The Plant Apocalypse Is Here … and It’s Beautiful (ish) 🌱🧟

I love a good apocalypse story. I also love a good video game to live action.

Actually, who am I kidding? I love video games period, and seeing my fav characters come to life on the small screen is honestly amazeballs. It’s like I get to dive into that world, for realsies. 

(I’m still waiting for Ubisoft’s Kassandra of Sparta, but I may grow old by that time.)

The problem is that shows and movies that are based on video games can be disappointing. I feel like a good character arc is usually sacrificed for action and effects. I also fully recognize that Geralt of Rivia, the original, is pretty much as interesting as watching paint dry, so the source material is … meh.

Then I watched The Last of Us. Yeah, that episode. The one with these two love birds, Frank and Bill. And I died over and over again. My heart was smooshed and I’m now a big blob of emotional jelly. 

The question here is why, though? 

Why does this love story matter now and in a video game apocalypse retelling of all places? Frank and Bill’s story is sweet and endearing and filled with love and ennui and tenderness and it’s in a fungus apocalypse television show based on a video game, of all platforms. There are even explosions. Ka-boom. 

Let’s start with a fact: in the past three years, apocalypse stories have been on the rise. 

Yep, you read that correctly. During the pandemic, people have gravitated to doomsday, apocalypse, dystopian, end-of-the-world disaster stories more than they ever did prior to the pandemic. 

Whaaatttt? I know, me too. Bananas, right? 

So, why do we want these stories now? I think it’s because we need to know how it will all end. We need to know, in some existential, subconscious way, that we will still be … well … us, when the last of us are still here. 

(Well, not me. I’ll be the first to go when the zombies come because I get winded dragging the laundry up one flight of stairs and I can’t imagine a world without coffee.)

There’s a big part of us that probably wants to know if we will be okay. So, these fictional stories are a make-believe playground where we can test characters and see how they react under extreme pressure. 

And the amazing thing is that love stories, those stories of tenderness and kindness, will always bubble to the surface. Frank and Bill are the characters that we will remember and love and help us feel a little less hopeless. It’s faith in humanity. It’s the reason that we endure. 

Technically, Bill and Frank’s love story really makes absolutely no impact on the main plotline of Joel and Ellie. Except for some supplies and a free truck, The Last of Us would still continue without the tangental path of over 10 years of a love story well-lived. And yet, their episode is the highest-rated episode of the show yet. 

We need this story to know that there will always be something worth fighting for. Otherwise, what’s the point of Joel and Ellie? What are they fighting for if not for kindness and love?

I don’t think there will be a version of this world where we won’t need Frank and Bill. Even when the zombies come and the fungus takes over the world and HBO and Xbox and Playstation don’t exist anymore, we still need this story.