The Last of Us creator thinks the changes were “so worth it”

Last night’s episode of The Last of Us, “Long Long Time,” introduced us to Bill and Frank, two men who find love in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. The show made some big changes from the source material, Naughty Dog’s 2013 The Last of Us video game. There, we’re not even completely sure that Bill and Frank were romantically involved until after the fact, when Ellie finds some gay porn mags in Bill’s truck, and we piece the story together. On the show, Bill and Frank’s love story takes center stage.

Also, in the game, Bill and Frank’s story ends tragically, with Frank getting fed up with Bill and striking out on his own, only for him to get bitten by a zombie and hang himself before he turns. Frank leaves a note for Bill clarifying that he “hated your guts.” On the show, the pair grow old together and leave the world in each other’s arms, about as romantic an end as you could hope for given the apocalyptic circumstances.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Craig Mazin explained why they decided to go in a different direction for TV, starting with the pacing. “I had an instinct that we would probably need to take a breath as an audience after the first two episodes,” he said, referring to the deaths of Joel’s daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) in the premiere and his lover Tess (Anna Torv) in Episode 2. “I wanted a way to show some of the passage of time between Outbreak Day and the current day of the show without doing more of the same, of the world falling apart.”

"The character Bill is fascinating. I love the idea of a guy who was actively preparing for the world to end, and when it did he was like, ‘Good!’ Bill in the game is a dark prediction of where Joel could end up if he doesn’t open his heart back up again: alone in a fortress of his own making, paranoid and grouchy. I felt like, we can go and actually do a different thing, which is to say there’s an omen of hope. You can actually, in this world, still find somebody that you can share your life with. Nobody lives forever, but the goal that we should all have is to have a good life. And when the end comes, we are satisfied."

Neil Druckmann, who wrote the original game and is also a co-showrunner on the series, thought Mazin had the right idea. “We have a lot of examples of dark outcomes of these loving relationships, and it was really smart to have a positive outcome just as a counterpoint,” he said. “There was stuff to draw from that note. They have different life philosophies, and for Frank it wasn’t just about survival, it was about something else.” Overall, Druckmann thought the changes were warranted “because what we’re getting in return is so worth it.”

“If we’re watching a show and nobody ever has a happy ending, what are the odds that the people we care about are gonna have a happy ending?” Mazin added. “We need to know that there’s a chance that things can go right.”

Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett talk playing Bill and Frank in The Last of Us

A big part of the episode’s success rested with its lead actors: Nick Offerman as Bill and Murray Bartlett as Frank. Offerman is best known for his hilarious turn as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation. You might not think that a sitcom role would set someone up for so dramatic a turn, but Ron and Bill actually share quite a bit in common: they’re both proudly self-sufficient, stoic and even grim.

Offerman, who was a great match for both roles, saw himself in Bill. “He can weld and build and fabricate anything. I’m like that to a much lesser degree. I love to make things,” he said. “Part of that competence, that sensibility, I think, is fear-based. It allows me to feel like I’m in control of my immediate surroundings, so nothing bad’s going to happen to me. I can never die because I can build a roof. I think for maybe both Bill and I that’s a way that we protect ourselves from having to feel things.”

"As someone who’s often accused of being crusty or masculine or taciturn, I loved the challenge of playing this character outwardly tough who ends up being vulnerable and having a rich emotional life. It was very gratifying."

Meanwhile, Bartlett is coming off an Emmy win for his work as hotel manager Armand in season 1 of The White Lotus. “The script was so beautifully drawn in terms of these characters. There weren’t a lot of spaces to fill in,” he said. “What was beautiful is the relationship happens when the two characters come together, and when the two actors playing those characters come together. I was blessed to have an amazing actor to work with. I had some ideas about Frank and some clearly-drawn things in the script that make you feel very supported. And then I felt like the character was revealed to me in the interactions with Nick as Bill.”

As we saw, the two actors worked splendidly together, right up to their final scenes when Frank, who’s in constant pain from cancer, asks Bill to help him die after one last romantic day. Bill, ever the pragmatist, decides to die with his partner, rather than live life without him.

“He generally is a planner and an organizer,” Offerman said. “I think when Frank makes the decision, Bill has to take a deep breath. He knows that he’s not gonna win this argument if he fights. I think in doing so, he’s making a grocery list in his head. Somewhere making that checklist, he’s like, ‘I’ll do the drink too.’ I think he’s a pragmatist, so it’s perfectly prudent.”

According to Mazin, the specter of Bill and Frank will hang over the rest of the series. “The idea was to show these two people functioning in a relationship, two very different people who have different concepts of how to love, and in their relationship and their two different ways of loving, both outward and inward, we create a kind of thematic codex for the whole show,” he said. “Every relationship we see from that point forward, you can feel like a Bill and Frank kind of lurking inside everybody.”

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