The Last of Us: Season 1, Episode 4 - Please Hold to My Hand (2023)

Ellie sits alone in a gas station bathroom, studying the gun she secretly took from Bill and Frank's house. She turns it over in her hands, fascinated by it, tests the trigger on an empty chamber, and even smells the weapon before hiding it away.

Joel and Ellie continue driving east in the truck Bill and Frank left them. The trip is slowed by the truck's need for fuel and by the rough roads, and Ellie keeps up her usual stream of questions and jokes while Joel stays focused on the road and on keeping them alive.

Joel comes to a road blockage and wakes Ellie. He tells her they are in Kansas City and decides to try a different route through the city rather than wait at the jam. As he drives into what looks like an empty stretch of streets, a wounded man suddenly runs out crying for help. Ellie reacts with concern, but Joel immediately realizes it is a setup and swerves away.

The trap is sprung at once. The truck's tires are ruined by hidden obstacles, gunfire erupts from the surrounding streets, and Joel forces the truck off the road as they come under attack. He and Ellie get out and take cover, and Joel orders Ellie to crawl through a hole in a nearby wall into another room so she can hide until the shooting stops.

Inside the city, the episode shifts to Kathleen, the leader of the local resistance that has taken over the Kansas City QZ. She is interrogating an older man in a FEDRA lockup, demanding to know where the people she wants are. Her manner is cold and controlled, but the scene makes clear she is driven by revenge and has the authority to kill.

Kathleen's group learns that there are signs of Henry, the man she is hunting. Perry takes her to inspect a crawlspace in a nearby building, and the evidence strengthens her belief that Henry is close by. Her focus stays fixed on finding him, and she makes it clear that anyone connected to him will be treated as an enemy.

Back with Joel and Ellie, Joel pushes Ellie to stay hidden while he deals with the attackers. He takes a brutal beating in the fight and ends up in close-quarters combat with one of the ambushers, Brian. Joel is dragged into a desperate struggle for survival, and when the fight turns into a life-or-death contest, he kills Brian with a piece of broken glass after Brian gets the upper hand. The scene shows Joel's willingness to be merciless when he thinks it is necessary.

After the attack, Joel and Ellie continue moving through the city in search of a safer place. They enter a tall building with the plan of climbing to a high floor so they can get their bearings and find a way out. Ellie keeps asking Joel how he knew the fake-injury trick was a setup, and Joel admits that he has seen that kind of deception from both sides before. He says that long ago, he, Tommy, Tess, and the people they traveled with did what they had to do to survive, making plain that he is speaking from ugly experience.

They keep climbing floor after floor. The building is huge, and the climb wears Joel down. By the time they reach the thirty-third floor, he is exhausted and cannot keep going. Ellie mocks him for being old and slow, and Joel answers that he is fifty-six, snapping back in the rough, familiar way their relationship has begun to develop.

They find an empty room high in the building and decide to spend the night there. Ellie builds a makeshift bed out of cushions, while Joel breaks glass and spreads the shards near the door so he will know if anyone tries to enter. The practical preparation shows how carefully he is still treating every moment of rest as a possible attack.

During the night, the dynamic between them softens. They trade banter, and Ellie tells a crude diarrhea joke that finally gets Joel to laugh openly, revealing a warmth he has mostly kept buried since Tess died. The moment marks a real shift in how he responds to Ellie, even as he remains guarded.

Joel is then awakened later in the night when Ellie suddenly alerts him to danger. Before he can react fully, both of them are held at gunpoint by Henry and Henry's younger brother Sam. Sam wears a superhero-style mask painted over his eyes. The episode ends this confrontation on that tense note, with Joel and Ellie forced to face the people Kathleen has been hunting.

The ending of episode 4 is a cliffhanger: Joel and Ellie finally lower their guard a little, only for two strangers, Henry and his young brother Sam, to sneak into their room and hold them at gunpoint. The episode cuts off right there, before anyone can explain who they are or why they came.

Earlier in the ending stretch, Joel and Ellie have already made it through the city's danger and reached a temporary place to rest after the chaos in Kansas City. For the first time in the episode, they are calm enough to talk more openly, and the moment ends with them laughing together after Ellie tells Joel one of her jokes. That quiet scene matters because it shows their bond softening just before the story interrupts it with the arrival of Henry and Sam.

