“Kin” continues the emotional gut punches from The Last of Us. There is a little levity at the start of the episode, but that was short lived. The title of the episode fits with the theme for the episode. Joel is shown to be afraid of the connection he’s been developing with Ellie. His reaction his relationship with his new surrogate daughter isn’t something that he wanted. Ellie has the opposite reaction to this relationship, where she’s less afraid around Joel while he’s more afraid.
The episode picks up three months after the last episode and Henry’s death still weights heavy on Joel and Ellie. Joel’s fear kind of plays like it will be a heart attack, which I was expecting as happened several times throughout the episode. Joel finally finds Tommy, who is thriving in the colony of Jackson. Tommy and Joel have a couple of heart to hearts where Tommy says that he’s going to be a father and Joel confides in Tommy that Ellie is immune and that he’s worried that he can’t properly protect her anymore. Joel gets Tommy to promise to take Ellie where she’s supposed to be taken, but unbeknownst to either of them Ellie overhears them. Joel and Ellie get into an argument about what she overheard. The next morning Joel ends up taking Ellie instead of Tommy. On the journey to the Firefly camp, Joel and Ellie bond more. At the abandoned Firefly camp, the pair find where they went but are confronted by raiders. Joel is injured in a fight with a raider. He passes out as the episode ends.
Both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey act their asses off this episode. Both of them make the moments in this episode even more gut wrenching. Gabriel Luna and Rutina Wesley are good with what they provide in the episode. I also really want to point out Graham Greene and Elaine Miles because they’re so funny. They steal their scenes and give some much-needed levity.
The next episode looks to be the Left Behind DLC stuff. I know vaguely what happens during it but I don’t really know too much about the specifics. It will show Ellie’s backstory and how she ended up where she was at the beginning of the series.
“Kin” was another good episode, but it feels like it moved the story forward almost at warp speed. It feels like the story is moving into its endgame. The character growth in the episode is important because it moves the where they need to be. I give “Kin” 9 sheep out of 10.