Warning: the following article contains spoilers for The Last of Us episode four, ‘Please Hold My Hand’, and the original video game.
The fourth episode of The Last of Us saw Joel and Ellie survive a close call with a group of bandits in Kansas City. While their car was totaled, they managed to escape with their lives.
Of course, if it wasn’t for Ellie finding and stashing a gun she found at Bill and Frank’s place, it might not have ended so well for Joel. The bandit that nearly killed Joel begged for his life, however our leading man opted to take him out anyway.
In the aftermath, Joel and Ellie are hiding out in a building while Kathleen and her goons try to round up the people responsible for murdering two of their own (who she suspects may be Henry). Joel takes the rare moment of quiet to apologize for making Ellie do what she did, to which she responds: “It wasn’t the first time.”
With this revelation, you likely have further questions about Ellie past, right up there with how she came to be bitten in the first place. We have a theory that may line up with the answer to that question, as well.
What did Ellie mean by ‘It wasn’t the first time’?
To answer this, we’ll need to do a little bit of theorycrafting based on our knowledge of the original The Last of Us game, specifically the Left Behind DLC, and perhaps even a little deeper than that, the American Dreams tie-in comic.
During the events of the aforementioned comic, Ellie has a couple of close encounters with both FEDRA and the Fireflies, but doesn’t outright kill anyone, so we can likely rule that out. Our attention then turns to the Left Behind DLC. Huge spoilers ahead for the ending of this sub-story, by the way.
Left Behind ended on a simultaneously ambiguous, but obvious note. Ellie and Riley have both been bitten and have presumed that they will turn into one of the infected. They choose to spend their remaining lucid moments together and wait for the cordyceps virus to take over.
This is where the credit rolls, but of course, there is subtext to unpack. Ellie would have tragically discovered that she is immune, while Riley would have succumbed. The pair were presumably alone while waiting it out, so Ellie may have had to make the heartbreaking decision to put her friend down or risk being torn to pieces.
Given that Ellie was wiping tears from her eyes before making her revelation to Joel about having killed before, we suspect that an infected Riley was the most likely culprit. The caveat of course, is that The Last of Us series hasn’t shied away from deviating from the source material, so perhaps we simply don’t know who it was that Ellie had to take down.