Episode 9 of The Last of Us concludes Season 1 in dramatic fashion. Read our recap with spoilers.

[Updated Mar 13, 2023 10:53 AM] The Last of Us Episode 9 Recap. Spoilers Warning! Episode 9 opens with a flashback that focuses on Ellie’s mother. Pregnant, Anna is pursued by an infected. She locks herself in a room but the abomination throws herself on her. Anna manages to get rid of it but realizes that she gave birth to her daughter at the same time as she was bitten. Very quickly, she cuts the umbilical cord and takes advantage of the first but especially of her last moments with her baby whom she names Ellie. Anna is joined in the evening by a group of Fireflies led by Marlène. Anna asks him to go to Boston with her baby and kill her. If at first Marlene refuses, she ends up acceding to his request.

Back in the present, we find Ellie and Joel arriving in Salt Lake City, where the laboratory of the Fireflies should be located, where they hope to be able to create a vaccine. On the road, Ellie finds a group of giraffes taking advantage of nature having reclaimed its rights in the city. The duo share several scenes where both open up for the first time in a long time. We have more and more the feeling that it is about a father and his daughter. They are, however, captured by the Fireflies.

When Joel wakes up, Marlène explains to him that Ellie is on the operating table because the surgeon must extract the cordyceps from her brain to create his vaccine. Joel then realizes that the Fireflies’ plan for a vaccine requires Ellie’s death. As two Fireflies escort him out of the building, Joel struggles and kills them. Now armed, he makes a real massacre in the camp of the Fireflies and, when he reaches the operating room, executes the surgeon and takes Ellie away. Marlene then stands in his way and asks him to think about the consequences of his actions: if he saves Ellie, he condemns the world to never recover from the cordyceps infection. But the idea of ​​losing a girl again is too heavy for Joel who kills Marlene and leaves with Ellie.

On the way to Jackson, Ellie wakes up and Joel decides to lie to her: the Fireflies have found many other people who are immune to Cordyceps but they can’t create a vaccine. So they gave up. He also specifies that the laboratory of the Fireflies was attacked and that most of them died. Before arriving, Ellie explains to Joel that she had to kill her friend Riley when she transformed. She also asks him to swear to her that what he told her about the Fireflies is true. Joel lies again and swears to her that he told the truth. Season 1 of The Last of Us ends with Ellie announcing that she believes him.

Ellie is still with Joel whose situation is not improving. The duo has no more food and the young woman has to go hunting to hope to feed them. In the forest after shooting a deer, she meets two men, David and James who are part of a community not far from there. And this group is also dying of starvation… When Ellie learns that they have medicine capable of treating Joel, she offers them to take half of the deer killed in exchange for penicillin. After James gives him the drugs, however, David reveals that Joel killed one of his group members and that he knows Ellie is with him. The young woman fled, with my syringe of penicillin but without food.

We then discover the community of Silver Lake, which was formed around David as chief and religious leader. It is a group of several dozen people, including women and children, who accept everything David says or does. Against his indication, however, they want revenge for the death of one of their own. A group is therefore sent on the trail of Ellie who tries to get them away from Joel, still in too bad shape despite having received two injections of penicillin. In her escape, Ellie’s horse is killed and she is captured.

Joel is attacked by men who are looking for him. He kills one and captures two others whom he tortures to find out where Ellie has been taken. He ends up killing them both after getting the information. At Silver Lake, David reveals to Ellie that he found God after the end of the world and that he created this small community that he considers like sheep around their shepherd. David also reveals that, to remedy his group’s starvation, he gives them human flesh to eat without telling them… He offers Ellie to go with him and become a sort of right hand for him. When he takes her hand, Ellie breaks his finger and bites his hand. James and David then attempt to kill her but she reveals to them that she is infected, allowing her to kill James and go into hiding. Trapped with David in the burning building, she ends up stabbing him to death. She finally runs away from Silver Lake and falls into Joel’s arms.

Spoiler alert! Episode 7 opens with Ellie bringing a dying Joel to a house. This orders him to leave him there and return to Tommy. We then witness a flashback in which Ellie’s past is evoked in a training center of the FEDRA in the quarantine zone of Boston. Taken to task by a certain Bethany, Ellie fights with her then receives the remonstrances of a FEDRA officer who lectures her and makes her understand that if she wants a better life, she had better fall into line and become an officer. .

