With a swift renewal handed out by HBO Max for The Last Of US after just two episodes of Season 1 have aired, it's clear that audiences – both those who have feverishly played the game and those who've never so much as picked up a controller — have embraced the post-apocalyptic series. Episode 3, however, takes things to another level entirely, diverging from the game to provide a perfect hour of television telling the story of two minor characters. Read on for an exclusive snippet of our chat with show bosses Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann about why they chose to put the duo in the spotlight. (And while there is nothing major discussed here, anyone who has yet to see Episode 3 should beware potential spoilers.)
While the show focuses on tough survivor Joel (Pedro Pascal) and snarky teen Ellie (Bella Ramsey), the third episode gives some extra depth to Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), who game players meet early on.
"I remember thinking about my own emotional reaction and response to moments in the story, says Mazin. "What's interesting is even though I've played through The Last Of Us maybe seven times at this point and have a sense memory of fighting through Bill's town with Bill, what I really remember are the moments where he talks about his partner. I really remember the scene where they find Frank, and that just felt like something I wanted to know more about."
"We knew that we also had an opportunity to say, 'Okay, the world ends now, here's what it looks like next month, a year later, another year later — let's throw ourselves into the future.' We wanted to have an opportunity to circle back and see how the world slowly changes over time. And we thought, doing it through the evolution of this relationship would be a fantastic way to do it."
The results speak for themselves: a beautiful, heartbreakingly told love story that also serves as a pitch-perfect origin story of the cordyceps outbreak from the initial evacuations, to the present day, all told through the eyes of not-so-paranoid prepper, Bill, and his partner Frank.
"I think the Bill and Frank relationship ultimately functioned as this interesting, thematic core where you can see every relationship between two people in the show," he continues. "It keeps circling what it means to be somebody that loves outward and somebody who loves inward, what it means to protect and what it means to risk. It just felt like it was a good chance to do that stuff and to do it in a place where we wouldn't be breaking anything from the game. It just felt safe."
Game director Neil Druckmann had more practical concerns, specifically in the fundamental differences between telling the story through an interactive game and a TV series. "I think a lesser adaptation would have looked at that Bill sequence and we would have said, 'Oh, that part where Joel steps on the trap, and he's hanging upside down. That's a cool set piece, how do we make that set piece bigger?' But that works in the game because you're immersed in it: I'm building a relationship because I'm playing alongside Bill, and I'm relying on him — he just saved me, we save each other. In the show, that would be boring very quickly," he says.
"Here, we get to unplug from Joel and Ellie and go and see 'What was Bill's life was like when the outbreak happened? What was that relationship with Frank?' and expand on that in these really interesting, emotional ways that we couldn't do in the game. There, all the story has to be told around gameplay loops — the show doesn't have those constraints."
You can hear our full, detail-laden chat with Mazin and Druckmann (plus the team's own in-depth analysis of the episodes so far) in our Pilot TV+ Spoiler Special on the first three episodes, which is now up. To subscribe to the Pilot TV+ feed, head here.
For UK viewers, The Last Of Us is on Sky every Monday morning at 2am, with repeats there and on the NOW streaming service.
