#lamar johnson

A Tale of Two Brothers

Oh, Sam and Henry 😢. Probably TLOU's biggest example of giving us hope only to cruelly snatch it away (letting us think Joel and Sarah have been saved by a soldier only for that soldier to follow orders and shoot them down is probably second). Like in the game, the brothers serve as a mirror to Joel and Ellie, showing what the worst possible outcome could be for our two leads and what Joel is risking the more he grows attached to Ellie. The last time Joel had a mirror held up to him, it was Bill reflecting the kind of man he should become, a man who takes a chance on letting love into his heart and, for a while at least, it seems like Joel had been taking that lesson on board. Well, any good story has to yank our hero's chain every once in a while, and that's what happens with Henry and Sam. Instead of the positive implications of Bill and Frank's story, they represent the terrible cost of failure, of what happens when you love and protect someone only to lose them anyway. If Joel had forgotten the terror and trauma that caused him to shut out Ellie in the first place, this episode definitely reminds him in brutal fashion.

Right from the off, your heart aches for these two brothers, with that scene of them crouching behind a dumpster, Sam watching with horror as the Kansas militia drags FEDRA bodies through the streets and Henry telling him not to look at it, to just keep looking at him (also, way to parallel Joel and Sarah back in the first episode). Your immediate question is "Who would ever want to hunt down this little guy?" and Kathleen and her goons instantly go up a notch in villainy. Unlike Ellie, Sam's innocence is amplified ever further because of his young age. Ellie has seen some shit, but Sam hasn't yet, and also has the benefit of an adult who cares enough to make sure he doesn't see these things. I definitely think it was a clever choice to age Sam down and to make him deaf. Not only does it give him and Henry a unique dynamic in the way they communicate with each other, but it also makes Henry's protectiveness even more understandable and tragic. In the game, Henry's protectiveness was painted as a fatal flaw that prevented Sam from learning self-reliance and survival skills and indirectly got him killed. But here, it makes perfect sense. Not only is Sam a younger child but Henry literally has to be Sam's ears in a world that's constantly trying to kill them, where evading the Infected relies on being able to anticipate their presence and movements. Sam relies on Henry, but Henry also relies on Sam just as much, and you spend this whole episode willing them to make it through, for them not to be torn apart. And it's just not to be 😭

In the game, the only real backstory that Sam and Henry get is that they were separated from their group when the Pittsburgh hunters attacked them and they are probably the lone survivors. I like that the show decided to go deeper, giving Henry a much weightier arc where he's had to make unforgivable choices. He betrays a man he admired and loved and would've followed to the end in order to save Sam's life and you can feel the guilt that weighs on him throughout. He would do it again but it's clear that he's not finding his complicity to FEDRA easy to live with and, on some level, understands why Kathleen wants him dead. He's never committed any violence towards anyone (and this shows in how uncertain he seems while holding Joel and Ellie at gunpoint) but he considers himself to have murdered Kathleen's brother just as much as if he'd put the bullet in his head himself. Having Joel as a confidante grants him some sense of relief, even if Henry preempts any assurances Joel might have by insisting that he is "the bad guy." I love how that conversation between the two of them in the tunnels showcases Henry's perceptiveness. Even if Ellie is not his biological child, he can immediately tell that Joel was a father once, and might be one of the few people who understands why Henry made the decisions he did. In the game it takes a while for Joel and Henry to bond and they do so over motorcycles, but here Joel is moved by Sam and Henry's plight after hearing about Sam's illness and actually apologises for making assumptions and calling Henry a rat. It makes me so sad to think that Henry never even gets the time to come to terms with his guilt and forgive himself, and Joel never gets the chance to have another adult companion who understands the terrible weight of what it is to care for a child in this world.

