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âThe Last of Usâ Creator Didnât Want to Sweep âUpsettingâ Moments Under the Rug
During the second-season premiere of â??The Last of Us,â? Ellie gets called a homophobic slur. Craig Mazin tells WIRED it highlights what happens when humanity stops moving forward.
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On Sundayâs second season premiere of The Last of Us, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) experienced something familiar to queer folks of almost any generation. Itâs the chill that comes when youâre showing affection to your partner in public and suddenly sense youâre being watched. Not by a Cordyceps-infected zombie but by a person who doesnât like what they see. They sling slursâas Seth did during Sundayâs premiereâor worse. Sometimes, you have someone like Joel (Pedro Pascal) who will have your back. Often, you donât.
The moment, show creator Craig Mazin tells WIRED, reflects The Last of Usâ key tension: Humanity is partially stuck in 2003, âbecause thatâs when the world ends on our show.â Fear has deepened some peopleâs prejudices. Others, attempting to rebuild familial bonds in a world where whole families have been wiped out, accept allies they otherwise wouldnât. What The Last of Us aims to do, then, is accurately remember the world the way it was and make its best guesses about how it would have moved forward on issues like religion, race, gender, and sexuality under the pall of a zombie apocalypse.
âIf there is a moment that is upsetting, it is in and of itself a reminder of the way things were,â says Mazin. âWe didnât just want to sweep that under the rug.â
Still, portraying queer people, and queerphobia, in the media remains a fraught proposition. The Last of Us, in all its permutations, is a product of its time, but the showâs second season is airing in an America different from the one that existed in 2013, when the first game came out, or even 2023, when the first season did. In 2025, queer people, specifically trans folks, are facing a barrage of attacks from President Donald Trumpâs administration, from attempts to bar trans women and girls from womenâs sports to restrictions on federal funding for gender-affirming care for anyone under 19.
To Mazinâs mind, his showâs portrayal of homophobia simply serves as a reminder of peopleâs views two decades agoâeven if people are watching it at a time with a queerphobia all its own.
Neil Druckmann, who cocreated the game and the show, remains very aware of how both are received by audiences. When I ask him and Mazin about how they balance the queer storylines in their show, stuck in 2003, against a 2025 in which trans rights have become a contentious matter of public debate in the US, his answer is direct.
âHow do we deal with whatâs going on in the world and how is that bleeding in and affecting our story? And I would say zero percent,â Druckmann says. âWe try to just shut out all outside pressure and voices as much as we can and really focus on the story ⦠If people love it, thatâs awesome. If people hate it, thatâs their choice. But we have a certain integrity and authenticity that we must apply to the story that we will never compromise on.â
Based on a series of videogames released by developer Naughty Dog, The Last of Us became a prestige TV juggernaut when its first season aired. At the time, it received accolades and condemnations for its LGBTQ+ characters. The queer media advocacy organization GLAAD gave it an Outstanding New Series award in 2024. Elsewhere, online commentators lashed out at the showâs creators for fleshing out LGBTQ+ storylines that were only hinted at in the games, and promoting queer âpropaganda.â
Naughty Dogâs gamesâThe Last of Us, The Last of Us Part II, and The Last of Us: Left Behindâalso faced varying levels of praise and backlash for their inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters. Queer fans have embraced the games and also frowned upon their use of a transgender characterâs deadname. Still, in a medium thatâs traditionally reacted harshly to diversity, the gamesâ characters like Levâa trans man born into a religious sectâhas been seen as a beacon of inclusivity.
Queerness on The Last of Us represents something else, too: A framework for building community at a time when nearly everyone has lost their family. Postapocalypse, the America seen on the show has divided into religious sects, cults, splinter groups seeking revenge. Queer people, accustomed for generations to building chosen families of their own, demonstrate an alternative framework for rebuilding.
