
Warning: spoilers ahead for The Last of Us episode 3.
After seeing Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) tragic love story unfold from their improbable meeting to their dying moments, it’s safe to predict that many fans will be inconsolable after playing the next chapter of The Last of Us.
They met by chance not long before the breakout, fell in love, lived together, got married, and died holding each other’s hands in episode three of the TV series based on the video game franchise.
Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) realise the couple has died, and the camera reveals the window that Bill had left open in their chamber. Director Peter Hoar and director of photography Eben Bolter discuss the significance of this in an interview with the media.
Frank, an elderly man who was sick, had expressed to Bill his desire to die and asked for his assistance in doing this. Bill not only agreed to go with him while shedding a few tears, but he also made the choice to accompany him.
Ellie discovers a letter from Joel written by Bill, in which he says that the window was left open so that the home wouldn’t smell from their dead corpses; nonetheless, as Peter said, the episode ended with a familiar scene from the video games.

‘In the game on the menu page, there’s always a window with the curtains blowing. That’s where that comes from,’ he pointed out, before explaining why they decided against showing Bill and Frank’s bodies in the end, for a tale that’s known to contain plenty of gore.
‘I turn up knowing the game, knowing the brutality of the game – that’s the game play. Obviously, there are occasions for great tenderness, and loss and grief and all of that, but there are lots of times to shoot – not zombies, they’re not zombies – but to shoot those things,’ he said.
‘We’re not about the gore, gratuity or anything like that,’ he added, stressing: ‘You have to earn that sort of stuff.’
After reading Bill’s letter stating that they may take everything they wanted, Joel and Ellie were shown driving away in his old vehicle while the curtains of the window fluttered in the wind.
‘There were a lot of conversations about that shot,’ Eben recalled. ‘For one, the road, the car disappearing into the distance, that’s all VFX. None of that was there. So we had a lot of pre-conceiving and we had to sort of fight for that shot.
‘The main thing was we really wanted Joel and Ellie driving off into the next episode into the sunset, but we just wanted to have that final reminder of this was Bill and Frank’s story and it just felt like a lovely way to do both things at the same time.’
The Last of Us is available to watch on Sky and NOW, with new episodes released on Mondays.