![]() The way Bill talks about Frank in the game is coated in heartache - describing him namelessly as “a partner,” “somebody that I cared about,” and “somebody I had to look after,” before adding that “in this world, that sort of sh*t’s good for one thing: gettin’ ya killed” – but it isn’t clear what happened to Frank, outside of him leaving Bill, until the one-two punch of exploring Bill’s Town. This is all we know of Frank until we discover his dead body, a rope wrapped around his neck in order to avoid succumbing to the cordyceps brain infection. That is precisely what his partner, Frank, does before the events of The Last of Us, abandoning Bill after over a decade together. ![]() The original Bill was an exhausting assh*le whom you'd be only too happy to get away from. Earl Brown in game, with Nick Offerman taking over the role in the series developed by Craig Mazin and TLOU creator Neil Druckmann, Bill is a character that exists in two distinct forms. Some might think of this as bad representation, while others may find pleasure in watching a queer individual surviving, however miserably, in a world in which few can exist. It’s a brief but necessary moment of intimacy in a world and narrative that has been overwhelmingly tragic and a precursor for relationships to come.īut there is one other memorable queer figure in the first The Last of Us game - one whose entire persona is to be as off-putting as possible. ![]() This was made explicit largely through the DLC for the first game, titled Left Behind, which tracked the time that Ellie spent with her best friend Riley prior to the events of the game, and featured a widely praised kiss between the two girls. The series has garnered as much praise for its handling of queer relationships in the midst of an apocalyptic scenario as criticism about the way the games approach everything from race to trans characters.įor the uninitiated, the game’s teenage protagonist Ellie (voiced by Ashley Johnson in-game, with Bella Ramsey portraying her in HBO’s TV adaptation) is queer, having had experiences with other women in both games. She's far from the only queer character in the series, though the only one the player actually controls in the game, as the rest float in and out of her life and that of Joel (voiced by Troy Baker in-game, with Pedro Pascal taking over in the show). In the decade since its release, much has been written about representation within The Last of Us video game and, even more notably, its sequel Part II.
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