*Spoilers and mature content to follow*
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Another week, another controversial Game of Thrones episode.
Like the three weeks before this, all types of Game of Thrones fans had problems with this episode as (I sound like a broken clock) the pacing and storytelling problems from this season resulted in an outcome that was both inevitable and disappointing. The showrunners finally gave in to what they foreshadowed last week and made Dany the Mad Queen we were all afraid she would become. Many different fans were afraid of it for different reasons though. I was afraid of it because I felt like it was a betrayal of her character like how Jaime leaving Brienne was a betrayal of his character. Others were afraid because what it would mean for the endgame of the show. Both fears are completely justified.
It was a moment that was foreshadowed and had hints of it since Season 2, but still the moment felt uncomfortable and unearned because her heel turn was so sudden. Like the past few weeks, we needed one or two more seasons worth of episodes to explore what Dany was feeling and what inevitably caused her to betray all of her morals. And I won’t take “she saw the Red Keep and suddenly it became personal” as an excuse, Dave Benioff and DB Weiss (D&D).
Additionally, this decision turns their back on everything that have done so far to make Dany out as the hero, the liberator, the breaker of chains. This is the same woman who stopped the Dothraki from murdering and raping innocents in season 1. This is the same character who liberated the slave cities of Astapor, Mereen, and Yunkai. Yes, she has burned people before, but the people she burned were either slave owners, captives of war, and her enemies. Not innocent women and children. She wouldn’t just suddenly snap and kill everyone in the city just because she is mad, we needed more to believe that she would actually snap like this. Up until she started burning King’s Landing, she was simply mad, distraught, sad, exhausted, and betrayed. She wasn’t mad, but that’s the direction the show decided to go in so now that’s the ending we got.
And now the show is almost over. After next week, this story of Game of Thrones will be over and the ending we watch will be the one we get. I think at this point we need to just embrace it and whatever happens will happen. Like I said last week, this is the direction the show has to chosen to go in and now we’re just along for the ride. In times reviewing this show I often feel like I am too critical and negative because of the bad storytelling and dialogue decisions by D&D. It makes me overlook the incredible parts of this show.
This week once again was amazing visually and the combination of music with the destruction of King’s Landing was something I have never seen before on television. This episode looked like a movie and the pure violence, horror, and spectacle we got as the city fell apart all around us was terrifying and amazing to bear witness to.
The camera work was also great, especially when it had close up shots of all the characters in this episode. This was the final episode for about half the cast so seeing the emotions on their faces was a great reminder about how well they portrayed all these multi-dimensional characters for almost a decade now.
Finally, Ramin Djawadi was a genius once again.
Now for the recap and analysis.
Recap
Varys calls a coin flip before the coin lands
We begin where ended last week, with Varys committing blatant treason as he tries to usurp Dany and convince everyone that Jon should rule the realm. He’s definitely not wrong picking Jon after this episode, but you need to pick a candidate at this point and stick with them. Try to support them and help them make better decisions. You can prevent them from becoming the worst versions of themselves if you are by their side guarding them instead of trying to betray them. Varys is basically culpable in making Dany grow more distraught and upset by betraying her.
Then in a last-ditch attempt to “save the realm”, Varys pitches the idea of becoming king to Jon, who looks like he is sick and tired of hearing how he’d be a good ruler. All he wants to do is help Dany win her war and then go home. He has no interest in ever coming south again and he has no interest in being involved in politics again. At this point in the story, after beating the Night King, Jon is just a soldier who will follow his queen into battle because he made a promise to her that he will.
Finally, Varys has a call-back to Barristan’s lines from the book when he said to Dany “Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.” (ASOS). Varys says her coin still hasn’t landed but based on his actions he has already predicted where he thinks which side her coin will land on.
Tyrion sells out Varys and realizes he got played again
Tyrion comes to see Dany to tell her about Vary’s betrayal and he accidentally sells himself out; along with Jon, Sansa, and himself. The interesting thing about this scene is when Tyrion goes to sell out Varys, Dany instantly knows who the source of the betrayal was. She has been betrayed multiple times now by Jorah, Tyrion, Jon technically, and now Varys.
She is sick and tired of these hardships, and she is sick and tired of suffering through this incompetence. In this scene, she looked like anything but a Mad Queen. She looked sad, she looked betrayed, and she looked tired. Betrayal is something she has always been worried about in her journey and I can sympathize with her as she is struggling to grasp with the fact that she has been betrayed again. She really can’t trust anyone anymore because everyone around her is consistently failing her.
