What Does Frank Have In The Last Of Us?

Contents

- 0.0.1 What is Frank dying of in The Last of Us?
0.1 Did Frank actually love Bill?

1 What did Bill put in Franks wine?
- 1.1 Why is Frank in a hole in The Last of Us?
2 How did Frank get infected?
3 Does Frank hook up with his daughter?
- - 3.0.1 Did Ellie find tampons?
4 Why did Ellie stab that infected?
5 Why doesn’t Joel let Ellie have a gun?
6 Is Bill not dead in The Last of Us?
7 How old is Ellie in The Last of Us?
8 Did Frank exist in Last of Us game?
9 Where is Frank’s body in The Last of Us?

What is Frank dying of in The Last of Us?

How Frank Dies In The Video Game – Since The Last of Us game is linear and focused on gameplay and combat, the story of Bill and Frank is quite different in the game, In the game, Joel and Ellie come to Lincoln, though Joel admits he’s never actually been there before. After running into infected and Bill’s traps, the two encounter Bill alone.

Paranoid and distrustful, Bill agrees to find a working car for Joel and leads them through town. Bill questions why Joel is taking care of Ellie; it’s here that Bill tells Joel that he once had a partner that he had to “look after”, who Bill eventually let go. After hours of gameplay and combat, Joel and Bill discover a corpse hanging in a house.

Bill tells Joel that the body hanging is Frank, and that Frank was his partner. Though the series openly portrays the romantic side of Bill and Frank’s relationship, in the game their romantic relationship is only implied, A note that the player can find in the house will reveal a letter Frank wrote to Bill. The note implies that Bill and Frank had some sort of falling out, which resulted in Frank trying to leave Lincoln.

As Bill cuts down Frank’s body, he and Joel find that he had bite marks from infected. Bill had said earlier in the game that infected were all over that side of town, so while players never see Frank, his fate is fairly clear. After his falling out with Bill, he attempted to leave Lincoln. Passing through the side of town with hordes of infected, Frank inevitably got infected himself, though chose to commit suicide rather than turn.

In the game, the discovery of Frank’s death clearly devastates Bill, showing a sympathetic side to the character players previously hadn’t seen. Bill’s distant relationship with Frank is meant to mirror Joel’s distant relationship with Ellie, signifying where the two might end up if Joel fails to grow close to Ellie.

In the series, Bill leaves a note to Joel, instead saying that taking care of Frank gave him purpose, and that both he and Joel have a life to save.
While Bill in the series never meets Ellie, Joel undoubtedly projects the message of Bill’s note onto him and Ellie.
The game showed the devastating consequences of continuing to be distant to Ellie, but the show instead chooses a positive spin.

By changing Bill and Frank’s story, the series shows how love is always possible, even in the most hopeless of situations. The Last of Us video game is available on PS3 and PS4. The Last of Us Part 1 is available on PS5. HBO’s The Last of Us airs on Sundays at 9PM.

Did Frank actually love Bill?

The Last of Us Challenges the Bury Your Gays Trope – There is a problematic trope of gay characters dying because they are gay, often referred to as the “bury your gays” trope, This is when a character’s queerness is the source of their death, which can result from being the victim of a hate crime or suicide for reasons related to their sexuality.

It also applies to characters who are viewed as disposable motivations for straight characters.
Frank and Bill do not survive the episode, but their deaths challenge this trope.
It is too bad that they’re dead, but they’re not dead because they are queer.
Yes, Bill’s suicide note motivates Joel’s decision to save Ellie, but Bill’s death itself has nothing to do with Joel.

Bill and Frank are challenging this trope because their entire life is a massive victory, and their death isn’t a loss but a conclusion of an epic love story more reminiscent of The Notebook than a homophobic trope. Bill and Frank are middle-aged gay men who manage to not only find each other after the apocalypse has ravaged the world, but they’re also able to build a full and beautiful life together.

They find their purpose in each other.
Bill’s purpose was to save Frank’s life, and Frank’s purpose was to give Bill a life.
They find a way not just to survive but to actually live.
They reject the idea that the end of the world becomes the end of their lives, and they live in defiance of the atrocities and heartbreak that this new world order dictates to so many.

Too often, gay characters die to tell a sad story, so it’s essential to see a gay character that lives to tell a joyous one. Bill and Frank’s love story is a beautiful thing, and it subverts expectations in the most beautiful way while setting up the rest of the series.

What did Bill put in Franks wine?

‘The Last of Us’ Episode 3 ending explained: The tragic short lives of The Last of Us Episode 3 was a complete departure from the story of Joel and Ellie, finally setting out on their own after Tess’ at the end of We see the two as they set out to do exactly what Tess told them to do — get to Bill.

Fifteen minutes into their journey, the episode turns into an epic flashback detailing Bill’s journey from outbreak day until just a few days before Joel and Ellie arrive.
But just what happened at the end? Here’s everything you need to know.
Warning! Spoilers for The Last of Us Episode 3 ahead.
Seriously, go watch the episode it’s worth it.) On Outbreak Day, one person in Lincoln, Massachusetts is well prepared.

Bill (Nick Offerman) watches FEDRA evacuate the town from his underground bunker, and then he gets to work: getting the gas plant up and running, setting up his generator, and building a whole bunch of booby traps to defend himself. After a few years, an uninfected person falls into one of those booby traps.

Frank (Murray Bartlett) convinces Bill to let him in for a meal, and sparks fly between the two.
Before they know it, it’s a few years later and they’re inviting some smugglers from the Boston QZ over for a lovely picnic lunch.
Frank makes himself at home at Bill’s.
HBO Bill and Frank build a life together that almost looks normal — they fight with each other, they fight off Infected, and they fight for each other.

In 2023, they’re both old men. Frank is emaciated from what appears to be cancer, and Bill is still taking care of him day in and day out. Bill treats the disease with pills, but when they run out, Frank decides he’s had enough. He asks Bill to spend one last day with him.

They’ll go down to the boutique and dress up nice, get married to each other, have a great dinner together, and then Bill will put painkillers in Frank’s wine (interestingly, the same painkillers Joel sold in Episode 1) and they’ll fall asleep together.
Bill protests at first but then decides to follow through with Frank’s wishes — they have a lovely day together, and then at dinner, Frank has his wine,

and Bill downs his one glass. He reveals that he put enough painkillers in his to kill him too, as he doesn’t have much to live for without Frank. They settle in bed together and, presumably, die in each other’s arms. Bill and Joel became friends — as much as guys like Bill and Joel can be friends.

