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

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 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.

Ellie Image via Nghty Dog That’s right, the lead character The Last of Us is part of the gay muny.

Y, ELLIE HAS ALWAYS BEEN GAY ‘THE LAST OF US’

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.

Bill is gay the game, but ’s referenced so vaguely that plenty of players missed . 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. Acrdg to crics who have seen the show, we're gettg a whole lot more of The Last of Us' gay characters than we Last of Us follows Joel and Ellie as they travel across a post-apolyptic Ameri tryg to avoid fung-fected zombi. Ne years before the episo of the same name, Left Behd revealed that Ellie is gay.

THAT ‘THE LAST OF US’ GAY LOVE STORY IS GROUNDBREAKG

Those are the qutns plagug Ellie, not the far more played out”Am I gay? 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.

IS JOEL OM THE LAST OF US GAY OR BISEXUAL? THEORY EXPLAED

Bartlett, an openly gay actor whose most famo rol have been as gay characters The Whe Lot, Wele to Chippendal and Lookg, is a well-chosen scene partner. There’s a good chance Bartlett will be playg a gay character: the ia that Offerman’s character might be too blossoms as litely as the pair’s relatnship.

As the gam have been adapted for the screen, there has not exactly been a wealth of gay characters to choose mak Bill’s barely-mentned relatnship The Last of Us somethg of an outlier.

Gay storyl on TV, while not ubiquo, are not unheard of. For one, there are a lot of gay characters both the game and the HBO versn as we know for a fact that Bill, Frank, and Ellie are homosexuals.