‘The Last Of Us‘ episode ‘Endure And Survive‘ showed us life from the perspective of brothers Henry and Sam. With Kathleen and the resistance gunning for him, Henry forms an uneasy alliance with Joel and Ellie. But much bigger dangers begin to surface and eventually come out of their corners.

‘Endure and Survive’ crafts the most brilliant argument of weighing one life’s value against another. On their way to Wyoming, Joel and Ellie reluctantly team up with Henry and Sam. While they make their way out of Kansas, Kathleen chases them relentlessly.

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‘The Last Of Us’: An Army Comes Knocking

‘Endure And Survive‘ begins with an empathetic opening of celebratory gunfire. Kansas City is free from the rule of FEDRA. The resurgence led by Kathleen is successful. But ‘The Last Of Us‘ kills this germ of hope early on by flipping to a contrasting page showing the horrors of wars.

This is the reality of war; for every free man, there’s a pile of bodies waiting to be burned. Kathleen comes to interrogate a terrified group of people. Informers, called ‘The Collaborators’ are being held up in the hope that they betray Henry. Soon, they give in to the first change of tone.

We then head back to the past again to understand how Henry and Sam (Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard) come to hold Joel and Ellie under gunpoint. Henry and Sam are brothers trying to get by in a bleak, post-apocalyptic land. Henry had betrayed Kathleen’s brother to the FEDRA for Sam’s leukemia medication.

After getting off the wrong foot, both groups come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. Henry combines his brains with Joel’s brawls as they crawl their way to momentary freedom. Ellie and Sam get along, while Sam and Joel have to play nice for the kids. As team Joel and Sam walk through safe passages, a sniper attacks them. Luckily, this sniper is an old man with a lousy aim whom Joel overpowers. Unfortunately, it alerts Kathleen to Henry’s presence. When she’s about to execute him, the dead comes crawling back. 

Kathleen, the anointed savior, had ignored the buried infected’s problem. In her blinding pursuit of vengeance, she failed to oversee the protection of people. We see a ‘bloater,’ a new and deadly variant of the Cordyceps virus infection, tear apart an entire human army. They kill Kathleen and the rest as they break out of the ground. Ellie tries to cure Sam’s infection with her blood, but it doesn’t change what’s to come sooner or later.

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Are Henry And Sam’s Deaths Different From The Video Games?

Come morning, little Sam finally morphs into an infected and attacks Ellie. Joel and Henry find themselves between a rock and a hard place. To save Ellie, Joel has to shoot Sam. But Henry can’t let Sam die, as hard it is for him to see Ellie being attacked. He won’t have a stranger shoot his brother. 

Hence, Henry does Sam a twisted kindness by shooting him before FEDRA, Kathleen, or Joel does. But seeing his brother bleed is too much for him. Realizing the error of his ways, he shoots himself in the head. 

In the video games, Sam and Henry were part of a larger group of survivors who intended to travel west, hoping to find and join the Fireflies. We only know a little about them since Joel and Ellie’s perspectives drive the video game narrative. 

Thanks to the medium of episodic series, Henry and Sam are more fleshed-out characters with beautiful stories. Both of their deaths in the show come the same way as in video games. The only difference is Ellie’s knowledge of Sam being bit, which is not present in video games.

A preview for the next episode of ‘The Last Of Us‘ shows an icy reunion between Joel and his brother Tommy. The community seems to be threatened by the presence of Joel and Ellie, doing their best to drive them away. 

The next episode of ‘The Last Of Us’ titled ‘Kin‘ will premiere on February 19, 2023.

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