[Ed. note: As you might’ve guessed from the headline, this post contains spoilers for a death at the end of The Last of Us episode 5.]
At some point everything goes wrong for everyone in the suburban litter The last of us Episode 5. “Endure and Survive” concludes with an elaborate action-set-piece that sees infected Joel (Pedro Pascal), Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and their Kansas City allies and foes alike swarm out of a hole in the ground and overrun. Many people die. But few die as brutally as Perry (Jeffrey Pierce), ripped to pieces by a bloater.
Even out of focus in the background as Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) escapes, it’s a particularly hard-hitting murder. And Pierce, who also voiced Joel’s brother Tommy The last of us
“Craig [Mazin, co-showrunner] said, ‘Look, you’re going to get the best death of the entire season,'” Pierce said in an interview with Polygon. “And to me – he’s a man who’s lived by a code of honour. And the idea of him being given that honorable death he can choose and sacrificing himself in the hope that Kathleen might be able to escape is really as heroic and selfless an act as one could wish for.”
That’s the strength Pierce wanted every moment Perry was on screen. The way he saw it, Perry was a former soldier, had no interest in joining FEDRA and her death squads, and had roamed around until he found Kathleen and her brother and joined their cause. Pierce describes going back and forth with the props department and putting together the look he wanted for the character he envisioned: a tactical vest with plate carriers, a personal weapon along with his FEDRA Beretta, three separate knives (“In the game’s lore, your knives are going out,” Pierce notes) and a medicine kit on his back. The goal was to make him feel steely and professional, in keeping with the “mythology of cowboys and samurai”.
“So, yeah, I think it’s great that he could choose to end things like that, even though she doesn’t really take advantage of the window he’s buying her,” Pierce says with a laugh. “Perhaps someone escaped by sacrificing themselves!”
Ultimately, Kansas City’s dead end just wasn’t big enough to accommodate that Cordyceps network under the city. And Perry becomes another distinctive zombie kill in a world full of zombies. Even so, Pierce will always cherish his memories of the sacrifice he made in the line of duty.
“We did whatever it took for the bloater to get a foothold,” says Pierce, noting that there was a real guy in the bloater suit. “He was hilarious. Like a 6ft5 Australian rugby player dancing between takes Michael Jackson in his bloated outfit was damn hilarious. But also, when a guy that big runs towards you across the street, it’s a bit scary. […] None of [the acting there] was hard.”
