And… this is it. The final entry on our
eight-year-long Game of Thrones
watch. As always, I’m joined by the brilliant Grand Maester Christopher Lockett, who has been doing these
with me right from the beginning. At the end of this week, I’m going to post an
archive post where I’ve gathered links to all of our GoT posts right from the beginning, in case, like me, any of the
rest of you decide to do a rewatch and want to see what we were saying at the
time (though I’m sure we had a lot of predictions in there about things that
never came to fruition!) This is the toughest episode to write yet, because
it’s the last one—and I need to warn you: prepare thyselves for some
sentimentality to follow. Chris and I have already talked about possibly doing
one more wrap-up post when we’ve properly wrapped our heads around this finale,
but we’ll have to find the time first. Also, most of you probably know this
already, but this Sunday is a special documentary about the making of Game of Thrones that looks pretty great.
This was an episode where I cried, laughed,
was a little confused, wasn’t quite sure what I thought at times, but I have a
lot to say about it (of course). I will say, one thought kept running through
my head the whole time: oh Ned and Catelyn… if only you could see where your
children ended up. ♥
And now, for the last time, I say… take it
away, Chris.
Christopher: Well, here we are at the end of all things … and I just want to
start by saying, Nikki, how much of a joy it has been writing these reviews
with you for the past eight years, and how much I will miss it. For those just
tuning in to these co-blogs, Nikki (who, when she’s not protecting Gotham, is a
mild-mannered freelance editor named Jen) and I have known each other for
twenty-three years, having met during our MA at the University of Toronto in a
class called “Victorian Fiction and the Politics of Gender.” We bonded during a
conversation that, as conversations often did in the 90s, became a lengthy
series of Simpsons quotes. This would
not have been remarkable in and of itself were it not for the fact that most of
our grad student peers took hipster pride in ignoring popular culture. Meeting
someone who was not only willing to admit to watching television, but was positively enthusiastic about it, was not at all unlike finding your long-lost
twin with the other half of the amulet you’ve worn all your life.
And if that sounds like an exaggeration?
Really not.
But of course, there’s more to friendship
than just a shared love of The Simpsons.
We’re lucky to have people in our lives with whom time and distance don’t
matter, and when you see one of those people in person after months or years,
it’s as if your conversation picks up where it left off. I’ll miss writing
these GoT reviews in part because I’m going to miss GoT, but really, I’ll be
missing the back-and-forth with a dear friend whom I don’t see nearly often
enough. (Seriously, Nik—time for that family vacation to Newfoundland).
End of sentimentality. On with the review.
I have, unsurprisingly, been thinking over
the last few days a lot about final seasons and final episodes. Which ones
worked, which didn’t? Which series stuck the landing? Which ones managed to
piss off a critical mass of fans? Even just a glimpse at social media in the
hours following the GoT finale makes it obvious that the most vocal fans hate
the way the series ended, but that is hardly surprising, considering that those
same voices have been declaring this final season an irredeemable dumpster fire
for several weeks now (and I just hasten to point out that “the most vocal
fans” on social media does not necessarily translate to “the majority of people”
more generally).
I suspect Nikki will have a lot to say on
this topic, as she is one of the few stalwart defenders of the series finale of
Lost—an episode, it doesn’t hurt
mentioning, that was slagged by none other than
GRRM.
Payback’s a bitch.
Ending a TV series is a fraught affair at
the best of times—the “best of times” meaning that you’re bringing the plane in
for a landing when there is still a critical mass of love for the show. (I
suppose, then, when you end a TV series at the worst of times, nobody really cares).
But that also means there will inevitably be upset people.
Given that I devoted a lot of words in our
last post complaining that Benioff & Weiss did not give this season enough
episodes to breathe and properly develop character arcs and narratives, I won’t
rehash that here. That being said: my first thought on watching this, the last
new episode we’ll ever watch of GoT, was that it followed pretty closely on the
last one. The previous episode might have needed an awful lot more in the way
of lead-up to be properly comprehensible, but the first part of this episode
made total sense so long as you don’t question the last one.
Which is to say: Daenerys is now the Mad
Queen and has gone the way of her predecessors, and thus everything that
follows her sack of King’s Landing makes sense in the context of that fact.
Are we all on board with that? At least
provisionally? Good. Then, if you’re seated comfortably, we’ll begin.
