No, The Last of Us isn’t “woke” or “pushing an agenda”

The third episode of The Last of Us, “Long Long Time,” starts with our lead characters, Joel and Ellie, heading west of Boston to hook up with a couple of Joel’s old contacts: Bill and Frank, a couple who have been together for years, ever since Frank stumbled into one of Bill’s homemade booby traps.

Instead of sticking with Joel and Ellie, the episode jumps back in time to show us how these two built an unlikely life together in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, surviving the elements, attacks from raiders, and each other’s bad habits to eventually grow old and die in each other’s arms. Bill goes on an especially momentous journey; he begins the episode a bitter doomsday prepper who is happy when society collapses; that just means fewer people around to deal with. But over the course of his time with Frank, he allows himself to become vulnerable and dies far more satisfied than he ever was on his own.

Bill’s journey parallels Joel’s. Joel is someone who’s been hurt — by the loss of his daughter, by the loss of his partner Tess — and who has cut himself off from human connection. If he opens back up, maybe he has a chance at finding the happiness that Bill and Frank found, even if it means putting his life and soul on the line.

These parallels are easier to see if you’ve played Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us video game and know where Joel and Ellie’s story is going; if you know how this ends, it’s pretty clear why showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin included this detailed look at Bill and Frank’s story. Joel will also be transformed by love, although it remains to be seen whether he’ll get as happy an ending. Bill and Frank’s story adds context and texture to this tale; it helps us understand not only what happens, but what it means.

Let’s read some bigoted reviews of The Last of Us

It’s interesting, then, that some fans of the game didn’t enjoy the episode, and that so many of them cite its seeming pointlessness as the reason. On IMDb, the first two episodes of the show are graded very highly, but Episode 3 has an interesting split: about half the reviews are 10-star raves, a quarter are one-star pans, and the rest are in between. This episode, which many (including me) are hailing as easily the best in the series so far, was polarizing among the public.

…or that’s one way to look at it. The other is that the episode was review bombed by people who were upset that it was pushing a “woke agenda.” Let’s take a look at some samples, from Twitter:

• “The new #HBO series ‘The last of us’ was good up until the third episode. Why do they have to ruin everything with their #woke bs? There’s hardly anything good out there without some woke angle.”
• “F**k this show. What a clear f**king stunt for all the woke critics.”

From Reddit:

• “I’m starting to think every streaming channel is going work [sic]…I don’t think I have anything to watch anymore. Why do I need to see two men f***ing?”
• “Is the apocalypse like prison? Can’t find a woman you’re just going to f**k a man? I’m done with this show. F**k this woke shit.”

And one from IMDb: “This episode destroyed what was a great ‘movie’ to be another politically correct lgtb include all.”

Let’s decode some homophobic reviews of The Last of Us

It’s pretty clear that the fans who wrote these reviews did not enjoy watching the gay love story; in some cases, their disgust is pretty thinly veiled. All of these reviews are on the edge of saying the same thing: “I did not like watching gay people on TV.” But admitting to this kind of homophobic reaction would expose them as bigots, and bigotry is frowned upon in most corners of polite society, even on the internet.

But they want to say something, so they settle for code: they’re not against gay people, they’re against “political correctness;” they don’t hate shows with gay chacacters, they hate shows that push a “woke agenda.”

Mind you, I don’t believe people who think like this do it consciously, not most of the time. We all want to think of ourselves as decent human beings, and it’s hard to pretend you’re decent when you openly hate a whole group of people.

How does a bigot deal with this dissonance? They hate that group in the abstract. They pretend that gay people aren’t people but rather part of an “agenda.” They convince themselves that a TV show with a gay love story is pandering to liberal interests, rather than telling a story because it’s good. (Incidentally, the characters of Bill and Frank are also gay in the 2013 video game, although they’re not featured as prominently.) “We know [it’s] so [the producers] can FARM on pink money with sex scenes and cheap romance,” reads a particularly conspiratorial review on IMDb.

I think the public at large is getting more savvy about recognizing when these kinds of words are used in bad faith. “It’s woke,” “It’s political”; “It’s pushing an agenda.” All of that can be true of a show or a movie or a book, but when used in certain contexts, it can mean more than it means. It can take the edge off an opinion that, if said outright, would be plainly hateful.

We saw some of that play out after the latest episode of The Last of Us. Happily, most of the response from fans was very positive, which makes sense; the episode was fantastic. And maybe it even won over a few people who saw this tender love story and thought twice about decrying it for being “woke.”

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h/t IMDb