The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 7, "Left Behind," streaming now on HBO and HBO Max.
The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey recently predicted that the Season 1 finale will prove divisive among the HBO show's audience.
Ramsey speculated on the reaction to The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 9, "Look for the Light," in an interview with Vogue. "It's going to divide people massively -- massively," she said. Should Ramsey's prediction prove accurate, it wouldn't be the first time The Last of Us has courted controversy. The show came under fire early in its run for changing core aspects of its video game source material's mythology and has since fallen afoul of review bombing by viewers unhappy with its inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
Ramsey touched on review bombing in a recent interview, insisting she's "not particularly anxious" about fans who take issue with The Last of Us' LGBTQ+ content. "I know people will think what they want to think," she said. "But they're gonna have to get used to it. If you don't want to watch the show because it has gay storylines, because it has a trans character, that's on you, and you're missing out." The star went on to praise the episode targeted by the review bombing campaign, "Long, Long Time," recalling how she cried during a montage sequence late in proceedings.
TLOU's Same-Sex Kiss Gets Censored
Ramsey was herself the source of a more recent online furor, after her same-sex kiss with co-star Storm Reid in The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 7, "Left Behind," was censored in North Africa and the Middle East. Dubai-based streaming platform OSN+ excised the intimate moment between Ramsey and Reid's characters, Ellie and Riley, a decision decried by affected viewers on social media. Ellie and Riley's kiss is a major moment in the former's backstory and appears in the Left Behind DLC The Last of Us' seventh episode is based on.
While HBO is yet to publicly comment on OSN+'s censorship of "Left Behind," The Last of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann has addressed the anti-queer sentiment within the world of the show itself. According to Druckmann, certain characters' regressive attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community in The Last of Us are intended to show how society's development has stalled following the Cordyceps pandemic. "The revolution that we've gone through as a culture to become accepting of homosexuality and whatever we'd call non-hetero normative sexualities hasn't occurred… in this world, that stuff is still 'problematic' as they say," he said.
Source: Vogue