HBO When Joel and Ellie reach Lincoln, it’s a few days later. Joel and Ellie find a letter from Bill saying what happened. “I used to hate the world and was happy when everyone died,” he writes. “But I was wrong. Because there was one person worth saving.” He bequeaths everything to Joel, telling him to use his guns to keep Tess safe.

It’s only then that Joel shows his grief not only for Tess but for Bill and Frank. They explore his underground bunker and stash, revealing why Joel’s radio played Depeche Mode at the end of Episode 1 — if the timer’s not reset, then a distress signal is automatically broadcast.

Why is Frank in a hole in The Last of Us?

‘The Last of Us’ Episode 3 Recap Following the shocking ending to The Last of Us ‘s, it feels like we’ve finally completed the tutorial section of the new series’s adaptation. We know what all the buttons do——so now the entire world’s map is available to explore.

That’s a good thing, because our hero, Joel (), must help Ellie (Bella Ramsey) reach the Firefly oasis that she believes is somewhere out there, still trying to find a cure.
The duo is now 10 miles west of Boston—which is info we receive from a very helpful location stamp at the start of the third episode—and tensions are high after losing Tess to the infected.

“I was thinking about what happened and nobody made you go along with this plan,” Ellie tells Joel. “You needed a truck battery or whatever, and you made a choice. So don’t blame me for something that isn’t my fault.” Yeah Joel, remember when you thought that this was all just a side quest for the car battery you needed to find your brother? Well, welcome to the main game now. At an abandoned convenience store, Ellie finds an infected guy still alive—but crushed under heavy concrete. He makes those weird, velociraptor-like noises that infected humans make in this world, displaying some truly impressive work from the show’s makeup and prosthetics team.

Toad from suddenly has some major competition when it comes to guys with mushroom heads. Next, Joel and Ellie find something even worse: a mass grave of people, all of whom the army didn’t let enter a quarantine zone—because they either had a chance of being infected, or the QZ was just too full. Apparently, the soldiers would just execute these people en masse so that they couldn’t turn.

Flashing back to 2003, I was worried that we were about to witness the horrible event take place. Instead, we meet, playing a survivalist named Bill. With everyone in the town now gone, Bill pops out of a secret bunker he built below his house stacked with guns, barrels of sulfuric acid, and a stack of security camera feeds.

He loots the gas station for oil, steals a massive number of supplies from Home Depot, and even jacks his neighbor’s boat.
Then, he sets up a bunch of booby traps and—as he eats his dinner—watches them go to work on some unlucky infected humans.
It doesn’t get old,” he says to himself.
We have a job to do, and God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.

Bill lives infection-free in this secluded fortress town for nearly four years, until another person named Frank (Murray Bartlett), from the Baltimore QZ, stumbles into one of his traps. Frank tells him that the quarantine zone is completely gone, and Bill lets him out of a hole after testing to see if he’s infected.

Begrudgingly, Bill lets him inside and offers a shower, a new set of clothes, and a home-cooked meal. Frank is in heaven. He thanks him with a song on the piano. but he’s not very good. Bill shows him up by playing “Long Long Time” by Linda Ronstadt, before revealing to Frank that he’s gay. Good news: Frank says, “I know,” and the two tear up as they kiss.

In an interview with, showrunner Craig Mazin revealed that he cast Offerman because he believed that “funny people have soul,” and “a connection that I think is even stronger to what it means to be human.” Nice job, Mazin. You were totally right. Frank never leaves.

The two of them live together for another three years before he starts to truly feel the isolation of their living situation. He wants to spruce up the town and play a little Sims in real life, but Bill reminds him that “we will never have friends, because there are no friends to be had.” Cut to: Joel and Tess having dinner with them outside.

Timeline-wise, it’s only been roughly seven years since we flashed-back to 2003, so I’m guessing this scene takes place somewhere in 2010—still over a decade before our current journey with Joel and Ellie. Tess thanks the couple for the beautiful meal, but Bill is still on edge.

Joel talks some business and offers up some bartering deals. They trade a gun for some strawberry seeds. Later, Frank and Bill eat strawberries and giggle in delight. “I was never afraid before you showed up,” Bill tells Frank. Oh my god, stop you two! Love?! During the apocalypse?! I’m going to cry at the mushroom zombie show.

This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. The couple grows old together in their little town, all to themselves, until Frank falls ill. He plans one final day with Bill, and it’s set to the incredibly recognizable “On the Nature of Daylight” by Max Richter. It’s a song heavily used in films including Arrival, Stranger Than Fiction, Shutter Island, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and many more.

Why? Because it works wonders on those tear ducts. Frank and Bill crush up enough sleeping pills to end their lives together—and go to sleep for one last time. When Joel and Ellie finally arrive in present day (well, August 2023), there’s a key left for them and a hand-written note. “I used to hate the world and I was happy when everyone died, but I was wrong because there was one person worth saving,” Bill wrote.

“That’s why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do, and God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.” The weight of three significant losses in his life finally bears down on Joel, and he takes a moment for himself outside. Finding Bill’s car in the garage, he prepares to set out and look for his brother Tommy once again.

Tommy was a former Firefly, Joel mentions, so it’s possible that he knows where this doctor outpost is located. I want to take this time to bring up the option that they could just stay here forever and be safe—but I know that it’s not in the cards for these two. Even though, you know, the town Bill made kept two people safe for nearly two decades.

Well, it’s a road trip now, folks. Let’s hope the infected can’t drive cars. Assistant Editor Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at : ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 3 Recap

How did Frank get infected?

Events of The Last of Us – Frank lived in Lincoln with Bill. The pair survived for nearly twenty years together, fortifying the town against the infected and rogue survivors, Bill described Frank as his former partner, someone that he cared about. Despite this, Frank eventually grew tired of Bill’s methods of surviving and left him, stealing supplies and a car battery for his truck from a military vehicle at the high school and stashing them at his hideout.

On the way back, Frank was bitten several times by a horde of infected, He hanged himself in his house so as to not succumb to the Cordyceps brain infection, Frank left a note for Bill telling him how he “hated his guts”, having grown tired of Bill’s ways and how he managed the town. If the player determines, Joel gives the note to Bill after looting the area.

Bill reads it, disheartened at Frank’s words, but keeps up his bravado to get Joel and Ellie out of “his” town. Joel apologizes for Frank’s death after they get the car started and wishes Bill farewell, since he is now truly alone. Frank was later mentioned in a smuggler’s note, which Joel found near a corpse in the flooded subway just after losing Tess at the Capitol building.

Why did Frank hate Bill?

