The first time I encountered Henry and Sam in the 2013 game, their story hit me like a punch to the gut. It was one of those rare gaming moments where I had to put down the controller and just sit with what had happened. Their brief time with Joel and Ellie—culminating in that devastating morning scene where Sam turns and Henry shoots his infected brother before taking his own life—represented everything that made The Last of Us special: unflinching emotional honesty in a medium that often prioritizes power fantasies over human vulnerability. So when HBO’s adaptation reached this storyline, I found myself tensing up, already dreading the heartbreak I knew was coming, but curious how they’d translate this pivotal chapter.
What I didn’t expect was how the adaptation would deepen my connection to these characters through thoughtful expansions and alterations to their story—taking what was already devastating and somehow making it even more meaningful.
The differences in Henry and Sam’s adaptation from game to show represent some of the most substantial changes HBO made to the source material, and nearly all of them strengthen the narrative. In the game, Henry and Sam are survivors from Hartford who end up trapped in Pittsburgh while looking for supplies. They’re well-drawn characters but with limited backstory. The show transforms them into something far more complex: Henry is a former collaborator who worked with FEDRA and gave up the resistance leader Kathleen’s brother to save his leukemia-stricken younger brother Sam. This immediately creates moral ambiguity absent from the game version—we understand why Kathleen hunts them so relentlessly, while also sympathizing with Henry’s impossible choice to protect Sam.
Lamar Johnson’s portrayal of Henry deserves special recognition. He conveys the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who’s been running for months while trying to maintain his little brother’s spirits, alongside the guilt of someone who betrayed his community for love of family. The scene where Henry explains to Joel why he collaborated with FEDRA—”I’m not a bad guy, just a good big brother”—carries so much emotional weight precisely because Johnson delivers it without self-pity or justification. It’s simply a fact of his existence: Sam comes first, everything else is secondary.
The addition of making Sam deaf in the show might initially seem like an arbitrary change, but it proves to be one of the adaptation’s most thoughtful decisions. Keivonn Woodard brings a stunning innocence and expressiveness to Sam, communicating volumes through sign language and facial expressions. This characteristic serves multiple narrative purposes: it makes Sam more vulnerable in a world where hearing danger can mean the difference between life and death, it creates immediate bonding moments between Sam and Ellie through their shared outsider status, and it necessitates Henry’s constant protective attention. The scene where Joel questions if Sam was born deaf and Henry explains he lost his hearing from autoimmune issues at age 5, then had to learn ASL quickly from books, conveys both the practical hurdles of post-apocalyptic medical care and the lengths Henry has gone to adapt for his brother.
Their time in the basement hideout creates some of the most poignant moments in the adaptation. Sam drawing superheroes on his Etch A Sketch while Henry explains they can only emerge after dark due to Kathleen’s patrols illustrates their constrained existence through visual storytelling rather than exposition. Watching Ellie connect with Sam—first through her joke book, then by learning how to sign “endure and survive” from their shared comic book obsession—creates a friendship that feels authentic rather than convenient to the plot. The show gives this relationship room to breathe, making their inevitable ending all the more gut-wrenching.
The sniper sequence adaptation demonstrates how the show smartly translates gameplay elements into narrative moments. In the game, this section involves the player (as Joel) making their way through houses to flank a sniper while Henry provides covering fire—it’s tense, exciting gameplay. The show reimagines this as a character-driven sequence where Joel’s military experience and willingness to kill come to the foreground, while Henry grapples with his self-image as someone who isn’t brave enough to do the violent work of survival. When Henry tells Joel, “You’re a brute, and I’m thankful for it,” it’s both an acknowledgment of Joel’s essential role in their survival and a personal confession of what Henry sees as his own inadequacy.
The infected child emotional impact reaches its peak in both versions with Sam’s transformation, but the show builds to this moment differently. By establishing Sam’s fears more concretely—particularly through the heartbreaking scene where he asks Ellie if she’s afraid and then reveals his terror that “there’s nothing” inside him that would prevent him from becoming a monster—the show creates additional layers of tragedy. When Sam secretly applies Ellie’s blood to his wound, hoping her immunity might somehow save him, it’s a child grasping for hope in a world that offers precious little. This moment doesn’t exist in the game but feels perfectly aligned with its emotional truth.
Henry’s impossible choice reaches its devastating conclusion in both versions, but the show gives this moment additional weight through everything we’ve learned about his dedication to Sam. In the game, Henry’s suicide after being forced to kill his infected brother is shocking and tragic. In the show, after we’ve witnessed the extraordinary lengths Henry has gone to keep Sam alive—betraying his community, living in hiding for months, constantly reassuring Sam despite his own fear—the moment becomes something even more profound. When Henry holds the gun to his head after shooting Sam, there’s no doubt in our minds that his life ended the moment his brother’s did; pulling the trigger is merely a formality.
