Similar to the season earlier than it, The Final of Us season 2 walks a line between faithfully adapting its supply’s already cinema-inspired materials and increasing on that materials to fulfill the medium of tv. And so, as gamers watched in 2020’s The Final of Us Half 2 and viewers watched a number of weeks in the past in The Final of Us season 2, there’s a scene early within the story when Ellie and Dina are necking throughout a sluggish dance, and an older man — Seth, the group bartender of Jackson, Wyoming — tells them to chop it out, they’re in public.
OK, Seth, harsh, however not unreasonable. However then he makes the actual supply of his disapproval clear by calling them a lesbophobic slur. Joel decks him, Ellie redirects her anger to Joel for presuming she will be able to’t defend herself, and we transfer on. Or, at the least, I might need been in a position to transfer on. However The Final of Us, the TV present, retains coming again to Seth the Group Bigot, culminating in among the most pivotal scenes on this week’s episode.
The Final of Us appears to need me to consider that the one overt prejudice to have survived the apocalypse is queerphobia. However prejudice just isn’t set dressing, not a one-off software to assemble a personality beat. And when the parents behind the present insist on together with one and hand-waving others, they’re telling on themselves.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 through episode 3.]
Picture: Liane Hentscher/HBO
If I’d repeat myself a little bit bit, none of this could have caught in my craw a lot if TLOU season 2 didn’t hold presenting Seth to me and asking, However what if he was actually an OK man? Issues like this simply occur, TLOU season 2 is saying. Seth’s not a bigot, he simply had a heated gamer second!
Bullshit. It’s definitionally bigoted conduct for a person to harbor such distaste for queer folks in his coronary heart that can’t see a pair youngsters get a little bit smoochy whereas they sluggish dance with out getting so indignant that his mouth opens and slurs two members of his personal close-knit group in public.
To be clear, if Seth and Ellie have been actual folks in an actual group, I believe episode 2 presents the perfect decision: Maria, a group chief, proactively makes positive that Seth apologizes, together with with a present, on the first alternative, and there’s no overt expectation that Ellie or Dina will forgive him. However contemplating Seth’s little arc as a part of a present, one made by folks making selections of what to placed on the display screen, it’s frankly insulting that we take the outing of all the things else happening right here for this inadequate show of Seth supporting Ellie’s revenge quest, culminating within the narrative elevation of him to Ellie’s ally when she in the end shakes his hand in episode 3.
What this little supplementary, post-dance Seth arc — not current within the video games and invented for The Final of Us the TV present — tells me as a viewer, actually, is that Jackson’s group has the social instruments to handle and overcome prejudice inside its small group with a purpose to preserve each equality and cohesion. Which is humorous, as a result of the remainder of The Final of Us’ set dressing tells me that some main prejudices are surprisingly unseen even in a few of its least steady communities.
The Final Of Us is about nothing however in-group-out-group definitions. That is your complete thesis of its apocalypse! That the undead as a priority are a detailed second to the post-apocalyptic dissolution of humanity into varied violent, factionalized teams who every have their very own sense of “us versus the remainder of the world.” FEDRA, the Fireflies, the ruthless Pittsburgh/Kansas Metropolis revolutionaries, the Scars, the WLFs, and even Jackson, albeit in a softer, graver manner. And but, just about each considered one of these teams respects the flexibility of girls and folks of coloration to struggle and lead.
Picture: Liane Hentscher/HBO
You possibly can’t excuse this by saying that possibly this apocalypse occurred after some future date during which America had culturally advanced past sexism and racism however not queerphobia. (The thought of that’s nonetheless unlikely, given how intertwined sexism and queerphobia are, however for the sake of argument, we are going to transfer on.) You possibly can’t say that, as a result of The Final of Us is so clear that the zombie plague occurred in 2003. You possibly can’t idiot me; I used to be a junior in highschool then! I had a front-row seat to precisely how sexist, racist, and queerphobic even essentially the most liberal communities within the U.S. may very well be in 2003. The concept that the apocalypse eradicated two of these bigotries however not the third is bananas.
