Conception and writing .|alt=A 51 year-old man with a grey beard smiling to the left of the camera. "Endure and Survive" was written by
Craig Mazin and directed by Jeremy Webb. The
Directors Guild of Canada revealed Webb would direct for the series in January 2022.
Rotten Tomatoes revealed the episode's title in January 2023.
The Last of Us series co-creators Mazin and
Neil Druckmann, the latter of whom wrote and co-directed
the video game on which the series is based, found the differing perspectives of the television series granted an opportunity to explore the backstory of Kansas City—a replacement of
Pittsburgh from the game—and show the stories behind the violence, the aftermath of which Joel and Ellie discover in the game. The writers wanted to honor the game's unseen character
Ish—who built a community in tunnels underneath the city—but found they could not properly depict it in the episode, opting for brief references. Mazin felt a standalone episode focusing on Ish may have worked but found
environmental storytelling more effective. The writers understood the game's sniper sequence would have translated poorly to television and chose to make the shooter an old man to add sadness to the scene. While meeting with Druckmann and Webb in
Santa Monica, California, Mazin realized the full action sequence would be more effective at night—as opposed to day like the game—as its visuals and the creepiness of infected would be improved. The episode's credits use the song "Fuel to Fire" by
Agnes Obel, which subsequently ranked fifth on
Billboards Top TV Songs
chart for February, with 378,000 streams and 1,000 downloads.
Casting and characters Lamar Johnson and
Keivonn Montreal Woodard's casting as Henry and Sam was announced in August 2021. Johnson recalled his casting process occurred quickly: he sent his audition tape on Monday, received the role by Wednesday, departed for the set by Saturday, and began filming by Wednesday. He had played the game and wanted to avoid imitating the original performance due to its impact. He was nervous about the role due to the character's importance, but found his nervousness prompted him to challenge himself. Mazin provided information to Johnson regarding Henry's backstory to help him understand the character. Johnson felt Henry was hurt by his own actions against Michael, but Sam was ultimately more important to him. Mazin and Druckmann had several long discussions regarding Henry's fate and considered many alternatives, but ultimately considered his suicide, like in the game, reflected that he had nothing left after Sam's death. Johnson found the final scenes emotionally draining due to his relationship with Woodard; he "tried to be as present and authentic as possible" as he considered it the most important and iconic scene of the characters, and felt
Pedro Pascal did the same opposite him as Joel. He was allowed to experiment with the scene, including performing lines similar to the game; he wanted to portray Henry's shock and confusion at the sudden events. Johnson believed Henry's final decision was to join Sam, as he felt they were likely religious. He recalled crying behind the camera with Webb during Ellie's final scene with Sam.
Bella Ramsey, who portrays Ellie, felt Sam brought out Ellie's childlike energy, which they largely attributed to Woodard. Mazin wrote Sam as deaf—a change from the game—to avoid his relationship with Henry feeling repetitious of Ellie's with Joel, which he felt would have been emphasized due to the different perspectives of the series. He had been watching the television series
This Close (2018–2019)—which follows two deaf characters—and felt it may have influenced his decision. He found it automatically introduced intimacy to the scenes due to their quietness, which contrasted with Ellie's talkative nature. Druckmann was instantly drawn to the idea and wished he had included it in the game. Mazin hired
This Close co-creator
Shoshannah Stern to review the scripts. The production team faced difficulties in casting Sam; they were met with minimal candidates. In February 2021, Mazin distributed a casting call for a boy aged 8–14 who is deaf, black, and proficient in
American Sign Language (ASL) or
Black American Sign Language;
Deaf West Theatre confirmed this was for the character of Sam. He had expected to receive around 80 auditions, but ultimately got about five, including Woodard; it was his first acting role. Mazin felt Sam's leukemia was a more significant part of his story than his deafness.
CJ Jones, whom Mazin met through Stern, acted as Woodard's liaison to the crew and helped teach ASL to cast and crew; Johnson began learning the language via
Zoom shortly after arriving in Calgary, and spent his time away from set learning the language. He did not want viewers to think his knowledge of the language was fake, and considered his performance important for deaf representation. He felt spending time around Woodard for production gave him a better grasp on the language; Woodard would sometimes correct his mistakes in scenes. Ramsey similarly learned ASL during production. Sam's age was reduced from the game to allow him to look up to Ellie; Mazin felt this justified his revelation of his bite to Ellie, which does not occur in the game. In portraying Sam's bravery, Woodard recalled his own experiences of being told to stay brave after his father died. Johnson and Woodard worked on the series for two-and-a-half months. Mazin and Druckmann did not want characters like Kathleen to feel like
non-player characters from a video game, opting to give them full stories to humanize them and justify their actions. They felt adding a connection between Kathleen and Henry—and, by extension, to Joel and Ellie—made the storylines more effective and justified the different perspectives. Mazin wanted Kathleen's death to represent the notion of violent actions meeting violent ends, and Druckmann felt her obsession with justice led her to become distracted from her own survival.
Melanie Lynskey knew of Kathleen's fate when she accepted the role. She found the scene easy to film due to the coordination of the team, as they had been planning for weeks. Mazin found it important that Kathleen was killed by a child, as minutes earlier she had told Henry that children die all the time. Lynskey recorded her death sounds as
automated dialogue replacement (ADR); Mazin and Druckmann directed her to "sound like someone was ripping your throat out". Lynskey's husband
Jason Ritter had a cameo appearance as an infected creature.
