Who are David and James in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us?’ 

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for The Last of Us episode eight.

The Last of Us episode eight, “When We Are In Need,” introduced us to a couple of new faces in Scott Shepherd’s David and Troy Baker’s James. 

First appearing in a cold opening of sorts (despite the opening credits rolling first), the pair are introduced as part of a group that Ellie and Joel don’t seem to have come across yet. The group’s community appears to have hit some trying times, having suffered losses and scarcity in food and supplies.

After preaching a sermon of some sort to the group, David and James reconvene outside of their meeting place to discuss their next steps and how they intend to find some food. They find a deceased deer out in the woods, at which point they are ambushed by Ellie, who is pointing a rifle in their direction. 

Consider this your second and final spoiler warning; below this, we’re going into everything that we find out about these two during.

David and James

David is a leader of a group of survivors that have found shelter someplace in the state of Colorado, presumably within a few miles of the University of Eastern Colorado. In an extended conversation with Ellie (which wasn’t as extensive in the base game), he reveals that prior to the apocalypse, he was a math teacher. However, after the cordyceps infection took over the world, he found God and became a preacher.

David (and seemingly, James) used to live in the Pittsburgh Quarantine Zone (incidentally, the original location of Henry and Sam’s arc in the original game), which eventually fell after a war between the Fireflies and FEDRA broke out. He and a few others went out on their own, and this is how David ended up with his “flock.” 

Of course, there’s something a lot more sinister bubbling underneath David’s surface of David as we find out as the episode rolls on. For one thing, in order to feed his community, he has been feeding them human meat and passing it off as venison, a fact seemingly known only by a select few in David’s inner circle, James included. He claims to feel ashamed of this approach to survival but deems it a necessary evil. 

While David’s flaws in judgment and character may seem necessary, he turns out to be a force of pure evil when he is revealed to be a pedophile. It is hinted at heavily earlier in the episode through his interactions with a young girl whose father was killed by Joel at the university. It was all but confirmed through his gross advances towards Ellie while she is locked in a cage, and his attempt to force himself onto her at the end of the episode.

There is a lot less to be said of Troy Baker’s character, James. He appears to be David’s right hand man, judging by their conversations and particularly by the look the pair give each other when asked about burying a young girl’s father in the opening of the episode. James is much less willing to forgive Ellie’s transgressions against his community than David, who on a surface level appears to be willing to welcome her out of godly kindness, but the truth of that matter rears its ugly head by the time the credits roll. 

Despite their differences in opinion, James seems to fear David and begrudgingly follows the orders he is given, perhaps hinting that he knows full well what monstrosities David is capable of, including cannibalism and pedophilia.