Utopia, Apocalypse, and Queer Effacement on <i>The Last of Us</i>

Producers of science fiction and fantasy have long employed the trope of alternative timelines to drive plots, develop characters, and maintain viewer interest. From the ancient futurism of Battlestar Galactica to the eerie ruination of Planet of the Apes, the best artistic works compel audiences to contemplate their relationship to the narrative arc and the implications of divergent temporalities. What if human abuses of the natural world lead to cataclysmic disaster? What if the technologies located primarily in our imaginations were actually developed thousands of years in the past? Perhaps most important for the purposes of this article, how does such equipment for living shape perceptions of culture, belonging, and power?1The Last of Us, like much postapocalyptic programming before it, invites viewers to contemplate the prospects of a future radically rewritten by disaster. Indeed, the series offers spectators the opportunity to ponder what life would have been like during the last two decades had the course of history gone in a markedly different direction. The Last of Us volleys between the time of a fungal outbreak that turns people into zombie-like creatures in 2003 to present-day 2023, the year the program aired. This timetable suggests that the first two decades of the new millennium have been entirely reimagined in The Last of Us. This includes many of the legislative and cultural accomplishments of LGBTQ political movements, which would no longer exist in the program's universe, such as the attainment of same-sex marriage rights in Obergefell v. Hodges. This becomes increasingly noticeable in the third episode of the inaugural season, which gives intense focus to a long-term same-sex relationship that culminates with a wedding. The episode is both a stark reminder of just how recent these achievements are, but also produces a queer assurance that love will prevail, even if governments fail and threats loom around every corner. This is a novel reconfiguring of the past for contemporary audiences, but the series also maintains a tradition of engaging the tropes of utopia and apocalypse, which have long structured LGBTQ movement rhetoric. As I outline in this article, the transformative space occupied by these characters, which presents in ways that mirror Foucault's understanding of heterotopias, is both suspiciously sentimental but also aspirationally satisfying. Audiences are assured that even as the world burns, love wins.“Long, Long Time,” the title of the episode under consideration, feels more allegorical than most chapters in the program's first season. This mythic quality is relayed in the opening shot, which features a mountain range with a river running through it and a caption that reads: “10 Miles West of Boston.” Importantly, the location is discernably not ten miles outside of Boston. As scores of social media users have observed, the terrain looks much more like the Canadian Rockies, where portions of the series were shot, rather than a locale in the Northeast United States. Although comically peculiar, the terrain immediately clues us into the fact that something is not quite right about this episode. One might wonder if the producers included this otherwise ridiculous caption to generate on-line chatter and create hype for the drama. If nothing else, the scene attests to the power of narrative to forge parasocial relationships with fans: in a series featuring plant-like zombies produced from fungus, mountains on the outskirts of Boston seem almost plausible. Regardless of producer intent or audience reception, the opening nicely captures the largely tranquil plotting of the episode. Even in the midst of a global disaster, there is peace to be found in nature. This staging is also emblematic of the fluctuating tensions between the tropes of utopian and apocalyptic discourses, which appear repeatedly in LGBTQ history.Elsewhere, I have written about the relationship between the tropes of utopia and apocalypse in LGBTQ social movements.2 These ideas surface in disparate contexts that include the ongoing urgency of the AIDS crisis, ideological debates over same-sex marriage, fragmented media consumption, widely circulated movement symbols, and the anxiety presented by queer teenagers who are imagined as both the promising future of LGBTQ life and a threat to its communal norms. Many movements oscillate between the stylistic emphases on utopia and apocalypse, but these figurations have been especially prominent among LGBTQ publics. The legal and cultural gains made on behalf of LGBTQ folk over the last half century, as well as some significant setbacks, have sparked contentment and anxiety, a dialogical interdependence that lives on today. In 2023, for example, there were a record number of legislative attacks on LGBTQ people, even as once controversial efforts like the push for same-sex marriage enjoys more support than ever before.3 We have good reason to fly multicolored pride flags, but also justification for clinging to the lessons represented by the pink triangle.The Last of Us continues this tradition of entangling the affective attachments of apocalypse and utopia in queer life. Even the two central characters might be interpreted as stand-ins for these competing impulses. Nick Offerman's character, Bill, is a doomsday prepper who the audience first encounters in his dimly lit underground bunker, surrounded by monitors, and surveilling the space outside of his home. His neighbors are being rounded up by military forces and many of them, including small children, would later be murdered by the government. This initial glimpse of Bill staring at a wall of screens is a familiar trope and one that has become a semiotic shorthand for discourses related to control, security, privacy, and panopticism. Productions including Sliver, The Dark Knight, and Cabin in the Woods are some of the many media texts that centralize this well-established staging device. Surrounded by firearms, sulfuric acid, and copies of Guns and Ammo, Bill mutters: “Not today, you New World Order jackboot fucks.” When Bill finally emerges from his home, he storms out the front door wearing a gasmask