Surely, Tomorrow Episode 4 Ending Decoded: The Alcohol Motif’s Hidden Message and Who’s Truly Healing
Surely Tomorrow episode 4 cracks open the series’ rawest chapter yet, wielding recurring alcohol imagery to probe sobriety and the jagged reality of recovery after trauma—with Kyeong-do at its bruised, beating heart. It’s a sobering hour that dares to ask who is truly healing, and how.
Episode 4 of Surely Tomorrow goes straight for the gut. It is not just about whether Kyeong-do drinks or not; the show keeps circling alcohol like a mirror and asking a bigger question: who is actually healing, and what does healing even look like after you have been cracked open by trauma?
Alcohol as a language, not a prop
Surely Tomorrow keeps using booze as shorthand for avoidance. Kyeong-do has already wrestled with his mess and come out the other side. He is sober, yes, but more importantly, he is accountable. He is not parading sobriety around; he is just living it, and when Ji-woo teeters on the edge, he steps in and nudges her toward a better choice.
Ji-woo, meanwhile, is still in the spin cycle. For her, alcohol is a self-destruct button: the way she smothers the loneliness, the depression, the parts of herself she would rather not meet in the mirror. The show is blunt about it: for Kyeong-do, alcohol marks the lowest moments he refuses to relive; for Ji-woo, it is the thing she reaches for when the pain will not shut up.
By the end of Episode 4, though, both of them are actually doing the work, just very differently. Kyeong-do keeps showing up with steady hands. Ji-woo starts facing the mess head-on: she admits she once wanted to disappear, she stops running, and she finally looks Kyeong-do in the eye.
The first breakup, in plain terms
Episodes 3 and 4 fill in the blanks on their younger, messier chapter. It is not subtle; money and class bleed into everything.
- In Episode 3, Kyeong-do accidentally discovers who his girlfriend really is when he is waiting tables at a dinner with her family. She is a chaebol heir, and he is serving them.
- Trying to bridge the gap, he sinks a big chunk of his paycheck into an orange dress from her dad's clothing brand. She thanks him with a matching T-shirt that costs more than his mom makes in a day. That gift sticks in his head like a splinter.
- Episode 4 brings the tension to a boil over dinner. Kyeong-do wants to buy her pork cutlet instead of the tteokbokki she usually loves, partly because he is embarrassed to be seen with her in his neighborhood and partly because he is trying to treat her on her level. He even borrows money from friends to make it happen. It is his way of chasing a standard he thinks he has to meet.
- He finally cracks and admits that the pricey T-shirt has been haunting him. It is one of the most expensive things he owns, and he feels ashamed just wearing it.
- That is the real fault line: he is suffocated by not having enough and by dating an heiress; she does not fully grasp how much money weighs on their dynamic.
- Ji-woo cries, apologizes for not being considerate, and leaves. Her mother later finds her unconscious and rushes her to the hospital. After treatment, Ji-woo tells her mom she wants to go abroad. She leaves Kyeong-do without contact or closure. That is breakup number one.
Do the feelings stick? Of course they do
Episode 4 basically answers the question: yes, Kyeong-do still cares about Ji-woo. The difference is he is not clingy or impulsive about it anymore. When Se-young calls and says Ji-woo is in trouble, he shows up. When Ji-woo says goodbye and warns that if he comes back she will take it as proof he still has feelings, he weighs the risk and walks straight into it anyway.
He even says it out loud to Ji-woo and to her ex-husband: he is interested in her and he is not planning to back off. He knows she has hurt him twice before. He knows it could happen again. He still chooses to be there so his first love does not have to suffer alone. And this time, it is not Ji-woo chasing him down the street; it is Kyeong-do stepping forward on purpose. Different paths, same direction: healing, slowly.
Where the show leaves them
By the close of Episode 4, they are both inching toward better versions of themselves. Kyeong-do keeps his boundaries and his sobriety without making it a spectacle. Ji-woo stops numbing and starts owning what she has done and what she wants. It is messy. It is honest. And it works.
Surely Tomorrow streams on Prime Video with new episodes every Saturday and Sunday.