Last of Us’ Ellie is best explained by her pun book in episode 4

You’ve probably heard the joke “Why did the scarecrow earn a medal? Because he was outstanding in his field.” But Last of Us’ Ellie (Bella Ramsey) never has. She pulls the pun seemingly randomly from her dictionary, trying to get it at Joel (Pedro Pascal) and see if he will be amused. When he instead offers up the punchline, she’s both delighted and aghast: “You Dick! Did you read this?”

There’s no way, of course, for Ellie to know that this is a very common pun, at least outside a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland brought on by mushrooms. But it’s telling that a scarecrow joke catches her off guard in a way that not even a surprise Clicker or random infected has in the rest of the show. And while this wasn’t the first time Ellie interacted with something new to her from the “old world,” it was an example of what Last of Us can do at its best, finding smart ways to let the characters’ softness peek through, even in an incredibly hard world.

Joel and Ellie have been at the core of this. Though at first glance they’re an odd pair, there’s a certain symbiosis between the two; they’re both spiky, tough, would-be loners who bring out the softness in each other. The game as well as the series are strongly based upon the belief that their deep bond is strong enough for them to commit acts of violence in order to preserve it. That’s true even when Joel finds the thought kind of shameful, embarrassed to have Ellie see him kill the Hunters who ambushed them, and he’s even more overcome when he hears that it isn’t the first time she’s had to kill someone.

Moments like this in episode 4 gives us the best glimpse yet into their relationship being more than just him as a chaperone, even if he’s still telling her she’s not family, she’s “cargo.” It lets us see Joel finally drop his guard for a moment and genuinely care about the life Ellie’s lived, perhaps thawing slightly from his grief over Sarah’s death. Ellie lets herself be taken cared of, and she takes care back. If Last of Us slows down for these moments, it makes time for Ellie to be more than just a generic apocalyptic teen, and Joel Here gruff-but-nonspecific protector. There’s texture to her world that we didn’t have before, something that feels more personal to her.

There is no pun intended: Volume too brings out the same thing in Ellie’s character. When she’s reading to Joel from the book, it’s not only a bonding moment, it’s an illustration that our world is as foreign to her as hers is to us. And it’s more effective storytelling than her marveling at an airplane in “Long, Long Time.” We’ve seen people in post-apocalypses linger at plane crashes, remarking about how grand it must have been to “go up in the sky,” as Ellie puts it. It’s understandable — air travel can leave even a seasoned passenger a bit awestruck — but it’s also overused, and misses the specificity that makes theLast of Us’ characters interesting and its best moments really shine.

In contrast to her general means-of-transportation-based awe, Ellie’s affection for puns and her lack of cultural context around them is charming, and comes from her unique personality. It’s not just that she’s amazed at how people got around, it’s that she’s surprised anyone had time to use language this way. Through her delight and shock at Joel completing the punchline, we get a sense of her world and just how joyless it’s been until now. Joel can be as charmed or saddened as we are by it.

It’s a smaller beat, to be sure. However, Last of Us, and in particular the connection between Ramsey’s Ellie and Pascal’s Joel, is built on minute moments. Ellie soon discovers that the world is bigger and more complex than she imagined. Here’s hoping Last of UsYou can also give the same treatment to her.