Her friend Riley, whom she thought was dead because she hadn’t given any sign of life for several weeks, enters her room and reveals to her that she has joined the ranks of the Fireflies, fighters who are campaigning to liberate the quarantine zone from the oppression of FEDRA. She then offers him to have the best night of his life. For this, the two teenagers avoid the FEDRA patrols and go to the old shopping center that Riley illuminates just for Ellie. At first suspicious of potential infected, Ellie ends up letting her guard down and letting herself go with Riley who makes her discover the hidden wonders of this old commercial complex. The two young women end up kissing.

Riley however reveals to her that she has been assigned to a new mission and that she is therefore going to leave Boston. She asked that Ellie could come with her but Marlene, leader of the Boston Fireflies, refused. This is terrible news for Ellie who feels abandoned. She asks him to stay. The two teenagers are surprised by an infected who throws himself on her and bites them both before being put out of harm’s way. Ellie and Riley contemplate their options: end it now or wait… If the episode does not give the answer, we know that Ellie survived because she is immune. It is also known that she lost someone earlier before the show started, so Riley is dead. Episode 7 of The Last of Us ends in the present time as Ellie finds some thread and attempts to sew up Joel’s wound.

Spoiler alert! Episode 6 of the series takes place three months after the events of the previous episode. We discover the snowy lands of Wyoming where Ellie and Joel are still looking for Tommy, her brother. They seek information from a couple living alone in a cabin. They advise them not to go to the west of their position because there lives a barbarian community that surrounds itself with corpses rather than friends. Never mind, Joel and Ellie continue on their way.

They are quickly surrounded by a troop of horsemen armed to the teeth. Joel realizes he has no chance of making it out alive if he draws his gun. A dog is brought in to sniff them out and determine if they are infected or not. A scene of great tension since we know that Ellie is infected even if she is immune. But the dog doesn’t detect anything on her either. At the mention of Joel’s identity, they are taken inside the walls of the community of Jackson, a kind of human bastion where civilization is recomposed to face the Apocalypse. It is there that Joel finds Tommy, who will soon become a father and refuses to leave with his brother for a dangerous new adventure. Ellie, meanwhile, discovers what a society looks like where children don’t have the hassle of survival. She also learns that Joel had a daughter named Sarah and that she died shortly after the end of the world began.

Ellie also overhears Joel trying to give the responsibility of the girl to his brother Tommy. According to Joel, his days of survival will soon be behind him and he will end up having her killed, like Sarah and Tess. Joel is a man broken by his failures and does not conceive of experiencing a new one with Ellie. There follows a heartbreaking scene where the duo tear each other apart, with Ellie mentioning Sarah and Joel leaving the room, ready to never see Ellie again. The next day, however, Joel seems to be remorseful and finally offers Ellie to take him to the Fireflies laboratory located in the University of Eastern Colorado. The young woman accepts immediately.

On the road, the duo share a very father-daughter moment when Joel agrees to teach Ellie how to handle a gun. Then, when they arrive at the university, they find that the Fireflies laboratory has recently been decommissioned. They discover the location of another place where the Fireflies must be: Salt Lake City. A little later, four men converge on their position and attack them. Joel kills one but is injured in the abdomen with a stake. They manage to escape on horseback but Joel ends up falling off the saddle, exhausted. The episode ends with a tearful Ellie kneeling in front of Joel.

Episode 5 of The Last of Us opens with a flashback that allows us to discover the violent takeover of the rebel forces of Kansas City led by Kathleen, but also the escape of Henry and his brother Sam. that the young man is mute and that he expresses himself in sign language with his brother. For a reason not yet explained, Kathleen absolutely wants to get her hands on Henry and does not hesitate to mobilize all of her militia to find him. Hidden by Doctor Edelstein (whom we saw die in the previous episode), Henry and Sam hope to hide long enough to be able to escape Kathleen’s army. Deprived of food and without sign of Eldelstein, they must however resolve to leave their hideout in enemy territory. This is where they meet Joel and Ellie.

