Are Henry and Sam really dead in ‘The Last Of Us’?
The Last Of Us delivers two heartbreaking deaths in the show’s fifth episode.
Created by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and the original game’s co-director Neil Druckmann, the series follows Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) 20 years after modern civilisation has been ravaged by a deadly infection.
The fifth episode, titled Endure And Survive, marks the real introduction of Sam (Keivonn Woodard) and his older brother Henry (Lamar Johnson). The pair are hiding away from the revolutionaries in Kansas City, and form an escape plan with Joel and Ellie.
Are Henry and Sam dead after The Last Of Us episode five?
In case being shot in the head wasn’t clear enough, Sam and Henry are unequivocally dead. After the infected attack, Sam reveals to Ellie he’s been bitten. Ellie attempts to cure him by rubbing her blood into the wound, but the next morning, Sam has turned and attacks Ellie.
Henry shoots his younger brother to stop him attacking Ellie. Unable to cope with the loss, Henry then points the gun on himself and pulls the trigger.
Do Henry and Sam’s deaths play out in the game in the same way?
The show largely stays faithful to 2013’s The Last Of Us in regards to Sam and Henry’s deaths. The only difference is Sam never shows his bite mark to Ellie in the original game, which makes the attack perhaps more surprising when Ellie goes to check on him.
Like Tess’s death earlier in the season, it marks a small change from the source material. The scene between Ellie and Sam does, however, allow the showrunners to dispel theories that Ellie’s blood can act as an immediate cure to infected bites.
In a four-star review of the series, NME wrote: “Gamers have been burned before by poorly conceived adaptations of their favourite titles, so they were naturally skeptical. But they needn’t have been. The Last Of Us lacks novel ideas, but when it’s this good it can get away with it.”