Oh, wait—one last thing: a professor at
UWO, whom I TA’d for in my first year there and who has become a good friend
was interviewed on CBC the other day. John Leonard is a brilliant Milton
scholar and also a Colbert-level Tolkien nerd, and has for several years been
teaching a course on A Song of Ice and Fire. His thoughts on Game of Thrones coming to an end are unsurprisingly
insightful.
But now, on to the episode.
Let me start by saying I completely whiffed
on everything I’d suggested in the first episode, re: the new credits. OK, so
no new dragons, no clutch of eggs beneath Winterfell. Given that we end the
series with a single dragon who decamps for parts unknown, the promise of the
many dragons on the third armillary sphere band now seems like the deepest
crimson of red herrings.
On the other hand, I totally called two key
points, though neither quite unfolded the way I expected: Drogon melting the
Iron Throne to slag, and Jon Snow returning to the North to be reunited with
Ghost.
The episode begins with Tyrion (re)entering
the city, registering anew what Daenerys visited on it. We see the burned
corpses and the devastated city, and Tyrion’s distraught expression as he
registers the destruction that he, despite all his best efforts, helped create.
Behind him walk Jon Snow and Davos. The three pause around the incinerated
corpse of the little girl still clutching her toy horse, whom we saw in the
previous episode, and who—as someone Arya attemped to help—functions as the
metonym for the thousands killed by Daenerys’ rage. “I’ll find you later,”
Tyrion tells Jon and Davos, and when Jon tells him it isn’t safe and offers to
send men with him, Tyrion insists, “I’m going alone.”
Where he is going isn’t clear at first, and my initial assumption was
that he was going to confront Daenerys—and that Jon’s warning and offer of a
bodyguard was a recognition of their erstwhile queen’s state of mind. But
no—he’s going into the bowels of the Red Keep, presumably to see if Jaime and
Cersei made good their escape (and possibly to escape himself?). I’m being
charitable in that reading: what is communicated is that he has somehow
intuited that that is where they met their end, and he finds their remarkably
intact corpses under what seems like a rather shallow amount of rubble. (As
Tyrion entered the space of their demise, my girlfriend muttered, “What, is he
going to see a golden hand sticking out of the rocks?”, and moments later—a
golden hand sticking out of the rocks. Not the subtlest or most believable
moment in the episode, however well Peter Dinklage played Tyrion’s grief).
Meanwhile, Grey Worm’s execution of
surviving Lannister soldiers is interrupted by Jon Snow. “It’s over,” he says.
“These men are prisoners.” To which Killy McGhee says, “It is not over until
all of the Queen’s enemies are defeated.” Davos, ever the voice of reason in a
crazy world, demands “How much more defeated do you want them to be? They’re on
their knees!” But of course Grey Worm is implacable. Daenerys has commanded him
to kill all who followed Cersei, and he’s going to carry out her orders. “These
are free men,” he points out, and therefore their choice to follow Cersei makes
them culpable—a callback to Daenerys’ riposte to Tyrion that the people of Meereen
rose up against their tyrants, while the people of King’s Landing willingly
submitted to Cersei’s rule. When Jon holds Grey Worm back, there’s a brief
standoff between the Unsullied and the Northerners; Davos tells Jon that they
should speak with the Queen, which is more or less the equivalent of saying
“we’re telling Mom!”, but it’s hardly as if the matter has been tabled—as soon
as Jon and Davos walk on, Grey Worm proceeds to start slitting throats.
After Tyrion uncovers the weirdly
peaceful-looking bodies of his siblings, we shift to Jon and Arya arriving
(separately) at Daenerys’ triumphant address to her troops, which looks and
feels uncomfortably Triumph of the Will-ish.
What did you think of the finale, Nikki?
Nikki: Triumph of the Will indeed,
my friend, right down to that Targaryen banner (seriously, did someone bring
that with them to the battle?!) in the Nazi colours. Why have I never noticed
that before?
I will similarly become sentimental about
the end of this show, and what a joy it’s been working with you on it, but
since I have the pleasure of going last, I’ll save my blubbering until then.
