Why 'The Last of Us' Picked That Linda Ronstadt Song
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While Linda Ronstadt’s “Long, Long Time” likely won’t become a TikTok trend like Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” in Stranger Things, or The Cramps’s “Goo Goo Muck” from Wednesday, HBO’s The Last of Us still knows the power of choosing the right song.
Placed in the heartbreaking third episode of the post-apocalyptic survival series, Ronstadt’s 1970 ballad is not only thematically important—but its lyrics are critical to the story, too. lyrically. When Bill (Nick Offerman) allows another man, Frank (Murray Bartlett) into his home after three years of isolation, he reveals his loneliness after somberly playing "Long, Long Time" on the piano. The track marks the beginning of their long relationship, featuring sentimental lyrics in the chorus like, “I think I'm gonna love you for a long, long time,” and “I think I'm gonna miss you for a long, long time.”
“I had the thought that this would happen, that there was a song that would be played, and that we would be surprised by who was good at it and who was bad at it,” showrunner Craig Mazin told IndieWire. “I remember saying to [creator] Neil [Druckmann], ‘I’m not sure what the song is, I just know that it has to be this incredibly sad song about yearning for love, and never getting love, and just making your peace with the fact that you will always be alone. But it can’t be on the nose. And it can’t be a song that we all know.'” After texting Seth Rudetsky, a buddy he had who hosts Sirius XM's On Broadway, Mazin “described what I needed and within 30 seconds, it was [incoming text noise] ‘Long, Long Time by Linda Ronstadt,’” he recalled. “I kinda remembered that song. I played it and was like, ‘Oh, my. There it is.'”
According to Mazin, “The whole idea was to hit the highlights of moments in your life where love means something different.” Bill and Frank’s story in Episode Three of The Last of Us is very different that their story in the video game the series is based on, but Mazin remembered Druckmann telling him that there was room for improvement when it came to expanding on the source material. “’Even if a character doesn’t make it in our show,’” Mazin recalled Druckmann saying, “’these guys had a happier ending than they did in the game.’”
The episode was beloved by fans of the video game adaptation and heralded on social media as one of the best portrayals of a gay couple on television. The detour also teaches its main character to not let his heart harden. “I used to hate the world, and I was happy when everyone died,” Bill writes in his last letter to Joel (Pedro Pascal). “But I was wrong, because there was one person worth saving.” No matter what happens next in The Last of Us, it was an hour of television that will stay with us for a long, long time.
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