The Last of Us – Enneagram and Encaustic

Season One Overview of The Last of Us

Wow. Season One is a grim line-up! It’s a dark world out there.

I’ve bolded the episode titles as I work through the Storytelling Enneagram.

When You’re Lost in the Darkness

ONE

This encompasses the first half of the episode, including all of pre-outbreak life. Within here Sarah dies and twenty years pass. We’re also introduced to post-outbreak life under a military government.

Establish Joel and Tess; establish Marlene and Ellie.

TWO

Joel meets Ellie. This Trouble moment looks all the way forward to the final episode. He’s tasked with delivering her to the Fireflies at the Two, and he succeeds at the Eight (although not in the way we expect).

When Ellie discovers the radio code in Joel’s apartment, we also begin to see their dynamics together. We get the hint that their dominating and crusty personalities might be double Eights, and we see which person is going to lead the other. Ellie outsmarts Joel right from the start.

ELLIE WILLIAMS, EIGHT

Remember, Ellie is a leader. It’s something we’re told more than shown, until we look at her in comparison to Joel. The child leads the man.

Here’s an interesting thought: is Ellie an Eight? Usually I wouldn’t like two main characters sharing the same Enneagram number, but this might work. Ellie displays the positive traits of an Eight. Leadership, bravery, loyalty, and an awareness of how her actions impact greater society. Joel is the negative. He’s brave and loyal, but not in the same way. He’s the guy the mob boss can depend on to do the dirty work. Ellie and Joel are both the kind of people you need in a dystopia, but Ellie’s the one you want to keep around after society begins to rebuild. Joel’s the one you want following Ellie’s orders.

JOEL MILLER, EIGHT

Think back to the beginning, before the outbreak. Joel would probably be his truest self at that point. Even then he was socially disconnected. Sarah wants him to grab a birthday cake and he forgets. Later, certainly, he’s not socially comfortable. He ridicules Tommy for being a “joiner”. This is not a Heart Type.

He’s not a leader, either. That’s Tess. That’s Marlene and, we’re told by FEDRA, that’s Ellie. Joel is a follower. We can say, judging by the final episode, that he’s not a planner. When no one is in charge of him, he kills everyone in the building. He’s not strategic. (He would’ve kept the doctor alive if he had any sense of the post-apocalypse big picture.) We could even say that Sarah was the boss of him before she died. For Joel, he’s not just losing a daughter with Sarah (or with the threat to Ellie), he’s losing his purpose and identity.

This is a particular kind of Eight, the type society tries to keep busy in physical jobs. He’s a mastiff on a leash, if we’re lucky. In civilization, we want Joel to obey orders. In war, we let the dog slip.

Look for the Light

This is the finale for Season One of The Last of Us.

ONE

Someone is panting and running through the woods. A woman. She’s last-trimester pregnant, and she’s having contractions. Sounds of pursuit keep her moving. Ahead, a ramshackle farmhouse. When entering, she calls out, “It’s me,” so she knows this place.

Her water breaks. In what was once a child’s bedroom, she pushes a chair under the doorknob and squats against the wall. She’s in advanced labor now. From her pocket she takes a switchblade, ready just in case. Something attacks the outside of the door. An infected breaks in and scrambles at her, rushing right up to her face.

She stabs him and goes back to giving birth. A small human, delivered onto the floor, starts crying. As mother looks down at the baby, she notices the bite mark on her leg. She quickly cuts the cord and ties it off.

A very precious and unhappy newborn infant (a squirmble!) gets a close-up. Mama cradles it and says, “Ellie”. Roll credits.

When We Are In Need

This is my least favorite episode of The Last of Us. Let’s get through it together.

ONE

Silver Lake, CO. The depths of winter.

Inside a restaurant, people meet and listen to a man reading from the Bible. A teen girl weeps. A sign written on cloth hangs at the window: “When we are in need He shall provide.”

TWO

The preacher/leader (David) kneels next to the girl. (He speaks gently but he has a creepy vibe.) She asks, “When can we bury him?” David pauses, looking at another man (James) at the gathering, then says the ground is too cold for digging. In the spring.

Outside, people in parkas head home. Blowing snow and roof ice dams indicate a very cold place. (None of Jackson’s social cheer is here.) James and David discuss that their meat stores are down to a week. Deer were spotted in the forest. David challenges James, sensing doubt in him. No, he answers, it’s just been a hard six months.

THREE

Ellie examines Joel’s wound while he sleeps. He looks feverish. Wolfing down the last packet of jerky, Ellie leaves a piece on Joel’s blanket. She heads out with the rifle.

Left Behind

LEFTOVER NINE

While credits roll, the camera travels through a neighborhood of abandoned houses. Inside a garage is the horse, still wearing its tack. Cut to a frantic Ellie, ripping cloth for bandages and pressing on Joel’s wound. He lies on the basement floor gasping in pain. He tells her to leave, and she yells at him to shut up. “Go to Tom,” he says. After covering him with his coat, she gives him a long look and walks out. Fade to black.