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In reality, Henry witnessed the carnage carried out by Joel following the ambush. Far from being frightened, he sees in him a violent man, yes, but who could help him leave Kansas City. This is exactly what Henry proposes to Joel, who must however be reasoned with to prevent him from attacking the two brothers. Henry’s plan is simple: you have to go through the Kansas City underground to avoid Kathleen’s armed forces. Problem, that’s where the infected are! On the way, however, the small group of survivors find none. They discover what looks like an ancient underground settlement. Sam and Ellie sympathize on this occasion.

Once out of the underground, they are attacked by a sniper. Joel discovers that he is an old man and hopes not to have to kill him. He is quickly obliged to do so when this one tries to shoot him. The shooter had also had time to call Kathleen and give them the location of Henry and Sam. Kathleen and her militia find them: Joel is alone in a sniper position while Henry, Sam and Ellie are in the clutches the wolf’s. This is where the basement collapses and reveals dozens of infected who attack anyone in their path.

Not without difficulty, Ellie manages to help Sam and Henry escape. They are attacked again by Kathleen who is killed by an infected before she can shoot Henry. The group flees away from the infected area. As things calm down, Sam announces to Ellie that he has been bitten… Ellie tries everything, convinced that her blood could be a medicine for the infection. She slashes her hand and slaps it on the boy’s bite. The next day, however, he attacks her and must be stopped. It is Henry who executes it with a bullet to the head. Appalled, Henry takes his own life shortly after. Episode 5 concludes after Joel has buried Henry and Sam. It is Ellie who urges him to continue their journey West. On Sam’s notebook, we can read that she wrote “I’m sorry”, as an admission that she failed to save him from the disease…

Spoiler alert! After episode 3 largely dedicated to the story of Bill and Frank, Joel and Ellie’s journey to the West of the United States begins in due form. Using Bill’s pick-up truck, the two survivors travel the deserted roads of the country-continent with the idea of ​​reaching Wyoming to find Tommy, Joel’s brother. We learn that the little brother has always been someone who liked to believe in big promises, even before the Apocalypse, when he joined the army before being mobilized in Operation Desert Storm. Since the end of the world, he joined the Fireflies, believing their promises to save civilization.

Never mind, Joel has made it his mission to protect his family, whether it’s his met family like Tess or his real-life family like Tommy. However, he specifies that he does not feel any family ties with Ellie, whom he still considers a “cargo”. However, the young woman does not let herself be defeated and always tries to create a bond with her protector, in particular by offering him many jokes, each more stupid than the other. Joel will end up laughing about it at the end of the episode.

On the fringes of Kansas City, Joel and Ellie are blocked by a roadblock and must enter the interior of the city. They come face to face with a man who pretends to be injured. Joel is not fooled but the trap closes on them. If he succeeds in getting rid of the aggressors, he is put in difficulty by a last one. It is Ellie who, using the revolver she stole from Bill and Frank, saves him from certain death. Joel ends up executing the assailant with a knife, insisting Ellie not look.

At the end of the episode, we discover another human community that lives in Kansas City. This is led by a certain Cathlyn who is looking for an opponent named Henry. She questions a doctor who seems to have information about her but does not tell her. When Cathlyn discovers the death of the three men killed by Joel, she ends up killing the doctor, out of rage, and commands his armed militia to go into town to find Henry and kill all of his “collaborators”. Joel and Ellie find themselves in the search area and try to escape by climbing over 30 stories in a building. Thinking they are out of reach, they are however found by a man and a child who hold them at gunpoint at the end of the episode.

Spoiler alert! Episode 3 of The Last of Us begins with the continuation of the journey of Joel and Ellie, who are now about fifteen kilometers west of Boston, in the middle of nature and in the direction of Bill and Frank. Along the way, Joel reveals to Ellie how the cordyceps epidemic really spread and how the military was guilty of the worst abuses to try to contain it, including the murder of innocent, uninfected people.

We are then transported back 20 years, when the army forcibly evacuates a small town whose inhabitants are understood to have been later shot because there was no place for them in the quarantine zone. As Joel explains to Ellie “the dead cannot be infected”. We discover Bill, a man who had taken refuge in a bunker hidden under his house and was thus able to escape the raid. This hardened survivalist then goes to help himself in the corner stores to build a real fortress around his house with electric fences and terrifying traps.

