When I’m done The last of usIn the eighth episode “If we are in need”, which tells the events of the winter portion of the game, I had to go for a walk. I thought I’d be emotionally primed to see a live-action version of the darkest moments of the source material, but I was surprised once again by the HBO show’s willingness to pull text from the game’s subtext. In doing so, the show makes one of the most terrifying characters in the post-apocalyptic world of Naughty Dog even more terrifying, to spooky effect.
Who is David in? The last of us show?
David is represented by breaking Bad And Jason Bourne Actor Scott Shepherd, and his performance builds on a character who is already undeniably villainous in the game. In a franchise that often explores the moral ambiguity of heinous acts when the world has ended, the game makes no attempt to disguise David as a good man lost in the apocalypse, even if he may think so. This is a man who started a cult, established a system to kill and exploit innocent people, and although the game never says it out loud, he’s a predator towards 14-year-old Ellie.
David’s characterization as both a cult leader and a predator is increased to 11 in HBO’s version of the character. Episode eight begins with David preaching and reading from the Book of Revelation. His listeners don’t seem particularly reassured by his writing, instead being dismayed at the death of someone in their group. A young girl asks David when they can bury “him”, and we later learn that this is the man that Joel killed at the University of Eastern Colorado two episodes ago. But David’s cold (no pun intended) response that they must wait until the snow clears and bury him in the spring does not satisfy the community David has cultivated.
The game The last of us made it clear that the influence David has over the people he commands has waned and that his unwillingness to deal with Ellie in a way that seems appropriate to the loss of the people in her community was a final source of friction . The show, meanwhile, makes it clear that while Joel and Ellie’s actions may have served as a catalyst for the cult’s dissolution, David’s abuses weren’t exclusive to those outside of his close-knit followers.
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About 20 minutes into the episode, there is a scene where David enters a busy diner and tells his community that he has found Ellie and will be following her to find Joel. Then, when the daughter of the man he killed says they should return the favor, David hits her back in front of the entire group. He tells her that she may not feel like she has a father anymore, but maintains that she still has one in him and that when he speaks, she should respect him. He then sits at her table and feeds her her father’s cooked leftovers.
All of this confusion comes because David does not want to kill Ellie, who members of his cult believe is at least partially responsible for the loss of one of their own. The last of us The game makes it very clear that David has some sort of predatory intent towards the young girl as there is a scene where the man sticks her hand through the bars of a cell and tells her she is special. In both versions of the story, Ellie seizes the moment to break her finger and escape. But because the HBO scene is a bit longer, we have to sit with the awkward, mounting suspense as an older man tells a 14-year-old girl about the life they could build together.
The entire thread almost collapses as the conflict comes to an end. After Ellie bites David in a fight, the two confront each other in a burning restaurant, much like the original game. As David gets the upper hand and pins Ellie, he utters a chilling line: “I thought you already knew biting is the part I like the most. No fear. There is no fear in love.” Ellie manages to reach for a cleaver and deliver several fatal blows, but not before the show manages to say it out loud, which the game hasn’t confirmed. In so doing, the show solidifies that there is no necessity motivating David’s actions, merely a perverted, predatory nature.
It’s a phenomenon that illustrated the show throughout its run. In episode three, we watch Bill and Frank’s love story unfold rather than being heavily implied in the game. In episode six, Joel and Tommy have a chat about Joel’s post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves the loss of his daughter Sarah and how he fears that t he closer he gets to Ellie, he won’t be able to protect her in a way he couldn’t Sarah. The HBO series has spent more time each episode talking about things the game left as subtext, and while it’s made for beautiful characterization for a cast we thought we already knew pretty well familiar from the games, it also means terrors like those David inflicts or intends to inflict on others with a more terrible effect.
Why It Matters HBO’s David is clearly terrifying
What makes this particularly interesting for David is that the character’s actor, Nolan North, has spoken out about interpretations of the villain over the years and has perhaps been more charitable to him than the show ever entertains. north has become on record that he did not view David as a villain when he took on his role, and that while most people would consider him “insane,” he sympathized with him as the actor who impersonated the role. He even said in a YouTube Let’s Play of the original game that he viewed David as a “distorted father” rather than a “sexual deviant.”
A lot of North’s comments are just what you might expect from an actor stepping into his role. However, Troy Baker, who plays Joel in the original game and plays the supporting role of James in this episode, has attempted to equate David’s actions with Joel’s in a way that was confusing in 2020 and is even more confusing in 2023 now after the show has made such great efforts undertaken to make it clear that David is reprehensible, even by post-apocalyptic standards. In The official The last of us podcast (the one about the games, not the one about the show, I know it’s confusing), Baker cites the discussion of David as follows:
The character of David, tell me one thing David did wrong. Tell me one thing that makes him “bad”. I can cite one instance where David is – he and Joel could be mirror images of each other. Both are looking for those who love and protect them. Both are willing to take care of Ellie. The only time he actually goes against Ellie is when she tries to kill him.
Comparing these two defenses from David, I think North’s is mostly okay, because as an actor it’s your job to empathize with a character, no matter how much a monster he is. But Baker’s comparison of David to Joel is wild to me because it supports an idea that despite the questionable morality of Joel’s violent actions, he somehow equates to a cannibal and sexual predator. For all The last of us‘ states that post-apocalyptic violence is a morally ambiguous act, some acts of violence are not necessarily considered acceptable, and David crosses that line more than once.
What makes David’s performance on the HBO show so outstanding is that it’s one of the most explicit examples of it The last of us Adaptation of the source material not through sweeping changes. Instead, the show capitalizes on what was already there, pulling out the character parts that were bubbling just beneath the surface in the games for more overt purposes. The show doesn’t allow for differing interpretations or explaining away the truth. Sometimes it’s okay to say someone is a monster, even in a world where most people are just a decomposed version of who they used to be.