A scene like this is one where I can believe that the Mad Queen turn is coming. The groundwork for her going crazy is coming but they just needed more time with scenes like this one to make it more evident that it would happen. They were one step 3 of a 5-step process to turn her and with about half a season more, this would have been executed perfectly. That is why I believe this is George R.R. Martin’s ending in the books too, but it will be a much more natural journey when she arrives at that final spot.
Dany flawlessly traces the origin of the betrayal back to Jon, but in Jon’s defense – did she really not think he wouldn’t tell his sisters? He’s an honorable man who only cares about the truth. He also made them swear and they betrayed him. It’s not entirely his fault. Dany should have known Jon would tell his sisters just like Tyrion should have known Sansa used him to spread the story of Jon’s true parentage. Both of these characters made mistakes and now they’re suffering the consequences of them.
Tyrion is more at fault though because he should have let her just burn down the Red Keep two seasons ago.
Down goes Varys
Varys gets the gold old fashioned burned to death treatment, just after learning Tyrion sold out his betrayal. I respected Varys taking off his rings like a mob boss before he died because that felt baller.
Jon and Tyrion’s reactions in this scene I think were more telling than Vary’s death by itself. Both of their faces had looks of concern and they both understand in that moment maybe Varys was right. Tyrion has the same look he had when Dany burned the Tarlys and Jon now understands the damage she’s capable of.
Also Drogon showing up out of the darkness was really, really cool.
Jon just needs to take one for the team here…
We cut back to Dany and Grey Worm having a moment as they burn Missandei’s chain that she had with her when she was freed by Dany in Season 3.
Jon then comes to tell Dany that “he loves her, and she is [his] queen”, even though he still wont kiss her for more than a second! Maybe he just loves her, but maybe the romantic love he once had is gone since he knows she’s his aunt. Either way he’s still loyal to her, although Dany now believes it is out of fear, and not love.
Here’s something for Jon now…I know that you don’t love her dude, but just take one for the team here. Lie for like two seconds, kiss her a little bit or at least give her a hug. She needed someone to comfort her and you could do that! Just take one for the team man.
In defense of Jon not comforting Dany. He is absolutely sick and tired of everything. He just wants to help Dany win and then go home or go North with Ghost and Tormund.
Finally, in this scene Dany seems to forget that it isn’t easy to win over subjects she’s conquering or liberating. It took her have a season to win over the Dothraki, she needed to liberate Mereen and defeat the slave masters to get the love of the people, and she had to actually talk to Sansa and get to know her in order to try to win her over. It’s not easy to win over people you don’t know. It’ll come with time if you just do the work and strive put your subjects ahead of you…that sounds like a meta-commentary on the show, but I swear it’s not.
The Bells!
After Varys’s execution and Jon’s terrible attempt at comforting Dany, we cut to Tyrion and Dany in the throne room at Dragonstone. Obviously, things are pretty tense already and there is some somberness in the air since Dany just had to burn one of Tyrion’s friends. However, since Tyrion is unable to read the room, he first mentions the bells of surrender in King’s Landing...because telling Dany what to do right after she burned someone alive is a smart move.
He begs her to stop the attack when she sees them, and she seemingly gives Grey Worm the nod that he should stop attacking once they ring them. Clearly that plan will go exactly how Tyrion hopes it will.
Finally Dany ends their conversation on a – rather surprising – note as she tells Tyrion that they’ve kidnapped her brother. She doesn’t mention whether Jaime was trying to betray her or whether he was trying to help them, she just decided to capture him when he first ran into them. At first, I’m not sure why she told Tyrion. It wouldn’t be to her benefit to throw Tyrion off his game and make him hate her by saying she kidnapped Jaime. I think she ultimately decided to tell him in order to test Tyrion’s loyalty and see whether or not he’d choose Jaime or his queen.
Let’s skip past most of this pre-battle stuff
Guards in GOT prove to be the most incompetent people in the lands once again as Arya and the Hound don’t even sneak past these ones and make their way all the way from the northern base to the Red Keep in like 10 minutes.
Tyrion still holds out hope that Cersei will have a change of heart, so he arranges for Davos to position an escape boat to get Jaime and his sister out of King’s Landing.
Tyrion repays his debt to Jaime
This was the first major emotional moment of the episode for me. I’ve always loved the Jaime and Tyrion dynamic in the show and this scene reminded me why. Jaime is the only one who ever treated Tyrion like a human and he was always ready to protect Tyrion whenever he got himself in trouble. Jaime arranged for Tysha to marry Tyrion so he could be with a woman and Jaime was the first person Tyrion called for when he was about to face a trial by combat at The Vale. Jaime sprung Tyrion from prison and allowed him to kill his father and Shae (that example was a bit darker but still).
