Polygon.com / 28.04.25

The Last of Us' post-apocalyptic homophobia reveals its shallow setting

Just like the season before it, The Last of Us season 2 walks a line between faithfully adapting its sources already cinema-inspired material and expanding on that material to meet the medium of television. And so, as players watched in 2020s The Last of Us Part 2 and viewers watched a few weeks ago in The Last of Us season 2, theres a scene early in the story when Ellie and Dina are necking during a slow dance, and an older man Seth, the community bartender of Jackson, Wyoming tells them to cut it out, theyre in public.  OK, Seth, harsh, but not unreasonable. But then he makes the real source of his disapproval clear by calling them a lesbophobic slur. Joel decks him, Ellie redirects her anger to Joel for presuming she cant defend herself, and we move on. Or, at least, I might have been able to move on. But The Last of Us, the TV show, keeps coming back to Seth the Community Bigot, culminating in some of the most pivotal scenes in this weeks episode.  The Last of Us seems to want me...
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