The brotherhood protection relationship theme runs through both the game and show but reaches new depths in the adaptation. The parallels between Joel/Tommy and Henry/Sam become more explicit, particularly when Joel admits to Henry that he hasn’t seen his brother in years because “I don’t know that he’d want to see me.” This creates a mirror between the two older brothers: Joel, who failed to protect Sarah but survived, and Henry, who protected Sam at enormous cost but ultimately couldn’t save him. Their different trajectories highlight the show’s central question about what makes survival worthwhile in this world, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for those we love.
Survivor guilt exploration takes center stage in the aftermath of Henry and Sam’s deaths. The game conveys this primarily through Ellie’s quiet withdrawal and her later reference to Sam in a conversation with Joel. The show gives us the gutting image of Ellie leaving her joke book on Sam’s grave—a small, perfect gesture that communicates her grief and guilt over not being able to save her friend. The fact that Ellie writes “I’m sorry” in the book rather than another joke provides a visual representation of her growing understanding that some pain can’t be laughed away, some losses leave permanent marks.
The child actor performances in this storyline deserve particular praise. Keivonn Woodard as Sam manages the difficult task of making a character who communicates primarily through ASL feel fully dimensional and expressive. His scenes with Bella Ramsey create a believable friendship between two kids who, in different circumstances, might have been ordinary playmates rather than survivors in extraordinary circumstances. The moment when Sam shows Ellie his bite reveals Woodard’s remarkable ability to convey complex emotions—fear, hope, shame—without a word being spoken.
The morning after Sam’s infection creates one of television’s most devastating sequences. Though it follows the same basic structure as the game—Sam attacks Ellie, Henry shoots Sam, then himself—the show’s version carries additional emotional resonance because of everything that’s been built into their relationship. The sudden shift from the relative peace of their morning routine to chaos happens with the same shocking speed as in the game, but our deeper understanding of these characters makes it even more wrenching. Joel’s helplessness, Ellie’s terror, Henry’s split-second decision, and the awful silence afterward all combine into a perfect translation of the game’s emotional gut punch.
What makes this storyline work so well in both mediums is how it functions as a mirror to Joel and Ellie’s journey. Henry and Sam represent one possible outcome for a protective older figure and their young charge in this world—total devastation. Their tragedy serves as both foreshadowing and counterpoint to Joel and Ellie’s evolving relationship. After witnessing Henry and Sam’s fate, Joel’s growing attachment to Ellie takes on additional tension. We understand more viscerally what he stands to lose by caring for her, and why he might resist that connection.
The “Endure and Survive” mantra from the fictional comic both Sam and Ellie love becomes painfully ironic in light of their story’s conclusion. Sam doesn’t survive, and Henry chooses not to endure without him. Yet the phrase takes on additional meaning for Ellie, becoming both a memorial to her lost friend and a personal philosophy she carries forward. When she references it later in the season during difficult moments, it connects directly back to this formative loss.
As a longtime fan of the game, what impressed me most about the Henry and Sam adaptation was how it honored the emotional core of the original story while finding new dimensions within it. The changes—Sam’s deafness, Henry’s collaboration with FEDRA, their more developed personalities—don’t alter the fundamental tragedy of their arc but deepen its impact and meaning. This is adaptation at its finest: understanding what made the source material powerful and finding ways to translate that power to a new medium while respecting the audience’s intelligence.
The Last of Us consistently demonstrates that the most heartbreaking moments in post-apocalyptic storytelling aren’t about zombie attacks or collapsing civilizations—they’re about the impossible choices people make for those they love, and the devastating consequences that sometimes follow despite the best intentions. Henry and Sam’s story, in both game and show, stands as one of the most powerful expressions of this truth. Their brief time with Joel and Ellie leaves permanent marks on the main characters and on us as the audience, a reminder that in this world, even the purest protective love sometimes isn’t enough to save what matters most.
When I finished the Kansas City episodes, I found myself sitting quietly with the same emotion I’d felt a decade earlier with a controller in my hand—that hollow feeling of witnessing something authentically tragic. The fact that HBO’s adaptation could recreate and even enhance that emotional impact speaks to the thoughtful translation of the source material. Henry and Sam’s story remains what it always was: a perfect, heartbreaking encapsulation of The Last of Us’ central message that love and loss are inseparably intertwined in both the world as we know it and the world as it might become.
