After the first two episodes of HBO’s “The Last of Us” proved faithful to the eponymous video game, the third installment veered sharply from the source material in its portrayal of characters Bill (Nick Offerman), a cantankerous doomsday prepper, and Frank (Murray Bartlett), a refugee-turned-romantic partner. While opportunities for social and political commentary abound in the show’s post-apocalyptic setting, where government authoritarians use a health emergency to destroy even healthy people, the latest episode focused on a different theme: romanticizing suicide.
In the decade-old game, lead characters Joel and Ellie cross paths with Bill only briefly in their quest for supplies and survival, learning in that encounter that after Bill’s gay partner had become infected with the deadly cordyceps fungus, he took his own life. HBO’s retelling, however, lingered on the homoerotic backstory for the majority of its third episode.
For this to work, viewers were expected to suspend their logic. For instance, Bill’s declarations that Frank was his “purpose” and he wasn’t afraid of anything before Frank showed up are wholly unbelievable in light of the former’s obsessive prepping for fear of losing his freedom, his apparent passion for conservation and resourcefulness, and his love for his apparently deceased mother and her heirlooms.
That’s to say nothing of the dead end their homosexual relationship offers viewers. The same-sex pairing does nothing to further the plot, much less the dwindling human race. But the gratuitous gay plotline, ubiquitous in today’s entertainment landscape, was unsurprising and hardly the most
