Family Ties, A.K.A. Joel Bares All: Breaking Down Episode 6 of ‘The Last of Us’
It’s reunion time this week on ‘The Last of Us.’ Joel’s biggest fear comes to life, and Ellie has a decision to make.
For those living in the postapocalyptic world of The Last of Us, fear is a near constant state of being. There might be Infected lurking around any corner, from contortionist Clicker children to colossal Bloaters who are capable of ripping your body apart with nothing more than their hands. But as the hit HBO series continues to show its audience every week, the last of the living can be just as frightening, if not more so. That could be the likes of hunters and raiders, who are willing to do anything to survive, or your loved ones—and the fear of losing them.
During the sixth episode of The Last of Us, “Kin,” Joel’s many fears—which he had been trying his best to subdue up to this point—rise to the surface. And they aren’t triggered by the sudden appearance of an Infected horde, like the one that sprung from the ground near the end of last week’s heartbreaking chapter. There aren’t any Infected sightings at all. In an eventful installment that sees Joel reunite with his brother, Tommy, and where Joel and Ellie grow closer than ever, the brooding protector reveals his rawest emotions since the death of his daughter in the series premiere. And by the end of it, one of Joel’s worst fears is realized.
After “Kin” opens with a (rather rude) reminder of Henry’s devastating demise following the death of his younger brother, Sam, we pick our story back up with Joel and Ellie three months later. The time jump is practical from a narrative perspective, as the duo is forced to travel west from Kansas City to Wyoming by foot with only the loose guidance of a map and a vague destination to travel toward. But the passage of time also means that we’ve missed out on some of Joel and Ellie’s off-screen developments, and showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann ask their viewers to quickly catch up through context clues. Joel has started to experience panic attacks, while his nightmares remain ever present. Ellie’s trust and admiration for Joel have continued to grow, but her confidence in whether the Fireflies will be able to produce a vaccine based on her immunity is waning after the failure of her ill-conceived attempt to save Sam with her blood.
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What’s more telling than Ellie’s temporary loss of faith is Joel’s reaction to it; he reassures her that if Marlene says that her crew can create a vaccine, then they can do it. It’s a far cry from the cynical response he gave when Ellie first mentioned her immunity to him and Tess in the second episode; whether Joel believes it or not, he tells Ellie what she needs to hear in order to make her feel better, as parents often do for their children in moments of doubt. As much as Joel has tried to maintain the emotional armor that he built for himself after Sarah’s death, Ellie has managed to break it down, piece by piece, and the cracks are starting to show more than ever.
With some help from a hilariously unfazed couple Joel and Ellie come across in Wyoming (and by “come across,” I mean “hold hostage at gunpoint”), they’re able to find their bearings as they continue their search for Tommy and the Fireflies. They soon find themselves on the other side of the gun, though, when they’re ambushed by a well-armed group on horseback. It takes an initial scare, but it’s through this troop and Tommy’s perceptive wife, Maria, that Joel and Ellie are able to finally track down Tommy at their gated community in Jackson.
Along with the heartfelt brotherly reunion, in Jackson, Joel and Ellie get a taste of everything that they’ve been missing on their traumatic odyssey from the Boston quarantine zone. They’re surrounded by living people who don’t want to kill them in a community with electricity, livestock, showers, warm meals, beds—and even movie nights. (As idyllic as this place must be in this terrifying world, I can’t help but feel bad for these kids. With no disrespect to 1977’s The Goodbye Girl, these children have no idea what kind of entertainment awaited them on the other side of 2003. I mean, for the world to all but end one year before The Incredibles and Spider-Man 2 hit theaters? Tragic.) For Joel, the joy he feels upon seeing his brother for the first time in years is fleeting, as he’s soon reminded of what he’s lost and what he’s at risk of losing again in Ellie.
Joel had assumed that once they found Tommy, the three of them would be able to finish this journey together. His younger, more capable brother would surely lead them to the Fireflies, whom Tommy knows have set up base at the University of Eastern Colorado. But Joel doesn’t anticipate a crucial life update from his brother: He and Maria are expecting a child. In a dying world, the prospect of Tommy welcoming a new life into a thriving community should be a happy one for his older brother—except Joel’s brain isn’t wired that way anymore; all he can think about is how he failed to protect his daughter when she needed him most. Unaware of Ellie’s immunity and the stakes of Joel’s mission, thanks to Joel withholding their real story, Tommy tells him he won’t be joining them.
It isn’t until Joel experiences another panic attack and believes he’s seeing Sarah in a crowd that he reveals the truth to his brother in private—all of it: how Ellie is immune and perhaps the only hope at creating a better world for Tommy’s unborn child, how Tess’s dying wish was for him to bring Ellie to the Fireflies and finish the task that Marlene had entrusted them with, and how he’s lost a step and is struggling to keep it together lately.