What I do want to say at the outset, if y’all will indulge me for a moment, is
to pause for a moment to mention something that has happened in the real world
we live in. I’ve been involved in fandom for many years now, as long as Chris
and I have been friends and I first got an internet connection when we were
doing our MA together. And among the very first fandoms with which I connected
was Xena: Warrior Princess. I was
writing my first book about it, and reached out to fans on various mailing
lists and listservs (remember those?) and among the many amazing fans who got
back to me, one in particular stood out. Over time, Kim and I became very close
friends, emailing each other several times a day—she called herself my #1 fan
when my first book was published—and the first time we met was to share a hotel
room at a Pasadena Xena convention
where we saw Lucy and Reneé. (Probably not the smartest move on either of our
parts, but this was before people were aware of catfishing on the interwebs
and, luckily, it worked out.) She travelled from Arizona to Toronto to see me,
and we continued to keep in touch for many years, and then, like most
friendships, the emails were further and further apart. Just over a week ago I
saw something I wanted to tell her about, but since I hadn’t spoken to her in a
couple of years, I did a quick google search to make sure she was at the same
place.
And that’s when I found her obituary, from
2018.
I managed to contact her workplace and
someone there contacted me back (she had no real family to speak of), and
generously explained what had happened. I’ve been heartbroken for a week to
know that the world no longer contains Kim, one of the kindest and most
generous people I’ve ever met. She was someone I met through fandom. And, like
Chris expressed above, we fans are a very specific kind of people; we find our
tribes and stick to them. Kim was such an important part of my tribe, and I
miss her so much. This final blog post is dedicated to you, my friend. I’ll
always be your #1 fan. Love you.
Anyway, back to the story. My overview on
the finale: the moment it was finished, my husband turned to me and said,
“Thoughts?” and I thought for a few moments and simply replied, “Satisfied.”
And I am. I remain committed to loving last week’s episode, and thought the
writers made all the right decisions. I also remain convinced of what you
pointed out, Chris, that the timing is what’s working against them this season,
that it should have been drawn out over a longer period. But for that, we can
probably blame HBO: no TV writer is offered 10 full episodes and says no, so I’m
assuming it was the network stupidly putting a severe limit on a final season
of their most successful show ever. As John Oliver said two weeks ago, “In two
weeks this network is fuuuuuucked.”
(Note how many ads ran right before the episode basically begging subscribers
not to leave and showing all the great shows coming up…)
All week long, my mind has been racing back
and forth over various storylines from the past eight years, thinking of plot
points I hadn’t thought of in a long time, considering the number of times we
joked about who we want to win the game of thrones. I think it was pretty
evident by this final season that no derrière was ever going to occupy the Iron
Throne again (to be honest, I just assumed it had been destroyed last week, and
even this week when we got that iconic moment in the throne room I was
shouting, “Hurry up and sit because it’s the only chance you’ll get!!”) We said
we’d love to see Tyrion ultimately in charge, or Sansa, or Arya, or Jon and/or
Daenerys. And in the end… a bunch of them are indeed in charge. Not in the ways
we’d considered, but I’m actually pretty happy with the way things ended up.
But more on all of those points later as we hit them. Let’s get back to where
you left off.
(Our readers are now thinking good LORD
this is going to be the longest blog post ever…)
I stand by my assertion that the end of
Jaime and Cersei was a deeply affecting and poignant one. I know a lot of
people this week have been complaining about it, saying Cersei deserved to be
tortured or worse. Maybe they’ve never been a parent, but I don’t think there’s
anything you could do to Cersei that would be worse than holding her child in
her arms while he chokes to death… only to have another one poisoned because of
something she had done, and the third one commit suicide just to escape the
world she’d created. She’s made so many errors, and lost all of her children
along the way. And Tyrion wasn’t blowing smoke when he said she was a devoted
mother: she truly loved those children. Cersei tortured and killed, and she’s
been tortured back… it’s over. I thought Dinklage’s performance when he finds
their bodies was beautiful, I agree with you 100%, Chris. Just as Daenerys was
(until Jon’s revelation) the scion of House Targaryen, so too is he the last of
House Lannister.
As Daenerys prepares to give her Hitlerian
speech to the troops, I was amazed at just how many Unsullied and Dothraki were
still there. I thought most of them had been wiped out at the Battle of
Winterfell, and I’m certain she set more than a few of them on fire last week
as necessary casualties, yet it looks like there are more now than were at the
beginning of Winterfell. Which was a little odd.
Daenerys says something in thanks to
everyone who aided her:
To the Dothraki: “Blood of my blood. You
kept all your promises to me. You killed my enemies in their iron suits. You
tore down their stone houses. You gave me the Seven Kingdoms!” Drogon roars.
To Grey Worm: “You have walked beside me
since the Plaza of Pride. You are the bravest of men, the most loyal of
soldiers. I name you commander of all my forces, the Queen’s Master of War!”
