The Last of Us episode 8 tackles the infamous winter chapter, bringing to life the emotionally harrowing story of Ellie as she attempts to keep Joel alive.
Let’s recap everything that happened in The Last of Us episode 8, ‘When We Are In Need’, and point out a few of the easter eggs that we found.
This is the Kotaku Australia recap of TLOU Episode 8. For the Kotaku US recap, click here. This article contains full spoilers for The Last of Us TV show. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch episodes 1-8 over on Binge now.
The Last of Us episode 8: Plot recap
Opening on a frozen seaside community, we find David (Scott Shepherd) reading from the book of Revelation to a group of listeners. A banner behind them reads “when we are in need he shall provide”, reminding us that, yes, religion does still exist even when the world ends.
David approaches a teary-eyed young girl. He reassures her that God will stop their suffering. She asks David when they can bury her father and he says that the ground is too cold to dig right now. Hmm, suspicious.
The group disperses and David’s right-hand man James (Troy Baker) tells him they only have one week’s worth of food left. David senses doubt in his companion and James tells him the group hasn’t lost faith, they’re just scared.
Returning to the basement of the suburban house, Ellie checks on Joel’s wound, which is festering. He has a fever and won’t eat or drink anything. They’re running out of food too. Ellie picks up Joel’s rifle and heads out into the snow.
Creeping through the woods Ellie eventually comes up on a deer. She lands a shot with the rifle and chases the wounded deer through the woods.
David and James find it first. They contemplate just taking it until Ellie arrives and holds them at gunpoint.
In true Bible-bashing fashion, David asks for ten seconds of her time. He tells her their group is large and hungry, which Ellie counters with a lie saying she is also from a large group that is hungry. David points out that she won’t be able to carry the deer home alone, so he offers to trade her for it. The thing she really needs is medicine so they arrange for James to return to the group to fetch some penicillin, while Ellie watches the deer and David.
Ellie and David decide to take shelter in a house nearby while they wait. David tries to make conversation, he tells her he’s the leader of the group. Ellie says David’s group sure sounds like a cult and to which he admits he is a preacher. Although surprisingly, David started believing in God after the start of the end of the world.
David decides to prove to Ellie that everything happens for a reason. He says he recently sent four people to a nearby town to scavenge but only three returned. The one who didn’t return was a father who was murdered by a man travelling with a little girl about Ellie’s age. The pin drops.
James has quietly returned and has Ellie at gunpoint but David tells him to lower the gun and hand over the medicine. Ellie snatches it and runs, leaving the deer.
She returns to Joel and administers the syringe of penicillin. Then she sleeps beside him, trying to keep them warm.
Back at the settlement, a man carries a bucket of chopped meat to the kitchen. It’s venison, he claims. Except it’s only after the group has eaten that David and James drag the deer inside.
David addresses his community, saying they’ve found the girl who was with the man who killed their guy, Travis. He vows to track her down. Travis’ daughter interrupts, saying they should kill them for their crimes. David slaps her. He reminds her that she will always have a father, and that father should be shown respect when he is speaking.
Then David says grace and the group eat their mystery meat stew.
The next morning, Ellie gives Joel the other vial of penicillin. She’s outside fetching snow for water when she notices David and his people are coming through the streets. David orders his group to bring the girl in alive.
Ellie returns to Joel but he’s still nonsensical. She arms him with a knife and says she’s going to create a distraction. Ellie mounts their horse and rides out to meet the group. They start shooting at her and she leads them away.
James gets an edge on Ellie and manages to shoot down her horse. Winded, she’s quickly surrounded by David’s people. They want to kill her but David arrives to stop them. He scoops Ellie up and leaves some of his men behind to search for Joel.
The group start going door to door. One man actually finds his way into Ellie and Joel’s hideout. Creeping down to the basement, he finds nothing but an empty mattress.
Then Joel tackles him from behind and sticks a knife in his throat.
