How did HBO’s The Last of Us change Sam and Henry from the game?

A three-way battle on the outskirts of Kansas City

That brings us to the big climax of the episode, where hunters, infected, and our heroes all clash in a chaotic showdown at the edge of the city. Many of the specifics in this scene are informed by all the changes the show made, such as Kathleen and Henry’s complicated relationship, but the overall format of the sequence sticks to the game.

In the video game, the hunters still use vehicles — in this case a humvee fitted with a heavy machine gun — to try and corner our heroes. Joel still has to take out a sniper that’s threatening the group, only to then see that raiders are swarming in behind his friends. He still has to try his best to cover them with sniper fire, shouting for them to run as hunters give chase. And the infected still show up right after, with one biting Sam amidst the chaos.

As with the truck crash in Episode 4, Episode 5 condenses several action scenes from the game down into one big television set piece. Henry and Joel’s relationship is far more complex in the game, with less trust between them. There’s one moment where Henry tries to leave Joel behind, only for Ellie to rush back to Joel’s aid. The two groups are eventually reunited after Ellie and Joel jump off a bridge to escape the hunter humvee and make peace once it becomes clear that it was Henry who fished them out of the river, but the journey to them becoming allies is far rockier than on the show.

Was Kathleen in The Last of Us game?

As we’ve mentioned, Kathleen and her entire story is new. She didn’t appear in Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us video games at all, though there were references to the hunters having a new leader. As such, everything dealing with Kathleen and her death in the show is brand new.

The same goes for Kathleen’s right-hand man Perry, although there’s a pretty fun easter egg there: Perry is voiced by Jeffrey Wright, who portrayed Joel’s brother Tommy in the video game. So of course they had to kill him off in particularly gruesome fashion by having the bloater rip off his head. Incidentally, this is more or less how bloaters kill Joel in the game if they catch him; it’s a one-hit kill.

Did Henry and Sam die in The Last of Us game?

Now we come to the most heartbreaking bit. If you’ve just watched “Endure and Survive,” one big question you probably have is whether Sam and Henry suffered the same horrific fate in the video game as in the TV show.

The answer is yes. Sam and Henry die in the exact same manner in both versions of the story. Their death scene is another instance where the show stuck to the game almost verbatim, recreating exact lines of dialogue and shots from one of the most tragic moments.

The main change to Sam and Henry’s death scene is Sam and Ellie’s last conversation. In the game, Sam never reveals to her that he’s been bitten, which means that Ellie never tries to use her blood to heal him or keep his condition secret from Joel and Henry. She doesn’t find out anything is amiss until she goes to wake Sam for breakfast only to find he has turned. Instead of that heartbreaking scene where she tries to reassure and heal him, we got a different one where Ellie reveals she had saved the toy Henry had scolded Sam over earlier, keeping it hidden to give to him once they were out of danger. Rather than act excited, this just makes Sam more upset since he knows his time is limited, and he pushes Ellie away to spend his last night by himself.

It’s a slightly different take, but the gist is the same. Henry is forced to kill his brother Sam before taking his own life.

There are two other changes worth noting. The first is that Henry’s motives are slightly different; in the game, any survivors from his group were supposed to rendezvous at an abandoned radio station so that they could then go meet up with the Fireflies. However, upon arriving at the radio station it becomes clear that no one else is coming, which leads into the death scene. The Fireflies are not a part of Henry’s story at all in the show.

The other change is that, on the show, we actually see Joel and Ellie bury Sam and Henry. The game cuts to black when Henry pulls the trigger, skipping forward to the next segment of Ellie and Joel’s journey; we find out that they buried Sam and Henry as the two talk.

The show also gives us one more tear-jerker moment when Ellie leaves Sam’s magic slate paper saver on his grave with the words “I’m sorry” written on it; in the game, she only reflects later how she wished Joel had let her leave the toy she’d tried to give Sam on his grave.

“Endure and Survive” was an epic episode of The Last of Us, and did a stellar job of honoring this important segment of the game while breathing new life into it. Read our review of it here:

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