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| Photo by Jeia Jazul |
Disclaimer: This article spoils the third episode of The Last of Us as well as the same part in the original video game. This article also mentions multiple instances of suicide. Reader’s discretion is advised.
Very rarely will an adaptation get the essence of its source material so right that it's warmly received by even its most devoted fans. Even rarer, is when the adaptation builds upon the source material, enriching it and extracting far more substance than its first go-around. HBO’s The Last of Us achieves this in spades and then some with its third and latest episode, Long, Long Time.
HBO’s The Last of Us is the series adaptation of the 2013 video game of the same name. Released just this January of 2023, the show, from its first episode, garnered praise for its performances, faithfulness to the source material, and overall presentation of a world torn to shreds by a fungal zombie outbreak. To the unfamiliar, it's a standard zombie affair filled with gore, tension, and high-stakes drama similar to The Walking Dead. But whereas shows like The Walking Dead excel in showing us the bleaker parts of humanity during an apocalypse, The Last of Us shows us that love persists and keeps us going—and episode 3 is the powerhouse example of that very philosophy.
The episode begins with Joel and Ellie traveling to a town run by a man named Bill in order to get a car that would get them across the country. At this point, an emotional wall between the two still remains—one that Ellie constantly tries to break down with her curiosity about the world before the outbreak. Joel, on his part, repeatedly shoots down any attempts to build a civil relationship, giving only short, cold answers and letting Ellie know that he treats her only as cargo to be transported.
While the two are the show’s main characters and are the emotional heart of the whole story, this is where the show cleverly deviates from the source material and decides to take us back 20 years earlier during the start of the apocalypse. We are introduced to Bill, a grumpy, old doomsday prepper-survivalist who managed to escape military forces sent to evacuate his whole town. Now, alone and with the town’s resources left all to himself, Bill decides to become a one-man community and lives in full self-sufficiency.
His time alone, however, is short-lived as another survivor by the name of Frank stumbles upon one of Bill’s traps. Bill agrees to take Frank in temporarily, albeit with distrust, to feed him and provide him with a shower (a luxury in the world of The Last of Us). As Frank finds more and more about Bill, from his taste in wine to the music that he plays, he begins to see through the tough exterior of the hardened survivalist and unearths a lonely man who has long repressed his sexuality and is looking for warmth from a world that has very little to offer anymore. Bill decides to let Frank stay as they begin a relationship.
We are then treated to the couple’s years together, from the time they had an argument about Frank wanting to restore parts of the town, to them forming a business relationship with Tess and Joel, to the time their town was unsuccessfully sieged by raiders and Bill was left wounded after getting shot in the hip.
One of the episode’s most touching scenes was the time Frank surprised Bill by growing strawberries in their garden. This is where The Last of Us, both in the game and now in the series, excel—showing us fleeting moments of gut-wrenching vulnerability in a world that is otherwise bleak and unforgiving. They serve as the folly to Joel, whose reluctance to accept Ellie prevents him from seeing that it is only her now that is keeping him going. More to that, they are follies of their video game counterparts, whose fates are far worse and more devastating.
In the video game, we never get to meet Frank; we only see the aftermath of a lifetime of bickering between him and Bill. Bill is a bitter and paranoid man, Frank leaves him and gets bitten. He commits suicide before he could turn into one of the infected. Frank dies hating Bill’s guts. You get the option to reveal Frank’s suicide letter to Bill; I don’t think it’s a good option. It is a section of the game hidden under layers and layers of subtext and implications and spite, never truly revealing to us what exactly happened between Bill and his ill-fated partner. In the video game, Bill is what Joel would have been if he continued to reject Ellie.
The show, then, surprisingly decides not to pursue the same route as its source material. In the show, Bill and Frank grow old together. Frank, having developed a sickness and becoming increasingly weak, decides that it will be his last day and asks Bill to assist him by crushing a handful of pills and mixing them with his wine. He plans to overdose and rest peacefully in Bill’s arms as they go to bed. Bill, though not by his own fault, is initially reluctant, but ultimately relents to Frank’s wishes, having been satisfied with the life they have shared together. They also decide to get married as the final act of cementing their love. The Last of Us throws us with one tearjerker of a moment after another.
That night, Bill mixes the pills in Frank’s wine in front of him as they share their final drink together before revealing that he has already laced the whole bottle so that he, too, may die with his husband. Bill and Frank go to bed together where it is implied off-screen that they have passed peacefully in each other’s arms.
By the time Joel and Ellie reach Bill’s house, they have already long passed. Before Joel could open the door to their room, he is stopped as Ellie reads a letter left by Bill addressed to him. A part of it reads:
...I respect you so I’m gonna tell you something because you’re probably the only person who will understand. I used to hate the world and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong because there was one person worth saving. That’s what I did. I saved him. Then, I protected him. That’s why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do and God help any motherf*ckers who stand in our way.
Bill leaves Joel with enough supplies for him and Ellie to go on their way. Joel reflects on the people he once had to protect, his daughter, Tess, and now, Ellie. They leave as they listen to a recording of Long, Long Time by Linda Rondstadt—Bill and Frank’s song and the one they bonded over on the piano when they first met.
It is impossible not to emphasize the strength of this episode, of deviating so heavily from this one plot point and coming out exemplifying the story’s themes far better than the source material had managed. Bill and Frank were no longer a tragic couple doomed to suffer a dark fate. Instead, the show allowed them to grow old and peaceful (as peaceful as apocalypses get) and die on their own terms. It is a love that transcends the nihilism of most post-apocalyptic fiction, and it is all the purer because of it. Series creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin took on the herculean task of adapting this story by offering a happier, albeit equally melancholy, take on Bill and Frank’s arc—and the show is all the better for it.
I have played The Last of Us more times than I’d be proud to admit. It is my favorite video game, and maybe even, story of all time. My biggest compliment for episode 3 is that it will most likely ruin all the subsequent playthroughs of the video game for me because I would know the show offered something more emotionally potent than what the game ever could. If the first two episodes of the show ever struggle to justify to you the very existence of its adaptation, episode 3 should have no problem answering emphatically why it deserves it. It is a triumph in all of its aspects and it is an hour of television that will stick with me for a long, long time.
The Last of Us airs exclusively on HBO and streams exclusively on HBO Max, with new episodes every Monday, at 10:00 AM in the Philippines.
