Is David a pedophile in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us?’

Warning: The following article discusses sensitive topics including sexual assault, grooming, and pedophilia. It also contains spoilers for The Last of Us episode eight, “When We Are in Need.”

The penultimate episode of HBO’s The Last of Us gave its audience to perhaps the most reprehensible character in the series so far: David the preacher, played by Scott Shepherd. 

David introduces himself to Ellie as something of a victim of circumstance who is otherwise a “pretty nice guy,” but as the episode progresses, more and more layers are peeled away from David’s surface-level act. He and his group are just doing what they can to survive, he says. Apparently, this includes acts of cannibalism and lying to his people to make sure they don’t starve. By the end of the episode, it becomes quite clear that David is more or less evil incarnate, but for those who are looking for further answers, we have them right here.

Was David grooming Ellie in The Last of Us? 

Not only is David a pedophile who was trying to groom Ellie, but it is implied somewhat early on in the episode that this wasn’t the first instance in which the vile resort community leader has preyed on young girls. While delivering his sermon in the opening scene, Hannah (the daughter of the man Joel killed at the university) is sobbing and appears to be terrified of David.

Later on in the episode, after delivering the news of tracking down her father’s killer, David beats Hannah off her chair after she has an outburst and demands that both Joel and Ellie be killed, hinting that Ellie wasn’t the first girl he’d abused. To make matters worse, David tells Ellie that he was a math teacher before the apocalypse, so there’s every chance he was preying on children before the world ended. 

This leads us to his conversation with Ellie in the cage, during which he heavily implies that he wants to lead the community “together” with Ellie, reaching out to hold her hand. If that didn’t make the matter clear enough, at the very end of the episode, he forces himself on Ellie. Thankfully, she manages to grasp a knife and take him down. Though traumatized, she manages to reunite with Joel by the time the credits roll. 

If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.