This article contains spoilers from The Last of Us episode 3.The love story of Bill & Frank in the newest episode of The Last of Us was an unexpected look at finding love at the end of the world. Queer characters in mainstream media are a little easier to come by these days. As their stories become more prevalent, audiences get to see a wide variety of characters experiencing different sexual orientations and/or gender identities. Recently, Noah Schnapp of Netflix’s Stranger Things outed both himself and his character Will Byers as gay. However, as more & more mainstream stories fearlessly showcase queer characters, there’s a running theme. Many of them focus on those who are conventionally attractive. They’re usually some combination of skinny, young, or pretty.
HBO’s popular adaptation of Neil Druckmann’s video game defies this pattern by introducing the romance between two older men trying to survive what’s essentially a zombie apocalypse. They argue, they sometimes don’t get along, and their health is in a steep decline. Yet, this all serves to endear viewers to their story rather than lose their interest. It’s one of the most beautiful relationships the show has offered and, therein lies the tragedy. In a world where the government sometimes orders the military to fire on civilians, no love was built to last. It can only – like lightly seared rabbit paired with Beaujolais wine – be savored in the moment.
The Last of Us hasn’t been on TV for very long, but already it’s changing the game. In March 2020, co-creator Druckmann partnered with screenwriter & director Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) to adapt the popular video game into a TV show. Their plan all along was to take advantage of a show’s ability to pace out the action and dive into individual storylines. Three years later and they’ve brought a version of Bill & Frank’s romance to life that no one could’ve anticipated.
Some things are the same. Bill (Nick Offerman) is still a gun-toting recluse whose life intertwines with Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) through shared experience & traded goods. Frank (Murray Bartlett), however, is brought to life as a much more fully realized version of his video game counterpart. The result is a profound love story enhanced by the performances behind the characters. It’s not the first time showrunners have taken creative license with an adaptation. However, it’s one of the few times such huge risks produce even bigger rewards – both in storytelling and audience reactions.
In a recent interview with EW, director Peter Hoar recalls that the romance between Bill & Frank happens “in a limited emotional sense” where little signs point to the true nature of their relationship. For instance, Bill describes Frank as having been his partner, and later on, Ellie finds a gay adult magazine that has some of the pages sticking together, implying Bill’s use of it. In the same interview, Mazin explains why it was important for The Last of Us to turn the relationship between Bill & Frank into “an omen of hope” amidst an otherwise bleak existence. It was vital for Bill & Frank to remind the audience that love can & should be found in moments of hopelessness because that’s when people need it the most.
Season 1, episode 3, “Long Long Time” opens with the military rounding up Bill’s neighbors as he hides out in a bunker beneath the floorboards of his home. Once they clear out, he makes his way back to the surface to put his survivalist skills to the test. He later meets Frank as the other man is desperately making his way across the country in search of food & shelter. Bill is reluctant to trust Frank at first, but an aptly placed piano allows viewers to watch his guard slowly come down. The two men engage in a kiss after both attempting to perform “Long Long Time” by Linda Ronstadt.
They go on to spend almost twenty years together. The Last of Us takes its time showing viewers Bill's & Frank's highs & lows. This paints a complex picture of how they built and then sustained their love in such tragic circumstances. There’s beauty in the pain, but there’s also pain in the beauty of falling in love with these characters while knowing they are doomed. When Bill tells Frank, “You were my purpose,” the audience believes it because they’ve seen it for themselves and man does that hurt in all the right ways.
Usually watching queer characters in a mainstream show die after one episode would cause outrage. The phrase “Bury Your Gays” was created to reference the tendency of many TV shows & movies to kill off their only queer characters. Writers were even accused of doing the same with Ser Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod) in HBO’s House of the Dragon. Somehow, though, Bill & Frank’s story manages to avoid such categorization. Part of that is how everyone in The Last of Us is suffering under the same terrifying conditions. Everyone’s grabbing love where they can find it and trying to live like they might not lose it at any moment.
It leaves their deaths feeling less like a targeted anomaly and more like a tragic inevitability. Bill & Frank are viscerally real in their relationship, and it makes their union even more beautiful. Among the day-to-day horrors, they still find time to fight about things like whether they should literally paint the town. Viewers only get them for a short time, but they’re played so believably by Offman & Bartlett with the help of Hoar & Mazin in the writer’s room. The Last of Us manages to make losing Bill & Frank a bittersweet yet necessary experience, even as it leaves viewers reaching for their tissues.
The Last of Us airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on HBO.