Towards the end of the fourth episode of the HBO series, “The Last of Us,” we see that Joel and Ellie were trapped inside the enemy territory and were discovered by two brothers, Sam and Henry, who were on the run and trying to save themselves from being captured by a revolutionary group. Though the episode ends before revealing any information about the brothers, we know them from the game, and that is why we have an idea about what they are up to, though a lot of things have been changed in the series. So, let’s try to know who these two brothers were and what they were doing in Kansas City.
Major Spoilers Ahead
Who Were Sam And Henry In ‘The Last Of Us’ Game?
The characters of Henry and Sam in the game are a bit different as compared to what’s been shown in the HBO series, “The Last of Us.” In the game, Henry was born five years before the Cordyceps brain infection broke out, and Sam was 12 years his junior. Henry was like a guardian to Sam, and he made sure that he protected his brother at all costs. Both of them grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, which was converted into a quarantine zone after the outbreak. The military abandoned the post, and both the brothers went to Pittsburgh searching for food or anything else of value that they could get their hands on. What they didn’t know was that Pittsburgh was the stronghold of the raiders, who called themselves hunters. They got attacked while they were searching for supplies and were forced to go into hiding. They hid for many days in an apartment, and that was the time they met Joel and Ellie, who were on their way to Wyoming to find Tommy.
Henry thought that Joel was a hunter, and that is why he attacked him, but Joel was a strong man, and he overpowered Henry. Henry proposed that they could help each other cross the city limits, and though Joel was skeptical about taking any sort of help from the brothers, Ellie convinced him because she knew that Henry and Sam could be of great help to them. They managed to escape the city limits by killing whoever came their way. There was a point in their great escape when Henry abandoned Joel, as he didn’t want to risk his or his brother’s lives. Henry had made one thing very clear: saving his brother’s life was his priority, and even if he had to betray his dearest friends, he would do so without thinking twice.
Why Was Kathleen After Henry?
The HBO series, “The Last of Us,” deviates a bit from the narrative followed in the game and introduces a few new characters and adds another layer of motivation to the already existing ones. Unlike the games, Henry and Sam were hiding in Kansas City when they met Ellie and Joel. The character of Kathleen has been created for the series and she is shown as being the leader of a revolutionary group. Kathleen’s brother had died in the FEDRA prison, and she knew that Henry was the one who had gone behind her back and given the information to the FEDRA.
Now it was possible that Henry and Kathleen might have been working together, and that is why the former knew the whereabouts of the latter’s brother. Why Henry betrayed Kathleen is still unknown, and the only thing we know for sure is that Kathleen had made it her life’s mission to find and kill Henry and Sam. As far as we could ascertain the character of Henry, based on the game, we can say that he was not the kind of man who would put someone’s life in danger unless and until he knew that his or his brother’s life was at risk. He was not the type of man who would give FEDRA soldiers information for monetary gain. It was possible that the FEDRA soldiers threatened to kill Sam or that Henry came to know something about Kathleen and her brother that was potent enough to make him change sides. Whatever his intentions might have been, it didn’t matter anymore, as the crux of the matter was that Kathleen was not going to stop until she found him, and he needed to find a way to escape Kansas City and save his and his brother’s lives.
How Were Ellie And Sam’s Situations Alike?
Ellie and Sam were both quarantine babies, and they didn’t know how the world was when the Cordyceps Brain Infection hadn’t plagued the entire world. Henry was the ideal elder brother who could do anything to keep his brother safe. Joel and Ellie hadn’t reached that point, but in the fourth episode of the series, “The Last of Us,” we saw their bond getting stronger. Joel was in denial, and he didn’t want to accept that he cared for the young girl and that he was making a conscious effort to not let her get exposed to the ruthlessness of the world without a soul. Joel told himself time and again that Ellie was just cargo, and after he delivered her to the Fireflies, his work was over. But just because he wasn’t accepting it, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t changing, and he had started feeling emotionally attached to Ellie. Yes, we don’t deny the fact that she was the most important cargo, as she could help in the creation of a vaccine, but a huge chunk of the care and protectiveness that Joel felt was because he had developed a paternal instinct for her over the course of time.
Sam was a fan of Superman, and apart from the hope that the superhero symbolized, he liked how he had the potential to single-handedly change the situation. Ellie, too, loved guns, and she had the confidence that in the case of combat, she could actually contribute and make a difference, something that she proved when a hunter came to attack Joel in the fourth episode of “The Last of Us.”
Joel knew that the situation was not conducive to thinking about the kind of upbringing a child was getting, but he still tried to protect Ellie’s innocence from getting tainted by the horrors of life. He didn’t want to give her a gun for the longest time, and whenever he killed anybody, he made sure that she was not there to witness it. But these were children of war, and preserving their innocence was a difficult task. They had been born amidst the deafening sounds of gunshots, and they had spent all their lives in quarantine zones. They didn’t know what it felt like to be free, and they were used to seeing people get killed right in front of their eyes. When Joel killed the hunter in Kansas City, Ellie didn’t ask once why he did so, nor did she show any signs of being traumatized or surprised. She knew that it had to be done, no matter how terrifying it felt. In fact, it often felt like violence fascinated her. It would be interesting to see if the makers take some creative liberties and bring about a change in the dynamics shared by the four of them or follow the same path as shown in the game.
Joel and Ellie might not have been there, but the manner in which they were proceeding indicated that there would come a time, sooner or later, when Joel would be ready to take a bullet for Ellie and also accept the fact that, after his daughter, she was probably the only person who could crack stupid jokes and make him laugh.
