I know what you’re thinking. Everyone and their mother has an opinion on the recently released The Last of Us Part II. Much of what people have to say isn’t positive—and I’m afraid I can’t say what’s on my mind is positive, either.
However, I’m not focusing on plot, the theme of revenge being a vicious circle, and whether or not both of these things were executed successfully. A few other outlets have already talked about all of this more eloquently than I ever could.
Instead, I want to focus on the topics of diversity and inclusion in the game, how The Last of Us Part II has been lauded as being a diverse and inclusive game, but how it really struggles on getting it right. Let’s dive right in and get to it.
WARNING: The contents of this post contain significant spoilers for The Last of Us Part II. Please read with caution.
What is The Last of Us?
The Last of Us is a third-person action-adventure video game developed by the game studio Naughty Dog. It is set in a post-apocalyptic universe where an outbreak of the cordyceps fungus has turned people into, for lack of a better word, zombies.
In the first game, you play primarily as Joel, a middle-aged smuggler, who is tasked with escorting fourteen-year-old Ellie across the country. Why? She is immune to the infection and may contain the key to a vaccine inside her body.
The sequel, aptly named The Last of Us Part II, takes place in the same universe but four years in the future. Ellie is now nineteen, and her once warm, parent-child-like relationship with Joel is strained. The inciting incident of this game is Joel being beaten to death by a woman named Abby as an act of revenge, which sets Ellie on her own path of getting revenge for Joel.
Listen, if you think that inciting incident sounds bad, just wait until you see all the problems The Last of Us Part II actually has.
All Characters of Color End Up Dead
This is actually an issue that plagued The Last of Us as well. And instead of waxing on and on, I’m just going to put this in a handy bulleted list so that you can see exactly how prevalent the problem is.
The Last of Us Part I
- Sam: A Black boy. Younger brother to Henry. He gets bitten and ultimately killed by his brother.
- Henry: A Black man. He shoots himself after having to kill his younger brother.
- Marlene: A Black woman and the leader of the rebel group the Fireflies. She gets shot by Joel at the end of the game.
The Last of Us Part I: Left Behind DLC
- Riley: A Black girl. She gets bitten by an infected and turned into one herself.
The Last of Us Part II
- Jesse: An Asian man. He gets shot in the face by Abby.
- Manny: A Latino man. He gets shot in the head by Joel’s brother, Tommy.
- Nora: A Black woman. She gets beaten to death by Ellie.
- Isaac: A Black man. He gets shot by Yara.
- Yara: An Asian woman. She gets shot repeatedly by soldiers.
So you’re seeing the pattern, right?
Let’s elevate this with some concrete numbers.
In The Last of Us Part I and the Left Behind DLC, there are eleven featured characters total. Four of those characters are characters of color, and not only that but all four of them are Black. And all four of them (AKA 100%) end up dead.
In The Last of Us Part II, there are fourteen featured characters total if we’re going off of the list on the main entry of The Last of Us Wiki (which I am). Six of those characters are characters of color, and of those six, five of them (AKA 83%) end up dead. Only one character of color survives.
Some of you will make the argument, “But a lot of white people die, too!” Okay, yeah, sure. But that’s not the point. The point is that there is something seriously fucking wrong with your game if literally the ENTIRE POC cast ends up dead by the game’s conclusion.
I hate to say too much on this subject because as I mentioned in a previous post, I am white. I can’t even begin to understand how difficult it is to consume stories featuring POC characters only to have literally all of them end up dead, and then have it happen time and time and time again. It’s not right. It’s not fair. POC characters deserve so much better, no matter how grimdark or gritty the setting is, no matter how minor their role may be.
You don’t get to just include POC characters in your content and then pat yourself on the back for “diversity!” just because you included them. Their inclusion ultimately meant nothing because, per the usual, they end up dead.
Abby and Ellie’s Stories Revolve Around Men
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can already hear people rolling their eyes and scoffing in the back of their throats just by reading the header of the section. Listen, it might be annoying for you to have to read this, but imagine how annoying it is for marginalized genders to be continually spoonfed stories that feature a “strong female protagonist,” only to have that protagonist’s story and desires revolve around men anyway.