Scene by scene, the ending unfolds like this:

Joel and Ellie are alone after the violence in the city, trying to hold onto a small pocket of safety. The truck they had been using is no longer part of their immediate escape, and they are moving through Kansas City on foot, trying to stay hidden from the hostile group led by Kathleen.

Joel finds a place where they can stop for the night, and the mood shifts from tense movement to wary rest. Ellie talks more freely than she has before, and Joel follows her lead instead of shutting her down. Their conversation becomes one of the episode's first real signs of trust between them.

Ellie tells Joel a joke from her pun book, and Joel cannot keep from laughing. He tries to hide it, but the joke breaks through his control and gives him a rare moment of open amusement. Ellie sees it, and the two of them share the laugh together. The scene ends on that small, human connection, which feels fragile because of everything that has happened around them.

Then the final shock arrives. While Joel and Ellie are resting, a man and a boy silently enter the room. Joel wakes to Ellie's voice and suddenly finds Henry and Sam pointing guns at them. The scene cuts before any real exchange can happen, leaving the fate of the immediate situation unresolved at the episode's end.

As for the main characters who are part of the ending: - Joel is alive and awake, but he is caught off guard at gunpoint by Henry and Sam. - Ellie is alive and beside Joel when the strangers enter, and she is also held at gunpoint. - Henry is alive at the end of the episode and appears with a gun, confronting Joel and Ellie. - Sam is alive at the end of the episode and stands with Henry during the confrontation. - Kathleen is not present in the final room; the episode has already shown her continuing her hunt for Henry and reacting to the aftermath of the violence in the city.

No. "Please Hold to My Hand" does not have a post-credit scene; the episode ends with the credits rolling over Lotte Kestner's cover of New Order's "True Faith."

The end-of-episode music is the notable extra detail rather than a hidden scene. That song is widely discussed as an intentional Easter egg because it connects to Ellie and later becomes important in The Last of Us Part II.

In Episode 4, Kathleen is shown interrogating a doctor because she is searching for Henry and Sam, and the episode makes it clear that her obsession is tied to something Henry did during the fall of Kansas City. The story reveals that Henry betrayed Kathleen's brother Michael by giving up the resistance's position to FEDRA in exchange for medicine for his younger brother Sam, and that betrayal led to Michael's death.

Henry and Sam are introduced at the end of Episode 4 as a man and a boy whom Kathleen's people are actively hunting. Their presence matters because Joel and Ellie first encounter them after spending the episode traveling through Kansas City, and the encounter sets up a major new relationship and threat for the story going forward.

Joel and Ellie are ambushed in Kansas City by armed attackers after they leave the road and try to move through the city. Joel ends up struggling with a man named Brian, and the fight turns violent when Joel kills him to protect himself and Ellie, which then triggers Kathleen's wider manhunt.

After moving through the city and avoiding Kathleen's forces, Joel and Ellie are approached by Henry and Sam in the final moments of the episode. Henry reveals himself as the person Kathleen is searching for, and the scene ends on this tense first contact between the two pairs of survivors.

Kathleen's group finds open canned food and superhero drawings in an attic, and those details strongly suggest they have discovered evidence that Henry is hiding with Sam and that Sam is a child who leaves behind personal drawings. The scene helps confirm that Kathleen's hunt is focused on a man protecting a young boy, not on an abstract enemy.

No. This episode is generally not family friendly for young children, and it can be upsetting for sensitive viewers because the series is rated for mature audiences due to strong violence, blood, strong language, and frightening/intense scenes.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting elements include: - Armed violence and threat from hostile human groups, not just infected creatures. - Blood and gore, including disturbing injury and death imagery associated with the show's infected and combat scenes. - Intense suspense and jump-scare-style danger, especially in tense survival situations. - Strong profanity throughout the series. - Disturbing post-apocalyptic imagery involving danger to civilians and children in the broader story world.

For older teens, some parents may consider it watchable with guidance, but for younger children or highly sensitive viewers, it is likely too intense.