I also love that, throughout, Henry is just a really good, loving big brother. Game!Henry could be harsh towards Sam in moments (where Sam was in his early teens, so perhaps it makes sense in that context), but Show!Henry sees the worth in preserving Sam's innocence and making sure that he gets to have plenty of moments to still be a kid. The scene where he assuages Sam's fear of being on the run by telling him that he's not scared and then surprises Sam with a bag of crayons and helps distract him by drawing murals over the walls of their hiding place is just so sweet. He boosts Sam's courage by painting a superhero mask over his eyes, letting the little boy feel like he's invincible as they make their break for freedom. I also adore how Henry makes sure Sam is always involved in the conversation, makes sure that he's never ignored by other members in their party on account of his deafness. Note that when Ellie asks Henry how old Sam is, instead of answering her on his own, Henry asks Sam the question and lets him give his own answer before translating the sign language. And also, when explaining their escape plan to Joel, he lets Sam unveil the masterstroke of "tunnels" via his little Woody Woodpecker writing board. Bad things happening to good, undeserving people is par for the course in TLOU but, dammit, if there were ever two characters who deserved to escape to a brighter future, it's Sam and Henry. Sometimes I think of how happy they would've been in Jackson, and it makes me sad 😢

Best Friends

The show balances an exquisitely torturous tightrope, making us feel how cornered Sam and Henry are. Their whole escape plan is fraught with the possibility of failure (the militia are sparing no expenses to see them caught, the tunnels that promise escape could also be teeming with Infected). I like how this is reflected in Henry's stubborn hopefulness throughout. He knows his plan is "dicey as fuck" (and has a hell of a time convincing Joel) but he has to believe it'll work, for Sam's sake. The constant cycle of hope and anxiety is as rough a ride for us viewers as I imagine it is for Henry. And just when they think they're safe and on the other side, yet more danger comes in the form of Kathleen and her goons, and then there's suddenly a horde of Infected to contend with too and there's so many moments where they escape by the skin of their teeth and you let out the breath you were holding and think, finally, they made it. But, in the end, it's all for nothing.

Part of the reason this loss stings so much is in the way they build up the bond between Sam and Ellie. Sam has probably never had a friend of his own age and Ellie is still reeling from the loss of Riley (which, it's easy to forget, was only about a month ago), so naturally they gravitate towards each other. It's not just a matter of them being of a similar age group - they have common interests and bond over them. The scene where they both enthuse over the Savage Starlight comics is just so adorable, with Sam teaching Ellie the sign language for "Endure and Survive." Being with Sam also affords Ellie the opportunity to be vulnerable in a way she can't quite yet with Joel, telling the boy that she's scared all the time and her biggest fear is to be alone. I think Sam's death hits Ellie so deeply is because he was younger than her, and she felt a sense of protectiveness over him, felt that she owed it to him to keep him safe and she failed. She promised him she would perform a miracle and save him with her blood and he puts his faith in her because she's his friend and she wouldn't lie to him. Ellie herself even believes it will work and the way she just immediately leaps to cutting her palm open, taking control of the situation and attempting to save Sam the way she wasn't able to with Riley, really shows just how deep her survivor guilt runs, even at this early stage of the journey. For me, the saddest detail in this final exchange between the two of them is that Sam doesn't quite seem as certain it will work as Ellie does, and asks her to stay awake with him to make sure. She promises and gives him a big hug. And then cut to morning, Ellie has inadvertently fallen asleep, and the dread sinks into your stomach like an anvil.

It hurts so much to think of what might be going through what's left of Sam's conscious mind in these last moments. The night before he was worried about how much of a person's original self is left behind after the infection takes hold and now that's the poor boy's lived reality. I've always believed the theory that Runners at least are still somewhat aware (in the game, you can hear them sobbing as they feast on a human carcass, suggesting they feel horror and disgust at what the fungus is making their bodies do, but they no longer have any control to stop it) so that leads to painful thoughts of how scared and confused Sam must have been, how a higher part of his mind didn't want to attack Ellie, but some malevolent force inside him was making him. The only mercy is that his suffering is short, his death is quick and he doesn't see it coming. The horror of this moment is only amplified by the contrast in sound. In the game, they kick in with the "All Gone" leitmotif and obviously that's its own kind of pain. But I'm always left so shaken by how quickly we go from a cacophony of noise (Ellie screaming, Sam snarling, Henry firing the gun to keep Joel back) to the gunshot that ends Sam's life and then...silence.

