HEADER BY ANISA CLEAVER

“I was never afraid before you showed up,” Bill tells his partner Frank in The Last Of Us. (Tears incoming.) It’s one of many tender, dewy-eyed scenes in the third episode of HBO’s lauded post-apocalyptic drama, which shifts focus from series protagonists Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to chronicle the love story between the paranoid survivalist and rugged artist, respectively played by Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman and The White Lotus’ Murray Bartlett. After two episodes of big-budget action sequences and a galore of mutated, zombified creatures – which led to longtime fans and critics hailing the series as “the most faithful” video game adaptation “in history” – episode three offers a welcome reprieve with a back-to-basics exploration of human connection. “It’s about two people finding each other,” says director Peter Hoar, “and it’s universal in so many ways.” 

Written by Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin, who helms the series alongside the original game’s creator Neil Druckmann, ‘Long Long Time’ will go down in history as one of television’s most beautiful hours, and one that will – or should – blaze a new trail for queer characters in the hetero-dominated action and horror genres. “It’s beautifully surprising in that it’s sort of, from what I understand, unexpected in the genre. Not only that, it’s not a stereotypical queer relationship,” Murray Bartlett tells GAY TIMES. “The relationship itself is surprising and dismantles a lot of those stereotypes. It doesn’t even entertain the stereotypes. This is starting to sound grand – I do have a great love for this episode so it’s hard not to talk about it in grand terms sometimes – but I think in terms of queer relationships in film and TV, this is unique.” 

Episode three opens with Joel and Ellie as they continue their cross-country journey to the Fireflies’ secret camp out west, where doctors hope to administer a Cordyceps vaccine with the latter’s DNA. Allies will be helpful, however, so they travel to the home of Bill and Frank, who Joel and (the now-deceased) Tess (Anna Torv) met years prior. Flashbacks reveal that Bill evaded authorities and quarantine zones to remain in his Lincoln home, where he used his survivalist skills to build a barrier from the ravaged wasteland and unwanted intruders. Four years later, a dishevelled Frank is captured by one of Bill’s traps, where an immediate romantic connection is forged after a spot of lunch and an intimate musical number to Long Long Time, Linda Ronstadt’s classic about loneliness and heartache, which the episode is named after. “Everything turns on Bill’s head when he meets the beautiful Murray Bartlett which, let’s be honest, if you’re going to fall in love with someone, why not make it Murray Bartlett?” laughs Hoar. “There’s an apocalypse, but it’s much more than that. It’s about these two people finding each other. It’s about that connection, that bond. Here was an opportunity to say, ‘This is what it was actually like for these two people to live through this atrocity,’ and yet, at the same time, it just happens to be two men.”