Bill has only one objective: to survive the Apocalypse and he seemed to have been preparing for it for years, in view of the arsenal he has in his bunker. His almost quiet little life compared to the other survivors will however be upset by the arrival of a man named Frank. He wants to go to Boston but ends up in one of Bill’s traps. Despite his reluctance, Bill invites Frank to share a meal at his house, with the idea of ​​asking him to leave the place afterwards. But a connection is quickly made between the two men. One, seeking protection. The other, in search of companionship.

The rest of episode 3 is devoted to the sometimes complicated romantic relationship of Bill and Frank, two who do not agree, especially on the fact of opening up to other survivors, including Joel and Tess for example. . Their situation is also dangerous, since, as Joel predicts, their fortress is the envy of them and they are attacked in the middle of the night by a group of bandits. At the end of the episode, we discover the two aging survivors and especially a sick Frank, in a wheelchair, who asks his lover to help him leave. Eventually, Bill and Frank both kill each other, ingesting enough drugs to die in their sleep. Joel and Ellie discover a signed note from Bill explaining their choice, which motivates him to take Ellie a little further on her journey, to her brother Tommy who – in all likelihood – is waiting for him in Wyoming and may know. – be where the Fireflies lab is where Ellie needs to go.

Attention spoilers of episode 2 in the rest of this article. Episode 2 of The Last of Us begins with a flashback dated September 23, 2003, three days before the events depicted at the time of the apocalypse seen in Austin around Joel and Sarah in the first episode. It is in Jakarta, Indonesia, that we discover a professor of mycology called by the authorities to study a strange corpse contaminated with cordyceps. We are told that she was bitten by one of her colleagues in a flour factory and that 14 workers are now missing. For this expert, there is nothing to do: no vaccine, no cure is found. The only solution to stem the contamination is to bomb the city…

Back in 2023, we find Joel, Tess and Ellie outside the quarantine zone. The two adults are very fearful of the teenager and her bite mark on the arm. For Joel, their mission is doomed and they better go back to Boston. Tess, on the other hand, is taken by the hope that Ellie can represent a cure in the future. To take him to the Fireflies, however, you have to cross many ruins often infested by infected humans. We also learn that these are linked by a kind of mycelial network that allows them to detect the presence of prey a kilometer away. When you know how fast they can be, this is information that sends shivers down your spine.

The peregrinations of Joel, Ellie and Tess lead them to a museum in Boston which they must cross to reach the Capitol. On the spot, they meet two clickers, infected totally possessed by the cordyceps to such an extent that they have lost their sight. These identify themselves using their cry (terrifying, by the way) in a form of echolocation. The slightest sound leads them to their target and the group quickly pays the price. They end up getting rid of it, not without injury.

Arrived at the Capitol, we discover that the camp of Fireflies who were waiting for Ellie has been decimated, probably following an infection. Ellie understands that Tess has been bitten and therefore has no hope of survival. She insists that Joel continue his mission and lead Ellie to the West where Fireflies would prepare a remedy with the help of doctors. Soon after, dozens of infected converge on the Capitol, forcing Joel and Ellie to flee while Tess remains behind to ensure they are not pursued. She blows up the horde using explosives. Ellie and Joel are alone in the vast infected world now.

Watch out for The Last of Us Episode 1 spoilers below. Episode 1 of The Last of Us series opens with footage from a 1968 show in which an epidemiologist explains that fungi have the potential to harm civilization if global warming allows them to proliferate. In particular, he cites the cordyceps among the threats to the human race. In 2003, we discover little Sarah Miller and her father Joel who celebrates her birthday that day. The young woman is keen to give him a nice gift and decides to have him repair his watch. During the day, several strange signs alert us: the increased presence of the emergency services and the police everywhere in Austin, the hardware store which must close shop in the middle of the afternoon, a student whose hand seems to be full of tics and, finally, an old lady who seems to be convulsing in the background… Something is wrong.

And it is Sarah who first discovers the catastrophe: the humans seem to be taken by a strange disease which makes them extremely aggressive and cannibalistic. She is saved by her father and her uncle Tommy who decide to leave immediately as far as possible. They then witness the disaster: the city is stormed by infected who pursue them. Just when they think they are saved, a soldier is ordered to execute them to prevent the spread of contamination. Joel escapes with a scratch but Sarah dies in his arms soon after.