What a sickening twist it is that the first time Henry ever kills someone, it's his little brother. And you immediately understand, with sinking horror, what Henry is going to do next. His entire life has been about protecting Sam and now that Sam is gone, so too is his reason for living. Like Joel, he's had his purpose ripped away from him, but unlike Joel, he's not fortunate enough to have another surviving family member to pull him back from the brink (not that it stops Joel from trying). Henry was already struggling with the guilt of betraying Kathleen's brother to FEDRA - the guilt of having to kill Sam, even if it was a mercy kill, is insurmountable. And then, just like that, these brothers that we've grown to love over the course of this episode are both gone. All Joel and Ellie can do is give them a decent burial before moving on, continuing west, as if this whole horrific interlude in Kansas City never happened.

Monsters in the Night

I remember people at the time bemoaning the lack of Infected in the series up until this point, but I think it was a smart move to conserve their appearances. Us gamers are probably used to Infected just being everywhere because, as players, we need enemies to be taking out but in the show it would be really distracting if they were constantly popping up all the time, and would rob them of their impact and turn them into a nuisance that's just hanging around in the background. We haven't seen any Infected in almost two episodes by this point, so the moment when the earth crumbles open and there's a pause as we hear snarling and wailing coming from underground, before they just explode out in a stampede, is such absolutely hair-raising 😱

I don't know the amount of visual effects, sound design and stunt work that went into this sequence but it must've been a lot and the final product is so impressive. I heard it took them about two weeks of night shoots to finish this scene, so kudos to everyone involved, especially all the hundreds of extras that must've had to undergo makeup. The whole sequence is inspired by the Suburbs sniper level in the game and really feels like a great opportunity for the show to indulge its video game roots and go nuts. This time the action takes place at night instead of daytime, and I like how this allowed for the orangey glow of the fire to bathe the whole thing in a hellish light - it really does make the Infected look like the souls of the damned as they come out to consume the living. The whole scene is only about four minutes but it feels like it goes on for far longer, which is a testament to just how tense and thrilling it is. It's just chaos incarnate, Kathleen's negligence coming home to roost in the most destructive fashion, and the final obstacle our heroes have to cross in order to finally escape this hellhole.

Joel is positioned in the sniper's nest and while he does his best to shoot down as many Infected as he can, he still has to watch helplessly as Ellie is caught in the melee. We're in his POV so it makes sense that the focus remains only on Ellie for a short while - he might have some care for Sam and Henry, but she is his primary concern. I love how this scene highlights once again how Joel and Ellie are starting to think along the same wavelength, always one step ahead of the other, as shown by when Ellie spots an open window in one of the cars and scrambles for a hidey-hole, just like Joel taught her. And when Ellie spots Sam and Henry in danger, she sends Joel a look, implicitly telling him to cover her, and he acquiesces. I love that the show allows Ellie this badass moment of making her way across the horde, ducking and dodging Infected as she goes, and that she gets to shank two Clickers to death, game-style, and save Sam and Henry (or so we think, anyway...). She's learning and becoming more adept at this survival thing, able to take charge where Joel can't (good foreshadowing for when she has to step up and take responsibility for him when he's hurt later in the series).

And, oh God, the child Clicker. I can see why the games didn't go in this direction, because it would feel awful to have to take them out. That said, I always imagined that they had to be out there somewhere, and the show goes there. It's such a bloodcurdling image, this little girl's body frozen forever in the form of a child, not allowed to grow up but not allowed to die yet either, the fungus splitting out of her skull, the way her small form allows her to creep inside the car Ellie is hiding in where adult Clickers couldn't fit, the way she twists and flails and throws herself over the carseats backwards Exorcist-style to chase Ellie, the "Blues Clues" t-shirt being the only hint of the child that this terrifying thing once was. Some fans had the horrifying thought that she was once a member of the sewer society and this is what became of them and why their secret lair is abandoned in the present day. I find it hard to disagree.