ONE

Pearl Jam starts, over, and we fade in on a Walkman at Ellie’s waist while she runs laps in the school gym. Round and round the basketball floor the girls jog until some bully comes from behind and rips off Ellie’s headset. The bully taunts that Ellie’s friend, the one who fights for her, is no longer here. After a pause, Ellie throws a punch.

Cut to Ellie in the principal’s office. She has a black eye. Cpt. Kwong wears a FEDRA uniform. He’s gentle, mentioning that Ellie’s been in much more trouble over the past few weeks. The bully, Bethany, is in the infirmary with stitches. Kwong, who appears to like Ellie, lays out the two paths ahead for her. One, she becomes a drudge doing the worst jobs. Two, she becomes an officer and has an easier life. “There’s a leader in you,” he says.

Details of a room: a baseball on a window sill, dinosaur drawings, a paperback copy of “No Pun Intended”. Rain is heard while Ellie on her bed reads the comic book Sam loved in Episode 5, “Savage Starlight”. She tosses it aside and looks over at a bare corner of the room with an unoccupied bed. Lights out, and Ellie climbs under her covers.

Kin

LEFTOVER NINE

Henry’s final moment from the previous episode replays.

ONE

Three Months Later. We’re in snow country. A man carrying rabbit carcasses strides up to a self-sufficient cabin. We don’t see his face until he enters and exchanges a glance with this wife, who sits by the fire. Her eyes move sideways, and Joel steps from behind the room’s center post with his gun drawn.

The couple goes through some hilarious schtick, the kind only longtime partners have, and the man sits. Joel is looking for Tommy. Ellie, from the loft, asks to come down. Husband and wife exchange another speaking look.

TWO

Joel asks for their location on a map and how to travel west. “Go east,” the man says. Past the river are a lot of dead bodies, only some of them infected. Joel and Ellie head out, having no choice but to continue on.

(This was a jewel of a scene that ended way too soon. Give Graham Greene and Elaine Miles their own show. I’d watch them all day.)

THREE

As they leave, Joel has what appears to be a panic attack, although it could be angina.

Endure and Survive

ONE

Fireworks. People chanting and celebrating in the street. FEDRA is defeated, its officers shot, and the Resistance owns the city. (This is a flashback.) Henry and Sam hide from the searchlights and communicate with sign language.

TWO

A jail enclosure filled with people. Kathleen, Perry guarding her, enters and sits. These are the FEDRA snitches. With her sweet, girlish voice, Kathleen promises them a trial (where they’ll be found guilty) and some time served if they tell her where Henry is. When she threatens to shoot them, someone implicates the doctor. Kathleen insists Perry go door-to-door until Henry’s found. And the snitches, even the one who talked, should be shot and burned.

Henry and Sam enter a building. Random gunfire can be heard outside. They find the attic hidey-hole where the doctor waits. (Kathleen shoots him at the beginning of the previous episode.) Henry calculates they have enough supplies for 11 days. In that time they need to figure out an escape route.

THREE

To calm Sam, Henry comes to see what he’s drawing on his Magic Slate Paper Saver. (Yes, I had to google the official name of this well-known toy.) It’s Super Sam, wearing a heroic mask. Henry gives him a bag of crayons so he can decorate the brick walls.

Please Hold To My Hand

ONE

Ellie practices with her handgun in front of a decrepit bathroom mirror. Partly she’s watching herself look cool, but she also unloads the magazine and inspects the weapon, learning it. She reloads it and slides it into her backpack.

TWO

Outside, they’re at an overgrown gas station with cars parked nearby. Joel siphons the tanks. She’s talkative and curious, he’s curt and taciturn. From her backpack she pulls out a paperback: No Pun Intended, Volume Too. (His face is priceless as she reads the jokes with joyful comedic timing.)

THREE

As they drive down an interstate, Ellie passes him a Hank Williams cassette from her backpack. She’s sitting in the backseat. Reaching under the front, she finds a men’s magazine and starts exclaiming about the centerfold. (Remember, this was Bill’s truck.) Laughing at how flustered she’s made Joel, she tosses the magazine out the window.

Long, Long Time

On my first watch of The Last of Us I missed the plot plants for this episode. The radio link in Joel’s apartment that plays 80’s tunes as a sign of trouble, and Tess’ plea for Joel to leave Ellie with Bill and Frank, didn’t stick with me as important.

However, that means I went into episode 3 with no expectations. I didn’t remember that Bill had a Frank. I’m glad, actually, that everything was a surprise for me. It let me experience each beat at its full impact. I’ve really been looking forward to this rewatch.

Let’s see how the breakdown holds up!

LEFTOVER NINE

Joel’s damaged hand reaches into a stream and takes out a stone. He’s building a cairn on the riverbank. Ten Miles West of Boston. Ellie waits for him in the woods. As Joel packs up to move on, Ellie takes him to task: Don’t blame me for Tess’ death. After a beat, Joel nods. They have a five hour hike ahead of them.