This episode also shows how the loss of Tess, Bill, and Frank is the loss of everything for Joel's current or now former life, he has no more connections to Boston and his world as it was. That end makes room for a new beginning with Ellie, now he can choose to become vulnerable and open up to her the same way Bill did with Frank, and that's the real power of the letter.

We still see the wounds on Joel's knuckles because he fractured his hand remembering Sarah and not being able to save her, he winced when Ellie took his hand as he helped her up the next episode in the flooded hotel because he's still burning with pain over his loss. Next episode I imagine we'll see this wound healing better.

The adaptation to TV from the game is impeccably done and how adaptations should be. The emotional aspects also resonated with my personal life, it's a message about the hope that real love can bring, rather than the grim despair of the game's version of these characters' story for this chapter. It's just good television and some article titles making claims aren't indicative of how I or anyone else feels, I feel the way I feel because I see what they're doing and enjoy it.

Really good point actually. It made his relationship w Tess matter more too so added more to previous episodes’ events. Set the scene for him protecting Ellie as you say.

100% this. That letter is objectively stronger for Joel's character arc than the equivalent events in the game. And if the context we're given to make that letter land for the audience is this brilliantly written and acted episode - well how do you complain about that? What are we here for? It's art - it's exploring the human condition - it's trying to move its audience emotionally. Did people really feel nothing watching this?

It's a GOOD change from the source material, but really I'd call it a flourish more than a deviation - it doesn't change the plot at ALL.

Brilliant point. It sold the letter and provided the emotional base for Joel’s decisions moving forward, while giving Joel and the audience closure on Tess’s death.

I would argue that if you need an hour long segue that completely departs from the source material to prop up why the letter is important, then the letter wasn't important in the first place.

They could have done the same thing in half the time, and put better framing around the letter in the current timeline to make it just as important without watching Bill and Frank eat strawberries in the garden or have awkward sex.

We knew Joel respected Bill from literally two minutes of the whole hour long flashback, when they talked to each other directly. That could have easily been done a hundred other ways without the extended flashback.

I think the biggest condemning factor here is that yes, you could argue that the super long flashback did X and Y and Z, but the game also did all of those things for all of those characters without an hour long flashback about Bill & Frank's domestic life. When taking that into account it's hard not to frame the whole thing as "filler."

Was it bad? Aside from a handful of blatant plot holes that really stretch suspension of disbelief, no, it was not bad. The acting was solid and the characters were at least passingly interesting if romance is your thing. But it 100% felt like they just copy/pasted any random Lifetime Original movie into the middle of an episode of The Last Of Us. It was jarringly out of place and would have done better on it's own as a spinoff movie or something.