What time is it? Bloater time! You can easily imagine that they would've been left out of the series because they're too impractical and expensive to bring to life, but Craig was right on the money when he thought about which things from the game fans would definitely want to see and would riot if they weren't included. The Bloater is an amazing amalgamation of make-up and visual effects - they even got the same guttural roaring sound effect. I like how they play that sound before showing the monster in all its glory, knowing that gamers would get an epic "Oh shit" moment. It's an "oh shit" moment for Kathleen and her soldiers too - this thing is superhumanly strong and not even a hail of gunfire can bring it down. The only option is to run. I also wasn't expecting them to pay homage to that infamous game-over scene where the Bloater rips your jaw open, but they did. Perry is the unfortunate casualty, sacrificing his life to give Kathleen time to run (and then she promptly wastes it, choosing to go after Henry one last time instead of getting the hell out of there 🙄). He probably wasn't a good man, but he seemed decent enough by survived-the-apocalypse-and-FEDRA-dictatorship standards. His fatal flaw was that he was maybe a bit too loyal to his boss, and it costs him his life in the end. Nasty way to go - at least the game cuts to black before things get too gory 😬

Kathleen says "Fuck them kids"

This is the episode where Kathleen's arc kind of clicks together for me. I finally get her character, and while a large part of that is still to illustrate that obsession does funny things to a person, it also digs into the frustration that people can feel when their understandable desire for justice, closure and catharsis is instead dismissed as simply "just wanting revenge", like anger and hatred is all that goes into it when, the truth is, there is a whole host of complicated, conflicting emotions and motives behind it. Not to say that it excuses any of Kathleen's actions, far from it, but it really helps to deepen her character beyond just a one-note bad guy with a fixation on obstructing our heroes by any means necessary.

I kind of adore the early sequence where she interrogates the FEDRA collaborators. Melanie really puts that soccer-mom-gone-bad energy that I talked about in the last episode to good use here, sounding like a disappointed school teacher lecturing her students (the sheer disdain in her voice when she says "Fucking apples" is great). We kind of already know she has absolutely no intention of giving them a fair trial, but it's still chilling to hear her tell Perry to burn their bodies because "it's faster", as if she were talking about burning garbage (also, that explains the pile of charred skeletons Joel and Ellie drove by last episode). I talked last week about how Kathleen clearly has tunnel vision when it comes to Henry and is neglecting her other duties of leadership - I'd forgotten that Kathleen literally comes out with it and admits this to Perry when he suggests they shouldn't waste all their men and resources just to search for Henry. It actually gives the Kansas militia arc a more tragic bent. Maybe if they'd wavered in their loyalty to Kathleen or recognised a leader with skewed priorities and a single-minded obsession that's detrimental to them all, they'd still all be alive in the end.

The moment in her childhood bedroom is probably the only time we get to see Kathleen the human, or what's left of her at any rate. It finally helped me to understand her character more and appreciate why she was included, specifically when she talks about how her brother wanted her to forgive Henry for his betrayal, when she bitterly recalls how forgiveness didn't save her brother's life in the end, when she seethes about how pointless his death was and how forgiveness will bring her no justice. I like how this also works to flesh out the ghost of Kathleen's brother - Henry describes him as a good and forgiving man, makes those sound like virtues worth following, but Kathleen is instead baffled by them, even angered. Her brother's dying wish was probably for her not to be consumed by grief and rage, but all she could hear was him telling her to "let it go", him condemning the idea of revenge as inherently wrong while ignoring its potential to bring her healing. Her brother was right in that it would be pointless bloodshed that wouldn't bring him back. But Kathleen wasn't wrong to feel this way either - the desire for justice after being wronged is not inherently bad. What pushes Kathleen over the line from "reasonable" to "villainous" is her methods and the lows she sinks to to achieve her goals. This scene also does a great job of illustrating how much Kathleen loved her brother and how his death has turned her world upside-down, and how much he in turn wanted to be an example she could live by, how he desperately tried in his last moments with her to dissuade her from pushing the self-destruct button in her grief. It also makes us wonder - was her brother's death Kathleen's tipping point or has she always harboured a dark side?

