Contains spoilers for Episode 6. 

Episode 6 of “The Last of Us”, titled “Kin” breaks through the traditional story line we have been following since the first episode. It opens with a time skip, where we meet Ellie and Joel 3 months later, in the winter months. They continue the search for Joel’s brother, Tommy. Although I am not always a big fan of time skips, the beginning of this episode showed the audience how long and hard the pair has been traveling. We also learn that Joel starts to struggle with some type of anxiety disorder due to lack of sleep and stress of travel. 

This episode had multiple scenes that had me holding my breath and my body tense. When Ellie and Joel reach “The River of Death”, as a passing traveler called it, they meet a group of people with an infected-sniffing dog. The combination of the aggressive dog and the covered faces of the group of people, this scene had me on the edge of my seat. One of my favorite scenes was one where the dialogue was taken directly from the video game. Once in the town of Joel’s brother, Ellie and Joel have an argument. For her safety, Joel wants Ellie to stay with Tommy, while Ellie doesn’t want to be without Joel. The dialogue and delivery is breathtaking, and left my friend and I completely still and quiet. Another acting moment that left me speechless was a conversation between Joel and Tommy, who had not seen each other in 20 years. The dialogue in this episode carried most of the weight and revealed a lot about new and old characters. 

Each episode so far has always had a comic relief. As said before, there were many scenes that had me holding my breath, but Ellie always finds a way to make Joel and the audience laugh. I love that all these episodes have had this added on dialogue.

As always, “Kin” ended with a cliffhanger. Between “Endure and Survive” and of course, the fan favorite “Long, Long Time” have been the top 3 episodes so far. This episode sets up for a question of, “So where do we go from here?”