The Final of Us‘s third installment “Lengthy Lengthy Time” is a fully unimaginable episode of tv, delivering a young love story between apocalypse survivors Invoice (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). Not solely did “Lengthy Lengthy Time” present a touching, hopeful have a look at the tip of the world, it additionally expanded on an implied queer relationship from the sport that ended tragically.
Sadly, quite a lot of viewers didn’t take pleasure in “Lengthy Lengthy Time” and are making their ire recognized by way of “evaluation bombing.” Evaluation bombing is when a lot of individuals go away adverse on-line critiques on a product over a concentrated time frame. Within the case of movie and TV exhibits, evaluation bombing primarily takes place on aggregator websites like Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, and Metacritic. Since Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t permit person critiques for particular person episodes, the evaluation bombing for “Lengthy Lengthy Time” is going on on IMDb and Metacritic.
‘The Final of Us’ modified Invoice and Frank’s story, this is why
On the time of writing, “Lengthy Lengthy Time” has a 4.7 person rating on Metacritic (person scores are out of 10). Out of 1102 rankings, 578 are adverse. On IMDb, “Lengthy Lengthy Time” holds a 7.9 score out of 10. 121,111 IMDb customers left rankings on this episode, and whereas simply over half gave the episode an ideal rating, a bit over 1 / 4 gave the episode a one out of 10. The primary two episode each maintain a rating of 8.6 on Metacritic and 9.2 on IMDb.
So what’s it about “Lengthy Lengthy Time” that has mobilized evaluation bombers? The reply is disappointingly all too predictable: homophobia. It is no coincidence that an episode centering a homosexual romance has grow to be the goal of on-line trolls, and the person critiques affirm this. Critiques complain that the episode pushes “the LGBTQ agenda” or “inclusive propaganda.” Others complain that the episode deviates too removed from the sport, despite the fact that the modifications to Invoice and Frank’s story are absolutely in step with the thematic spirit of The Final of Us and are backed wholeheartedly by Neil Druckmann, creator of the sport and co-creator of the sequence. (Invoice and Frank are additionally homosexual within the sport.)
Evaluation bombing tends to be triggered by racism, sexism, and homophobia. For instance, in 2022, Prime Video briefly paused critiques to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy with a purpose to defend the present from trolls. A lot of the net vitriol was directed on the present’s solid members of coloration. Even The Final of Us franchise is not any stranger to evaluation bombing. In 2020, evaluation bombers focused the The Final of Us Half II due to an early in-game loss of life and the sport’s centering of LGBTQ characters. (So, brace yourselves for Season 2.)
As upsetting because the rhetoric behind the evaluation bombing of “Lengthy Lengthy Time” is, it does not have that enormous of an affect on the present’s score itself. The Final of Us nonetheless holds a 7.7 person rating on Metacritic, and an much more spectacular 9.3 on IMDb. Critics (myself included) showered “Lengthy Lengthy Time” and The Final of Us with acclaim. On the rankings facet of issues, 6.4 million viewers(Opens in a brand new window) watched “Lengthy Lengthy Time” when it aired on Sunday night time — a 12 p.c enhance from viewership the week prior. And since viewership continues all through the week, that quantity is certain to extend. Regardless of the very best efforts of trolls, The Final of Us is doing greater than superb.
Nonetheless, it bears repeating that the existence of queer individuals in media and in the true world doesn’t mirror some insidious agenda or propaganda. Newsflash: LGBTQ individuals exist, and so they have the best to exist in movie and TV as nicely. One-star critiques will not change that.
The Final of Us is now streaming on HBO Max.(Opens in a brand new window)(opens in a brand new tab) New episodes air each Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
