'The Last of Us' tells a new but familiar queer love story

But however revolutionary their deaths might be for the universe of "The Last of Us," they still fall into well-worn gay death tropes. It seems that Bill is older than Frank, but Frank succumbs to an unspecified illness and ends up infirm, which ultimately prompts his suicide. If you grew up queer in the 80s and 90s, the image of one gay man pushing another in a wheelchair might look fiercely familiar from the early days of the AIDS crisis and the storytelling that came out of it. Many cis gay men of my generation believed this kind of death was inevitable, that they would die tended to by a lover or they would be the widower left behind. Bill rebels against this trope by dying alongside Frank, but as I watched (and cried) as Bill wheeled Frank around their house and handed him his pills, I thought of how many times I had seen this scene in other movies and television. I wondered why the show's creators chose to have Frank sicken to lead to Bill and Frank's deaths when one or both of their ages could have been the inciting factor.