I do always enjoy a good sequence of a villain well and truly going off the deep end. Kathleen doesn't scream or yell or lose it completely when she finally corners Henry, but the moment when she involves Sam and Ellie in Henry and Joel's crimes is when you realise that she's irredeemable. When she starts talking about how maybe Sam was supposed to die, you realise that she's not just blinded by her grief anymore, she's maybe one of the coldest, most cruel-hearted characters in the series (and there's hefty competition!). Her desire for justice has consumed her so deeply that she can't even understand that Sam is an innocent party in all of this, who probably wouldn't have chosen any of this if he had any say in the matter. I always remember, my first time watching, the moment where she declares that Ellie and Sam have to die purely because they had the audacity to be accompanied by adults who've killed to protect them (seriously, I did a double take and was like, "This bitch"). But there's so many lovely nuances in Melanie's performance too, that lend so much room for interpretation. Especially the way she sounds like she's visibly wincing when she says "Sorry" to Henry - is she genuinely sorry that she has to kill Sam and Ellie because she feels like she has to set an example and has no other choice, or is it just a sadistic way of further messing with Henry's head? And then when Henry tries to get her to see reason by telling her that Sam is just a kid, her only response is to dismissively say, with breathtaking callousness: "Well, kids die, Henry. They die all the time." A woman who's seen so many children die since Outbreak Day that she's become numb to it or a woman who no longer values even the smallest lives if they stand in the way of what she wants? We'll never know, but it's interesting to think about. I really like Melanie's emotional shrug and moment of hesitation when she's finally got Henry where she wants him and is about to fire the gun - I don't know if she was about to take vicious pleasure in killing Henry or wavering now that it had finally come down to it but, either way, I don't think it would've given her the closure she was after either.

So after all of that, Kathleen's final moments are pretty cathartic. I like how it was set up that her failure to heed Perry's warnings about the Infected underground that sealed her fate, blinding her to the danger just beneath her feet. And how extra fitting it was that, after ranting about how kids die all the time, she was taken out by the child Clicker. Despite Perry's insistence to the contrary, I never felt that she was a particularly shrewd or inspiring leader, but I think that was precisely the point. She's a cautionary tale - believing yourself to be the hero of your own story won't save you if you make foolhardy decisions. I guess I could feel sorry for her that she was clearly in over her head, but she did bring this on herself. She helped liberate her city and then gets all her soldiers killed because of her refusal to move past her vendetta (and probably gets many of the Kansas City citizens under her protection killed in the crossfire too, if that horde heading towards the unprotected city is any indiction). Worst of all, she sets in motion the events that will lead to Sam and Henry's deaths. She'll get her vengeance but the fact that she gets herself killed in the process and doesn't even live to see it just goes to show how petty and pointless the whole endeavour was. Don't do revenge, kids.

Performances

Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Montreal Woodard have such adorable chemistry together, the lived-in kind that makes you instantly believe them as brothers and makes you feel like they've known each other for their whole lives, in just a few scenes together. There's no doubt that they're the whole world to each other and that Henry would burn his soul and give his life for this little boy. Lamar does a great job of balancing Henry dealing with the heavy responsibility of making sure he and his brother make it out of this city alive alongside surface-level bravado and a stubborn sense of optimism. Even if he has to admit that his plan is highly perilous, he still chooses to believe that it will work, making Joel and Ellie believe it's worth the risk. Whether it's how he really feels or a front he puts on to convince others is up to interpretation. There's a sense of youthfulness to this performance too - Henry has seen and had to do some fucked-up things to survive, but he is still, in some sense, sheltered (his utter panic at the sight of the Infected makes me wonder if he's ever even seen one before). The years haven't done a number on him yet the same way they have Joel. His scene where they're cornered by Kathleen in the suburbs, where he tells Ellie to take Sam and run, willingly sacrificing himself so his brother can live, is just heartbreaking - after everything he's done, right as they're about to get out, the universe throws this cruel twist of fate his way. I'd say thank God for the Infected interrupting his execution, but as we all know, that's just yet another cruel twist of fate.

