Warning: spoilers ahead for The Last of Us episode 6.
The Last of Us has changed the game in lots of ways since its launch, gripping people across the world with a new take on the post-apocalyptic genre after being adapted from the video game.
The small, understated moments during the journey being undertaken by Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the TV show can carry just as much significance as the big, action-packed sequences.
In episode 6, one of those said small moments broke down a taboo that often surrounds menstruation and menstrual products, normalising doing the simple act of demonstrating in a TV show that some people do indeed have periods, even if there’s a world-destroying pandemic going on.
In a previous instalment of the programme, Ellie was shown finding a box of tampons while Joel dug up his old stash of equipment.
But in the sixth episode of The Last of Us, a product that some viewers might have never seen before was shown on screen, along with an instruction manual – a menstrual cup.
An alternative to other products such as sanitary pads and tampons, a menstrual cup is inserted into the vagina when someone is on the period and is made from materials such as silicone or latex.
The cup collects the blood and then is removed, emptied and rinsed before being inserted again.
Many fans expressed how delighted they were for the cup to be shown on the series, with one tweeting: ‘I am so obsessed with #TheLastOfUs finally showing us how people deal with menstruation in the apocalypse.’
‘As an ObGyn and fan of the show, I love that #TheLastOfUs featured a menstrual cup this week. Period,’ another person said, while someone else wrote: ‘Menstrual cup representation on this week’s The Last of Us… that’s what we like to see.’
While speaking to Vulture, co-showrunner Craig Mazin said about the inclusion of the menstrual cup in the show: ‘These are basic items that we’d need or would want. In a postapocalypse, it’s annoying to have to deal with that and have a shortage of options. Why wouldn’t we show it? Especially because our co-lead is a 14-year-old girl. This is part of her life!’
He added that the product ‘is a great solution in the ongoing apocalypse’, because it’s ‘reusable’, unlike the tampons that Ellie previously found and that she would have run out of eventually.
Craig explained that they ‘enhanced the original paperwork that we had for the cup’, asking visual effects to make the font bigger so that it was easier to see.
‘The intention was that if you don’t know what it is, you can ask someone or you can Google. It’s more for the people who do know what it is,’ he stated.
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The Last of Us is available to watch on Sky and NOW, with new episodes released on Mondays.
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