Without Jaime, Tyrion never would have become hand of the king for Dany. He owes everything to him. The least he can do is try to save Jaime one last time and hopefully give him a happy ending far away from here with Cersei. Jaime had no intention of giving himself a happy ending so at least Tyrion tried to.
Dany figured out the Scorpion scouting report
The scorpions got Dany in Game 1 of the series and she even lost a dragon as a result, but like the Bucks against the Celtics, Games 2 thru 5 were a completely different story as Dany dismantled every single scorpion and the entire Iron Fleet in minutes. I had a suspicion that this battle would be one sided towards Dany, but I didn’t think it would be this lop-sided.
Her flying straight from above was also a pretty cool trick. Once she figured out the scorpions couldn’t aim too high, too low, and couldn’t turn around fast enough to catch her this battle was over.
She made the two biggest human threats to start the season (the scorpions and the Iron Fleet) look like the 10-72 Charlotte Bobcats. I could not have been prouder of her in this moment! It almost made me forget what was about to happen to her in mere minutes. Also Harry Strickland made a strong case for most useless character in show history. Here is his uselessness resume:
- Pushed around by Euron
- Didn’t bring elephants
- Had like 5 lines
- Died in approximately ten seconds during the battle
- Not even proficient in Microsoft Excel
Meanwhile, we get a callback to Season 7 as Tyrion looks at the carnage that has unfolded outside the battlements of King’s Landing. At this point he is begging for the bells to ring. He’ll get the bells in a few minutes…but what follows is his biggest fear.
Also it was great to see the Dothraki are as healthy as a horse when they faced “essentially the end of the Dothraki” two weeks ago.
Finally, Qyburn delivers the news we have all been waiting to hear. The scorpions and the Iron Fleet is destroyed. Cersei has no army left. She begins to cry, and we remember why Lena Heady is so good as Cersei Lannister. Despite her mainly staring out a window for two episodes now, her facial expressions perfectly encapsulate what she’s feeling.
In a last-ditch effort, she says that the “Red Keep has never fallen”. I can’t tell if she’s just in denial or the showrunners forgot that Tywin Lannister literally allowed King’s Landing to get sacked and led to the fall of the Red Keep like 30 years ago. If that is just a desperate plea by her than I can live with that. If not, then the showrunners made another major lore gaff that they shouldn’t be making this late in the game.
Heel turn Dany and good boy Drogon.
The bells ring, the city surrenders, and Dany has finally done it. She has taken back her home. Then she looks at the Red Keep and, in the words of D&D, “she makes it personal”
…which is why she decides to burn down the entire city and not just burn down the Red Keep. I don’t like to editorialize too much, just simply critique. But in this case, here are my notes for how this scene could have gone down more realistically.
What would have been a better heel turn for me: If we need Dany to have the final heel turn and kill everyone then we need the people to turn on her as well. That would be an incredible breaking point. The one thing that kept her sane and motivated, besides coming home was liberating people and breaking the wheel. If she sees that people don’t want her and that the wheel can’t be broken, then maybe this would be what finally makes her snap and kill everyone; not just seeing the Red Keep because it reminds her of her family.
Basically we needed one more distinct instance or event to finally trigger her. Imagine if a random citizen threw a rock at Drogon or they started fighting back against her because they reject her rule. That I think that would be a better reason for her to snap rather than the other events that led up to this moment.
Jon and Tyrion betraying her is a reason for her to kill them, not everyone else. Cersei and Euron killing her dragons is enough of a reason for her to kill them, not the citizens she is trying to save. We needed a reason for her to turn on the people and we just never got that. You could say that when the people ask to ring the bells in order to save themselves, she realizes that she can’t govern with love like she did before, she can only do it with fear. They just needed to articulate that more. Give us one more concrete scene explaining this and then I think I can get there. I think I’ll be able to believe this Dany’s heel turn then.
However, the turn happens and so the burning of everything and everyone begins.
What also disappoints me about this outcome for Dany is what the show has done to its female leaders as a whole on this show. Cersei was a mother who did all she could to protect her family (we see more of that in her last moments), but for the past two seasons she has been a literal Mad Queen. Dany, once a leader who symbolized hope and liberation is now just a crazy woman who has descended in darkness and madness. So many viewers of this show have looked up to her to be a hero we should all strive to be. Now she is a villain who had a turn that feels unearned and did an act that is completely against her nature in every way. Her seeing the Red Keep would make her want to destroy the Red Keep, not murder thousands of innocents and commit a horrendous action on the city she wanted to save.
She did it though, and we get the shot of a dragon flying over King’s Landing that Bran saw two seasons ago when he got his massive data dump from the weirdwood tree.