To the Unsullied: “All of you were torn
from your mothers’ arms and raised as slaves. Now… you are liberators! You have
freed the people of King’s Landing from the grip of a tyrant! But the war is
not over. We will not lay down our spears until we have liberated all the
people of the world! From Winterfell to Dorne, from Lannisport to Qarth, from
the Summer Isles to the Jade Sea. Women, men and children have suffered too
long beneath the wheel. Will you break the wheel with me?”
It’s a powerful speech, and if you listen to it and imagine yourself one of the
people she’s addressing, you’d follow her to the ends of the Earth. She
liberated everyone in front of her, and they’ve followed her this entire way.
They’ve seen her at her very best, and they saw King’s Landing as a place of
rot. If some innocents got killed along the way… oh well; it’s a sacrifice for
the greater good. Having a queen who would take the throne and liberate all of
Westeros is more important than a few measly lives.
Her idea isn’t a new one. And historically,
it’s not always seen as a bad one. Do you think the British troops in WWII made
sure not a single German civilian died in the war? That the American troops in
Vietnam made sure there wasn’t a single innocent casualty? Last week as Drogon
was immolating most of King’s Landing, I said to my husband, “It’s like
napalm.” And guess what? Napalm was invented—and dropped—by the Americans, the
“good guys,” during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and as far back as WWII.
They did it in an effort to quash Communism, and killed untold numbers of innocent
people along the way.
Oh well; it’s a sacrifice for the greater
good. And it’s OK that the Americans did it, because, you know, freedom and all
that. But Daenerys? First of all, she’s a woman, and secondly, she speaks some
foreign tongue. Better do away with her then.
I actually love how the writers frame this,
because in the end, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that what ultimately
happens to her was the right thing; it’s all about perception. Arya and Jon saw
people being burned alive in the streets in a single day in a horrific act;
Daenerys and the Unsullied and the Dothraki have seen people live their entire
lives in chains, and have liberated them. When she says, “You have freed the
people of King’s Landing from the grip of a tyrant,” we’re supposed to think,
“Um, look in a mirror!” She talks about liberating people across Westeros, and
says, “From Winterfell to Dorne,” and a dark cloud goes over the faces of Jon
and Tyrion. They read that as, “Because that tyrant Sansa Stark is keeping
people under her thumb” when the Unsullied see it as, we were just there, and there are a lot of people being treated badly
in Winterfell; did you see the way they treated those servant girls? Of
course, Dany very much could have
meant, we’ll unseat that tyrant Sansa
Stark. We’ll never know.
Side note: throughout this scene, I kept
thinking, Tyrion and Jon don’t actually speak Valyrian; we saw how badly Tyrion
bungled it last week trying to see Jaime, and there’s no way Jon is fluent in
anything beyond his own language, nor has he been given the opportunity to
become so, since even the wildlings speak the Common Tongue. So… how do they
understand a word of what she’s saying here?
But anyway, this is a very complicated
scene because of the way one speech is interpreted by various people. And the
reason it works so well and makes us so angry is because it mirrors what’s
happening in the world today. Fans have wondered why Game of Thrones has changed so much. But it’s always been a kind of
reflection of our own world, and the world has changed very much from 2011 to
now. Could you imagine your 2011 self being suddenly zipped to 2019? You’d be
reeling from how different the world is politically and ideologically. And
watch Dany’s speech, as the woman speaking for the people. She says something
that the progressives behind her don’t like, and their faces are nothing but
scorn. But the people in front of her hear every word differently and are
willing to overlook the bad things she’s done. Nah, that doesn’t look like a certain rally that we see regularly done
by a certain politician who doesn’t seem to get that he’s already won an
election and can stop campaigning now. Many people actually love him, and
they’re not all morons, despite what you might think. They’re people who are
desperate, who feel like their leaders have never helped them no matter how
many times they’ve appealed to them. They didn’t get what they’ve been
promised, so they vote in someone who looks like a monster to some people; a
savior to others.
As Dany makes her speech, the camera zooms
in on Tyrion, who slowly walks forward. My heart stopped; I was so worried he
was going to do something stupid in front of too many witnesses. She looks at
him with scorn. “You freed your brother; you committed treason,” she says.
