The most recent episo of HBO’s The Last of Us has left some fans wonrg if Bill and Frank were a gay uple the origal game.
Contents:
- HBO’S THE LAST OF US IMPROV ON THE GAME’S IMPLIED GAY ROMANCE
- ‘THE LAST OF US’ CONFIRMED THAT BILL WAS GAY YEARS AGO
- WAS BILL GAY THE LAST OF US GAME?
- Y, ELLIE HAS ALWAYS BEEN GAY ‘THE LAST OF US’
- THE LAST OF US’ GEO GAY LOVE STORY COULD NOT BE MORE TIMELY
- THE LAST OF US’S GAY LOVE STORY BREAKS NEW GROUND FOR AN ENTIRE GENRE
HBO’S THE LAST OF US IMPROV ON THE GAME’S IMPLIED GAY ROMANCE
“It was geo, and I was so not expectg , ” said Darn Lowenste, 41, a vio game nsultant, who is gay. “Obvly, I’ve played the gam religly and I know there’s gay characters there, but I was not expectg an 80-mute … tearworthy piece of art. ” Queer-themed gam date as far back as 1992’s “Gay Bla, ” acrdg to the LGBTQ media advocy group GLAAD.
Though Bill’s role the game is small, and his mentn of beg gay brief, did not go unnoticed by LGBTQ gamers like then, he was his early 20s and still the closet about his sexualy. ”Adaptatn giv gamers hope for more reprentatnSome queer viewers exprsed excement that Sunday's episo would expose even more people to gay vio game characters. Bill is gay the game, but ’s referenced so vaguely that plenty of players missed .
‘THE LAST OF US’ CONFIRMED THAT BILL WAS GAY YEARS AGO
The cisn to keep muted, hted at a sgle le of dialogue and a hidn letter, was both praised and cricized — was easy to overlook, but also avoid a lot of gay-character trop, and allowed Bill to be a human and not “a maniftatn of sexualy, ” as Polygon’s Danielle Rien put at the time. The game’s storyle don’t avoid trop altogether, though: It was cricized for “buryg s gays. “Long Long Time” has sparked several plats om the worst si of Twter about how The Last of Us allegedly shoehorned a gay relatnship.
But the fact is Bill has always been gay.
WAS BILL GAY THE LAST OF US GAME?
So yeah, Bill has always been gay. LGBTQ+ them are not somethg entirely new to The Last of Us anchise, as the first stallment of the seri also showsed a gay NPC and then a very graceful lbian kiss the Left Behd DLC.
Bill is gay and had a relatnship wh a man lled Frank, who is later found ad the game, much to Bill's dismay. Unlike Da, Bill tri to hi his homosexualy and ially only refers to Frank as someone he had red for.
The most recent episo of HBO’s The Last of Us has left some fans wonrg if Bill and Frank were a gay uple the origal game. Wh such drastic chang, pecially when to Bill and Frank’s relatnship, some are left askg if Bill was really gay The Last of Us vio game.
Y, ELLIE HAS ALWAYS BEEN GAY ‘THE LAST OF US’
The biggt hts towards Bill beg a gay man are his relatnship to Frank and a certa magaze that Ellie steals om his stash the church basement, both of which n be missed by players not engagg optnal ntent or not payg close enough attentn. Ne years before the episo of the same name, Left Behd revealed that Ellie is gay. Those are the qutns plagug Ellie, not the far more played out”Am I gay?
THE LAST OF US’ GEO GAY LOVE STORY COULD NOT BE MORE TIMELY
Though this storyle ends wh a ad LGBTQ+ character, don’t necsarily follow the Bury Your Gays trope. But The Last of Us Part II -wrer Halley Gross nfirmed no uncerta terms that Ellie is gay. While Jackson, Ellie is harassed by a homophobic man for kissg her iend Da.
And yet The Last of Us was there 2014, nfirmg that one of the bt known characters gamg history was gay all along and handlg her first love as serly as this anchise handled the ath of Joel’s child.
The show is already garnerg high praise for s third episo, which lved ep to a si story wh two gay characters at s re. Several more gay characters are sttered among the game’s st, and future episos — and seasons — will see the h characters realized live-actn for the first time.
THE LAST OF US’S GAY LOVE STORY BREAKS NEW GROUND FOR AN ENTIRE GENRE
Ellie Image via Nghty Dog That’s right, the lead character The Last of Us is part of the gay muny. The character’s sexualy is hted at the Last of Us gam, and many players termed that he was gay, but players didn’t get nearly the romance the origal that HBO livered wh “Long Long Time.
What we got stead was a psule episo, and a particularly bracg one, given the show’s opprsively bleak mood th far: The hour is dited to the love story of Bill and Frank, a gay uple who—due ially to Bill’s skills as a bunker-stockg, booby-trappg, Don’t Tread on Me survivalist—manage to build a largely happy existence together an abandoned and eventually fortified ral hamlet for almost 20 years. Wh Bill and Frank, we were given a portra of love—specifilly gay love—that feels surprisg and urgent.