In “The Last of Us” recap, Joel and Ellie travel outside Boston and we are introduced to Bill and Frank and their journey to survive the apocalypse together…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
When “The Last of Us” season 1 inevitably comes to a close and 2023 eventually nears an end, critics are undoubtedly going to write about the best television episodes of the year and it’s nearly impossible to imagine that the latest installment from the HBO series won’t be on that list when it’s all said and done.
The third episode of the first season of “The Last of Us” spends a little bit of time with Joel and Ellie as they continue their arduous journey across the United States but we’re mostly with a man named Bill, who almost rooted for the world to fall apart, and his partner Frank — the unlikeliest candidate who Bill would fall in love with until these two finally set eyes on each other.
A beautiful and ultimately sad love story plays out over 20 years in a single episode that will almost certainly earn Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett some award nominations. This one episode truly gave us the best and worst of the world coming to an end and how love could still find a way to survive even amidst a pandemic that wipes out the majority of life on Earth.
Of course, Joel and Ellie learn a few lessons about each other along the way but more than anything this was an episode dedicated to Bill and Frank and the life they built together after everything around them fell apart.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “The Last of Us” titled “Long, Long Time”…
Not My Fault
It’s the day after Tess sacrificed herself after she got infected by the Cordyceps virus and blew up the state building in Boston so Joel and Ellie could escape the monstrous creatures coming for all of them. From the start of this series, Joel has struggled to deal with his emotions, especially after the way his daughter died but it’s clear he never quite processed or perhaps even verbalized what exactly Tess meant to him.
Now that she’s gone, Joel has finally figured that out.
After what had to be a night filled with little sleep, Ellie tries to address Joel but he’s not interested in anything she has to say — particularly if she’s going to bother telling him that she’s sorry about what happened to Tess.
Rather than offering her sympathies, Ellie reminds Joel that both he and Tess took this trip knowing all the risks and she’s not the one who got her infected much less the reason anybody got killed.
“I wasn’t going to say I’m sorry. I was going to say I’ve been thinking about what happened. Nobody made you or Tess take me. Nobody made you go along with this plan. You needed a truck battery or whatever and you made a choice. So don’t blame me for something that isn’t my fault.”
~ Ellie
She’s brash but she’s got a point and even Joel is forced to at least nod at her in acknowledgement because Ellie certainly wasn’t to blame for what happened back in Boston.
The two get back on the road and Joel eventually leads them to an old convenience store where he had some supplies stashed just for occasions like this one. Inside, Ellie starts looking around despite being told the place was already picked clean while Joel attempts to remember where he stashed his supplies.
Ellie eventually finds a trap door leading into an underground basement where she discovers an infected person has been trapped by a cave in that left them stuck under a mountain of rubble. Curious about the enemy she’s facing, Ellie approaches the zombie-like creature and cuts its head open with her knife, which only reveals more fungus seething underneath.
She decides to put the creature out of its misery by stabbing the infected man to death before she makes her way back upstairs. It’s not a total loss — she does manage to find a dusty box of tampons that might come in handy one day soon.
After Joel retrieves what he had hidden way, the two of them get back on the road again.
Along the way, Ellie marvels at an airplane that crashed in a nearby field — she grew up after the world had already gone to shit so she’s never actually seen one of these things in the air much less had the opportunity to fly on one herself.
Ellie then asks Joel how the entire pandemic started because she doesn’t understand if the infection spreads by bites, who was the first one bitten and how did they get infected?
Joel explains that as best as he could understand it, the Cordyceps fungus mutated and got into food through grains or sugar. We learned a bit more about that in the previous episode when an outbreak started in Indonesia at a flour factor (where the largest flour factory in the world actually does reside).
The tainted food got packaged and sent out across the globe and landed on store shelves on a Thursday. By Friday night, people who had eaten the tainted food began to get sick before transforming into these mindless killing machines hell bent on spreading the infection through bites.
The world effectively ended on Friday night, September 26, 2003
By the following Monday, everything was gone — that’s just how quickly this whole thing spread across the globe.
As they continue walking, Joe wants to lead them through a field because there’s something up ahead she doesn’t want Ellie to see — but that just makes her want to see it that much more. When they finally arrive, Ellie finds a mass grave where a huge number of people were slaughtered and left dead on the side of the road.
As Joel explains to her, the quarantine zones filled up rather quickly once the infection started to spread so the military began gathering up people from outside communities. When there were no more open spots in the quarantine zones, the military decided to just execute everybody who still needed saving because a dead person can’t eventually transform into an infected zombie.
Bill and Frank
We then travel back to September 30, 2003 as the military evacuated a small town called Lincoln in Massachusetts where the last survivors were being pulled from their houses. It doesn’t take long to connect the dots that a mother and child seen loading into a military transport vehicle are wearing the same clothes we see at the bottom of the pit filled with dead bodies in the scene with Joel and Ellie from 20 years later.