How is Bill and Frank’s story in The Last of Us different from the game? – Who was Bill before he met Joel and Ellie? Credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO When Joel and Ellie arrive in Bill’s town in The Last of Us game, they only meet up with Bill. In fact, Joel doesn’t even know who Frank is until Bill mentions that he once had “a partner.” However, he claims that in this world, caring for someone is “good for one thing.

Getting ya killed.
So, you know what I did? I wisened the fuck up.
And I realized it’s gotta be just me.” Bill’s been on his own ever since.
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We later learn than Bill and Frank had had a fallout, with Frank weary of Bill’s staunch survivalist rules and limits.

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He stole some of Bill’s supplies during an attempt to leave town, but before he could make it out, an infected Clicker bit him. Rather than turn into a mindless monster, Frank died by suicide. Bill, Joel, and Ellie find his body. Joel also discovers a note Frank left for Bill that gives us a sense of how things ended between the two.

“I want you to know I hated your guts,” the note reads. “I grew tired of this shitty town and your set-in-your-ways attitude. I wanted more from life than this and you could never get that.I guess you were right. Trying to leave this town will kill me. Still better than spending another day with you.” If a player chooses to give Bill the note, his response is not one of grief but of anger: “Well, fuck you too, Frank.” The harsh circumstances of Bill and Frank’s separation could not be farther from what we get in the show.

There, a wary Bill takes Frank in, and the two fall in love, confirming and expanding a relationship that the game heavily implied. Over the next several years, Bill and Frank build a life together and befriend Joel and Tess (Anna Torv). Frank falls ill and decides to die by suicide — something he declares to Bill.

What disease did Frank have?

IF YOU’RE KEEPING up with HBO’s The Last of Us, you’ve seen that Frank’s downfall, shockingly, has nothing to do with zombies. But it may be something just as bad. By the end of Episode 3, we’ve already met Frank ( Murray Bartlett ), and have gotten to know him through a number of different time points over a 20-year period.

By the time the episode catches back up to 2023, he’s battling some sort of disease, but doesn’t share much about what he’s suffering from. Coming 10 years after the episode’s previous segment set in 2013, Frank is now in a wheelchair, unable to walk. His partner, Bill ( Nick Offerman ), is left to tend to him— helping him in to and out of bed, and reminding him to take his assortment of pills.

Fans are begging the question: What illness brought him to this state? When discussing Frank’s condition on the official The Last of Us podcast, co-creator Craig Mazin says Frank has an unspecified neuromuscular disorder. “We didn’t necessarily want to specify for the audience, it was either MS or early ALS but it was a degenerative neuromuscular disorder,” Mazin says.

Neuromuscular diseases, or NMDs—such as multiple sclerosis (MS) or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ASL)—are caused by a dysfunction in the nerves that affect your voluntary control muscles, and the nerves that carry sensory information back to your brain.
Neurons, or nerve cells, collect and dispense information to and from the brain.

In people who have neuromuscular disorders, these cells break down, leading to muscular issues. These muscular issues can trickle into a load of other problems, such as muscle weakening, twitching, cramping, pain, balance issues, trouble swallowing and trouble breathing, according to Cedars Sinai,

All NMDs have a prevalence rate between 1 and 10 per 10,000 people. Some NMDs are more common than others, however. Nearly a million people in the United States live with MS, according to the National MS Society, ALS is much less common, with about 30,000 people living with it in the U.S. In The Last of Us, Frank talks about his condition, saying that there wasn’t a cure for it even before the world collapsed.

The same is true today; there is no cure for NMDs like ALS or MS, and no known treatments to regress degeneration. While MS in itself is not fatal, it causes several issues that could lead to a premature death, such as swallowing or respiratory issues.

ALS is a bit different; it is fatal, typically causing respiratory failure within 3 to 5 years of symptoms developing, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Studies have found that patients with ALS are at an excess risk of suicide, and there has been an uptick in physician-assisted suicides with patients of this nature in other countries.

In a heartbreaking end to their love story, Frank and Bill ultimately decide to take their lives together, lacing their drinks with enough pills “to kill a horse.” Cori Ritchey, NASM-CPT is an Associate Health & Fitness Editor at Men’s Health and a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor. You can find more of her work in HealthCentral, Livestrong, Self, and others.

Why did Frank kiss Bill?

What happens to Bill and Frank in The Last of Us game? – The Last of Us fans are sobbing over Bill and Frank’s gay love story in episode 3. Picture: HBO In episode 3, Joel and Ellie follow Tess’ dying wish for them to meet Bill and Frank. The episode then flashes back in time to 2007. Here, we learn that Bill is a survivalist who’s transformed his dead mother’s abandoned hometown into a safe haven where he lives alone and is protected from the fungal infection that’s wreaking havoc on the rest of the world.

However, Bill’s world changes when Frank stumbles onto his land.
Initially suspicious, Bill feeds Frank and lets him shower.
The two then bond over their love of Linda Ronstadt and realising that there is a romantic spark between the two of them, they kiss and sleep together.
Here, Bill admits that he’s never been with a man before.

The episode then flashes forward to 2010. We learn that Bill and Frank now live together and, even though Bill’s wary of all outsiders, he and Frank have formed a friendship with Tess and Joel via radio. Fast forward to 2023 and we find out that Frank and Bill are still in love and have shared a life together.

However, Frank is suffering from a degenerative illness.
He asks Bill to marry him and then euthanise him.
Reluctantly, Bill agrees.
We see them share one last beautiful day together in which they get married.
Instead of poisoning Frank, Bill kills himself as well and they die together.
In the present day, Joel and Ellie arrive at Bill and Frank’s and find a letter that Bill left for Joel.

In it, he states that looking after Frank gave his life meaning and encourages Joel to protect Tess (!). He also tells Joel that his truck and weapons belong to him now. READ MORE: The Last of Us’ Bella Ramsey responds to cruel backlash over her Ellie casting Are Bill and Frank gay in The Last of Us game? Picture: HBO Naturally, people are bawling after watching the episode and sharing all of their emotional reactions to the storytelling online. One person tweeted: “the last of us just randomly telling one of the most beautiful and devastating gay love stories i’ve ever seen on televisionwith nick offerman no less.” Another wrote: “imagine being smug thinking you know everything that’s going to happen on The Last of Us show already bc you played the game and then they show you a gay version of Up”.

Meanwhile, someone tweeted: “the last of us writers were like “hey joel needs a car. what if we write the most touching and heartbreaking hour of television in the world”. One fan added: “Okay. The Last of Us episode 3 will probably go down in history as one of the greatest episodes of TV ever made. Holy shit.” Perhaps most heartbreaking of all, a viewer wrote: “gay marriage was never legalized in the last of us universe so bill and Frank getting married meant the fuckin world and more.” No.

