The Last Of Us’ Gay Episode Review Bombed By Homophobic Bigots

The latest episode of the post-apocalyptic video game adaptation, The Last of Us, released last week, has received praise for its refreshing and beautiful queer love story. 

In this episode, we are introduced to Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). While the 2013 PlayStation game only touches on the pair, as a means to push the plot along, the tv series gives us a fuller look at their lives and their relationship.

However, since the release of the third episode, titled “Long, Long Time,” homophobes have been review-bombing it on review aggregator sites.

Review bombing is when people purposely give a movie or series a low rating, usually because of an “ideological disagreement” with its content. They tend to be for racist, sexist, or homophobic reasons.

The third episode of The Last Of Us was not immune to this. 

‘Snowflakes’ Come Out Of the Woodwork

Of the 100,143 ratings on Internet Movie Database (IMDb), a majority, or 59,408, were nine or ten stars. 28,791 or almost 29% were one star, which was the second-highest rating given.

One pearl clutcher wrote, “Watching it with my family and especially my two children was wrong and a big mistake that i ve made ,what is that? 

The reviewer then wrote, “this is a show that narrates a post apocalyptic world with zombies or monsters or whatever you called it ,if you want to make a love story about two guys then go look elsewhere.”

(Apparently, a post-apocalyptic graphic zombie movie full of death is ok for the person’s two children but a love story was a mistake.)

‘Useless Representation’

Another one-star review talked about the “useless representation.” 

They wrote, “Doing this with every show nowadays isn’t helping me to ‘accept’ or ‘like’ them more in fact it makes my opinion of them worse.”

They added the usual chestnut, “Same goes for the relationships between male and female characters,” – despite the fact that the first two episodes dealt with a relationship between a male and female character. 

The “butthurt” reviewer continued, “For the butthurt people out there – take my opinion how you like; however, I’m not spreading hate, I’m just fed up with this, it’s been years.”

‘Why Not Show Some Straight Couple?’

On Metacritic, the episode received 903 ratings, 364 were positive while 494 were negative, for a rating of 4.5. Compare this to the first two episodes which received an 8.7 and an 8.6 respectively.

Once again, the negative ratings were mainly for homophobic reasons.

One negative review read, “Please, HBO, enough of LGBT-agenda, just stop it. We dont want to saw it in such details.”

“This full of LGBT episode doesn’t add anything new to the world of the series, they could have spent 80 mins showing animals striving to survive during the apocalypse and that might be of more interest. Why LGBT?”, another reviewer wrote.

Then apparently forgetting the giant straight bar of a world we all exist in, added, “Why not show some straight couple?” 

Negative Reviews Have Little Effect On Overall Viewership

The negative reviews had little effect on the episode’s overall viewership. According to HBO, the episode was watched by 6.4 million viewers on the night of its release, the highest first-night viewership for the series to date. It was also widely acclaimed by critics.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator of the series and developer of the original game, Neil Druckmann, said that the relationship between Bill and Frank in the game, “went over a lot of people’s heads.

“At the time, [the subtlety is] what helped get it in. It’s sad to say, but it would have been controversial otherwise.”

Renewed For A Second Season

The Last of Us has been renewed for a second season. If it is true to the PlayStation game, the homophobes and transphobes better buckle up because it features a lesbian relationship as well as introduces Lev, a trans character. 

This was not lost on Twitter.

“Cannot wait for lev to be in the last of us series and people will go like ‘woke’.” a person tweeted 

cannot wait for lev to be in the last of us series and people will go like “woke 🤓”

— daan (@stedebcnnet) January 28, 2023

Another wrote, “can’t believe homophobes who never played the game are complaining about the last of us first peak of gayness like… who’s gonna tell them…”

can’t believe homophobes who never played the game are complaining about the last of us first peak of gayness like… who’s gonna tell them about ellie??? and lev?? 💀💀

— 🪩🫶🏻 (@timasreputation) January 30, 2023

The Last of Us is available on the streaming service Binge in Australia. A new episode drops every week.