Warning: spoilers ahead for The Last of Us episode 4.
The Fourth Episode of The Last of Us highlights a watershed moment in Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) adventure, as the two enjoy a key bonding moment while hiding from a new threat on their tail.
The two end up in Kansas after being forced to take a detour on their trip to find Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) in Wyoming in the newest episode of the TV programme based on the video game series of the same name.
Director of photography Eben Bolter recently spoke with Metro.co.uk about the touching moment in which Joel and Ellie are avoiding the threatening Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) and her crew of revolutionaries, who are following them after the murders of several of their men.
Despite the fact that death is just metres away outside, the characters are able to bond in an altogether new way following the deaths of their pals Tess (Anna Torv), Bill (Nick Offerman), and Frank (Murray Bartlett).
Joel and Ellie share bonding moment after attack
When Joel and Ellie try to travel through Kansas City, they come across a man who tries to lead them into a trap by claiming to be hurt, before a bunch of bandits attacks them with the intent to kill.
Joel kills two of the guys before another attempts to strangle him to death, but the assailant is stopped by Ellie, who had disguised the fact that she had stored a revolver away from Bill and Frank’s house.
While Joel is the one who delivers the fatal blow, viewers might have expected that when he and Ellie are alone and sheltering in a bar, with the windows covered by newspapers, he’ll be unhappy with the adolescent for not informing him she has a handgun on her.
Instead, he teaches her how to use it properly, proving how much more he’s coming to trust her and relax his own guard, after she’d earlier tried to make him laugh with her pun book.
After filming the scene in a pub in Calgary, Canada, one of the few non-set settings, cinematographer Eben characterised the connection as a’real bonding moment,’ since while ‘they’re still in a perilous situation,’ they’ve ‘got a little moment to rest’.
‘We talked a lot about what that environment would be and it changed a few times,’ he recalled, before the team decided on the setting of the bar.
‘It’s always my intent on The Last of Us to make it feel like a real location, and that we’ve stumbled upon it and it happens to look great, but it’s still found,’ he added, having collaborated with the art department on the programme to try and ‘bring colour in’ to the setting, which resulted in them creating a ‘stained-glass effect’ above them in the room, alongside the ‘incredibly red bright vivid walls’.
‘In terms of them being hidden, I think it was boarded up with wood, and we just asked if that could be a blanketing of newspaper, because the newspaper naturally goes a little bit yellow, and then you get this beautiful, diffused, soft light that just makes it feel intimate, but warm, safe, but still in the world,’ he explained.
This scenario was filmed in a genuine place so that they could integrate the armoured vehicles driving outside with their personal talk.
‘It was one of the rare ones where it was a location and we’d sort of bent it into our world and it worked,’ he stated.
Melanie Lynskey’s Kathleen makes foreboding entrance
Despite having a bright and exuberant personality in real life, Melanie’s character Kathleen in The Last of Us couldn’t be further from the truth.
Kathleen, like the hunters in the video game, is the head of a revolutionary organisation in Kansas City that has no qualms about using violence and fatal retribution to achieve their goals.
While she and her soldiers are looking for two persons named Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Montreal Woodard), she chooses to follow them as well after seeing a trail of dead bodies left by Joel and Ellie, presuming that they are working together.
Melanie gives a very gloomy portrayal as the softly spoken leader of the pack, so Joel and Ellie had best be on their guard.
Meanwhile, one of her companions, Perry, is played by Jeffrey Pierce, who also plays Tommy in the computer game The Last of Us.
Henry and Sam are on the run from Kathleen’s forces
Other than the knowledge that Henry and Sam are on the run from Kathleen and her army, nothing is known about them in The Last of Us TV programme.
Joel and Ellie are asleep at the end of the episode when they are awoken by Henry and Sam, who is Deaf, standing over them with pistols.
Sam urges them to be quiet by placing his finger over his mouth, so it will be interesting to observe how they interact with Joel and Ellie, who are characters stolen directly from the computer game, until next week.
The Last of Us is available to watch on Sky and NOW, with new episodes released on Mondays.