I’m not crying. You are. the last of us just randomly telling one of the most beautiful and devastating gay love stories i’ve ever seen on televisionwith nick offerman no less. pic.twitter.com/p201aseJj2 — sappho’s friend (@grakke) January 30, 2023 the last of us writers were like “hey joel needs a car.

what if we write the most touching and heartbreaking hour of television in the world” — zach silberberg (@zachsilberberg) January 30, 2023 imagine being smug thinking you know everything that’s going to happen on The Last of Us show already bc you played the game and then they show you a gay version of Up — ًًً (@dunwaIl) January 30, 2023 Episode 3 of The Last of Us is a terrific example of how sometimes deviating from a adaptation’s story can strengthen the characters, world, and our connection to it.

Beautiful episode and best one yet. — Collin MacGregor (@BeguiledGamer) January 30, 2023 tonight’s THE LAST OF US is an all timer, an emotionally crushing bottle episode right out of THE LEFTOVERS playbook, radically expanding the game into a poem of apocalyptic love, mature partnership and confronting death.

Does Frank hook up with his daughter?

He seduced his own daughter – Every man has his limit. For Frank Gallagher, that limit is incest. barely. When a failing liver leaves Frank with only a short time to live, the deadbeat searches for a potential donor match. At this point, he reveals that he has another child that the family is unaware of — an illegitimate daughter named Samantha that he lost contact with before any of the other kids were born.

He tracks Samantha down and finds her living in a trailer park with a child of her own. Rather than attempting to reconnect with his long estranged family member, Frank romances his own daughter in an effort to receive a liver transplant. The two almost sleep together until Frank finally reveals that they are, in fact, related.

Once again, Frank’s brazen disregard for other people hurts someone unlucky enough to be related to him. Amazingly, his plan still almost worked. Samantha did offer Frank her liver, only to find out that they are not a match.

Did Ellie find tampons?

‘The Last of Us’ Episode 6 Fixes a Glaring Blind Spot in Post-Apocalyptic Stories Post-apocalypse stories have a lot of questions to answer: what happened to cause the apocalypse? How are people still eating today? Do vehicles still work? What form does the government take? How do people have their medical needs met? But one of the questions rarely answered in these stories is one of,

Despite affecting a large portion of characters in these projects, it often goes completely ignored.
That is, until Episode 6 doubles down on answering this question out in the open — even if it makes some people uncomfortable.
In Episode 3, Joel and Ellie explore an old convenience store.
Ellie tries to find things to loot, but Joel says the place is “pretty picked over.” But while checking out a back room, she finds a box of tampons, the ultimate score for a 14-year-old girl.

(Just to quell any complaints about the usability of 20-year-old tampons, they should be stored in a “cool, dark place in the original packaging” — the exact circumstances Ellie found them in.) Ellie finds tampons — worth their weight in gold in the post-apocalypse — in Episode 3.

HBO It seemed like nothing more than a cute little worldbuilding moment, but Episode 6 doubles down on this when Maria gives Ellie a pile of supplies, including new clothes, a warm coat, and a menstrual cup. Of course the menstrual cup is the period care of choice for the post-apocalyptic world: it’s reusable and non-absorbent, so there’s no chance of it degrading with time.

Period care and typically feminine hygiene issues go woefully ignored in post-apocalyptic stories. How many times have you seen male survivors in TV shows with grizzly beards but all the female characters still manage to have perfectly bare legs and underarms? Where are all the characters in The Walking Dead getting an endless supply of tampons and pads? It seems like the only time these aspects are acknowledged in survival settings is when the cast is mostly female, like the survivors in Yellowjackets boiling rags to use in lieu of pads.

Maria gives Ellie a menstrual cup, which is reusable for years of post-apocalyptic menstruation. HBO Many fans may consider this part of the series to be too much information, but if we see Ellie take toilet paper from Bill and Frank’s place, why not show this other important part of hygiene? It’s a part of life, much like showering or finding clean clothes, and should be considered an equal part of survival.

While Episode 3 may have been a nod to this huge part of life, Episode 6 cements it as an element the creators took into serious consideration — something other showrunners, especially cis male ones, should factor into their process. How Ellie handles menstruation on the road may not factor into the plot, but it’s an essential part of worldbuilding.

Why did Ellie stab that infected?

The Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey explains why their character, Ellie, had to cut into the infected’s head before killing it in episode 3. The Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey reveals why Ellie cut the infected before killing it. The moment in question happens during The Last of Us season 1, episode 3, “Long Long Time.” As Ellie and Joel travel to meet with Bill and Frank, they stop by an abandoned convenience store to look for supplies.

Ellie slips past Joel and jumps into the store’s basement, where an infected is trapped under a heap of debris. Ellie kills this infected, but only after slowly slicing its head open and watching the black blood ooze out of it. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Ramsey explains Ellie’s decision to cut the infected before killing it.

According to Ramsey, Ellie is thinking of people close to her in that scene. To Ellie, it is as if this infected person killed Riley and Tess, even if it wasn’t the same infected. Check out the full quote from Ramsey below: “I think that this, Ellie cutting the zombie with her knife, that scene, she’s thinking of like Riley and Tess and being like you killed Riley and Tess, essentially, like the infected guy.

Why doesn’t Joel let Ellie have a gun?

Joel and Ellie’s Trust in Each Other Begins to Grow – Image via HBO Before leaving the bathroom where she was posing with a gun, Ellie makes sure to hide it in her backpack and continue keeping it a secret from Joel. She exits the room and Joel is still his usual closed-off self. She tries to break through to him with the jokes and puns in her book, but he’s still doing his best to keep it serious with her.

You’re cargo,” he tells her after explaining that family is why you keep fighting even after everything ends.
By the end of the episode, though, he laughs out loud about her diarrhea joke.
What happened to motivate such a drastic change? Was the joke that good? Well, yes, but that’s not it.
Please Hold My Hand” gives our power duo the actual start of their journey after the first set of three “introductory” episodes, and the plot thickens real quick.

They are forced to cut their road trip short and enter Kansas City, losing their car in the process and quickly making an enemy of the militia led by Kathleen ( Melanie Lynskey ). They are cornered in a laundromat and, just as Joel is about to lose his life, Ellie reveals her weapon and shoots his assailant, having to hand it to Joel right afterward.

Her carrying a concealed gun would surely mean a violation of trust, but, at that point, there wasn’t much trust to begin with, too.
In the previous episode, Joel even lays down the ground rules that Ellie has to follow, trying to make sure she wouldn’t do anything she wasn’t supposed to.
And trust isn’t something you establish by telling jokes, but by taking affirmative action when it’s needed — the jokes come after.

