The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 3, "Long, Long Time," now streaming on HBO and HBO Max.
Actor Chandler Riggs, best known for playing Carl Grimes in The Walking Dead, just revealed he's loving rival dystopian drama series The Last of Us.
Riggs voiced his support for the HBO series on Twitter, writing that he was "so happy" with the way it adapted Naughty Dog's original 2013 video game. Like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombie-like creatures. This has led fans and critics alike to draw comparisons between the two, although The Walking Dead's chief content officer Scott M. Gimple previously insisted there was room for both franchises in genre fans' living rooms.
Riggs' praise of The Last of Us adaptation comes hot on the heels of the show's third episode, "Long Long Time," which won critical acclaim for expanding on the backstory of Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). The Last of Us co-creator and showrunner Craig Mazin recently discussed the decision to expand on Bill and Frank's backstory in Episode 3, saying that it allowed viewers to "take a breath" after the previous two episodes. "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," he said.
The Last of Us Showrunner Talks Bill and Frank
Mazin also spoke about his approach to writing Bill and Frank's relationship in "Long Long Time," noting that he was keen to avoid perpetuating the "bury your gays" trope featured in other TV shows. "My feeling about that trope is that it's really about gay characters dying so that straight characters can mourn them and improve their lives and move on," he said. "In other words, gay people are just an instrument for straight people. And this is certainly not the case here. Their relationship is self-contained."
The showrunner added that The Last of Us' third episode will serve as a "thematic codex" for the rest of the series, by presenting Bill and Frank as two characters who express love differently. According to Mazin, the relationships depicted in subsequent episodes will reflect Bill and Frank's internalized versus externalized "ways of loving," which will in turn ensure the pair's presence is felt for the remainder of The Last of Us' run.
Source: Twitter