On this particular day in 2003, the military are clearing the town but there’s one man left behind.
His name is Bill — he’s a doomsday prepper like you would not believe and it’s almost like he’s been waiting for the moment for the world to end so he could finally survive in his own element. After watching the military vehicles load up and leave town, Bill arms himself with one of his dozens of weapons, puts on a gas mask and ventures out his front door, presumably for the first time in days since the infection first started to spread.
Outside, Bill realizes that he truly is alone — but he’s not the least bit panicked.
Instead, Bill takes his truck and a boat used to haul equipment and he begins visiting all the key places around town that will offer him the supplies he needs to survive. He loads up on gas and then hits the Home Depot for all the tools he’ll require to effectively cut off this town, build a wall around it and set enough booby traps that anybody stupid enough to come near here will never make it out alive again.
Bill fires up a generator to ensure he has power. He plants vegetables and raises live stock so he’ll never run out of food. Bill is nothing if not ready for this exact situation.
When his work is done, Bill sits down and enjoys a meal and a glass of wine for his trouble.
Bill even manages to get a little bit of enjoyment when an infected person makes the mistake of stumbling towards his walled off city because one of his traps ends up blowing it away. He never gets tired of watching those scenes on his security cameras.
Flash forward four years later to 2007 and Bill has been living on his own for the past four years with presumably no contact with another living person except those infected people who get killed by his booby traps. When Bill gets alerted that one of his traps has been triggered, he looks at a camera and realizes that somebody fell into one of the pits he had covered surrounding the compound.
He heads outside, loaded up with guns and he’s probably prepared to kill whatever he finds.
Rather than shoot first and ask questions later, Bill ends up meeting a sweet man named Frank, who was trying to complete a journey to the Boston quarantine zone because the one in Baltimore was overrun before crashing and burning. Sadly, Frank started his trip with a much bigger group — and now he’s the only one left alive.
Bill decides to help Frank out of the pit before testing him to ensure he’s not infected. He then points the way to Boston but Frank is tired and hungry and he would certainly appreciate a meal.
Bill takes pity on his new visitor before offering him a hot shower and a change of clothes while he prepares dinner for the both of them. They share a meal together — Frank is outgoing and boisterous while Bill is seemingly the exact opposite but there’s an obvious attraction between them.
After dinner and as he prepares to leave, Frank spots a piano in the living room and he pulls out a song book to play a song by Linda Rondstadt. It’s a little out of tune and tone deaf, which forces Bill to intervene and he ends up playing the song and singing instead.
It’s a sweet moment shared between them and that’s when Bill finally reveals that he wasn’t singing this sad love song about a woman — and that leads to a kiss with Frank. Upstairs, the two of them go to bed together as Bill tells Frank that this is his first time with a man so they take things slow.
Before anything more happens, Frank informs Bill that he’s not a whore — he’s not trading sex for lunch or a hot shower so if they go through with this, he’s staying for at least a few more days. Bill agrees and they share a kiss.
A few days turns into a few years because we then pick up three years later in 2010 and by this point Bill and Frank are like an old married couple. It seems they are arguing over Frank wanting to use some supplies to fix up some buildings in their little town and maybe even mow the lawn.
More than anything, Frank wants them to make friends even if that might seem next to impossible given the current state of the world. Bill scoffs at the idea, especially considering there are no friends to be had in a post-apocalyptic world but it turns out that Frank has been using their radio to talk to a very nice woman in the nearby quarantine zone.
That’s when we find Bill and Frank sharing a meal with Joel and Tess outside their house in Lincoln.
Frank and Tess are chatting and almost giddy about getting to know each other while Bill gets a gun on the table with the barrel aimed directly at Joel, who doesn’t seem to have much to say either. When Frank offers to give Tess a tour of the house — much to Bill’s chagrin — Joel admits that he finds far more in common with Bill giving this particular situation.
“I understand. If mine brought strangers into our situation, I wouldn’t be happy either.”
~ Joel
Despite his reservations, Joel promises that Bill got lucky by meeting two pretty decent people and they can help each other by trading supplies each of them needs. In particular, Joel offers Bill 10 spools of aluminum wiring because the fence he has built around the compound is already corroding and it’s only a matter of time before the walls come down.
On the way out, Frank and Tess work out a code so they can speak over the radio — the same code we heard inside the Boston quarantine zone with various music from different decades. Meanwhile, Joel warns Bill that while he and Frank are safe from FEDRA and the infected, a day will come when raiders will find his little town and attempt to steal everything he’s built.
Bill promises they’ll be just fine.
