After an unforgettable third episode, The Last of Us explored the relationship between Joel and Ellie in Episode 4 and took us into the dangerous world of Kansas City. Here’s a recap of The Last of Us episode 4, and a guide to all its hidden easter eggs.
This article contains full spoilers for The Last of Us TV show. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch episodes 1-4 over on Binge now.
The Last of Us episode 4: Plot recap
Ellie (Bella Ramsey) practices handling her newfound pistol in a bathroom. She’s fascinated but isn’t entirely comfortable with it.
When she rejoins Joel (Pedro Pascal) outside, he’s siphoning petrol from abandoned cars. He warns her not to wander off, so she decides to punish him by reading jokes from a pun book. The jokes do not amuse Joel, but Ellie is having the time of her life.
They continue driving. Ellie digs up a few interesting items from Bill’s old truck, including a Hank Williams cassette (that Joel is excited about) and a raunchy magazine (that Joel is less excited about).
“Why are all these pages stuck together?” she jokes, enjoying Joel’s discomfort before tossing the magazine out the window.
They cover a lot of ground, driving past desolate fields and through highway graveyards full of cars and tanks.
They camp in a forest for the night, sharing a meal of twenty-year-old canned ravioli. It’s cold and Ellie wants to start a fire but Joel is worried that people will see the smoke and rob them (or worse). He sleeps with a loaded rifle by his side.
The next day, Ellie navigates their path to Tommy on the map. Ellie wants to know more about Tommy, so Joel explains to her how his brother was a “joiner” with dreams of being a hero. Before the outbreak, he was in the army, then post-outbreak, he and Joel joined a group going to Boston, where they met Tess. Then Tommy met Marlene who talked him into joining the Fireflies, and that’s where the brothers’ paths diverged.
Upon entering Kansas City, they find the highway is blocked. Going all the way around would take too long, so Joel decides to risk it and cut through the city.
They get lost in the urban sprawl pretty quickly. A man staggers out in the street in front of them, pleading for help. Joel sees right through his facade and keeps driving. It turns out to be the right move because the man pulls a gun on them.
They’re shot at in the street and Joel loses control, crashing the car into a laundromat.
Joel trades fire with the hunters, distracting them so that Ellie has time to hide in a hole in the wall. Joel has success clearing out their pursuers but is jumped by one of them.
The hunter has the upper hand, choking Joel. Ellie emerges from her hiding spot and takes action, breaking out her pistol and shooting Joel’s attacker in the back. Wounded, he begs them for his life. Joel tells Ellie to hide and she listens as the screams of the hunter are suddenly cut off.
Ellie tries to hide from Joel how much this interaction impacts her.
They sneak through the city streets which are patrolled by armed hunters in trucks.
Next, we meet a new character, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) who is interrogating a doctor for information on someone called Henry. Apparently, Henry gave up her brother to FEDRA and they beat him to death in a cell, kind of like the one they’re in now. Even with a gun to his head, the doctor doesn’t give up any information.
Kathleen is called outside where the group have found the bodies of the people Joel killed. When she learns that one of her men isn’t going to make it, Kathleen returns to the holding cell and shoots the doctor without hesitation. Her comrade, Perry (Jeffrey Pierce), believes outsiders were responsible, but Kathleen is keen to pin this all on Henry and demands they go door to door to find and kill him.
Joel and Ellie find refuge off the street. With a minute to themselves, they check in with each other after all the murders they’ve been through that day. Joel regrets that Ellie had to shoot someone to save him.
“It was my fault. You shouldn’t have had to. I’m sorry,” he tells her. Ellie reveals this wasn’t the first time she’s hurt someone. Joel decides that now it’s time to teach Ellie how to properly use a gun.
Perry takes Kathleen to an abandoned apartment building where they’ve found food scraps and a kid’s drawings in an attic. Kathleen surmises that Henry is out of food and he won’t let Sam starve, so he must be close.
Perry has one other thing to show her.
In the basement, they look at a partially collapsed floor. Something large and alive rumbles beneath it. Kathleen decides to seal off the area and deal with Henry first.
Joel and Ellie break into a building and start climbing up as many flights of stairs as Joel can handle. Ellie wants to know how Joel knew the beggar in the city was a trap, and he reveals he’s been on both sides, so he knows their tricks.
They settle in an empty apartment for the night. Joel scatters broken glass on the floor around them, ensuring that someone won’t sneak up on them while they’re asleep. Ellie asks if Joel will hear it, having noticed he doesn’t hear very well out of one side.
After a genuine conversation about dealing with guilt over the people they’ve hurt, Ellie gets off one last bad pun joke before they sleep – (“did you know diarrhoea is hereditary? It runs in your jeans.”) – and it actually makes Joel laugh!
It’s a nice moment between them. But nothing nice lasts forever in this world and when Joel wakes up it’s to find that two people – Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) have guns to their heads.
Easter eggs
Episode 4 of The Last of Us manages to condense many gameplay-heavy sequences into one hour but it still has plenty of easter eggs for fans:
- Melanie Lynskey’s character Kathleen is a new character created for the show. In the game, Joel and Ellie are chased by hunters in Pittsburgh. By adding Kathleen the group in Kansas City have a bit more of an identity and motive than they ever had in the game.
- The biggest easter egg in this episode was the appearance of Jeffrey Pierce, who played Tommy in the video game, as the Kansas City rebel Perry.
- The show chose to skip over the infamous hotel basement sequence. In the game, Ellie and Joel become separated after Joel falls down an elevator shaft, and he must fight through a dark basement full of infected to escape. However, we did get a hint that there’s something gnarly waiting underground in Kansas City, which could make up for it.
- The pun book that Ellie reads from, No Pun Intended: Volume Too by Will Livingston, is a reference many game fans will recognise. During the game, players can prompt Ellie for more pun jokes as they wander around and many of the same jokes made it into the show as well.
- Joel confirms that Tommy was part of the army which explains the Operation Desert Storm sticker on his truck in episode 1.
- If you’re wondering how Joel and Ellie manage to drive on highways in the apocalypse, Joel explains that the military used trucks with battering rams to clear paths on the highways. The more you know!
The Last of Us episode 4: Verdict
After a massive swing last week, episode 4 of The Last of Us narrowed things down to give us more insight into Joel and Ellie’s relationship. The episode also managed to provide a new point of view into this portion of the story by introducing Kathleen, and Melanie Lynskey’s performance makes for another standout.
Read our weekly recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3
Stream The Last of Us on Binge.
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