“You think I can still handle things, but I’m not who I was,” Joel confesses to Tommy. “I’m weak. Lately, there are these moments where the fear comes up out of nowhere, and my heart feels like it stopped. And I have dreams. Every night.”
“What kind of dreams?” Tommy asks.
“I don’t know; I can’t remember,” Joel replies. “I just know that when I wake up, I’ve lost something. I’m failing in my sleep. It’s all I do. It’s all I’ve ever done … is fail her. Again and again.”
From the moment that Joel and Ellie fell into the hunters’ ambush in Kansas City during the fourth episode, The Last of Us has shown the myriad ways in which Joel is slipping. He’s all but lost his hearing in one ear, he’s falling asleep when he’s supposed to be on watch, he hesitates in moments that require split-second decisions, and now he’s experiencing panic attacks on top of it all. But this is the first time that we really see Joel reconciling with that reality and admitting to how much he fears the failure of protecting a loved one again. He begs Tommy to escort Ellie to the Fireflies the rest of the way in his place, and his dutiful brother succumbs to his pleas.
When Joel goes to deliver the news to Ellie soon after, she already knows what’s coming. She overheard some of his and Tommy’s conversation, but even before that, she had been piecing together what Joel was angling toward. Through Maria, Ellie learns about Sarah at last, and she begins to understand what had been holding Joel back all along. Like Joel, she initially resisted this partnership that Marlene forced upon them, but with how many people have come in and out of her life, Joel had become the exception and someone she could look up to—faults and all. “Everybody I have cared for has either died or left me,” she tells Joel. “Everybody fucking except for you. So don’t tell me that I’d be safe with someone else because the truth is I would just be more scared.”
Together, these back-to-back scenes feature some of the more emotional conversations in the series thus far (at least, among those that haven’t arrived in the midst of a life-or-death situation). On one hand, it feels as if—between Joel’s sudden panic attacks and the rapid growth in their relationship—Ellie and Joel have reached this dramatic peak quickly. As it has been throughout the course of the season, the most important moments of the main plot are pulled almost directly from the Last of Us video game that the HBO series so faithfully adapts at times; this scene, in particular, unfolds almost line for line as Druckmann originally wrote it, even if some of the context around it has been changed slightly. However, by this point in the game, the player would have spent hours of gameplay limited mostly to Joel and Ellie’s interactions with each other, with quieter moments of dialogue developing their connection in between action set pieces as they scavenge rooms for ammo, pills, and other collectibles.
But this Last of Us adaptation departs from its source material by splitting screen time between multiple perspectives and expanding story lines outside of Joel and Ellie’s purview, mirroring what’s happening to their relationship all the while. Through Bill and Frank’s stand-alone story in “Long, Long Time,” we witness how you can still find beauty and something to live for at the end of the world, presenting something of a best-case scenario for Joel and Ellie. Through Henry and Sam’s prologue to open the fifth episode, we see a more direct parallel to our protagonists, as Henry stands in as a surrogate father and protector to his younger brother. With Sam’s death, and Henry’s failure to protect him, we witness a worst-case scenario for Joel and Ellie—especially from Joel’s point of view. Even if some of the developments in Ellie and Joel’s relationship are happening off screen or through the prism of other characters’ experiences, we’ve been conditioned as viewers to recognize and empathize with the bond that they’ve formed after stumbling into each other’s lives.
With all of that said, all of the mounting dramatic tension is relieved by the morning, as Joel offers Ellie the choice to go with him or Tommy to Colorado, and she picks Joel without hesitation. But for Joel, there’s no turning back. It’s as if the previous night was his final attempt at protecting himself from the possibility of experiencing a loss like Sarah’s, and after failing to cut ties with Ellie altogether, he lets his emotional guard down entirely. Despite his declaration that he “sure as hell” isn’t Ellie’s dad, it isn’t long before he’s teaching her everything from shooting a rifle to the rules of football. He even seems to be starting to take pride in becoming more of a father to Ellie.
When the duo reaches the University of Eastern Colorado without any conflict, they find that the Fireflies have already moved on, with clues indicating that they’re heading to Salt Lake City. Instead, they find a group of raiders, and before long, one of Joel’s nightmare scenarios begins to unfold right before him. He gets stabbed in the chest by a splintered baseball bat, and though they’re able to escape on their horse with Ellie unscathed, she’s now left alone, with her protector bleeding out and with no idea of what to do next.
The song that closes out “Kin” is a bit on the nose, as it drives home the message of the episode’s final moments, with lyrics that reflect Ellie’s present crisis: “I’m taking a ride with my best friend / I hope he never lets me down again.” Despite Joel’s better judgment, he set himself up to fail to protect a loved one for the third time since the start of the series, and this time, he is letting Ellie down. Except unlike Sarah and Tess, it isn’t Ellie who’s been hurt, but Joel himself.
With only three episodes left in the first season of The Last of Us, it’s now up to Ellie to play the role of protector for a dying man or else go the rest of the way on her own.
