Warning: The following article contains spoilers for future plot lines in The Last of Us.
Tension is ramping up with each fresh episode of The Last of Us, as Ellie and Joel’s situation becomes more dire.
The most recent episode, “Left Behind,” finished off with Ellie making the decision to stick with Joel, despite his poor condition, and work to keep her surrogate father alive. Her quick thinking with that needle and thread should stop the bleeding, but Joel will need medicine, cautious care, and most importantly time to recover from his injury.
Warning: Spoilers to follow.
Fans of the games behind HBO’s spectacular series are well aware of what comes next. We have officially entered the “Winter” stage of the game’s story, in which Ellie sets out on her own to keep the pair alive. She’ll really start to grow into herself in the next stage, as she is forced to hunt, scavenge, and survive without Joel’s gruff guidance to keep her going. Thankfully, Ellie has already proven herself to be a capable and stalwart girl, and her determination to keep Joel breathing will surely help keep her going as things get grim.
And grim is just the word for what’s headed her way, in the form of David. A vicious survivor with a loyal group at his back, David — at first — seems relatively friendly, despite the clear threat of any full grown man when matched against Ellie. He and Ellie agree to exchange a deer, which Ellie felled, for antibiotics Joel desperately needs. They even fight off some infected together, in the game, before David reveals to Ellie that it was members of his group that attacked she and Joel at the university.
Things sour, following the revelation. Ellie gets the antibiotics she requested, but David and his men attempt to track her back to Joel. She’s too smart to lead them back to her ailing father figure, but her attempts to lead them away get her caught. She’s captured, rather than killed, due to David’s entirely creepy desire to add her to his group — and maybe make her a child bride — and wakes in a cell.
It is concept art for the following area that was unearthed by The Last of Us fans, and reignited anxiety over the coming storyline. See, when Ellie wakes, she finds herself in a cell, and soon witnesses one of David’s men chopping up a body for food. The group’s cannibalism has kept them alive this long — and was the motivator behind their attack at the university — and David wants Ellie to join them in their gristly community.
Concept art for this portion of the game shows some genuinely upsetting images, so avoid unleashing the above if you’re squeamish. A gruesome image shows a line of human bodies, hung up like livestock, with various appendages missing. As most gamers noted in the comments, it is an accurate — if extra gory — depiction of what Ellie stumbles across in the game, but it takes things a bit father than Naughty Dog did in the actual release.
As several people noted, however, this is exactly how David and his men likely prepare a body they intend to consume. It’s certainly not pretty to look at, however, and the image sparked immediate anxiety over the upcoming episode. With David’s introduction looming, fans realized they are not ready for Bella Ramsey’s Ellie to confront something so macabre.
Based on how the show has adapted things so far, it seems unlikely that any castrated corpses will appear over the next few episodes of HBO’s adaptation, but we’re sure to see some creepy cannibal action soon. At least those fans who frequent Reddit’s The Last of Us sub have some warning of what’s to come, but the remainder of viewers will head into Sunday’s episode blind.