Keivonn is so good and when you consider that this was his first acting role ever - wow. I remember reading about just how difficult it was for the casting department to find a kid who could play Sam, to the point of only getting five responses to a casting call, but man did they unearth a little diamond here. Keivonn fills Sam with the sweetness and curiosity you'd expect from an eight-year-old, but still we can read something in his eyes, a hint of maturity beyond his years, an explicit and growing understanding of the cruelty of this world, the beginnings of that innocence being worn down. He knows what's hunting them, both human and inhuman, and it scares him and maybe he's too young to know the complexities behind why Kathleen is chasing them to the ends of the earth, but he still understands the gravity of the situation, the life-or-death stakes at play. The moment where he knows, in his heart, that Edelstein has been killed by Kathleen's men because that's what happens to collaborators, but still seems to hold out hope that he got away, until Henry confirms otherwise, is gut-wrenching. He also understands what becomes of people after they're infected and the thought of losing his free will and sense of self frightens him. I love that he also has moments where he's still such a kid - he complains that he's hungry; he eagerly reaches out to a colourful doorway painted with murals without thinking of the possible danger behind it and has to be stopped by Joel; he keeps quiet about his bite because he's scared he'll get in trouble. His delight at having a playmate in Ellie and finally getting to let go of the fear for a little while is especially wonderful. There's a studied sense of keen observance to Keivonn's performance, which makes sense as Sam has to spend his life watching the actions of other people and reading their faces in order to get some sense of what they're thinking. I love his scene with Ellie in the motel where he reveals his bite, where you can just intuit all the thoughts going through his head - the terrible secret he's keeping warring with the need for reassurance, him weighing up whether or not to confide in Ellie, his fear of losing himself, the childlike way he puts his trust in Ellie. It's so good, you're just aching with the need to protect this child and make sure he's alright. And then the turn he has to take in the episode's final minutes...

Because, dear God, Sam's final scene 😭. This is one of the hardest scenes in the show for me to watch (Sarah's death, Ellie killing David and Joel bursting into the operating room to rescue Ellie are also up there). It's just absolutely gut-wrenching to watch this sweet, adorable little boy turn into a savage, mindless creature. It's the most noise we ever hear Sam make and that just makes it all the more jarring. Even worse is the way they fake us out by having him sitting quietly on the edge of the bed at first, seeming completely fine and you think "Holy shit, maybe it did work", only for him to snap and attack like a rabid dog the instant Ellie touches his shoulder (I buy into the fan theory that Sam could feel himself changing in the night and his last conscious act was to turn away from Ellie so that he wouldn't hurt her 🥺). You know what has to happen next, and a part of you knew this was always going to happen, but it still hurts like hell 💔

Lamar portrays Henry's shock afterwards so brilliantly and devastatingly. He shot Sam on instinct, but then, as the blood spills across the carpet, the horror of what he's just done hits him. The way his emotions shift and fluctuate on his face in this last moment is masterful - the confusion, the denial, the hyperventilating breaths, the tears beginning to flow unbidden, the way he keeps asking Joel "What did I do?", like Joel can reassure him that this isn't really happening. It's Lamar's delivery of "Sam" in that barely audible little croak that always breaks me. You can physically see the sense of failure slam into him, the moment where he decides he no longer wants, or feels he deserves, to live. In the game, Henry blames Joel for Sam's death but here he focuses all that grief and rage inwards, because it was his job to keep Sam safe and a failure of this magnitude is unforgivable. The pain of even contemplating going on without his brother is too great to bear and, in the last tragic act of protection he can offer to Sam, Henry follows him, refusing to let him go into the unknown alone 😭

Joel and Ellie got a lot of focus in the last episode so it would've been easy to overlook them this time around, but Pedro and Bella still have a lot of great moments here too. Pedro's best moments come when they're in the suburbs. He picks up on Ellie's fear of the sniper and realises, that it's not just for herself but for him, and asks her "Do you trust me?" Again, Pedro says so much with just his eyes and shifts in his expression - him in the sniper's nest is especially brilliant, you can feel the terror rolling off him in waves as he watches Ellie's predicament, the way he's trembling from desperation and breathing heavily through the panic as the child Clicker manages to get inside Ellie's hiding place. You can also see, through the stone-cold determination on his face, how he's not going to miss a single shot, how he won't let any of them hurt her, just like he promised her last episode during the shootout.

