It has been speculated that Nick Offerman may be gay due to his portrayal of Bill in HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us. The actor’s sexual orientation is typically private information.
But there’s a question of genuine representation when it comes to portraying members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially when the character being portrayed is as central to the story as Bill is in The Last of Us.
There are multiple characters in the video game The Last of Us who are strongly suggested to be LGBTQ+. It wasn’t until the downloadable content Left Behind that any of those numbers were confirmed explicitly; Bill wasn’t even one of them.
However, it would almost require an intentional misreading to think that Frank was just Bill’s “partner” in survival and trapping up the town in The Last of Us because of the numerous hints that Bill is gay throughout the game.
Is Bill The Gay Main Character In The First ‘Last Of Us’ Game?
Bill (W. Earl Brown) is W. Earl Brown’s character in the first Last of Us and he’s a survivalist who lives alone in a small town. Bill is so paranoid that he has built booby traps all around the outside of his safe house.
Joel (Troy Baker) tries to curry favor with Bill (Bill Irwin) by asking him to fix up an old car so he and Ellie (Ashley Johnson) can drive out west. In the end, he agrees, but only if Joel helps him find the missing pieces.
They track down the vehicle and its components across town, where they find Bill’s old friend and traveling companion Frank hanged himself, ostensibly to avoid turning. Bill tells Joel that Frank used to live with him before leaving on bad terms, and Joel sees that Bill is clearly distressed by Frank’s death.
Bill’s homosexuality is strongly implied, though not stated, in this scene. And before the events of The Last of Us took place, he and Frank were an item.
Even game director and series co-creator Neil Druckmann confirmed his sexuality. Neil discussed his desire to more openly depict Bill’s sexuality in the game in a 2014 interview with Gay Gamer, but he acknowledged that the final product left this aspect of the story open to interpretation.
Nonetheless, there are hints galore in the game. Ellie rummages through the back seat of one of Bill’s trucks after Joel and she leaves in it and finds an old issue of an adult men’s magazine that was probably Bill’s.
The Importance of Bill’s Story in “The Last of Us”
Bill doesn’t have a huge impact on the world of The Last of Us. The player never sees him again in the game after passing through his town on the way to the next location.
Bill, however, is only one of many LGBTQ+ characters in The Last of Us and The Last of Us: Part II, with the underlying themes of queerness and acceptance gradually rising in prominence throughout the narrative (which can now be expected to be explored in The Last of Us season 2).
Bill’s inclusion in the story both prepares the reader for the world post-infected and paves the way for Ellie’s eventual coming out as a lesbian.
While Bill was already signed for the LGBTQ+ community in The Last of Us, Nick Offerman’s portrayal of the character has the potential to be even more so. Bill’s partner Frank is killed early on in the game and never seen again; this decision comes perilously close to the trope of “burying your gays.
” Regardless of his sexual orientation, Nick Offerman clearly respects the responsibility of accurately portraying Bill’s character onscreen thanks to Murray Bartlett’s portrayal of a very much alive Frank in HBO’s The Last of Us.
Nick Offerman Doesn’t Identify As Gay, But He Supports Equal Representation.
As long as we’re still here Unlike Nick Offerman, Bill is happily married to Megan Mullally despite being gay. Over the years, however, she has become an outspoken supporter of the queer community,
helping those who are less fortunate by virtue of her own identity. The Logo Conversation Hearts Beat Loud: A Role Introduction According to Nick Offerman:
While Bill and Nick Offerman don’t share a sexual orientation, the LGBTQ+ community is much more likely to be self-represented in media today than it was even a generation ago, and queer characters are much less likely to be offensive cartoons.
While it would have been ideal to cast someone who identifies as LGBTQ+ in the role of Bill, there are two additional factors to take into account. In Bill’s relationship, I mean, what do we have left of us? Murray Bartlett, the actor who plays Frank on TV, identifies as gay.
On HBO, Nick Offerman has stepped in to play Bill. who is still here Con O’Neill, who was removed from the project due to scheduling conflicts and is now featured in Our Flag Means Death?
Final Words
Fans praise the story’s potency, saying that the protagonists’ moral arcs are as believable as in a novel and that the characters feel fully realized.
Players can easily become emotionally invested in Joel and Ellie’s story, to the point where they may make strategically questionable decisions just to stay true to the character’s motivations.
