5 best moments from HBO’s The Last of Us (and the 5 most devastating)

The Last of Us Episode 7
The Last of Us Episode 7 /
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The Last of Us Episode 3
The Last of Us Episode 3 /

The second best moment from The Last of Us: Bill and Frank’s love story

We’ve talked a fair amount about great moments in the show which were adapted almost verbatim from the game, but now we have to talk about what’s probably the single biggest change to the story. Bill and Frank are relatively minor characters in Naughty Dog’s video games; in fact, we never even see Frank alive in the game. But the show tells the story of how these two men found each other amidst the zombie apocalypse.

We’re classifying Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) entire story as one moment, because that’s the only way to talk about it properly. As we skip through the decades, we see Bill go from being a solitary survivalist to realizing he’s found someone he cares about to being so devoted that he’s not only willing to take his life so he doesn’t have to live without Frank, he’s happy to do it. It’s powerful as hell, and that’s before you even start to unpack the real-life impact of a huge HBO series portraying a loving and complex relationship between two men with such care.

Offerman and Bartlett totally kill it in the roles, and the way the whole thing is written and paced is perfect. Looking back on the season, their saga is easily one of the high points.

The Last of Us Episode 5
The Last of Us Episode 5 /

Second most devastating moment in The Last of Us: Sam and Henry’s deaths

Bill and Frank may have had a happy ending, but no such luck awaited our next pair of survivors. Joel and Ellie met brothers Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) during their journey through the ruins of Kansas City. While initially reluctant to trust them, after surviving the horrors of the city together the group ends up becoming friends. Despite his usual cynicism, Joel even invites Henry and Sam to come with him and Ellie to Jackson. For a fleeting second, it looks like the traveling party may have just grown larger and Joel and Ellie will have company for the next leg of their journey.

How quickly that illusion is shattered. We soon discover that Sam was bitten by an infected during the chaotic cul de sac battle. The show then makes the whole thing even worse than the game by having Ellie keep it a secret, attempting to heal Sam with her blood. The end result is the same though. Infected Sam attacks Ellie the next morning, forcing Henry to shoot his younger brother to save her life. Horrified at what he’s done, Henry then proceeds to commit suicide while Joel begs him to hand over the gun.

The death of Henry and Sam is by far one of the most traumatic moments in the season, and not just for viewers. It’s the first real shared trauma that Joel and Ellie experience together, and it’s crushing.