There is a component right here that’s very rooted in The Final of Us’ origins as a online game. The 60-plus-hour motion saga hinges on a tribalistic world state. For the writers, it’s an environment friendly technique to grasp a story across the mechanical must have a multiplicity of various enemy sorts, with sufficient mechanical and visible selection to keep up curiosity, in a sport the place the majority of the participant’s time is spent overcoming these enemies and, vitally, feeling largely good about it.
One can think about a line of dominoes right here, I believe, that begins with the 2014 royal roast of a Ubisoft rep for pleading that ladies have been an excessive amount of work to animate. And someplace within the center there’s a domino for AAA sport writers and builders absorbing the concept that in-game fashions ought to mirror extra visible range, however flinching away from incorporating that visible range in any manner which may appear politically motivated, as our social media arenas have devolved to the purpose the place even making a Wolfenstein sport the place you kill Nazis sparks controversy.
And the ultimate domino is The Final of Us the TV present, set in a post-apocalypse the place America has settled out into an seemingly limitless collection of fiercely insular, extremely militarized teams of survivors, none of that are oriented round racial strains and all of which have totally gender-integrated their combating forces. Maybe the white-nationalist militias are merely barely off display screen? Maybe considering girls aren’t match to steer in fight makes you further tasty to Cordyceps? Apparently in case you assume lesbian kissing is dirtier than straight kissing, you’re tremendous.
Now, I don’t need to be mistaken for arguing that The Final of Us can be higher if it had extra racism and sexism in it. Fairly the other. I’m very a lot good with a narrative that posits that the zombie apocalypse brought on a basic shift that closed humanity’s arbitrary cultural divides endlessly. And whereas I’m open to exploring how which may have occurred, actually, I don’t essentially must! I’d respect a creator who simply decided that these have been subjects they didn’t need, or weren’t outfitted, to the touch upon, and so didn’t incorporate them into the setting.
However we’re not in that house. As a result of I nonetheless needed to watch Ellie shake palms with a bigot.
Apparently, the house we’re in is a setting the place we’ve eradicated the entire previous prejudices besides the one which, it simply so occurs, applies to the primary characters. All of the prejudices besides the one which, it simply so occurs, can’t actually be visualized in in-game enemy fashions. All of the prejudices besides queerphobia.
Picture: Liane Hentscher/HBO
So we’re left with the query of why. What’s the presence of queerphobic ideas, actions, and speech doing in The Final of Us? Effectively, within the scene the place it’s launched, Ellie must be indignant at Joel for inserting himself into her life within the identify of defending her. Joel wants a motive to pop off that’s severe sufficient to make him appear righteously protecting. And in Seth’s new arc, he’s a car for example how The Final of Us’ in-group-out-group framework is expressed via its central relationships: Any act of violence will be justified in case you did it for somebody who’s a part of your “us.” Seth helps Ellie’s violence, which earns him a spot again in her “us.”
You might need observed that not one of the above has something particular to do with making a personality face an aggressive act of bigotry from somebody in their very own group. Regardless of getting a second swing on the identical character beat, separated by years of business dialogue and crit, the parents behind The Final of Us season 2 not solely replicated the discordant concept that queerphobia exists of their post-apocalypse, however doubled down on it by giving Seth a bigger, redemptive half to play. They haven’t thought of how this makes their very own world-building appear shallow. Nor what it says about their very own minds, after they presume the persistence of anti-queer prejudice so simply as to place it entrance and middle, whereas hand-waving the position of identification prejudice within the formation of in-group-out-group dynamics… of their story that’s completely about in-group-out-group dynamics.
The Final of Us doesn’t need me to assume very laborious about its post-apocalyptic world the place disaster has eradicated all however queerphobia — as a result of no person behind The Final of Us thought of it both. So we’re right here, on this fantastical apocalypse, with our revenge and energy fantasy, the place the hero continues to be made to stoop to shake the hand of the bigot who slurred her.