The Last of Us Episode 8 is a horrifying survival story that changes everything

We’re in the endgame for season 1 of The Last of Us, and this week, things get dark. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) have overcome many challenges during their cross-country journey, but “When We Are in Need” tests them like never before, to the point where you wonder if they can really come back.

As always, this review contains SPOILERS for the latest episode of The Last of Us as well as for Naughty Dog’s video game.

The Last of Us Episode 8 review: “When We Are In Need”

So far, The Last of Us has balanced human drama and even sweet-natured humor with post-apocalyptic horror. “When We Are In Need” leans deep into the horror side of the series to deliver the most nail-biting hour of television of the year so far. This episode was basically everything I hoped it would be and more, adapting some of the most iconic scenes from The Last of Us video game.

This episode is all about a group of cultish survivors holed up at the Silver Lake resort who come into conflict with Ellie and Joel. Led by David (Scott Shepherd), these cultists at first appear to be a religious sect spouting a lot of compassionate jargon. But on closer inspection, this group — and David in particular — are revealed as far more terrifying than any clicker.

As with Kathleen and Frank and Henry, the show spends a solid chunk of time introducing us to these new characters. David is the quintessential creepy preacher who spouts florid rhetoric while hiding extreme darkness beneath the surface. There are hints things are amiss in the opening scene, which feels like something straight out of an A24 movie. But it’s only later, when it becomes clear the group is starving and resorting to drastic measures to survive, that the full picture comes into focus. They’re also grieving the loss of one of their number, which we’ll circle back to in a second.

Then you have Joel and Ellie, who are still holed up in an abandoned house. Joel’s wound has gotten badly infected, leading Ellie to scour the countryside for food and medicine. She gets lucky, finding a deer and shooting it (in a stunningly good combination of real animal footage and CGI), which ultimately brings her into contact with David and his right-hand man James (played by Troy Baker, the same actor who portrayed Joel in the video games.)

David sends James to get penicillin to trade for the deer and then has a long conversation with Ellie that takes a sinister twist. It’s revealed that the people who attacked Joel and Ellie at the University of Eastern Colorado were part of David’s group. That guy who stabbed Joel? He’s the guy some of the cultists were grieving at the beginning of the episode…and they’re none to happy to learn that Ellie and Joel are still alive and nearby.

This conversation highlights one of the biggest running themes of the episode. A lot of the dialogue is taken straight from the game, including David’s chilling “everything happens for a reason” line. “When We Are In Need” is an incredibly faithful adaptation of the Winter section of The Last of Us game, but it also improves the story and dialogue in a number of small ways. For example, we get more information about how David found God and spend some time in the Silver Lake dining hall, which we never saw in use during the game.

A scary showdown at Silver Lake

From there, things quickly spiral out of control. Ellie administers the penicillin to Joel, cuddling up with him for one last night of peace before things get ugly. David and his crew track Ellie the following morning. As she tries to lead them away from Joel her horse is shot and she’s captured.

What follows is one of the most intense sequences in the entire series to date. Awakening to discover Ellie is in danger, Joel goes fully off the deep end, torturing two of the cultists he captures in order to find out where they took her. This is another iconic scene from the game, and my did the show pull it off, right down to Joel’s brutal “I believed him” line as he clubs in the head of one of his prisoners.

While Joel is scouring the area to find Ellie, she’s busy fighting for her life. We learn that the cultists are cannibals who have been eating the dead and those unfortunate enough to cross their paths, which sheds a sickening new light on earlier shots of them chowing down on food. David tries to convince Ellie to join them, but she reacts about how you’d expect: breaking two of his fingers, killing James with a cleaver, and slipping out of her imprisonment.

It all leads to an edge-of-your-seat showdown between Ellie and David in the main hall of Silver Lake resort while the building burns down around them. David’s ranting is terrifying, and the final moment where he tries to rape Ellie only for her to chop his face to bloody bits with a cleaver is absolutely brutal.

It’s not long after that that Ellie and Joel are finally reunited, stumbling away from the fiery wreckage together…but a feeling of unease lingers long after the credits roll.

“When We Are In Need” is a peak episode of The Last of Us anchored by outstanding performances from Ramsey, Shepherd, Pascal and Baker. As far as penultimate episodes go, the show couldn’t have done better.

The Last of Bullet Points

• This episode did an amazing job of subverting viewer expectations. Normally in a story like this you’d expect Joel to show up at the last minute and save Ellie; the show even sets this up by having Joel arrive at Silver Lake right before Ellie’s battle with David. However, Ellie ultimately must save herself, with Joel only appearing afterward to escort her away from the carnage.
• Similarly, David doesn’t strike the young cultist girl who talks back to him at the beginning of the episode, which only makes it more shocking when in a later scene he abruptly backhands her so hard she’s sent sprawling to the floor. The writers really know how to keep you guessing.
• The set design continues to be absolutely stunning, which is funny considering most of the show is set in run-down buildings. But those run-down buildings are perfect.
• It was awesome to see Troy Baker have such a big role in this episode. I’ve loved how The Last of Us has incorporated so many of the people that worked on the games. And casting him as an antagonist was a great call.
• That said, it’s kind of messed up that Baker’s character shoots Ellie’s horse and is ultimately responsible for her capture, and that she kills him later in the episode. I imagine the producers got a meta chuckle out of this; I know I did.
• I misted up hard when Joel called Ellie “baby girl” and wrapped her in his jacket. This episode marked a huge turning point for these characters and their relationship. It’s been a while since Joel was that guy who didn’t even want to escort Ellie out of Boston.
• The scene where Joel kills a guy by quietly stabbing and choking him out until he dies was so intense. Joel has killed a lot of people off screen, but now we see him get his hands very, very dirty. That was also a cool little game reference; it’s framed very similarly to how Joel does stealth takedowns in the game.
• Speaking of game references, just like with “Left Behind” there were an absolute ton of them here. Just about every scene involving Joel or Ellie is from the game, many of them almost exact translations. Read our game vs. show breakdown for the episode if you want to deep dive.
• Bella Ramsey has had a lot of fantastic material this season, but “When We Are In Need” marked a huge turning point for Ellie as a character, foreshadowing the sort of dark depths Ramsey will have to go to in future seasons. If anyone had any concerns about whether she can pull off Ellie’s grim story in The Last of Us Part II, this episode should lay them to rest.

Verdict

“When We Are In Need” is as solid a penultimate episode as we could have hoped for. It adapts one of the most iconic sections of the game while expanding on it in a number of great ways. It almost feels silly to say that the show’s hotstreak continues, because at this point the season’s practically over and it has hardly missed a beat. It’s just a nearly pitch-perfect show, that’s all there is to it. On to the finale!

Episode grade: A+

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