Jeffrey Pierce felt Perry was in love with Kathleen, which prompted several of his actions. He considered Perry's sacrifice selfless as it was to allow Kathleen to escape, and thought it reflected Perry's constant wish to be a hero. Mazin had told Pierce earlier that he was "gonna get the best death of the entire season". Pierce played the role akin to a
rōnin from an
Akira Kurosawa film and saw his death as an honorable "
samurai death", sacrificing himself for the woman he loves.
Filming 's painting
House by the Railroad (1925).|alt=An oil painting of a blue four-story house. "Endure and Survive" was primarily filmed in April 2022, shortly before production finished on the season finale. Eben Bolter worked as
cinematographer for the episode. Johnson and Woodard were on set in Calgary on March 23, 2022. The classroom and tunnels were built in the cellar underneath the old Inglewood Brewery in Calgary; production designer John Paino and his team enjoyed the "kind of dankness" it had. The team mapped the room with
laser scanning to allow the visual effects team to extend the hallways. Production took place around the
Calgary Courts Centre and
Victoria Park in May. Pascal and Ramsey were spotted on set in Calgary in May, followed some days later by military vehicles representing FEDRA. The action sequence took significant planning—Bolter estimated around 80% of the episode's planning focused on the scene—and was filmed in four weeks; about a week-and-a-half was dedicated to the infected horde rising from the ground. The sequence was one of few in the series prepared on a
storyboard due to the combination of elements like pyrotechnics and visual effects, which presented potential dangers. The neighborhood was built in an empty lot near the Calgary Film Centre to allow full control of the significant special effects required. Modelers crafted to-scale versions of the area based on
Lidar scans of Kansas City, and the game and real Kansas City neighborhoods were referenced. The nine-week building process, led by Paino, art director Don Macaulay, and construction coordinator Donadino Valentino Centanni, involved crafting
asphalt driveways, paving
gravel, arranging damaged vehicles, and constructing front and sides of thirteen houses; they engaged several housebuilders for construction. The sniper's three-story building was modeled after
Edward Hopper's painting
House by the Railroad (1925) and the Bates residence from
Psycho (1960). The interior was aged for two weeks with water, and Calgary's snow and ice added more water damage, which Paino appreciated. Webb cited
Saving Private Ryan (1998) as inspiration for some of the shots during the sequence, particularly from Joel's perspective in the house or Ellie's on the street. A camera with a
sniper scope was used for Joel, and three
handheld cameras were used to track the action sequence from the ground, with long
lenses "to compress the space, to make it feel scary and cinematic and real". The shots of the truck crashing into the house and the subsequent explosion could only be filmed once. Bolter faced difficulty lighting the sequence.
Street lights located two blocks away were switched off to allow Bolter to fully craft the lighting. He took inspiration from
stadiums by surrounding the set with
backlights and lighting from above with
ambient light.
Troy Baker, who portrayed Joel in the video games and James in the television series, visited the set while he was in the city for a convention. The ending scenes at the motel were filmed in
Nanton, Alberta. The episode completed production in the early hours of June 11, marking the final day of
principal photography for the season, two days later than originally scheduled.
Prosthetics and visual effects Barrie and Sarah Gower led the prosthetics teams for the series. Around 60 actors were used in the infected mob, and 10 to 15 wore clicker masks, all crafted by 70 prosthetic artists; they applied prosthetics to about 30 people in each three-hour shift. The makeup process began around 3:00 p.m. to prepare for shooting, which began at 9:00 p.m. Due to the amount of infected in the episode, the production team worked with
Terry Notary to coordinate their movements; he set up a boot camp to prepare the actors for the role. The child clicker—designed by
Naughty Dog artist Hyoung Taek Nam, who originally designed clickers for the game—was portrayed by a young
contortionist actress, Skye Belle Cowton; prosthetics and visual effects were combined to make the creature. Mazin insisted Cowton wear a ''
Blue's Clues'' shirt to contrast the innocence and horror. The visual effects team consulted with Mazin and Druckmann to emphasize her childlike features, adding
pigtails and showing more of her face. Sixteen visual effects teams worked on the action sequence; while the season averaged 250 visual effects shots per episode, "Endure and Survive" had around 350 to 400.
Wētā FX created the visual effects of the infected; 50 to 70 infected were added to the horde through visual effects. Mazin compared the infected emerging from the ground to an
ant colony, as well as a scene of goblins in the mines in
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), which he considered terrifying. The writers spent months trying to decide whether or not to include a bloater in the series before ultimately adding it. It was portrayed by actor Adam Basil, with whom Barrie Gower had worked on
Game of Thrones. A cast of Basil's body was created to help create the bloater. The suit was coated in a gel-like liquid during filming to appear wet and reflective. Gower said his team wanted the creature to have a "practical presence" for interaction on set, which could later be emphasized with visual effects; the bloater was made taller and given additional muscle definition. In the script, Mazin wrote that the bloater tore Perry in two at the waist, but Druckmann wanted his death to be more grounded; as visual effects were implemented, Mazin realized decapitation looked more realistic and paid homage to the games. == Reception ==