and holding a shotgun. Bill is evasive, technologically savvy, and prepared for the worst-case scenario. Paranoia constitutes his character, but his inclinations, including his distrust of the government, often prove correct.If Bill parodically captures the haze of apocalyptic readiness, Murray Bartlett's Frank introduces a movement toward utopia. Bartlett is himself an openly gay actor who frequently plays queer characters on shows that include Looking, Tales of the City, and The White Lotus. Four years after Bill evades military capture and secures portions of his town as a makeshift compound, Frank falls into one of Bill's traps meant for the infected. Frank convinces Bill to let him stay and the two instantly fall in love. Frank draws attention to the cultural aspects of the good life in Bill's world throughout the episode. He comments on the amazing food that Bill prepares and the wine that perfectly accompanies the meal: “A man who knows to pair rabbit with a Beaujolais.” Bill coyly comments that he knows he “doesn't seem like the type,” but Frank assures him that his persona is recognizably queer. Following this interaction, Frank moves to a sitting room with a piano and pulls out the sheet music for Linda Ronstadt's “Long, Long Time,” which acts as a catalyst for their love affair. As the episode progresses, viewers are exposed to small changes in the house, which are visually tied to Frank. In one of the final scenes that the couple appears in together, for example, plants and paintings that were not featured in the dining room earlier in the episode are noticeably on display. Both are attributable to Frank, who is an artist attempting to maintain a degree of domestic normality in a deteriorating world. Unlike the antisocial Bill, it is Frank who demands contact with others outside of the compound, leading to their ties with Pedro Pascal's character Joel and Anna Torv's Tess. But perhaps most utopic is the isolated romance at the center of the narrative. Viewers watch as the pair overcome obstacles, build a life together, and ultimately choose to die in each other's arms. Frank decides to take his own life after becoming terminally ill and Bill, unable to picture living without him, follows suit. The couple are informally married and then consume poison—Romeo style—at a meal that bookends their storyline.This amorous narrative arc is reminiscent of tensions related to notions of utopia and apocalypse in media representations of LGBTQ relationships. Producers of queer love stories have long confronted a dilemma when strategizing how to market such texts for popular consumption. On the one hand, such narratives must capture the nuances of queer life and the specific affections, intimacies, and challenges that accompany such romances. On the other hand, these tales must have broad appeal, and not contain themselves to themes recognizable only to queer viewers, particularly if they want to reach the largest audience possible. The latter of these concerns seems especially pertinent in a media context where cisgender heterosexual women are often the largest consumers of queer content. “Long, Long Time” embodies these tensions, though the draw of the relationship seems to be of specific interest to the program's creators. Executive producer Craig Mazin told the Los Angeles Times, “I'm not speaking, actually, specifically of two gay men in a committed relationship. . . . I'm speaking of two human beings who have been in a committed relationship for a really long time. That's a different kind of love than we usually see.”4 For readers who have even a cursory understanding of queer history, this gesture may feel awkwardly familiar. The romantic difference displayed on screen is readily apparent but is positioned as speaking to a universalism that is meant to educate all audiences and not simply LGBTQ people.It is interesting that Mazin presents the unique ways each of the two characters displays affection to anchor his point. He notes, “I've been married for over 25 years and there's this other thing that happens, there's a very different kind of love. . . . I wanted to show that through the lens of Frank, who loves one way, and Bill, who loves another way. . . . I thought it was important to show how a relationship could endure, and then conclude in a natural way. Because death is a perfectly natural thing to do.”5 The duration of their love reflects a utopic impulse toward the universal, even if the ultimate plot telos—death—alludes to all the living viewers did not see on screen. Mazin expands on his point: “The story of Bill and Frank and the letter that Bill leaves behind [in the show] is such a huge part of why Joel decides he's going to keep going [on this journey] with Ellie. . . . Their relationship ultimately becomes kind of the skeleton key to unlock all of this show, as far as I'm concerned.”6 Importantly, Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, is portrayed as queer. However, Ellie never meets Bill or Frank in the television series. Although the queer relationship functions as an impetus for Joel's mission, their love transcends the specifics of queer life (and, apparently the queer teenager at the series’ center) to advance the plot. Numerous authors have documented the “bury your gays” phenomenon that has been a persistent element of television programming for decades, and that pattern resurfaces, in modified form, here.7 Consistent with that trend, the utopian partnership the lovers build is situated as a lesson in survival for Joel, but not necessarily one in love or life for Ellie. Keeping in mind Lee Edelman's warnings about the specter of the child in the heterosexual imaginary, I do not mean to suggest that the characters should be sacrificed in the name of the children.8 Rather, their generally serene life provides a familiar form of inspiration to move the plot forward, regardless of the other queer characters in their proximity who could use some hope.To be sure, that sense of hope might be reserved for the program's queer audiences, who are witnessing a political assault on their livelihoods. The twenty years that envelope the timeline of The Last of Us, roughly late 2003 to 2023, contained a remarkable number of legislative