Jaime finally offs the C+ Jack Sparrow
This fight was satisfying on multiple levels. The first is that it was about time someone offed Euron Greyjoy. This version of him is a bastardized version of his book character and he needed to die. It was also nice to finally have Jaime get a kill against a real person, not thousands of undead creatures. This fight was also a classic GOT, bloody, brawl with both characters using everything at their disposal to fight.
It was another good instance of a handicapped character using that to their advantage. Theon used the fact that he doesn’t have balls last season to his advantage and Jaime’s golden hand finally came in “handy” as he used it to get a few good punches in on Euron throughout the fight.
Also for the record Euron, you didn’t kill The King Slayer, Dany did.
Qybrun and Cersei get the F- out of the Red Keep tower
That’s about what happens in this scene.
Grey Worm starts a riot and Jon for some reason didn’t plan for this
Come on Jon. You gotta know that Grey Worm and Dany are both on edge. Maybe you tell your guys ahead of time that if something goes wrong don’t jump into the riot. The only big thing Jon does in this sequence is save a woman from getting raped which once again proves that he should rule. Jon continually moves up the ladder every time he tries not to. It’s an incredible talent.
By this time all out carnage has begun on both Dany’s part and on behalf her soldiers. She creates the sole thing she swore to destroy. Jon and Davos do their best to protect everyone, but they know it’s a futile effort.
Also we see Aaron Rodgers die and NFC North rival fans all over American rejoiced.
While all of this happens, we get a touching goodbye with Arya and the Hound in that big ol’ map room in the Red Keep. The Hound understands that, while Arya is driven by revenge, she has so much more to live for now and that she still has a bigger purpose to fulfill. She needs to leave because if she follows him, she will also die. Much to her dismay I’m sure, she missed the most hype moment ever and she missed---
CLEGANE BOWL!!
It lived up to the hype! The Mountain killed Qyburn in the most hilarious way possible, Cersei awkwardly exited stage left, and we got a physical battle that will be told for centuries. The Mountain even stopped obeying Qyburn because he hated his little brother so much.
Their hate and desire to kill each other was fueled by the flames of Drogon behind them in the distance. Sandor stabbed and stabbed all he could, but he couldn’t stop the Mountain as he truly was now the monster he had always been. But Sandor never gave up! Even while the Mountain tried his signature “crush the guys’ skull move” Sandor fought him off and took them both out as they blasted through the brick of the Red Keep and pummeled to their death in the flames down below.
“How would you like to die?” – Tyrion
“In the arms of the woman I love” – Jaime (Season 8, Episode 2)
At the time of this quote we all expected Jaime meant Brienne, instead he meant Cersei. How he finally went out, comforting Cersei in her final moments felt true to his character and I am glad that the poetic justice of them dying together was fulfilled. I just feel like we didn’t need to do Brienne dirty in the process. He could have just knighted her and then left for Cersei after The Long Night. Or we could have just had more time for Jaime to process his reversion to Cersei. Seriously, more time could have fixed everything. Jaime did go out as a Knight though.
He did all he could to protect Cersei and we finally got a humane moment from Cersei after almost two seasons of not getting one. She was scared for herself and her child. Maybe Tyrion was right all along. She did have something to live for. She was so desperate to live for it and so protective though that she refused to let anyone. By then, the walls were literally collapsing all around her and she was at her end.
This scene reminded me of how tragic this show can be again. Jaime didn’t deserve to die this way, only Cersei did. Jaime had been redeemed and he had finally found happiness. However his fundamental character flaw is that he believes he doesn’t deserve to be happy because he’s a king slayer. No one knows what he did to save King’s Landing about 20 years ago and he will never have a chance to change the story about him. His pages in the books of the Knights of the Seven Kingdoms won’t be filled, despite all the good he did.
The rest of the episode as told by jokes and memes
As Arya ran around the city with all of the citizens of King’s Landing, I couldn’t help but think of this scene:
This is the woman who saves Arya from one of the collapsing buildings:
Then Arya gets covered in dust:
Finally, after the slaughter ends, Arya sees a white horse (symbolizing her becoming death probably), Old Town Road blares, and she rides off ready to kill Dany (presumably).
Season 8 Rankings:
1. The Long Night
2. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
3. The Bells (this goes third because of the great acting and incredible effects)
4. Winterfell
5. The Last of the Starks
6.
This episode wasn't bad and there were some great emotional moments, coupled with amazing visuals and devastating destruction perfectly executed. I just wish we had more time for character development because that is what I care about more than anything else. It just hurts to see characters fall in ways that don't feel natural, despite how good the actual death or payoff scene was this episode.
Next week, is the final episode Game of Thrones ever. Will they disappoint us? Only one was to find out.