet gets away, running in the opposite direction of a horde of infected, rampaging towards Kansas City as sirens blare.
Henry Makes A Tragic Decision
Ellie Tries To Give His Sam Her Blood
All is well, it seems. Henry and Sam's enemy is dead, Joel and Ellie may have found two new friends, and all four of them are safely out of the danger zone. They find an abandoned home and hunker down for the night, and that's where the tragedy of The Last of Us season 1, episode 5 happens. Ellie discovers that Sam has been bitten and, in a desperate attempt to save him, she cuts her arm to spread her immune blood on his wound. The pair fall asleep together to see what tomorrow will bring.
In one of the most impactful deaths in The Last of Us, Sam turns overnight and attacks Ellie in the morning. She fends him off and Henry and Joel charge into the room. Without a moment's hesitation, Henry shoots and kills his little brother. Joel doesn't have time to say anything before Henry turns the gun on himself. It's a heartbreaking moment that drives home the desolation and hopelessness of The Last of Us. However, it doesn't stop Ellie and Joel, who continue on, their journey still far ahead of them.
