Note – The below article will contain some spoilers for the plot of The Last of Us as well as the HBO adaptation.
The third episode of HBO’s TV adaptation of The Last of Us aired yesterday, and is sure to go down as one of its most talked-about chapters. We were lucky enough to see the season in full before its debut a few weeks ago (you can read Shannon’s review here) and it was plain to see at the time that Episode 3 would catch peoples’ attentions.
As one of the episodes in the series that most deviates from the source material of the game, Long, Long Time focuses almost entirely on Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) for its 80-minute runtime, with those familiar with the game knowing that while Bill is featured fairly prominently his “partner” Frank is already dead before being introduced.
Here though, we get to witness Bill and Frank’s first meeting and subsequent life together as a bittersweet love story amidst the horrors of the world around them. It’s a beautiful, quietly-paced episode that does plenty to offset the otherwise crushingly bleak tone of the show, while still taking a moment or two to absolutely shatter viewers hearts. It’s a genuinely great love story that doesn’t draw on its queer-ness to invoke tragedy, but instead simply shines a lens on the joy and ultimate pain of growing old with the person you care for most in life.
IGN scored the episode a perfect 10/10 in their spoiler review, saying “A masterfully told love story set in a world designed to leave them unwritten, episode 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us is a sensational hour of television.”
Aside from being some incredible TV though, it’s also just generally shaken the TLOU-enjoying internet to its core:
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”
— zach silberberg (@zachsilberberg) January 30, 2023
just finished tonight’s episode of the last of us pic.twitter.com/ewa5XD9n0c
— nat ? (@missratalie) January 30, 2023
Nick Offerman reading the Last of Us Episode 3 script pic.twitter.com/akiTzL6Gyv
— daman ? (@nallamothud) January 30, 2023
Amusingly, Variety also reports that the song “Long, Long Time” by Linda Ronstadt has seen a 4,900% spike in Spotify streams following its powerful use in the episode.
You can catch new episodes of The Last of Us every Monday at 1PM AEDT on Foxtel and Binge. Head here to see the full series schedule.
The show was also just renewed for a second season after drawing record-breaking numbers for HBO, and our latest peek into the upcoming The Last of Us multiplayer game has us believing it could be a two-player cooperative experience.