When Ellie intervened in Joel’s fight with Bryan ( Juan Magana ) in order to save his life, that was an example.

Is Bill not dead in The Last of Us?

The Last of Us: Remastered – PlayStation 4 – Now 20% Off In the games, Bill never dies and players never actually meet Frank, as he dies before Joel and Ellie reach their town. Joel and Ellie try to get a truck to move faster on their journey. When they reach Lincoln, Bill tells them about his partner who previously left.

While searching Frank’s new place, they find his body and discover he was infected before he died.
Frank chose to die by suicide instead of letting the infection take over.
He also left behind a note for Bill that reads: “Well, Bill, I doubt you’d ever find this note cause you were too scared to ever make it to this part of town.

But if for some reason you did, I want you to know I hated your guts. I grew tired of this shitty town and your set-in-your-ways attitude. I wanted more from life than this and you could never get that. And that stupid battery you kept moaning about—I got it. Entertainment Editor Tamara Fuentes is the current Entertainment Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers TV, movies, books, celebrities, and more. She can often be found in front of a screen fangirling about something new. Before joining Cosmopolitan, she was the entertainment editor over at Seventeen,

How old is Ellie in The Last of Us?

Ellie Is 14 Years Old In The Last Of Us – In the TV series and the video game, Ellie is 14 years old. Ramsey is 19, and they started filming the role when they were 17 years old. While Ramsey is a few years older than Ellie, they are still a teenager and able to capture the adolescence that Ellie possesses.

While she has a tough exterior like Joel and anger about the world around her, Ellie also craves having a family and a community. Throughout The Last of Us season 1, Ellie comes to view Joel as a father figure, and they help fulfill each other’s need for a family. Like any compelling character on TV, Ellie has layers and is a nuanced character.

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She loves to play whenever she is given the chance, hinting that the post-apocalyptic society forced her to grow up too fast. Ellie frequently curses, but she also loves telling jokes and reading from her pun book. In episode 8 “When We Are in Need,” Ellie is captured by multiple men, but she manages to kill them and escape before they can cause serious physical harm, showing her survival skills.

Did Frank exist in Last of Us game?

Editor’s Note: This story contains spoilers for Episode 3 of HBO’s “The Last of Us.” CNN — In the video game “The Last of Us,” the most we see of the character Frank is his dead, decaying body dangling from the ceiling of an abandoned residence. Gruff doomsday prepper Bill is stunned to find his body – they were partners, Bill says.

But he quickly cuts Frank’s body down and moves on. When “The Last of Us” was released in 2013, that’s all Bill and Frank were – former “partners” who couldn’t survive the apocalypse together. (Players of the game could find a note Frank left to Bill, stating that he hated Bill’s guts.) In HBO’s television adaptation of the game, Frank and Bill’s years-long relationship becomes the focus of the series’ third episode, with their apocalyptic love story depicted in a way that is unique in video game adaptations and dystopian stories.

Their ending is one built on terms Bill and Frank set for themselves. It all makes for a bittersweet and moving episode of television. (HBO and CNN share parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.) The episode, “Long, Long Time,” marks the biggest diversion so far in a series that has otherwise stuck closely to its source material.

Bill and Frank’s relationship is not the only queer love story to come in “The Last of Us” (and, mild spoiler, it won’t even be the last in this first season of the adaptation).
But the response, among first-time viewers and devoted fans of the game, has been largely rapturous,
I couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful deviation from the canon game content,” said Nic Sam, a writer for the lesbian pop culture site Autostraddle who has long loved the game.

“I’m replaying the game along with watching the show, and after watching this episode, I just know I’m going to connect even more to Bill emotionally than I did on previous playthroughs.” Happy endings are exceedingly rare in apocalyptic storytelling, particularly in “The Last of Us.” But giving one to Bill and Frank, whose story ends in unresolved tragedy in the game, shows yet another side of life after the apocalypse, Sam told CNN, and the “series is stronger for it.” In the game, the most backstory we receive is the blistering note Frank leaves for Bill, who is briefly devastated by Frank’s harsh words but continues to get Joel and Ellie the help they need, never again mentioning his former partner.

Their story in the TV adaptation isn’t exactly a meet-cute: Frank (Murray Bartlett), a survivor from Baltimore, falls in a hole Bill dug to trap raiders and the infected who stumble near his rural Massachusetts home. When Bill (Nick Offerman) realizes Frank isn’t sick, he must quickly acclimate to the idea of helping another person after years of isolation.

They share a delicious meal prepared by Bill, still reticent, while Frank is eager and giddy to dine, shower and spend time with another human being. Bill eventually lets his guard down. (Co-creator Craig Mazin said on the series’ official podcast that Frank is “smiling” throughout his first interaction with Bill because “he already can tell something about Bill that Bill maybe didn’t think anyone was able to see at all.”) Their first kiss, shared after both men take a turn at playing Linda Ronstadt’s “Long, Long Time” on Bill’s antique piano, is less passionate than it is revelatory – it’s an exhale after years of holding their breath.

Frank never leaves after his chance meeting with Bill. Here are two people who, in a world uncorrupted by brain-gnawing fungus, would likely have never met, let alone embark on an almost 20-year relationship, and they’re facing the end times together. Most of the time audiences spend with Bill and Frank is delightfully un-dystopian.

They jog together and are nearly brought to tears by the taste of strawberries that Frank planted by surprise. They squabble about trivial things – beautifying some abandoned storefronts, for one. We see Joel and Tess lunch with Bill and Frank; Frank is elated to have company for the first time in years while Bill keeps his handgun on the table.

After all those years of survival (and at least one close call), Frank is still sickened by an unnamed human illness.
He asks Bill to prepare a deadly prescription cocktail before the pair have one last “good day,” which culminates in a private wedding ceremony between the two.
Viewers pointed out that, in the timeline of “The Last of Us,” same-sex marriage had not been legalized in the US by the time the Cordyceps fungus took over.) And then, after both of them drink laced wine, the two retire to their bed, where they die.

Through Bill, we see an alternate path Joel’s life might have taken, if Joel were able to open himself to the people who care about him. Bill is utterly transformed by his love for Frank – and the two keep each other alive in more ways than one. But Bill and Frank don’t exist solely to lend the series’ heterosexual protagonist greater depth.

Their story is wholly contained in one episode, and it doesn’t play much into Joel and Ellie’s journey.
It’s a long-awaited expansion of a sliver of story fans of the game have fantasized about for years.
Valerie Anne, who streams on Twitch as PunkyStarshine and is recapping the series for Autostraddle with Nic Sam, thought the new additions to Bill and Frank’s story were a definite improvement over the game.