The rest of the episode takes place twenty years later, in 2023. We discover the quarantine zone of Boston, where we do not hesitate to euthanize a young boy positive for cordyceps infection. The quarantine area is walled in and protected by the military and FEDRA, the Federal Disaster Response Agency. On the spot, the group of Lucioles, rebels, oppose the tyrannical yoke of the army. The leader of the Fireflies, Marlene, has found a very special girl. Ellie is held prisoner for a reason that we will learn at the end of the episode: she is immune to infection. Bitten three weeks ago, she still hasn’t transformed.

In the course of the episode, we find a Joel who seems naturally broken by the death of his daughter. He is also involved in rather dark dealings with a FEDRA soldier. He is also seen abusing alcohol and unidentified pills. With Tess, he leaves to retrieve a car battery he needs to search for his brother Tommy outside the quarantine zone. They come face to face with Marlene in the HQ of the Fireflies who have been decimated in a shootout. Reluctantly, Joel and Tess agree to lead Ellie out of the quarantine zone in hopes of getting everything they need to join Tommy. They are surprised by a soldier who holds them in check. Carried by the memories of the death of his daughter, Joel throws himself on him and kills him with his fists. Tess and Joel then discover that Ellie is cordyceps positive but hasn’t transformed yet. They then decide to continue their journey in the contaminated area.

Episode 1 of The Last of Us ends with a shot of the radio station in Joel’s apartment. This airs Depeche Mode’s 80s track “Never Let Me Down Again”. The song was released in 1987, which has narrative significance as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) pointed out during the episode. Indeed, the young woman discovers in Joel a list of the greatest pieces of music as well as a code relating the decades of publication and the message that it represents. We therefore understand that it is a musical code used by Joel and his brother Tommy to communicate non-verbally. In this code, songs from the 1980s – as learned through Ellie – represent danger. This is therefore promising for the continuation of the adventures of Joel, Tess and Ellie.

Among the revelations of this episode 1, we will also mention the fact that Joel and Tess learn that Ellie is contaminated. Indeed, during their arrest, the soldier had time to test them and the red monitor tends to prove that Ellie is a carrier of the cordyceps infection. Of course, this greatly surprises Joel and Tess, but Ellie tries to reassure them: she was bitten three weeks ago and she has absolutely no symptoms where, traditionally, infected people take a few hours or even a few days to show early symptoms. This revelation coincides with the secrets evoked by the Fireflies, including Marlene who considers that Ellie is more important than anything. We understand that Marlene imagines Ellie as the key to a possible cure for the infection, hence the need to transfer her at all costs outside the quarantine zone to a laboratory held by the Fireflies.

The event series The Last of Us is broadcast in France on Prime Video in streaming from this Monday, January 16, 2023. The first season, consisting of nine episodes of approximately one hour each, is written by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann ( The Last of Us Part I, The Last of Us Part II). Season 1 is to adapt the entirety of the first game released in 2013 exclusively on Playstation 3 at the time before being ported to PS4 and then PS5. For many viewers who have not played the games, this series will undoubtedly be their first contact with the universe of The Last of Us. But then do you have to have played The Last of Us before watching the series? The answer is no.

Like any adaptation, The Last of Us series is aimed at fans of the original work as well as potential new audiences. Because it is indeed a question of attracting an even wider audience than fans of The Last of Us game. episode 1. Neophytes should therefore not be lost at all. Connoisseurs, meanwhile, will have the pleasure of detecting the similarities between the game and the series but also the differences, because the series The Last of Us from HBO also allows itself liberties with respect to the original work, always in the respect for the history of the game. In other words, we will benefit from many references when we played the game but it is not at all necessary to understand the history of the series, fortunately.

Co-written by the screenwriter of The Last of Us, the HBO series scrupulously respects – at least in its episode 1 – the narrative structure of the first game. In fact, quite a few surprises are to be found in this first episode for those who have already played the original work although the series allows itself liberties and deepenings at many points. The Last of Us series sometimes even uses word-for-word dialogues or even plans directly taken from the game. Proof, if any, that this adaptation is particularly faithful to the game The Last of Us.