The Last Of Us' two lowest-rated episodes have something in common

We can all agree at this point that The Last of Us is the greatest video game adaptation ever, right?

Honestly, it’s strange to think that we only have one more episode of season one to go. The first eight episodes have done a spectacular job of telling the story of the original game - many scenes have perfectly replicated moments from the source material, right down to the last frame. All in all, it’s apparent that a lot of love and care has gone into the series, and that’s been reflected by the massive viewing figures and positive ratings.

Take a look at the trailer for the final episode of The Last of Us’ first season below.

Along the way though, two particular episodes received a lot more negative ratings than any others, and I’m sure you can probably already guess what they are. Episode three, ‘Long, Long Time’ and episode seven, ‘Left Behind’ both currently sit with average scores of 8.0 and 7.4 on IMDb, respectively. The score for ‘Long, Long Time’ is made up of 26.1% one star ratings, while the score for ‘Left Behind’ has been impacted by 14% one star ratings. It’s no secret that many of these are the result of homophobic backlash, as the episodes focus on Bill and Frank’s relationship, as well as Ellie and Riley’s romance.

Others on Reddit have noticed this, too. “The fact that ‘Long, Long Time' has the second lowest IMDb rating of all show episodes is a tragedy,” alanzhang34 wrote. “The only two episodes that have had over 10% of reviews be one star are this episode and ‘Left Behind’. Both have had something in common.”

“A lot of people are homophobic. Plain and simple. It's why [The] Last of Us Part II got review bombed as well. And typically, these are the type of people who usually say ‘I don't care if you're gay but…' and follow that up with some homophobic stuff,” replied yinyang_yo_. “Homophobia is still rampant in the world unfortunately,” added S3b45714N.

As some pointed out in the Reddit thread, these were the two episodes that focused heavily on backstories rather than Joel and Ellie’s present-day journey, but the language that can be seen in many of the negative reviews (which I’m not going to quote here) proves that that's not why many were leaving such low ratings.