She told CNN that, while playing the game for the first time, her “gaydar pinged” when Bill mentioned his “partner,” but by the time she read Frank’s suicide note, she wondered if she’d misunderstood – maybe the pair were just business partners and nothing more, she thought.

“I am thrilled that the show took it upon themselves to not only give Bill and Frank a beautiful love story, but to make Bill a character who deserves it,” she told CNN. “In the game he’s just a surly guy, and if there was a sweet center under all those layers of sour, we didn’t get to see it.” In the game, Bill antagonizes Ellie after Joel and his ward meet up with the prepper.

Their tête-à-tête is missing from the series – Bill is dead before Ellie even enters his home onscreen – and Valerie Anne said she missed seeing sides of Ellie that are illuminated through her interactions with Bill. But overall, she said, letting Bill and Frank get their own episode, without the burdens of plot exposition, was a generous reward for viewers.

I thought it was a beautiful snapshot of what 20 years in the pandemic could have looked like for some people,” she said. “Not everyone is running from clickers at every turn or burning bodies for scraps of paper so they can get some food.” The episode had its critics, too. In their review, writer and filmmaker Juan Barquin said the sudden veer into a straightforward romance in an otherwise bleak series “feels fundamentally opposed to the world (co-creator Neil) Druckmann has created,” and the episode was less of a valuable narrative divergence than “an explicit attempt to court praise.” Riley MacLeod of the Washington Post noted that however moving their story was to viewers, Bill and Frank still “fall into well-worn gay death tropes” – a gay man pushing another gay man, sickened by an unknown disease, in a wheelchair; an image often shown in storylines about HIV-positive characters – and are seemingly the “only two queer people in the world.” Creators Mazin and Druckmann had been teasing the episode for weeks ahead of the series’ mid-January premiere.

In a lengthy piece for the New Yorker, writer Alex Barasch said he was asked by the creative team more than once whether he “cried easily” ahead of watching the Bill and Frank episode (during a screening, Barasch wrote that Mazin, “smiling,” handed tissues to a weeping HBO executive).

Mazin in particular has spoken about how proud he is of the episode and its changes, and to some critics, the response seemed a bit self-congratulatory. The 2013 game was the topic of controversy for its treatment of Bill, whose queerness is only briefly alluded to. A critic for Logo TV wrote that the game reduced Bill to a “punchline” after Ellie jokes about a gay porn magazine she finds.

Fanbyte reported on Bill’s casting in the TV series as a “gay (the show) will probably bury.” Even the widely praised 2022 remake of the game was a “reminder of its ‘bury your gays’ romance,” said Jade King of The Gamer, in an article that year. (The “bury your gays” trope refers to the frequent killing off of gay characters in media.) Seeing Bill and Frank’s love story play out from start to finish, when in the game it felt like an “afterthought,” was a “universal improvement,” King told CNN.

“Bill is left alone to deal with his failure of keeping Frank alive in the game, but here they die in each other’s arms, content that they have lived a full, loving life and can go out on their own terms,” King said. “You can almost view it as a reclamation of agency from queer characters who have so often been done wrong.” Even though, as a queer trans woman who covers LGBTQ media, she’s played and watched plenty of similar storylines, Bill and Frank’s romance struck her as sincere, she said.

“I would normally turn away from queer stories that glamorize trauma and tragedy, but ‘The Last of Us’ has somehow deconstructed damaging tropes and transformed them into a narrative that feels earned,” King told CNN. To reveal more about the queer relationships still to come in “The Last of Us” would spoil the rest of the series and its freshly greenlit second season, which Mazin and Druckmann have said will likely follow the plot of “The Last of Us Part II.” But it bodes well for the rest of the series that the showrunners have taken care in telling queer stories, Valerie Anne said.

“To get almost two full decades with someone you love is a gift, and to get it in a time of so much death and destruction feels even more special, so it’s really nice to see it happen for gay people,” she told CNN. Rewriting Bill and Frank’s partnership makes the LGBTQ representation that follows even more meaningful since those storylines and characters are no longer correcting for what came before.

“The Last of Us Part II” was praised upon its release for the time it spent with its central queer characters (as well as the addition of a trans character who plays a pivotal role). Their story is given hours of space that Bill and Frank’s love only received a few seconds of.

Whose sperm did Frank use?

Frank’s Predicament – (Credit: Beth Dubber/SHOWTIME) As for Frank (), he’s faced with quite the predicament when Randy () shows up with the twins Ingrid () had with Frank last season. Randy reveals that Ingrid left him, and he can’t take care of Frank’s kids. The real truth comes out though, as Frank notes Carl’s sperm was used when the babies were conceived through IVF.

Why did Frank explode at the end?

In the Shameless finale, Frank finally planked – Showtime The majority of the episode follows Frank’s slow march toward death. After surviving an attempted suicide via heroin overdose, he wanders the streets in a dementia-induced haze. We get fleeting glimpses of how the world the show inhabited has changed — Patsy’s Pies has been shuttered, for instance.

Frank ends up contracting and dying of COVID-19 with no family members at his side.
A lonely, fitting conclusion for a character who always put his own wants and needs above his family.
But Shameless doesn’t satisfy itself with poetic justice, choosing to give in to sentiment.
In Frank’s dying moments, he flashes back to a family breakfast table tableau from the first season, then appears at the Alibi in his hospital gown as a spirit, sipping from a perpetually refilling mug of beer while watching his family.

As everyone in the Alibi leaves to taunt a rich person whose car has been set aflame outside (an awkward metaphor for the class division that drove the show), Frank and his stool are lifted heavenward into a wide shot over the Chicago skyline in what is definitely the show’s most bizarre visual, and the audience hears his suicide note in voiceover.

Frankly speaking, if any television patriarch has ever deserved to spend eternity in hell, it’s Frank Gallagher.
Ending his arc by having him float away to heaven on a barstool is both too out there for a show like Shameless, and far too sentimental a conclusion for a man whose presence generally meant nonstop misery to his family.

The less said about him being so soaked in alcohol that the hospital’s attempt at cremating him resulting in a percussive explosion that blows the oven’s doors open, the better.

Does Frank ever get sober?

7 Sober Frank – Warner Bros. Television Distribution After Monica’s death, Frank talks himself into truly believing that she was the reason he has been a bad father as well as a horrible member of society. He sobers up and goes in search of a real job that will give him a sense of purpose.

Why is Ellie immune?

