Who is Alec in The Last of Us and why is he so important?
Warning: This article contains spoilers for episode eight of The Last of Us.
Recommended VideosHBO’s The Last of Us has been on a steady trajectory of grade-A entertainment, and episode eight was no exception.
Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is now back at Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) side as he recovers from the knife wound he suffered at the end of episode six. She’s decidedly ignored his demands to leave him to die alone and is singlehandedly fending for the two of them in a snow-ravaged landscape void of livestock.
We see Ellie unwrap a crumpled piece of paper with scant few pieces of food inside it and realize that if she has any hope of surviving — and if Joel has any hope of healing — she must brave the wilderness for provisions. She straps a shotgun to her back and steps out into the snow.
Little does she know, a nearby town governed by a cannibalistic cult leader named David is also in desperate need of food. As Ellie trains her eyes for deer, bunnies, and the like, so do David and his righthand man James. The trio cross paths after Ellie guns down a deer only to find David and James standing over her game.
After a lofty amount of threats, David and Ellie come to an agreement: He will offer her medicine in exchange for half of the deer. As they start talking we find out that David lied; he knows exactly who Ellie is. In fact, in addition to hunting for food, he and James have been hunting for her and Joel.
Who is Alec and how does he fit into the story?
At the end of episode six, Joel and Ellie finally make it on horseback to the Firefly compound at the University of Eastern Colorado. However, upon their arrival they discover that the compound is vacant of Fireflies; they appear to have fled to Salt Lake City. Before Joel and Ellie can get their bearings, they are bombarded by a group of raiders. One of the raiders stabs Joel, and Joel subsequently snaps his attacker’s neck vigorously. That man was Alec.
Back to this episode: In the first few minutes, we see David deliver a sermon to his townsfolk and witness a young girl cry over the death of her father. The young girl asks David if he can bury her father, but David said they can’t right now; they must wait for the snow to melt.
Now, as David and Ellie discuss their bargaining arrangement over food and medicine, we discover that the man Joel killed at the end of episode six is the father of the mourning young girl at the beginning of this episode.
Realizing David is seeking revenge on her and Joel, Ellie scurries away with the medicine and dashes back to Joel, sans her portion of the deer. Before long, David and his men hit the pavement in search of Ellie and Joel, and Ellie is captured.
She’s taken hostage by David and locked up. While locked in a cage, Ellie spies a severed ear on the other side of the bars at the feet of a butcher’s table. At that very moment, we — and Ellie — realize David has been engaging in heinous acts of cannibalism to feed his starving people. In fact, the reason David insisted to the young girl that he couldn’t bury her father, Alec, is likely because Alec was already cut up and served in that afternoon’s soup.
Why is Alec so important to the storyline?
Aside from serving as a metaphor for the gross underbelly of this post-apocalyptic world, Alec is also the catalyst for a singularly important storyline for Ellie. Because Joel killed Alec, he and Ellie were hunted down by David and his henchmen. And because she was the only healthy person capable of putting up a fight, Ellie was left to fend for herself, which resulted in her capture by David.
While locked in David’s cage, Ellie rejects his offer to join his people and subsequently breaks his fingers. This sets him off and he and James hold Ellie down on the butcher’s table and try to decapitate her. Thankfully, she breaks away.
Now trapped in a burning building locked from the inside, Ellie becomes like the deer she hunted at the beginning of the episode — prey. She manages to sneak up on David and stab him, but as she runs for the door, he knocks her to the ground, straddles her, and delivers the most disturbing line in the whole series: “I thought you already knew… the fighting’s the part I like the most.”
Throughout the episode, there were clear implications that David was a pedophile, but only after he tries to rape Ellie does the assessment click into place. Ellie eventually cleaves David in the neck and then proceeds to violently and repeatedly stab him.
Stumbling out of the burning building covered in blood, Ellie finds Joel, who wraps her in his arms and says “It’s okay, baby girl.” But it’s not okay. Ellie has just gone through a life-altering situation no human being should ever experience, and she is not the same fourteen-year-old girl she was just that morning.
The Last of Us has never been light on the violence, but this episode’s violence ushered in a new era for the show and its characters. The heinous acts committed and witnessed are the beginning of this season’s page being turned, which ultimately culminates next week in the season finale.
The season finale of The Last of Us premieres Sunday, March 12 on HBO.
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