Rejoice! ‘The Last of Us’ episode five will premiere early, probably thanks to the Super Bowl

Warning: The following article contains spoilers from ‘The Last of Us’ episode four, ‘Please Hold My Hand’.

If you’re anything like us, you’re absolutely dying to see the resolution to that cliffhanger ending to this week’s episode of The Last of Us. Well, fret not, because you won’t have to wait seven agonizingly long days for the fifth episode to drop. 

Shortly after the airing of the show’s fourth episode, ‘Please Hold My Hand’, HBO issued a release saying the fifth episode will be making an early premiere on HBO Max and HBO on Demand on Friday, Feb. 10 at 9:00 pm ET/6:00 pm PT. Of note, should be that it will premiere on HBO linear at the usual time, on Sunday, Feb. 12 at 9:00 pm ET/PT. 

The show will return to its usual time slot the following week. While HBO didn’t state outright the reasoning behind the programming shift, we can pretty safely assume it’s in regards to a football-sized elephant in the room that’s plonked itself on top of the usual air time.

Of course, that is the 57th Super Bowl which will see the Philadelphia Eagles face off against the Kansas City Chiefs. Serendipitously, this week’s episode (and likely next week as well) takes place in the post-apocalyptic version of the latter city. Coverage of the Super Bowl is set to start at 6:30 pm ET, so we can pretty much put two and two together here. 

Super Bowl or not, we’re certainly glad we’ll be discovering the identities and motivations of the mysterious strangers who snuck up on Joel and Ellie in their sleep right before the credits rolled.