Warning: this article contains major spoilers for the most recent episode of The Last of Us.
The Last of Us has well and truly captured (and somehow broken) Twitter’s heart this week.
The dystopian series based on a video game was expected to pull heartstrings, as it’s set in a universe where fungus essentially turns people into zombies – making the world fall apart.
As it is effectively about a pandemic, it was always going to be a difficult subject to approach. Episode three was just released this week and it’s really taken the emotional biscuit.
It deviates from the main plot line, centred around Joel (played by Pedro Pescal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) who are trying to make their way through the new world without getting infected themselves.
Instead, it focuses on two lone survivors who appear to have been separated from the remaining (heavily diminished) society for years – Bill (played by Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), who fall in love.
It begins with a flashback to just a few years after the outbreak began in 2003, when Bill, who has been preparing for doomsday for some time, meets Frank.
The episode then takes viewers through their whole relationship. They sing, they eat strawberries, and have the most idyllic connection you possibly can in an apocalyptic land ravaged by fungus.
Then, Frank reveals that he is dying – and so Bill decides to take sleeping pills so he can die with him.
It’s an absolutely gut-wrenching storyline, which took viewers completely by surprise. In the video game, we learn very little about the relationship between these two figures as Frank is already dead when Joel and Ellie turn up.
But this change in direction has gone down extremely well online, leaving the internet, well, sobbing.
New episodes of The Last of Us are released every Monday on NOW TV.
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