It's only through the benefit of hindsight, once you've watched all of Season 1, that you know exactly what's going through Joel's head after Henry kills Sam, that he knows exactly what Henry is feeling and what he's afraid he'll do. He tries to talk him down, but to no avail. It always breaks my heart when Henry puts the gun to his head and off-camera you hear Joel cry out, "Henry, no!" I don't know if Joel saw Henry as a fellow father-figure and confidante or as another lost kid he felt protective of, but he was willing to let them journey with them to Wyoming, in the hopes of seeing them off to somewhere better, and seeing it all end like this must feel like such a slap in the face to him, like the universe is reprimanding him for daring to hope.

I like how Ellie is allowed to regress into being a kid for a little while in this episode. She no longer has to be Joel's number two and act with the responsibility and maturity that entails, she can let go and enjoy comics and football and play fighting with Sam. Bella's uninhibited silliness in the underground sewer hideout is so endearing. You really feel like Ellie wants to be a cool role model for Sam and, when the situation presents itself where Ellie can save the day, she takes it with both hands. As adults, we probably know it's a foregone conclusion that Ellie's blood won't be able to stop Sam from losing himself to the infection, but Bella's performance in this scene is so earnest and warm and comforting that you almost buy into it. And then it's all turned horribly on it's head come morning. The way Ellie screams as Sam attacks her, calling out for Joel specifically, always tears my heart to pieces. She's just so scared and she wants the one adult she trusts in the world to save her. And when Sam is shot and she can only stare at his body in mute horror, tears running down her face...oof. But Bella's best moment in the whole episode is that frightened little whimper/scream they let out when Henry shoots himself, the camera focusing on their reaction rather than Henry's body, the way their face just shuts down completely in shock... it's so, so good 😭. And then the way they silently pay their last respects to Sam and Henry at their graves, the guilt and remorse that's livid in their eyes, only speaking up to ask Joel "Which way's west?", Ellie clearly all too ready to try and suppress this grief and move on before it swallows her up...all together now: Poor baby girl 🥺

Stray Observations

I don't know if Henry was also aged down for the series (he's 25 in the game), but in any case, I definitely picture him as a bit younger, maybe 19 or 20, a kid who's only ever known the apocalypse. I do like how, even though he's technically an adult, he still has a sense of naivety about him. The moment where he hears about how Joel and Ellie survived an encounter with Clickers illustrates this best, with Henry believing this makes them highly capable, deadly allies worth having, little knowing that it was sheer luck that Joel and Ellie survived that and it cost Tess her life.

The opening sequence where Kansas City revels in their freedom by summarily torturing and executing FEDRA on masse is really disturbing. If Henry's word is anything to go by, they more than had it coming but still, man's brutality to man is never easy to watch 😳

Playing the "All Gone" theme while Henry and Sam are in their attic hideaway - just incidental score or foreshadowing to let us know their story is not fated to end well?

Sam going in for a hug after Henry tells him their doctor friend has probably been captured and killed. He was sad, but he was probably doing it because Henry needed a hug too 🥺

I love that little shot of Henry peering out the window just after the ambush where Joel gets in a shootout with Kathleen's men, the way a sign from across the street is reflected in the glass to make it appear like he has his own orange superhero eye mask, just like Sam 🦸🏿‍♂️

"That's a weird fuckin' tone, man." "That's just the way he sounds, he has an asshole voice." I love so much that Ellie is the mediator in this situation, in her own Ellie way 😂

"Everything is great." 😠 "Dude!" 🙄 (Though personally, I like to believe Joel sized up Henry pretty quickly and realised he wouldn't actually hurt them, otherwise I don't think he'd have been nearly so sassy)

Ellie slapping at Joel's knee to force him to socialise with Henry and Sam 😂

I never realised just how tall Pedro is until he was standing next to Lamar. Which made me realise how tall I must be, because Pedro and I are about the same height, give or take an inch 😳

Sam and Ellie giggling over No Pun Intended 🥺. They both deserved to be the big sister/little brother the other never had, dammit! (Also, that being the thing that convinces Joel to at least hear out Henry's plan. Man never stood a chance)

I like how Henry was smart enough to suss out that Joel's soft spot is kids and that's how he gets him to help them, by telling Sam that he's agreed to help them escape when Joel's clearly verging on "no", effectively trapping him into saying yes.