It’s tired. I’m tired!
In Abby’s case, her story starts with her pursuing revenge against Joel (a man) because he murdered her father (also a man) at the end of the first game. Later on, her story shifts to being more focused on the Seraphites, Yara and Lev, though it still ties back to a man as she debates escaping to Santa Barbara with her ex-boyfriend, Owen (yep, a man).
In Ellie’s case, her story becomes her pursuing revenge for Joel (still a man), who was murdered by Abby. And to make matters worse, her revenge becomes hinged on TWO men when Tommy (Joel’s brother, also a man) guilts her into pursuing Abby AGAIN after nearly being killed by her.
There are so many ways they could have pushed this story so that the women protagonists have unique stories that do not hinge on the men around them. Joel and Ellie’s community could have been attacked by the soldiers of the Washington Liberation Front, and they could have gone off on an adventure together. Ellie could have been motivated to go and find out more about her mother. And for Abby, hell, they could have pulled a John Wick for all I care and had Joel kill her dog instead. Something, ANYTHING would have been better than what they gave us.
It is not hard to make diverse stories driven by marginalized genders that don’t hinge on men. Mirror’s Edge did it. Alien: Isolation did it. Even Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, another Naughty Dog title, did it!
Also, before I start hearing people cry misandry at this notion, I’m not saying men shouldn’t be involved in the stories of marginalized genders at all. That’s not what I’m saying, and it’s not what I want. The point is, there are more nuanced ways to tell the stories with protagonists of marginalized genders that don’t hinge on a man’s involvement to drive that story forward.
LGBTQ+ Representation Needs Work
I’ve spoken about this to friends in private chats and on my personal Facebook as well. I feel like I need to include a disclaimer in this section as well: it is exciting to have a lesbian protagonist in a triple-A game. It is really, REALLY exciting.
But as I mentioned in my post covering the Inhuman Non-Binary trope, LGBTQ+ people are allowed to be critical of the portrayals of us in media. If we are not critical of our portrayals, there’s no way we will attain better and better LGBTQ+ characters and storylines.
I know Lev is the smoking gun, so I’m going to address Ellie and Dina first since my gripes with them are more minor.
The L Word
It is absurd to me when content creators utilize things like homophobia, misogyny, racism, and the like in their speculative fiction. So, naturally, it’s absurd to me that Ellie and Dina would kiss (intimately but overall chastely) at a public event in their home settlement of Jackson, only for Dina to be spat on and called a dyke.
I’m sorry; you’re telling me that it’s twenty-odd years in the future after the outbreak of an unstoppable virus, and bigoted people are still getting hung up on the fact that girls can like girls and boys can like boys? Can you understand why that is just absurd to me?
It’s twenty-plus years in the future, the human survivors are all worried about a virus that WILL turn them into monsters without hesitation, and they are still calling LGBTQ+ women dykes?
Here’s another thing: that man can throw around the word dyke knowing what it means, but Ellie will never, not once, refer to herself or be referred to as a lesbian in canon?
There’s a lot to unpack about all of this.
First and foremost: you can’t have it both ways. You don’t get to use a slur that’s actively used to harm and discriminate against lesbians and not actually use the word “lesbian”. Lesbian is not a dirty word. It means a woman or woman-aligned person who is attracted to women and has zero attraction to men. It is not a porn category. It is not a slur. It is what we are, so fucking call us lesbians.
Second, and perhaps most important, content creators have GOT to get more creative with their worldbuilding. If you’re going to lean on real-world bigotry for your speculative fiction, you are a lazy writer. Period.
(Note: This doesn’t apply to marginalized people using fiction to explore their trauma. Last time I checked, Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross are not Black, Asian, Latino, trans, or lesbians.)
Whiiich brings me to…
Lev’s Journey as a Transmasculine Person
There are a few things about Lev’s storyline that are upsetting to trans people, but I have to make the same disclaimer I did for Ellie: it is really exciting to have a visibly trans person in a triple-A video game, especially one that is actually human. It’s even MORE exciting that an actual, real, live trans person was able to portray this character. It is all a big step in the right direction.
