Is David’s flock a community of cannibals in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us?’

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for The Last of Us episode eight, “When We Are in Need.”

The Last of Us episode eight pitted Ellie against an entire community of people, led by series newcomer David, all of whom want Joel’s head for murdering one of their own at the university back in episode six. With Joel still being incapacitated for the majority of the episode, Ellie had to fend for herself. 

During their first encounter, Ellie and David seem to get off on the right foot to a degree, but the web that is David’s villainy slowly and surely starts to unravel as the episode goes on. From the hesitation about the nature of the meat he is feeding his community to the revelation that one of the people Joel murdered belongs to his group and everything else that ensues, the leader of the resort community turned out to be quite the piece of work. 

It all started, however, with a moment of hesitation at the beginning of the episode. After being asked about when a young girl’s father will be buried, David and his right hand man James exchange a look, before hesitantly responding that he will be buried in the spring when the ground isn’t as hard.

Is that really the case? Was that REALLY venison being prepared in the kitchen? We have all of the answers for you. 

Are the resort community cannibals?

In a sense, this question can be answered as yes and no.

Yes, David and his inner circle were knowingly feeding human meat to the community and passing it off as venison, but the rest of his “flock” were seemingly living in blissful ignorance of that fact. We can get into a whole philosophical argument as to whether or not David’s unsuspecting followers are truly cannibals if they didn’t know what they were eating. At the end of the day, they were all eating human flesh.

Given James and David’s brief interaction at the beginning of the episode, it’s safe to assume that the young girl’s father was fed to the community. Ellie also spots a stray body part on the floor while she was caged, and David flat-out confirms that he’s been feeding his group human flesh, but insists it is only an emergency measure and a last resort. 

However, that seems a little difficult to believe, given that Joel discovers a number of strung up human bodies, which certainly doesn’t lend credence to David’s insistence that it was something of a “one-off” occurrence. Besides, David turns out to be quite a reprehensible character by the end of the episode. Based on that, it would seem that he enjoys picking a human steak off the menu, even if the options are plentiful.