Bella Ramsay, on homophobic criticism of ‘The Last of Us’: “There is a gay army that supports me”

‘The Last of Us’ is the first phenomenon of the year and, without a doubt, the best series so far in 2023. However, since the third episode of the HBO series, focused on the relationship between Bill and Frank, premiered, there is a toxic current that attacks the series solely because of the sexual orientation of several of its characters. Bella Ramsay (Ellie) is the center of many of these toxic attacks, but she has declared that she feels protected thanks to the love of “gay army” who supports her on social networks.

Although there are some differences between the series and the video game, the truth is that ‘The Last of Us’ has always had an important LGBT component and the HBO Max series, which many fans have praised for exceeding expectations, has stayed true to that. The video game already faced irrational hatred in its day, but the globalization of its adaptation to the small screen has viralized an absurd (and non-existent) controversy that criticizes the presence and exposure of gay characters in the series. Yes, in the middle of 2023.

Episode 3, for many the best chapter of ‘The Last of Us’, introduced us to one of the most emotional and tragic love stories of recent yearsconfirming a relationship between Bill and Frank that in the video game was implied but did not materialize. However, the chapter was the victim of “review bombing” (a practice that consists of voting negatively on a movie or series in order to affect its reputation) by a part of the toxic and homophobic fandom.

Bella Ramseywhich was recently defined as non binaryresponded to the controversy and hatred of ‘The Last of Us’ warning the intolerant to “let them get used to it“, anticipating episode 7 of ‘The Last of Us’ in which the lesbian inclinations of Ellie’s character are revealed in another romantic and heartbreaking story, that of the teenage love between Ellie and Riley (Storm Reid) at the mall.

In a recent interview with “The Last of Pods” from ComicBook.com, Ramsey praised the “gay army” of fans for standing up for her character Ellie and the entire series in general in the face of the nonsense of homophobic insults:

“I swore an oath to Craig Mazin [el creador de la serie ‘The Last of Us’] that I wasn’t going to look at the comments, and I feel like I’ve broken that oath a bit dramatically in recent weeks. I’m well aware that there’s a gay army out there on Twitter that does nothing but support Ellie and me, and it’s like they’re a lot louder than anyone who hates us, or hates the show, homophobic trolls, whatever. to be. It feels good to have that army behind me. That’s been a reaction that I’ve really enjoyed.”

In addition to the “gay army” covering Ellie’s back, Ramsey added that he loves to watch the reactions of the gamers before the series, and that it feels even more valuable to receive love and praise from the players themselves. “That’s what makes you feel so valued, that the gamers who love the game and were so involved with it say: ‘The series is great, it lives up to all my expectations and exceeds them‘. That’s the thing, that’s the reaction that feels really cool.”