The latest episode of The Last of Us was one of the HBO Max series' most explosive. There were plenty of monsters and plenty of killing, and it turns out that the episode was also a bit gorier and gruesome until the showrunners decided to go with something a little more realistic.
The insanity that exploded in The Last of Us episode 5 was hinted at in episode 4, so the viewers likely foresaw some of what happened. Still, the HBO series added some surprises, especially in how some of the characters came to rather grisly ends. Speaking of those grisly ends, at least one character's death was initially supposed to be quite a bit more showy and terrible.
In a new episode of The Last of Us podcast, Craig Mazin made it clear that Perry, one of The Hunters' leaders, was originally going to have a more brutal death. Of course, the death that made it to the screen was still pretty bad. But when Mazin wanted to ramp up the way that he died to something that would raise eyebrows, he was eventually brought back to reality to keep the show grounded in some version of science.
In The Last of Us episode 5, Perry is killed when the Bloater comes out of the ground with the horde of other infected and charges the militia group that found Henry and his brother. Perry, in one final act as a brave soldier and lieutenant for Melanie Lynskey's Kathleen, he tells her to run and steps in front of the charging Bloater. The infected creature that was once a person then grabs Perry and, rather than showing interest in infecting him, rips his head off. However, Mazin originally wanted the Bloater to rip Perry in half at the waist. He was eventually talked out of that idea by Neil Druckmann and the show's FX supervisor.
Mazin said that Druckmann was the first to ask whether Perry being ripped in half would be realistic and keep The Last of Us grounded. "I'm like, 'I think so.' And then like the more Wētā [FX] tried to do the more you realize that people don't rip along the waist," Mazin said in the podcast. "It's really hard to do."
Eventually, as close as The Last of Us episode 5 got to having Perry ripped apart at the waist, the showrunners decided that ripping a man's head off stood out well enough. It's likely something fans will like about the show more in the long run.
The Last of Us airs every Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.