victories for LGBTQ rights. Characters from the program would have seen the U.S. Supreme Court strike down sodomy laws in April 2003, but little beyond that point. Massachusetts, presumptively where this episode takes place, became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. Four years later, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act into law. In 2010, the Senate officially repealed the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, and the Obama administration would follow suit with trans folks in 2016 (the latter policy was revoked by Donald Trump's administration and then reinstituted under Joe Biden's White House). And, of course, in 2015 the Supreme Court narrowly granted gays and lesbians the right to marry. This is to say nothing of the gradual gains made by LGBTQ people in everyday life, the hard fights won by queer activists, and the (sometimes) progressive representations that appeared across the media landscape.To be sure, viewers in 2023 did witness these historic events. The Last of Us reflects a distorted space and time, a fictionalized pre- and post-Obergefell world where fans can contemplate what might have been had these milestones never come to pass. In The Last of Us universe, there are few signs of generative political transformations for LGBTQ folks. Rather, it depicts the nurturing of a single relationship, which also carries the historical echoes of the AIDS when Frank becomes In many the world that Bill and Frank build behind and traps is by Foucault's of a to that are a kind of utopia in which the all the other that can be found the culture, are and offers the mirror as an “The mirror after a it is a . . . But it is also a in far as the mirror does exist in where it a of I the of the mirror into the of which is both a of but one with significant are both mythic and that and communal and notions of time. that not just different they or the of a representations often capture such in both stark and readers that such are progressive in their functions can widely from the of to the of cultural This is in The Last of Us, where the apocalyptic Bill's of also an same-sex relationship that is of that the in which he was more with space than with time is though perhaps in the be sure, the initial outbreak of is a of the proximity we in to We social and of However, there is no that the with which both people and in this can is that of the world is that of a long life through time than that of a that and with its own during a draw attention to such on The Last of Us are through a series of the In our we over the duration of an the of the and the of time. On the of being are Bill and space both the zombies at and room for and in a world that is deteriorating around many of the and that when about are in the series. I that the in The Last of Us utopia and apocalypse to a that is for that are a of The late out two of under this initial and The first of or or reserved for who are, in to and to the human in which they in a state of the of have and are in which is in to the mean or are of this are and and of course . . . Bill and Frank are presented as at most of the time, in a If a is the of this the of space that they create to gay may have once a of or in The Last of Us there is no no that same-sex or are In both to and apparent same-sex about that for the to The later episode that assault is not beyond the reach of this world and Ellie will no more to stay this to the becomes an element of survival and acts as a of in a Long Time” reflects the features of in its of space and time and these are tied to notions of utopia and is little room to on each of Foucault's I at the more than I at that are when a for this episode. For example, Bill and in a single that are in themselves the of the after Frank has made the to he Bill that he is going to the he to something to for their In what is otherwise a military he is going to Foucault's of this is a which he the of the world and then it is the of the one of the most scenes in the episode Frank Bill with in a on the The scene also captures the nuances of in the ways the notions of as such a space they are in much the ways Bill and Frank of the world that has around The that shape their love to from that as take on different His is that of the in has over the he to in the center of the of the century, with the of and the of death with the of these were to the outskirts of were one had to rather than simply We might the of Boston where can in the of The Last of Us presents an of this The two men die in their home, in the and their is not Their death is an of their utopic that a new that they a space with the of of the outside or its If only the audience could be tropes of utopia and apocalypse have a in LGBTQ The Last of Us this by the Bill and Frank course, in some the of apocalypse the of utopia. Although the of “Long, Long Time” is not of and the utopic are We are to see such figurations to in our world where LGBTQ folks are being by the Indeed, just after this episode and folk a for the The of the suggest about queer people, but the was made to a gay couple who the and of being in As with Bill and Frank, the men are they fall in love and a life a that is reminiscent of the one in The Last of one of ultimately should not be that such utopian are being during a time of cultural for queer But such also compel us to contemplate how audiences are to see the between and that Bill and Frank are key to the of the might us about the narrative of these Productions that queer characters have often as a for nurturing and audiences The “bury your gays” trope may ultimately the viewers this show in the but the is out in the As in the from the in which Frank and himself to is no and no do not to are they the world together, in and on their own were that the trope its I to with the of this if for no other reason than it a narrative at a time when the world is attempting to LGBTQ lives with and series might also us to the figurations of utopia and apocalypse, as well as Foucault's were to the world as he it but his political was different than the we today. In a where the and of LGBTQ lives is as as we may to how we these which and

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.