The second season of The Last of Us became ground zero for fandom toxicity, review bombs and the culture war infecting modern TV, writes John Turnbull.
PEOPLE WHO WRITE about TV drama (I hesitate to call us journalists) often fall into the “everything used to be better” trope, whether they’re referring to the likes of premium series like The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad, or classic episodic television like Hill Street Blues, The West Wing or Twin Peaks.
While rose-coloured glasses certainly play a role in this perspective (and ignore contemporary dramas like Andor and Severance), it’s hard to argue that the above listed aren’t good-to-great TV series. Aggregate sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes (themselves vaguely problematic, which I’ll come back to) consistently rate most of these series in the top ten, with nostalgic viewers quick to remember classic episodes while hand-waving away sub-par story arcs or even entire seasons.
There is no doubt that passionate fans have existed for as long as the medium of TV, with Star Trek aficionados resurrecting the show multiple times purely through the force of their fandom, Rick and Morty fans mobbing restaurants stocking limited edition Szechuan sauce and Supernatural fans writing a truly impressive amount of incest-themed fan fiction.
The tribalisation of fandom
If fan passion is a sign of quality, then The Last of Us is simultaneously the best and the worst drama series of 2025, if not ever. Currently screening on the nascent streaming service Max and based on the video games from studio Naughty Dog, The Last of Us is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has fallen into a zombie-like state propagated by an evolved cordyceps fungus.
Loosely following the story of the critically acclaimed second game (which itself attracted negative fan attention as voice actor Laura Bailey received death threats for the actions of her character in the game), the series focuses on the relationship between Dina (Isabela Merced) and Ellie, played by former Game of Thrones actor Bella Ramsey, who goes by they/them pronouns.
Out.com suggest that video game fans have been review bombing the series for exactly this reason;
With season two of The Last of Us focusing on Ellie and her girlfriend Dina instead of Ellie and Joel (Pedro Pascal), many viewers are angry that their video game show is no longer focusing on a man, but instead on two queer girls.
Negative reviews have begun flooding IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic, mostly focusing on the show pushing a so-called “woke agenda”.
The claim is echoed in other LGBTQI friendly publications like Pink News and Them, which bring data to the discussion:
‘Across review aggregator sites, there’s a stark contrast between critic and audience reviews for the show’s second season. At the time of writing, TLOU season two has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, drawn from 184 reviews. The audience rating? A mere 43%, from over 5,000 ratings. That trend is also true of Metacritic, where season two has an 81% approval rating from critics, and an average user score of 3.7.’
Gamers respond to review-bombing accusations
Originally created back in 2013 to discuss the game, subreddit r/TheLastOfUs2 has been a hub of criticism for season two of the TV adaptation, much of it centred around the casting of Bella Ramsay as Ellie. When challenged around the dichotomy between critic reviews and user-submitted ratings, commenters are defensive;
‘“Review bombing” doesn’t exist, it happened one time and now shills always use it as an excuse,’ opines Top 1% poster eventualwarlord.
‘It’s not “review bombing” when the show is terrible. More like “review bloating”,’ agreed fellow top commenter be_nice_2_ewe.
Inevitable_Jury5290 gets closer to an honest take:
‘There may be some review bombing. But if a show targets teens and the LGBTQ community, then you're really limiting your possible audience. It's not like there's a shortage of post-apocalyptic zombie offerings.’
Being gamers, criticism of the TV show often takes the form of cruel memes that make fun of Ramsay’s appearance.
Clearly, this sort of behaviour is incredibly childish and cruel, but it also highlights a schism within those who hate the show. While generally supportive of Ramsay as the 14-year-old Ellie in season one, many game fans argue that they lack the maturity to play the vengeance-obsessed 19-year-old.
Others blame series creator Neil Druckmann, with posters accusing him of Islamophobia, over-representation of minorities, and even deliberately making the TV series bad so the game looks better by comparison.
“The system is broken”
Review aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes purport to give an average rating for movies and TV shows, based on the published reviews of hundreds of critics around the world. If a movie rates above 60% it is declared “Fresh”, while those below 60% are “Rotten”.
The problem with this dichotomy is that reviews are simply classified as positive or negative, with no nuance taken into account. Credible accusations have been made that the site can be gamed and most directors despise the dumbing down of criticism – even the dumb ones – with filmmaker Brett Ratner calling aggregation “the destruction of our business”.
Writer and director Paul Schrader echoes this sentiment:
“The system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.”
With the second season now complete and with the hindsight of someone who has been writing about TV for over ten years, I can confidently say that The Last of Us deserves neither a 94% rating nor a 39% rating.
A quick comparison
A rating of 94% would place the series amidst the best TV ever made, better than The Sopranos (92% Fresh), but not quite as good as The Wire (96% Fresh). The Last of Us is well shot and includes some amazing performances – particularly Jeffrey Wright as weary militiaman Isaac – but is dragged down by hokey writing and predictable story beats.
The not-at-all-review-bombed viewer rating of 39% places the series below Marvel’s much maligned Secret Invasion (43%), and the sluggish Lord of the Rings prequel, Rings of Power (49%), which once again feels unjustified.
The Last of Us is not terrible, even pretty good at times, but for non-gamers doesn’t really have much to distinguish it from long-shuffling competitor The Walking Dead (78% Fresh), apart from a commitment to cultural representation that really seems to rub some people the wrong way.
But that’s 2025 for you.
John Turnbull is a cultural consultant with over a dozen years of experience connecting with and understanding diverse Australian communities.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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