What was buried in 2013’s The Last of Us hasn’t been forgotten – not entirely, anyway. Instead, the bitter ending to Bill and Frank’s relationship in the original Naughty Dog game blossomed into one of the most beautiful love stories ever revealed on screen. And while there is a lack of strange love stories in the media certainly contributed to some of the indie episode successwhat makes the story of Bill and Frank in the third episode of HBO’s live-action The Last of Us so powerful that we need its unyielding optimism.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the third episode of HBO’s The Last of Us. If you can’t keep up, head to HBO Max to do so.
To see Bill and Frank’s relationship blossom the way it is would have made a lot of sense at any point in history, but to see it now is paramount. Witness a story of pure, unshakable strange love when a lot of the world seems desperately resisted LGBTQIA+ communityaccurately express the capacity of same-sex love, even when it feels like everything is collapsing around us.
“Long, Long Time” tells the story of two men who still fight for the right to be loved without compromise in our reality that is still plagued by bigotry today. But in the post-apocalyptic world in which Bill and Frank find themselves, no fascist state seeks to turn their time together into fuel for more power – turning their love into a rivalry. political treatise.
In their own safe havens from the fungal outbreak, many neighbors and strangers to Bill and Frank, around their homes and across the country, would not allow the two to live a life together. so complete and uncompromising. Aside from the glares they’re both sure to receive, same-sex marriage remained illegal in the United States at the federal level until June 2015, nearly twelve years after The “outbreak date” of The New York Times. Last of Us in 2003. Even at the state level, though, it wasn’t until 2004 that the state of Massachusetts, where Bill and Frank live, legalized same-sex marriage.
However, in a twist of irony and bittersweet, the apocalypse becomes their beginning. An even greater barrier than legitimacy was removed at the start of The Last of Us pandemic: masked inhibition, bound by political intrigues and culture wars, living next to in Bill, who has never been with a man or truly loved until it was just him and another person.
Bill’s story begins as an apocalypse preparer whose paranoia paid off when the end of the world came in 2003. He held his breath as he watched the wall of his security camera monitor. himself while the army evacuated his entire town. And then for the first time he stopped holding his breath and started to really embrace life.
Cut for Frank, who has fallen into one of the many traps that Bill has set up around the nearly abandoned town of Lincoln, Massachusetts to keep anyone stupid enough to drop by. He was about to let him go, but after a hot meal, some booze, and two interpretations of Linda Ronstadt’s song “Long, Long Time,” it became clear that there was something deeper between the two of them. .
And that’s when we know why Bill breathed a sigh of relief when the world ended. He’s a peculiar man living in a world that would surely reject him just for that reason. But now, in a quiet town with only him and the one he loves, Bill is free to love Frank without being ridiculed. Every underprivileged person knows the security they will enjoy in a town like Bill’s. It’s something a lot of us have dreamed of.
An empty town gave Bill and Frank the freedom to live in a world that didn’t define their gender—to love each other and create the world they’ve always dreamed of. The two enjoy 16 years together outside of the watchful eyes of their neighbors, allowing them the freedom to move around and fall in love. While bandits and infected people can sometimes lurk outside their solid perimeters, Bill seems specially equipped to deal with such threats. His pre-apocalyptic pain is of a different nature, and it is no longer appropriate that he and Frank are given the relative power and peace to live as they are.
It’s hard to imagine Bill giggling with Frank in a garden of the world. But in a world without homophobic bills and an explosion of mainstream media talk, one can see Bill playfully falling on top of Frank, before enjoying ripe strawberries beside him. In this world, people like Bill and Frank are allowed to grow old together. As a transgender woman, I will soon end my own life before a social or medical transition, something that my state and country seems damned, the story of Bill and Frank made a deep impression on me. The two have shared decades of life together, experiencing a full and unrestricted life. It doesn’t mean their relationship or life is perfect. There are still disagreements and arguments, but together they make it through until the very end.
After watching their love story unfold, testifying to the beauty and depth of Bill and Frank’s long relationship, we move on to the day where the terminally ill Frank speaks to love. of his life that he wants today to be his last.
On their last day together, the two reflect on the time they’ve shared. Frank tells Bill that he’s had more good days with him than anyone else, even though they’ve both had bad days. We see the two sharing their last meal together before voluntarily taking their own lives.
Only when the world’s repressive regimes collapse and the congress zombies are eliminated will Frank and Bill’s “strange agenda” be seen for what it is: the two express love without worry, inhibition or criticism. For a lot of people, this has been their way of showing love, but for Bill and Frank, the underlying systems of oppression and cruel judgment had to collapse to allow them to find each other and let their relationship go. Their lineage flourished on remade land.
The products discussed here are independently selected by our editors. GameSpot may receive a share of the revenue if you purchase anything featured on our site.