Joel's scowl when Ellie takes her gun out of her pocket, where he expressly told her not to put it 😂

Henry: "Your dad's kind of a pessimist." Joel and Ellie in unison: "He's/I'm not my/her dad." How quick they both were to jump in there with that. You're not fooling anybody, guys 😏

I never noticed before, but Ellie puts her arm around Sam as they first begin their trek through the tunnels 🥰. Also, Joel rushing to prevent Sam from opening the unchecked door to the sewer hideout. He might have been in hibernation for twenty years, but that man's dad instincts never went away. He sees a kid, he must protect them 🥺

I love that they managed to include the sewer society from the game. That would've been the kind of thing they could probably cut without too much damage, just a piece of world-building about how some people managed to survive in the aftermath of the outbreak. It's nice to have but not essential, but they included that, for us. And they snuck in a reference to our boy Ish! 🥳 That little child's drawing on the wall is an exact replica from the game. It's just little Easter Eggs like that that make this show such an enjoyable experience for me

So glad the Savage Starlight comics got a cameo 🚀. As a person who didn't watch Season 2, tell me if Ellie's trading cards got a mention there

The way Ellie mouths "Please" to Joel when asking if they can stay in the underground hideout for a little longer 🥺. And the way he immediately caves. He's a dad, what can he do? 🥰

Joel glancing at his watch as he watches Ellie and Sam playing 🥺

Music cameo - "Soft Descent" is one my favourite Gustavo tunes from the games, so I was happy to hear it as our foursome make their way through the suburbs 🎵

Ellie: Well, we're going to Wyoming Joel: 😠 Ellie: What? It's a huge state, it can fit two more people!

Ellie's impression of Joel is just so funny (love that her attempt at Texan is just to make her voice as deep and growly as possible), as is her confidence that she can always wear him down 😂

One niggling inaccuracy, but Joel wasn't killed 50 times in a row trying to make his way past the sniper. But, you know, minor quibbles 😜 (actually that level's not too hard for me. Now, the Firefly hospital, that's my Everest)

I can't help feeling bad for the elderly sniper in the suburbs. He looks as though he was probably already an old man when the outbreak happened and has had to watch the world fall apart for another twenty years. Maybe that's why he decided being killed by Joel was preferable to continuing to serve in Kathleen's militia

The scene where the truck chases Ellie, Sam and Henry down, mowing down every car in its path, while Joel tries to take out the driver at a distance but his rifle is jammed, is heart-in-your-mouth stuff 😱

Kathleen ranting about how Sam is not more important than anyone else - I can see how this would fly under the radar for show-only watchers, but as a gamer I could definitely see the foreshadowing for Joel's final decision come the end of the series.

"It ends the way it ends" - not just Kathleen scolding Henry for ever believing he could outrun her, but a clever, nasty little bit of foreshadowing for us viewers still harbouring hope that Henry and Sam will get away scot-free

You know Jeffrey Pierce was overjoyed to get the Bloater-rips-off-your-head death, straight out of the games

God, but that moment where Ellie just misses being mowed down by the car going top speed to run down the Infected always gives my heart a good scare. If it was bad for me, imagine what that moment was like for Joel?

The look on Ellie's face as Kathleen is being mauled to death - great bit of acting by Bella. Even though this woman ordered her to be killed, she's still a kid and can't help but be horrified at what she's seeing

Man, that final, panning-up shot of the horde erupting out of the hole in ground, too many of them to count, the city's defences completely overrun, is just bone-chilling. Kansas City is fuuuucked

"I'm Sorry." Stab me in the guts and the heart, it would hurt less 🗡️

"Fuel to Fire" by Agnes Obel during the end credits. Beautiful, stark and heart-breaking

Memorable dialogues with my parents the first time we watched this episode

Dad: (after Sam and Henry's deaths) So, did they die in the game too? Me: (emotionally ravaged) Yeah, but it's worse here because, in the game, Sam was an older kid, about Ellie's age, but here he's just a baby 😭😭😭