Are bill and frank gay
HBO’s The Last of Us improves on the game’s implied gay romance
Three episodes in, it’s clear that HBO’s The Last of Us is a trusted adaptation of the first video game from 2013 — so much so that lines and frames may have been pulled straight from the game. That’s not to speak that there aren’t changes, though. Series co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are making strategic adjustments to certain elements of the game for the new medium and to catch up to new sensibilities. The first of those changes was with Joel’s partner, Tess, and how her story ultimately came to an finish in episode 2. Whether it was an improvement is debatable, but for a show dedicated to preserving the anatomy of the source material, it was notable.
The filmmakers made another major change in the third episode, and it’s one that is unequivocally for the better.
[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for the third episode of HBO’s The Last of Us and the original The Last of Us video game.]
Bill and Frank have been mentioned offhand a scant times over the past two episodes, referred to as collaborators in Joel and Tess’ smuggling chime. If you haven’t played The Last of Us, those names mean no
Bill and Frank's Romance In The Last Of Us Feels Like An Apology From Naughty Dog
Spoilers obey for The Last of Us episode three
Bill always deserved better. The Last of Us originally depicted him as a resentful and untrusting misanthrope, with any meager emotional warmth only surfacing for those closest to him. Joel and Tess spent decades trading with him and learning to survive amidst the apocalypse, and still couldn’t weave their way into his heart, too busy walking into deadly traps made to hold them out. His distrust remains in the HBO show, but it’s lined with love and companionship he has always deserved - far more than a partner hanging himself out of desperation.
The game is deliberately vague about his queerness, hinted at through ambiguous dialogue, rough jokes, and the aforementioned suicide. I’m not against queer characters experiencing hardship in media - it often gives them the agency more obnoxiously positive media takes from them through coddling - but The Last of Us came at a moment when harmful bury your gays tropes and regressive stereotypes were commonplace. Diverse audiences were used to being treated as an afterthought, and here was a ch
The Last of Us’ Gorgeous Gay Love Story Could Not Be More Timely
This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us, Episode 3.
Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us, titled “Long, Long Time,” could have been very different. As the third installment of HBO’s boiling new show about an Earth overrun by a mutated, zombifying fungus, it seemed sure to highlight on advancing the pivotal narrative of young, apparently plague-proof Ellie, and Joel, her begrudging protector, as they journey from Boston west toward a lab working on a cure—a trek that had only really gotten underway (with a bang and a few hundred whimpers) at the end of Episode 2. What we got instead was a capsule episode, and a particularly bracing one, given the show’s oppressively bleak mood thus far: The hour is dedicated to the love story of Bill and Frank, a same-sex attracted couple who—due initially to Bill’s skills as a bunker-stocking, booby-trapping, Don’t Tread on Me survivalist—manage to build a largely content existence together in an abandoned and eventually fortified rural hamlet for almost 20 years.
The tale of Bill and Frank, as depicted through award-worthy performances from Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, has garne
Was Bill Gay in The Last of Us Game?
In Episode 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us, titled “Long, Long Time,” audiences are introduced to the characters of Bill and Frank, a queer couple living out their days in the town of Lincoln, years after the cordyceps pandemic decimated the population. This episode, besides entity one of the most critically acclaimed of the series, also marks the biggest departure from the original game, changing many aspects of this particular chapter in the source material. With such drastic changes, especially when it comes to Bill and Frank’s connection, some are left asking if Bill was really homosexual in The Last of Usvideo game.
Developed in the initial 2010s and released in 2013, The Last of Us was created before a time when discussions about voice were within the popular consciousness. In episode 2 of The Last of Us – The Official Podcast, “Summer Part 2,” game director Neil Druckmann confesses that he wasn’t thinking about representation when he created the ethics of Bill and that Frank was conceived as a “best friend.” It was the voice actor for Bill, W. Earl Brown, who infused
HBO’s The Last Of Us Reclaims The Queerness Its World Forgot
The story of Bill and Frank in The Last of Us (and its remaster and remake) is a tragic one. Naughty Dog’s series is occupied of tragedy, but because it features a same-sex association to portray the danger of forming connection in the post-apocalypse, to some, it felt prefer another in a long line of stories about how queer love is doomed. In stark contrast to the game’s hopeless grab on their bond, the HBO series’ version of Bill and Frank feels like a reclaiming of a queer post-apocalyptic romance the two never got to see, and the survival of a queer history the world of The Last of Us illustrates is long gone for the next generation.
As in the HBO show, the game’s Bill is a gruff survivalist so guarded against the world that even his partner, Frank, can’t break through and find a real emotional connection. When Joel and Ellie arrive in his fortified town, Bill is alive, but Frank, unable to endure Bill’s coldness and isolating tendencies, has taken his own experience and left a bitter suicide notice that condems his ex-partner for organism content to only survive behind the traps and tripwires he’s scattered