Another three years pass to 2013 and at this point, Bill and Frank have settled into a very comfortable life together. In fact, Frank surprises Bill with a strawberry patch that he’s been cultivating across town after making a trade with Tess for some seeds. It’s a wonderful moment spent between them.
That night, Frank wakes up to the sound of gunfire and explosions — the raiders have finally come for the compound and many of them got caught up in Bill’s various traps. Unfortunately not all of the raiders, so Bill has gone outside to exchange gunfire with the survivors.
Frank follows him out there and he watches as Bill takes a bullet in his side, which forces both of them to retreat back into the house. Bill believes he’s going to die and he tells Frank to please reach out to Joel because he knows the man he loves won’t make it on his own.
But Frank isn’t ready to give up just yet so he patches up the wound and nurses Bill back to health.
Time passes again — this time 10 years later and the present day in 2023.
Bill survived his wounds but Frank has taken ill and he’s lost the use of his legs so he’s now bound to a wheelchair. Bill cares for Frank and tends to his every need as they continue their lives together but it’s obvious that time is running out.
Realizing that his condition is never going to improve, Frank wakes up the next morning and tells Bill that this is going to be his last day on Earth. Rather than wither away and just fall sicker and sicker, Frank prefers to have one last great day with the man he loves before taking his own life, which means he’ll die by his own choice rather than a disease just slowly eating away at him.
Frank: “Do you love me?”
Bill: “Yes”
Frank: “Then love me the way I want you to.”
It doesn’t take long for Bill to realize there’s nothing he can do to change Frank’s mind so he concedes to the plan while also promising to give him everything he wants for this final day.
They visit the boutique together, put on suits and even have their own private wedding. That night, Bill makes them both a delicious dinner and they will share a final glass of wine — and Frank’s will be laced with enough medication that when he goes to sleep that night, he won’t wake up the next morning.
But after Frank finishes his own glass, he watches Bill gulp down some wine of his own — and he knows that the entire bottle was laced. Bill had no intention of allowing Frank to go alone without him.
“This isn’t the tragic suicide at the end of the play. I’m old. I’m satisfied and you were my purpose.”
~ Bill
Frank admits he should be angry but at the same time he believes the gesture was incredibly romantic. So they clasp hands together before Bill takes them both to bed where they will fall asleep in each other’s arms, which is where they both wanted to be forever.
Take Care of Tess
Joel and Ellie arrive at the compound that Bill locked down 20 years ago. Joel is able to enter through a code he was given by Bill that allowed him to come and go as he pleased but as they approach the house, he notices that the flowers have wilted — a sign that something has gone terribly wrong.
Inside, the house feels empty as Joel searches for signs of Bill or Frank but it’s Ellie who gets the answer when she finds a letter addressed “To whomever but probably Joel” along with a key.
The letter reads as a suicide note with Bill confessing that he never liked Joel all that much but probably considered him a friend. Bill says that he was happy when the world ended because he didn’t think anyone was worth saving — until he met Frank. He found one person worth saving so that’s exactly what Bill did — and he believes Joel is built just like him.
He leaves everything to Joel so he can take what he wants to survive with the letter telling him to take care of Tess — words that still manage to break Joel’s heart because it seems unlikely he ever truly expressed what she meant to him.
After taking a moment to himself and realizing that Bill had a truck and a battery to power it, Joel goes back inside to inform Ellie that he’s going to take her with him to Wyoming. There he hopes to reunite with his brother Tommy, who is a former Firefly and he might know the lab where Ellie could help create a cure to the Cordyceps infection.
Until then, Joel makes Ellie promise to follow three simple rules — she doesn’t bring up Tess and they don’t share each other’s histories. Ellie can’t tell anyone about her condition because people won’t believe she’s immune — they’ll just see her test positive for Cordyceps and then put a bullet in her brain. Finally, Joel makes Ellie promise that she’ll do whatever he says because it’s in their best interest in order to survive.
From there, Joel heads down into Bill’s bunker where he starts loading up on weapons and supplies for the cross country journey. While perusing around the house, Ellie manages to find a gun of her own — something Joel explicitly forbade her from having but she wants one anyways.
They finally load up everything into the truck and it’s the first time Ellie’s ever seen the inside of a vehicle — it’s like a spaceship to her. She finds a tape in the glove compartment and despite Joel’s protests, she puts it into the player — and he’s soon happy to realize it’s Linda Ronstadt’s voice playing through the speakers.
Joel enjoys the music as he opens the gate to Bill’s compound and he begins the long trip to Wyoming with hopes of reunited with his brother and delivering Ellie to the scientists that may finally be able to stop the deadliest infection known to mankind.
“The Last of Us” returns next Sunday night at 9 p.m. on HBO.