âThe deeper message of the games and the show is the idea that there is such a thing as a queer way of being that could also be an answer to collective trauma if only we would be open to it,â say Ramzi Fawaz, a cultural studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. âThe games and the show both do such a good job of representing queer people by not making them tokens and simply making them potential models of another set of choices.â
During the Last of Usâ first season this manifested in the showâs now-infamous âLong, Long Timeâ episode. In it, a conspiracy-believing prepper named Bill (a non-player character from the game portrayed by Nick Offerman) meets a man named Frank (Murray Bartlett) when the latter wanders onto his property. Prior to the Cordyceps outbreak, they maybe never would have crossed paths or agreed on anything. In a world infested with zombies, where Billâs conspiratorial ideas have somewhat proven true and Frankâs level-headedness has proven useful, they fall in love. Bill opens up to life outside of his bunker, outside of his conservative worldview, and even makes friends; Frank learns the value of Billâs overpreparedness.
World-building this way has its upsides and downsides. The Last of Us can be a mirror, a reminder that attempts to make a place âgreat againâ are inherently retrograde. Again implies that life was better before, even if it wasnât better for everyone. It also forces the show to treat its characters, particularly its queer ones, in inhumane ways.
These tensions emerge in season 2 in Jackson, Wyoming, where dozens of survivors of the Cordyceps plague have built a somewhat safe and stable existence. Joelâs brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and his wife Maria (Rutina Wesley) helped establish the settlement; Ellie, now an effective fighter and sharp-shooter, helps protect it. But it has also become a microcosm of America in the early aughts.
âOne of the problems with Jackson,â says Mazin, âis that theyâve become a bit complacent. They feel safe enough that somebody can get drunk at a party and start tossing out homophobic slurs, to repeat the kind of shitty little sins that [people] used to feel free to commit when the world was not in an apocalypse.â
Re-creating those shitty little sinsâor challenging themâon television comes with complications. After HBO aired the âLong, Long Timeâ episode, the homophobic backlash was swift. Most of it seemed to come from a vocal minorityâthe episode was the seriesâ most-watched to date when it airedâbut they were mighty enough to seemingly review-bomb the episode and take to the internet with âgay agendaâ allegations.
Offerman won an Independent Spirit Award for his performance, and when he accepted he gave his response for what to say when people ask, Why did you have to make it a gay story? âBecause you ask questions like that,â Offerman said. âItâs not a gay story, itâs a love story, you asshole!â
At least some of this comes from gamers who are still upset about the LGBTQ+ representation in The Last of Us games. The Last of Us Part II, on which the showâs second season is loosely based, was considered groundbreaking when developer Naughty Dog released it in 2020. Its queer representation, which extends beyond Ellie and Dina, was a big deal in a medium that has been pushing back against inclusivity since at least the days of the first Gamergate.
At the same time, Part IIâs inclusion of Lev, was also not wholly well-received by the queer community. Some derided the gameâs use of Levâs deadname. Some said the game, and its predecessor, fell into the âbury your gaysâ trope, killing off its queer characters too willingly. Others, like Kotakuâs Riley MacLeod, noted that âLev isnât necessarily a complex character, but he also doesnât just walk around being trans like so many trans characters in media do.â The showâs creators wouldnât confirm if Lev would make an appearance this season but said viewers would likely see him on the show and that he would be a trans character. Just before the showâs second season premiere, HBO renewed The Last of Us for a third season.
Ian Alexander, who played Lev in the game, told WIRED in 2021, âI completely understand peopleâs frustrations [about the deadnaming scene]. Obviously, the writers have the best intentions and wanted to bring authentic representation, and they might have missed the mark a little bit with that.â
Attempts to show people in all their complexity, though, might mean occasionally missing the mark. The Last of Us offers complicated and messy queer characters and politics rather than relying on trite stereotypes. And messiness means sometimes people will feel uncomfortable.
Sunday nightâs episode marks the showâs first breath-holding moment of the season; it wonât be the last.
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