The Last of Us Finally Reveals Ellie’s True Origin Story to Explain Her Immunity This Last of Us article contains spoilers. In, both the HBO series and the video game that it’s adapted on, the has destroyed the world as we know it. There is no cure for anyone who becomes infected, and they succumb to the mind-controlling fungus within a couple of days.

As far as we know in both the game and the show, Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey in the series) is the only person who has been exposed to Cordyceps and not turned into a flesh-eating monstrosity. While The Last of Us Part I does give some background on Ellie’s immunity, the game doesn’t tell us much about or why Ellie is immune when so many others aren’t.

However, HBO’s The Last of Us expands on this important part of the game’s lore in the season finale, just as the series has done with, Episode 9, “,” begins with a tense opening sequence. A pregnant woman named Anna (played by the original Ellie actor from the games, Ashley Johnson) is running from infected while going into labor.

She comes across an abandoned farmhouse, where she fights off the infected alone as the baby is being born.
Anna realizes that she has been bit in the leg just as she’s given birth, so she cuts the umbilical cord as soon as she can.
Even though she cuts the cord immediately after realizing she’s been infected, it turns out that there are still traces of Cordyceps that pass from Anna to the baby, who she names Ellie.

However, we don’t know that for sure until Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie make it to the Fireflies in Salt Lake City. After Joel and Ellie are attacked, Joel wakes up in a hospital room with Marlene (Merle Dandridge), who explains to him what their doctor’s tests on Ellie’s immunity have uncovered.

Marlene tells Joel that the doctor “thinks that the Cordyceps has grown with Ellie since birth” and that it “produces a kind of chemical messenger” that makes “normal Cordyceps think that she is Cordyceps.” She’s immune because, even when Ellie is bitten or otherwise exposed, the Cordyceps that enters her body already thinks that she’s infected.

In order to create a cure, Marlene says that the doctor is going to remove the Cordyceps from Ellie’s brain, “multiply the cells in a lab,” and reproduce the chemical messengers to give to everyone. In The Last of Us Part I, the player can find a recording from the doctor that gives insight into Ellie’s immunity, just as Marlene’s conversation with Joel does in the show.

However, in this recording, the doctor says that he is “uncertain” why Ellie is immune.
As far as we know in the game, Ellie’s bite at the Boston mall was her first exposure to Cordyceps, and her immunity is presented as more of a miraculous reaction to that than a result of essentially being born with Cordyceps already in her system.

In the game, Ellie also has malignant fungal growth in her brain that has to be removed to be studied, but the recording doesn’t mention chemical messengers or how long the fungus has been in her system. Instead, the doctor just talks about how Ellie’s blood tests and MRI’s don’t match what he typically sees in an infected person.

Because we don’t know exactly why Ellie is immune in the game, it seems more likely that there could still be others out there who are immune, or whose immunity could be revealed later on.
In the show, however, Ellie’s immunity is caused by such unique timing with regards to when her mom was bitten, when she was born, and when the umbilical cord was cut that it truly positions her as the miracle cure for Cordyceps – making even more devastating.

I may not be an expert in statistics or mycology, but even I can predict that the odds of other children being born under the same or similar circumstances with the exact same result aren’t going to be that high, even with all of the infected running around.

You might be interested: What Time Does You Season 4 Come Out?

Did Bill and Frank kiss?

Four years later, 2007: The meet-cute – While not many great love stories start with the phrase “I’m not infected”, even fewer begin with 60 per cent of humanity being wiped out by a zombie killer fungus. Still, Bill’s literally captured himself a guy, after Frank falls into his booby trap hole.

After assessing that he’s not carrying the lurgy, Bill reluctantly lets Frank in for a meal.
And what a meal! Who knew preppers were such good chefs – and with a nose for an excellent vintage too? As we’ve learned from Come Dine With Me, all the best dinner parties have after-meal entertainment, and this couple quickly find their song: Love Will Abide by Linda Ronstadt.

After Frank butchers the track on the piano, Bill steps up and nails it. Anyone ever think they’d be sobbing hot tears over a video game TV series? This is just the beginning. Frank realises that Bill is not singing about a girl, and kisses him. Given the this is a welcome relief, and they go to bed, where Bill tells him it’s his first time with a man, and Frank says he’ll stay for a few more days.

What did Frank get sick with in The Last of Us?

What disease did Frank have in The Last of Us ? – What disease did Frank have in The Last of Us ? In the show, the illness that gradually incapacitates Frank isn’t actually named but we suspect, given his symptoms, it’s multiple sclerosis (MS) or another uncurable neurodegenerative disorder. The Last of Us. Courtesy of HBO/Warner Media On HBO’s Last of Us podcast, which is hosted by Troy Baker (Joel in the games), showrunner Craig Mazin confirmed Frank suffered from a neurodegenerative condition—but doesn’t mention which one specifically.

We didn’t want to necessarily specify it for the audience,” Mazin said.
It was either MS or early ALS but it was a degenerative neuro-muscular disorder.
And, you know, this happens.
It happens so commonly and yet so rarely.” He continued: “As people get older on-screen, they tend to be fully healthy until a heart attack staggers them out of nowhere.

That does happen, but for a majority of people, there’s a decline and we thought it was really interesting to think, ‘Look, Bill is older—Frank can literally run circles around him—Bill gets shot and then we jump ahead a number of years and it’s Frank that’s been brought low by this disease and there’s nothing they can do about it.” Both MS and ALS eventually impair speech as they eventually affect facial nerves.

His quality of life is already suffering and this is ultimately why Frank chooses to end his life. What he doesn’t bank on, though, is Bill deciding it’s his time, too. Towards the end of the episode, ‘Long Long Time’ we see how Bill and Frank’s story ends. As morning light streams into their sunroom, Frank decides it’ll be his last.

He asks Bill to give him “one last good day”. They exchange rings, eat a beautiful meal together and as his final wish, Frank asks Bill to crush his pills into his wine where he will fall asleep in Bill’s arms. Distraught, Bill decides that he no longer wants to be alone and tells Frank he’s split the pills between them.

“This isn’t the tragic suicide at the end of the play,” Bill says. “I’m old, I’m satisfied, and you were my purpose.” Frank is initially angry but concedes that, “from an objective point of view, it’s incredibly romantic.” They have their last drink and go upstairs to the bedroom where they’ll spend eternity together.

When Joel and Ellie arrive at Bill and Franks, the dying, dried-up flowers on the porch signal to Joel that something is wrong or has changed. Ellie discovers a note left by Bill addressed “to whomever but probably Joel”. Bill asks that he and Frank’s bodies be left undisturbed in the bedroom but that they left a window open so the house wouldn’t smell.

