‘The Last of Us’ episode 3 already being praised as one of the all-time greatest hours of TV

Warning: Spoilers for The Last of Us to follow.

It’s no question that The Last of Us will continue boasting an iron grip on the world’s attention for as long as the season will run, as well as staking an easy claim to the greatest video game adaptation of all-time, despite largely owing it to the fact that the original, critically acclaimed game was effectively an interactive movie. If your game has a “cinematic mode,” who are you really kidding?

Nevertheless, an adaptation is an adaptation, especially with episode three focusing the majority of its time on a story that’s effectively exclusive to the show, so The Last of Us has more than earned its chops as one of the top dogs of modern television.

“Long Long Time,” directed by Peter Hoar (It’s a Sin, The Umbrella Academy), sidelines Joel and Ellie’s quest for most of the episode, instead offering us a glimpse into the life and relationship of survivors Bill and Frank, the latter of whom never appeared in the game as anything more than a corpse. And with every facet firing on all cylinders from the writing to the acting, Twitter’s universal outpouring of love for this episode just might see it get etched into a history book somewhere.

Indeed, especially relative to the rest of the show, it’s an episode that’s positively drenched in hopeful beauty, even if it’s combined with a dash of inevitable tragedy.

As much as we’re looking forward to reuniting with Joel and Ellie, we’ll happily take as many of these self-contained episodes as the creative team can dream up; if these are the sort of heights that The Last of Us is capable of reaching as a television show, one might wonder why it ever started out as a game in the first place.

The Last of Us is currently available to stream on HBO Max, with new episodes releasing every Sunday until the season’s conclusion on March 12. A second season has been confirmed.