Ever since December of 2021, we’ve known that Nick Offerman would be in The Last of Us. Yet no one — not even the most dedicated fan — was prepared for the masterpiece the HBO thriller delivered. “Long Long Time” centers around Bill (Offerman), a survivalist who manages to avoid the worst of the Cordyceps brain infection. But instead of turning his story into another saga of survival, The Last of Us turns it into a love story. Though the beauty of Peter Hoar and Craig Mazin’s episode may have been unexpected, the couple at its center isn’t.
“Long Long Time” has sparked several complaints from the worst side of Twitter about how The Last of Us allegedly shoehorned in a gay relationship. But the fact is Bill has always been gay. It just wasn’t spelled out as clearly in the original version of the game.
In the 2014 game, Joel and Ellie track down the survivalist because they need a car from him, and for a short period of time, Bill joins their team. Originally, Bill’s sexuality was hinted at rather than directly stated. “Once upon a time, I had somebody that I cared about. It was a partner. Somebody I had to look after,” Bill tells Joel in his gruff, unpleasant way. “And in this world, that sort of shit is good for one thing — getting you killed. So you know what I did? I wisened the fuck up. And I realized it’s gotta be just me.”
Later, Joel and Bill find Frank’s body hanging in a house, covered in bite marks. When Joel asks Bill who that is, Bill refers to him as his “partner” while holding back tears.
Those same extreme emotions appear in Frank’s note. After discovering Frank’s body, Joel finds Frank’s suicide note, which is addressed to Bill and says “Trying to leave this town will kill me. Still better than spending another day with you.” The PlayStation 5 remaster even has an option for Joel to give Bill the note. If you choose to do so, Bill will call Frank a “fucking idiot” and angrily toss it away. This level of hatred doesn’t typically appear in platonic friendships.
But it’s Ellie who confirms Bill’s sexuality. After Joel and Ellie take a truck from Bill, Ellie finds a sticky porno mag filled with male models. Need more proof? GLAAD named Bill one of its most intriguing characters of 2013, an article that the game’s director and the series’ co-creator Neil Druckmann tweeted about. So yeah, Bill has always been gay. As for whether he had a relationship with Frank, that’s more of an implication than fact, and it completely changes how we should look at this character.
In the game, Bill was always meant to be a tragic figure. He was someone whose selfishness and stuck-in-his-ways nature ultimately cost him everything, including the one man who could tolerate him. Bill is meant to be a cautionary figure about what your ego can cost you. But in the show, he’s an almost inspirational tale about finding light in the darkness.
That’s not the direction The Last of Us series takes at all. Druckmann told Decider that this wildly different story was Craig Mazin‘s “baby.”
“In some ways, it deviates quite a bit from the game. But in other ways, it’s extremely faithful to the game. Bill comes in and saves you, and that’s how you’re connecting with him in the game, which makes for compelling gameplay and wouldn’t work as much for a show. In the game, there’s also a philosophical question of what does it mean to survive? What does it mean to survive if you don’t have anything left?” Druckmann said. “The brilliant thing that Craig did with the story is say what if eventually Bill changed in a way that he didn’t in the game? That has a lot of beauty to it because so much of the story is the contrast of ‘Here’s the wonderful things that love can lead to, and here’s sometimes the horrific loss or the horrific violence that can emerge out of love.’”
“It just became this opportunity to both tell a story of the passage of time — what happens between the outbreak and now — and also to explore the themes that are baked into The Last of Us going back to the game, which are themes about love and the different ways we love and how love can be both beautiful and dangerous and dark,” Mazin added.
The Last of Us airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max.