Joel knocks out, ties up and proceeds to torture two of David’s men. He uses the map trick, asking one of his prisoners to point out Ellie’s location on the map, before killing him. Then he asks the other one to corroborate it. The man is spiteful, adamant he won’t tell Joel anything.
“That’s ok, I believe him”, Joel says before raising a metal bat.
When Ellie wakes up, she’s in a cage. David is doing what he does best, preaching, and he offers to protect her. He wants her to accept that her time with Joel (her actual protector) is ending. If she doesn’t accept his offer, she’ll be alone, which we know picks at Ellie’s biggest fear.
David brings some mystery stew to Ellie. He notices that she’s staring in horror at a bloody human ear on the floor. “This is deer meat, I swear”, David says, but Ellie’s caught on. They’re cannibals and she’s next.
David tries to justify it, claiming it’s a last-resort measure to save the group from starving. David thinks Ellie will understand, he sees some of himself in her. He even offers to spare Joel, because he sees Ellie as an equal.
Then David reveals that the thing he really believes in isn’t God, it’s cordyceps. He sees the cordyceps as a nurturer because it feeds and protects its children. It loves.
For a moment, it looks like Ellie may be considering this, drawing David closer to the bars of her cage. Until she takes his hand, breaks one of his fingers, bites him and makes a grab for his keys. But she’s unsuccessful. David smashes her face into the bars and leaves, promising to cut her into “tiny little pieces”.
Meanwhile, Joel makes his way through a blizzard to the resort. He follows a blood trail and sneaks in through the boat shed. There he discovers headless human corpses hanging like meat carcasses.
David and James come back for Ellie and drag her out of the cage, placing her onto the human-sized chopping block in the room. David raises a cleaver and Ellie blurts out that she’s infected. She bit David, so now he’s infected as well. “Everything happens for a reason right?” Ellie says as she shows him her bite wound.
With James and David distracted, Ellie picks up the cleaver and rams it into James’ throat. She flees the room and runs through the resort. David pursues her and she picks up a burning log from the fire and throws it at him. It misses and starts a fire in the room.
Like a game of cat and mouse, David creeps around the room, searching for Ellie. All the while Joel is rushing through the snow trying to find them.
Ellie picks up a knife and manages to sneak up on David. They get into a brutal fight but David has the advantage of size and pins her. “I thought you knew, the fighting is the part I like the most,” he tells her with a grin. This prick I stg.
Ellie manages to reach for David’s fallen cleaver and stabs him with it. Then she repeatedly hacks at him. Blood goes everywhere.
As she stumbles out into the snow Joel arrives. Ellie is clearly shaken as Joel embraces her and he bundles her in his jacket as they limp away from the burning resort.
Easter eggs
The Last of Us’ eighth episode sticks quite closely to the narrative of the games, meaning almost everything feels like an easter egg from the game. But here are a few of the notable ones:
- Troy Baker, the actor who played Joel in The Last of Us video games, makes an appearance in this episode as David’s henchman James. It’s kind of twisted then, that Ellie is the one to kill him later in the episode.
- In the video game, Ellie and David have to work together to fight off a horde of infected in the snow. This doesn’t happen in the series but they do sit down to wait in a rundown house that looks very similar to the one from the game.
- When David is recounting his history to Ellie he reveals that he left the Pittsburgh Quarantine Zone after it fell. In the game, Joel and Ellie spend a substantial amount of time in Pittsburgh, but in the series, this location was swapped for Kansas City. Acknowledging the fate of Pittsburgh feels like an overt shout-out to the game.
The Last of Us Episode 8: The verdict
In episode 8 the series managed to provide more insight into one of the game’s most infamous villains, while also somehow making him even more unlikable. Joel and Ellie are driven to brutal extremes, with Bella Ramsey giving a standout performance as Ellie is forced to step up as her own protector in Joel’s absence. The Last of Us’ winter chapter has always been one of the hardest to swallow and it remains that way in the TV show.
Read our weekly recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6 | Episode 7
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