So now it’s time to get critical.
I’m sure guessing by the end of the last section, you know where I’m going with my first point: LAZY! WORLDBUILDING!
Lev belongs to a faction known as Seraphites. The Last of Us Wiki describes them as being a “primitivist cult” who followed a prophet who preached that the cordyceps outbreak was a result of their own sin.
When you first encounter the Seraphites as Ellie, you can hear them talking to each other about an apostate named “Lily”. You’re not sure what “Lily” has done, but once you switch to playing as Abby, you meet Lev and Yara and soon learn that Lev was ostracized for shaving his head—something only men are allowed to do.
Any time you encounter Seraphites, whether you’re just listening to their conversations or they’re shouting at you while playing as Abby accompanied by Lev, they repeatedly deadname and misgender him.
Most heartbreaking of all, Lev goes back to the Seraphite settlement to try and convince his mother to leave with him and his sister. His mother has none of that and actually attacks him, cutting up his face and arms, until he kills her in self-defense.
If the Seraphites actually utilized the “word of God” as the basis for their intolerance to trans people, similar to how current-day Christian religions do, I might not call this lazy worldbuilding. Except they do not use the Bible or word of God as part of their religion at all. No; their prophet wrote down all of her beliefs and teachings so that she could, essentially, begin an entire religion.
There are no Bibles lying around, no Bible verses painted on walls or written on scraps of paper, so… I’m allowed to call this lazy as many times as I want.
It has been widely written that the gender binary and colonialism are inextricably linked. And this is true. Many indigenous cultures have a more diverse and eclectic gender system that far surpasses the simple male-female binary many of us are accustomed to.
I bring this up as evidence that gender variance is not a radical or novel concept. Folks that have fallen outside the typical male-female binary have existed for hundreds of years. It is not a trend that began in the 2010s, as much as right-wing conservatives would love to believe that. We have existed for a long time before, and we will exist for a long time to come.
So… with all of this in mind… Naughty Dog wants me to believe that as soon as society breaks down and we are back to doing what it takes to survive… people are just gonna get on board with hating trans people like they do in our present-day? AND, not just that, they want me to believe that people are going to get on board with that just because a prophet, NOT using the word of God, says so???
What really gets me is that the Seraphites don’t seem to have strict gender roles. It’s just the societal roles and jobs that are strict. Yara, Lev’s sister, says that she was assigned to be a soldier while Lev was assigned to be the spouse of one of their elders. So I have a really, really hard time understanding why, if gender doesn’t play a part in what role you’re assigned, trans people would be so hated by the Seraphites.
(Actually, I told you why already. Several times. It’s because it’s lazy worldbuilding.)
There’s one other thing about Lev’s storyline that an amazing journalist named Waverly brought up in an article she wrote called “The Cisgender Voyeurism of The Last of Us Part II”. I HIGHLY recommend you check out her article because she discusses this concept much better than I could, but I still want to summarize it to back up my points as to why Lev’s story should be criticized.
Cisgender voyeurism is the idea that cisgender people get to watch and observe transgender people because we are strange and unusual. We aren’t people to them. We’re something to be studied, poked, and prodded. As Waverly succinctly puts it:
“There are three different times where [Abby] asks Lev why he shaved his head, even when he tries to avoid the subject. For Abby, and the player who experiences the world through her, Lev isn’t a character to be respected but investigated.”
This is further impacted by the fact that we don’t actually learn about Lev’s trans-ness from Lev himself. It’s Yara who tells us Lev’s story. A cisgender person outs her transgender brother to another cisgender person without his consent, which… URGH. If I have to explain why you shouldn’t out people without their consent, then you shouldn’t even be reading this article.
There are so many things about The Last of Us Part II that are good. The gameplay has been lauded as incredible, the accessibility settings are said to be revolutionary, and the performances in the game are top-notch. But this game, and its predecessor, are not pinnacles of diversity and inclusivity. If anything, it serves to show us just how far we have to go before marginalized people finally see good, worthy portrayals of ourselves in video games.