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Around the WIRED workplaces I’m not essentially a “told ya so” form of individual. Frankly, in a office this good, I’m extra of a “no, no, you’re right” crew participant. But on Monday morning, when my colleagues hopped on Slack to speak about final Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us, all I might suppose was, “I warned you.” 

Granted, I’d solely warned a pair. But as one of many editors behind Will Bedingfield’s brilliant piece on bringing Naughty Dog’s online game to HBO and Hemal Jhaveri’s lovely Q&A with Last of Us star Pedro Pascal, I’d gotten an early peek on the present, and when anybody would ask, I’d say, “Episode 3 made me cry.”

The sequence’ third episode—a love story between a prepper, Bill (Nick Offerman), and a person named Frank who will get trapped on his property (Murray Bartlett)—is a departure from each the HBO sequence’ foremost plot and the sport it’s primarily based on. Bill is a personality within the sport, however not a playable one, and Frank is simply talked about in passing. Expanding their story was one of many some ways the present’s creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (additionally the sport’s maker) sought to remodel Last of Us the sport into Last of Us the status TV present. “I said, ‘Neil, I’ve got a crazy idea,’” Mazin told Vanity Fair. “And he was like, ‘Do it. Let’s see how it goes.’”

The gambit labored. Sunday’s airing of “Long Long Time” garnered 6.4 million viewers, a 12 p.c enhance from the earlier episode and 1.8 million greater than the sequence premiere. (This bump is important contemplating Last of Us’ community sibling, House of the Dragon, was already shedding viewers by its third episode.) Streams for the Linda Ronstadt music from which the episode obtained its title went up 4,900 percent on Spotify. Jimmy Kimmel had Offerman on his late-night program to show him TikToks of followers’ tearful reactions to the episode. And Twitter couldn’t cease speaking about it. Personal fave: “The Last of Us writers were like, ‘Hey, Joel needs a car. What if we write the most touching and heartbreaking hour of television in the world.’”

It was that uncommon episode of tv that launched a thousand suppose items. Vulture declared the episode a Rosetta stone that “unlocked the adaptation.” Rolling Stone referred to as it an “achingly beautiful love story.” Inverse requested director Peter Hoar to decode the final shot. More than one outlet called it a masterpiece.

As with all discourses, there was additionally a backlash. Druckmann himself had foretold it, telling The New Yorker previous to the sequence launch that “as awesome as that episode is, there are going to be fans who are upset by it.” Druckmann’s creation has ceaselessly acquired criticisms round its queer characters, and he, rightly, knew some followers wouldn’t like what his present did with Bill’s story. Some called it “an egregious pivot under the guise of positive representation.” Others referred to as it “empty sentiment.” There was discuss that the episode was an instance of the “bury your gays” trope; additional critics claimed it was a subversion of that trope. (The latter is nearer to the reality.) And on and on it went.