I never liked you but, still, it’s like we’re friends. Almost.
And I respect you,” Bill writes.
I used to hate the world and I was happy when everyone died, but I was wrong because there was one person worth saving and that’s what I did.
I saved him and I protected him.
That’s why men like me and you are here.

We have a job to do.” This note ties in nicely but contradicts what Bill tells Joel in the game, which is that caring about someone will eventually get you killed. It’s a beautiful divergence from the games and something true fans of the game should be pleased about.

What is wrong with Frank in The Last of Us Episode 3?

Frank Develops Parkinson’s Disease In Last Of Us Episode 3 – Based on what is shown of Frank after developing his illness in The Last of Us episode 3, it is safe to say he developed Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease is a condition that affects the brain, in which various areas of the organ become increasingly damaged over time.

The main symptoms of Parkinson’s disease that are shown to affect Frank in The Last of Us episode 3 are involuntary body shakes (tremors), slow movement, stiff muscles, and insomnia. All of this is sadly highlighted in Bill and Frank’s Last of Us story in the latter sections of the episode. At one point in The Last of Us episode 3, Frank states how there was no cure for his illness before the outbreak, meaning finding a doctor now would still not aid him in any way.

This also provides evidence that Frank has developed Parkinson’s disease, which is unfortunately incurable in the real world. The development of Parkinson’s causes Frank to plan out his last day with Bill, which the two of them experience before tragically dying together.

Was Joel in love with Tess?

Are Joel and Tess Together in HBO’s The Last of Us? – Like the game, the show’s 20-year time jump happens at the Boston quarantine zone where Joel and Tess are residing. There they smuggle illegal goods and dispose of infected bodies – the latter requiring Tess to keep an eye on Joel. When she sees a child among the corpses, she doesn’t want Joel to look, already showing in their first interaction how much she cares for him.

This scene is also already a big departure from the game, as Tess seemingly didn’t even know Joel had a daughter in the game – or at least, she never mentioned it.
Later on, at night, Joel is sleeping in bed when a woman crawls into bed with him.
While it’s hard to tell who this woman is from behind, it’s likely to be Tess.

She is the only person that Joel is even slightly close to in the quarantine zone and the next morning she’s seen cooking for the both of them in their shared apartment. Joel also immediately takes notice of her black eye and is ready to fight whoever gave it to her.

Where is Frank’s body in The Last of Us?

But he quickly cuts Frank’s body down and moves on. When “The Last of Us” was released in 2013, that’s all Bill and Frank were – former “partners” who couldn’t survive the apocalypse together. (Players of the game could find a note Frank left to Bill, stating that he hated Bill’s guts.) In HBO’s television adaptation of the game, Frank and Bill’s years-long relationship becomes the focus of the series’ third episode, with their apocalyptic love story depicted in a way that is unique in video game adaptations and dystopian stories.

Bill and Frank’s relationship is not the only queer love story to come in “The Last of Us” (and, mild spoiler, it won’t even be the last in this first season of the adaptation). But the response, among first-time viewers and devoted fans of the game, has been largely rapturous, “I couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful deviation from the canon game content,” said Nic Sam, a writer for the lesbian pop culture site Autostraddle who has long loved the game.

Frank never leaves after his chance meeting with Bill.
Here are two people who, in a world uncorrupted by brain-gnawing fungus, would likely have never met, let alone embark on an almost 20-year relationship, and they’re facing the end times together.
Most of the time audiences spend with Bill and Frank is delightfully un-dystopian.

After all those years of survival (and at least one close call), Frank is still sickened by an unnamed human illness.
He asks Bill to prepare a deadly prescription cocktail before the pair have one last “good day,” which culminates in a private wedding ceremony between the two.
Viewers pointed out that, in the timeline of “The Last of Us,” same-sex marriage had not been legalized in the US by the time the Cordyceps fungus took over.) And then, after both of them drink laced wine, the two retire to their bed, where they die.

Their story is wholly contained in one episode, and it doesn’t play much into Joel and Ellie’s journey.
It’s a long-awaited expansion of a sliver of story fans of the game have fantasized about for years.
Valerie Anne, who streams on Twitch as PunkyStarshine and is recapping the series for Autostraddle with Nic Sam, thought the new additions to Bill and Frank’s story were a definite improvement over the game.

“I am thrilled that the show took it upon themselves to not only give Bill and Frank a beautiful love story, but to make Bill a character who deserves it,” she told CNN. “In the game he’s just a surly guy, and if there was a sweet center under all those layers of sour, we didn’t get to see it.” In the game, Bill antagonizes Ellie after Joel and his ward meet up with the prepper.

I thought it was a beautiful snapshot of what 20 years in the pandemic could have looked like for some people,” she said.
Not everyone is running from clickers at every turn or burning bodies for scraps of paper so they can get some food.” The episode had its critics, too.
In their review, writer and filmmaker Juan Barquin said the sudden veer into a straightforward romance in an otherwise bleak series “feels fundamentally opposed to the world (co-creator Neil) Druckmann has created,” and the episode was less of a valuable narrative divergence than “an explicit attempt to court praise.” Riley MacLeod of the Washington Post noted that however moving their story was to viewers, Bill and Frank still “fall into well-worn gay death tropes” – a gay man pushing another gay man, sickened by an unknown disease, in a wheelchair; an image often shown in storylines about HIV-positive characters – and are seemingly the “only two queer people in the world.” Creators Mazin and Druckmann had been teasing the episode for weeks ahead of the series’ mid-January premiere.

Mazin in particular has spoken about how proud he is of the episode and its changes, and to some critics, the response seemed a bit self-congratulatory. The 2013 game was the topic of controversy for its treatment of Bill, whose queerness is only briefly alluded to. A critic for Logo TV wrote that the game reduced Bill to a “punchline” after Ellie jokes about a gay porn magazine she finds.

Bill is left alone to deal with his failure of keeping Frank alive in the game, but here they die in each other’s arms, content that they have lived a full, loving life and can go out on their own terms,” King said.
You can almost view it as a reclamation of agency from queer characters who have so often been done wrong.” Even though, as a queer trans woman who covers LGBTQ media, she’s played and watched plenty of similar storylines, Bill and Frank’s romance struck her as sincere, she said.

“To get almost two full decades with someone you love is a gift, and to get it in a time of so much death and destruction feels even more special, so it’s really nice to see it happen for gay people,” she told CNN. Rewriting Bill and Frank’s partnership makes the LGBTQ representation that follows even more meaningful since those storylines and characters are no longer correcting for what came before.

Rosemarie Basco