A mid-season queer check-in: The Last of Us

Due to the Superbowl airing on Sunday, The Last of Us dropped this week’s episode on Friday night, instead of the regularly scheduled Sunday evening. This brings us to the middle of the season and we promised to check in with y’all about how things are shaping up for this show so far. The entire office is watching this one and we’re a little all over the place with our opinions on the coverage. So we’re keeping this one all about the gay and we’re going to do a mid-season queer check-in with y’all to tie us all over until the season ends. 

In case you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know, The Last of Us has been killing it globally. It’s breaking all kinds of viewership records, and HBO already renewed it for a second season after just a couple of episodes. To say that this show is popular would be an understatement. Everyone is talking about it – everywhere – and rightly so. 

Season one picks up years and years after a fungal infection brought the world to a standstill. Even after a deadly pandemic managed to bring the world to its knees, life, it seems, forged forward, and brought us to Ellie (Bella Ramsay) and Joel (Pedro Pascal). Little teen Ellie seems to be immune to the virus, and the very few in the know about her condition, seem to think she is the key to creating a cure or a vaccine against this thing that continues to ravage them all. So Joel makes a promise to protect her with his life, and get her to the people that can do the science work necessary for them all. 

This mid-season queer check-in is largely going to focus on episode three. It’s well documented that in the game – of which The Last of Us is based on – Ellie is a lesbian. Prior to the release of the HBO series, the director told the press that the show was going to honor that part of Ellie’s character and that she would also be queer in the show. 

In the game universe, this part of her character doesn’t show up until later, so it was unclear how, or even if, this would be written into the first season of the show. So far, Ellie’s sexuality hasn’t been brought up at all, which, considering what they’re dealing with, is understood. Right now, they’re all in nothing but complete survival mode. There really isn’t a lot of time for teen romance, yaknow?

So it does look like the writers of the HBO series are definitely going to follow the trajectory of her storyline as it plays out in the game. When it comes down to adapting the storyline for the small screen, this has been true of everything else so far – mostly. It only makes sense that they would do the same with Ellie. However, in episode three, the HBO series takes a bit of a deviation from the canon storyline in the game to tell us about Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) storylines. This queer check-in was very interested in the changes that they made with the trajectory of these characters. 

In the game, players don’t actually meet Frank, but in the show, viewers absolutely do. Frank stumbles into town one day and despite his initial hesitation, Bill lets him into his heavily armed and protected home. They eat, Frank cleans up (hot water, y’all) and it marks the beginning of a beautiful love story that spans over fifteen years. Despite their post-apocalyptic surroundings, they manage to live a good life together, and they’re happy. They fight as couples do, but it’s very clear that they love each other desperately. It’s hard to find genuine love like that in a normal world, but the fact that they found it amidst the world in which they live in? It only makes their love and their story even more special. 

Frank is the first man that Bill has ever been with, and he also becomes his last. Frank contracts some kind of incurable disease (that wasn’t curable before the apocalypse happened) and becomes ill. He is wheelchair bound and his quality of life is quickly declining. Frank makes a decision: instead of letting his body fail him, he wants to take his own life. 

And Bill isn’t going to let Frank leave him behind to deal with everything all alone. When Bill informs Frank that they’re going to do this together, that both of them will be leaving the earth on this night, he tells Frank that he was his reason for existing. And that just broke us into a thousand tiny little pieces. 

During their last night alive together, Bill cooks them an elegant meal (the same one they had when they first met), they share some wine, and share their love. And then they fill their stomachs with enough pharmaceuticals to wipe out a horse and tuck themselves into bed, next to each other, and fade off into the darkness. 

Their story in the game is quite different, and we have to say, we’re quite happy with the change in direction for these two. In the game, Frank eventually leaves Bill alone and doesn’t even really say goodbye. He writes him a letter before he makes his departure. In the letter, Frank says, “Well, Bill, I doubt you’d ever find this note ‘cause you were too scared to ever make it to this part of town. But if for some reason you did, I want you to know I hated your guts. I grew tired of this shitty town and your set-in-your-ways attitude. I wanted more from life than this and you could never get that.”

So yeah, we’re much happier with this new storyline indeed. 

The Q+ Magazine offices were flooded with tears that day, as we lamented our feelings all over the place. So we’re doing a mid-season queer check-in with y’all … how is everyone doing so far? 

We hope that game purists and enthusiasts weren’t too put off by the change in the storyline, but the love these men shared on screen is just so pure and beautiful. Two broken men, scarred by a harsh life that no one should have to endure, managed to find peace and love, and happiness inside each other. 

And that gives us hope y’all. It gives us nothing but pure, unadulterated hope. We thank those in charge of making the executive decisions to alter this part of the storyline. Apart from the fact that it made our very queer hearts very happy to see such positive and loving representation on a small screen, it also broke up the treachery of the harsh realities of the world the characters of The Last of Us are all living through. If the story was nothing but monsters and running and gunfire, it would be quite a difficult watch indeed. 

But Bill and Frank? They gave us love where there shouldn’t have been any, and that’s nothing short of a miracle indeed. 

We can’t wait to see what happened in the second half of the season. Good luck Ellie and Joel!

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The Last Of Us airs every Sunday on HBO Max at 9 pm EST. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!