“I freed my brother,” he concedes. “And you
slaughtered a city.” And with that he rips the Hand of the Queen brooch off and
tosses it down the stairs. Dany’s face is a bundle of emotions. Deep down, she
knows what she did, but she has to remain stone-faced… “Greater good, greater good, greater good” she must be saying to
herself. Jon watches Tyrion escorted away as prisoner, and then realizes she’s
watching him. He says nothing, and neither does she.
As she walks away, Jon turns to see Arya
suddenly standing beside him, creepily appearing out of nowhere, as Arya
brilliantly does. Arya immediately refers to her as “your queen,” and he says,
“She’s everybody’s queen now.”
“Try telling that to Sansa,” says Arya. And
with that, she turns the screw a little deeper into Jon. Torn always between
the family he loves and his loyalty to his queen, he knows that one is in
serious danger from the other. But as Arya says next, Sansa’s not the only one
in danger; Dany knows that Jon has doubts, and she won’t abide a threat to her
regency. “I know a killer when I see one,” Arya says.
Jon goes to see the imprisoned Tyrion, who
immediately asks for wine (a Lannister through and through). Tyrion has been
sitting and thinking about how he’d betrayed Varys and watched him burn, and
that Varys must be thinking, “TOLD YOU SO” from wherever he is. (Interesting
side note if you don’t follow me on Facebook: my friend Mary
pointed out an awesome tidbit from Reddit that had gone right over my head, but
last week when Varys was talking to kitchen girl Martha about how Dany wasn’t
eating, and he said we’ll try again later, it seemed like such a throwaway
scene; except what many of us missed is that he was actually trying to poison
Daenerys, and she wasn’t taking the bait. When he removed his rings, that was
likely a payment to Martha, who would collect it later. BRILLIANT.)
Tyrion asks Jon if there’s any life after
death, and Jon says there wasn’t in his experience. Tyrion is thankful for the oblivion
that awaits him, and says he asked for this fate: he’d strangled his lover,
killed his father, betrayed his queen… and he’d do that last one again. He is
where he is as a result of a series of choices; the people of King’s Landing
weren’t so lucky. Jon reassures him that the war is over now. Tyrion says, “OH
REALLY?!” and reminds him of the war speech (that, again, I don’t think either
of them fully understood, but perhaps they were going on body language alone,
which was pretty telling). Tyrion gives that flip side perspective I was
talking about earlier, saying she “liberated” the people of Slaver’s Bay and
King’s Landing, and will go on doing so until she can rule over everyone that’s
left. Jon reminds him that TYRION was the one counseling her, until today.
I LOVE the back and forth that happens next,
which pretty much mirrors the fandom battles I’ve seen all week: Jon is the
apologist, explaining exactly why Dany did what she did: she saw her best
friend beheaded; her child had been shot out of the sky. She’s not her father,
and shouldn’t have to bear the banner of her House just because her last name
is Targaryen, no more than Tyrion should have to apologize for the sins of
Tywin Lannister. Tyrion counters: my father and Cersei killed a metric
shit-tonne of people in their lifetimes, and still didn’t come close to what
Dany did in a single day; the city burned for her grief, and they didn’t
deserve it.
“It’s easy to judge when you’re standing
far from the battlefield!” says Jon. But Tyrion says, “Would you have done it?”
knowing the answer to that question, just like he and Varys knew the answer to
that question two episodes ago. Jon says he knows nothing, but Tyrion doesn’t
accept it. “Does it matter what I’d do?” asks Jon.
“It matters more than anything,” says
Tyrion. Tyrion reminds Jon, as if he’d read my words in the blog last week, of
all the people she’s burned in the name of them being evil, but once they were
killed no one could argue they were anything else. They “stood between her and
Paradise,” and she killed them, Tyrion says. Jon is devastated. He knows the
truth, but he loves Daenerys. And Tyrion concedes that. “I know you love her… I
love her too. Not as… successfully as
you [ha!]…” but he believes her. And he says love is more powerful than reason.
“Love is the death of duty,” says Jon, such
a brilliant little parable that even Tyrion asks if he came up with that one
himself. No, Maester Aemon said it. “Sometimes,” Tyrion says, “duty is the
death of love.” He says Jon’s entire life he’s tried to protect people. He’s
never been the sword; he’s been the shield. Who’s the biggest threat to the
people now? Shouldn’t he be doing his civic duty?
Tyrion knows what he’s asking, and he
apologizes for it, but just as Arya had said earlier, Jon is a threat to the
Iron Throne, and she won’t leave him alive. “That’s her decision,” says good
ol’ Jon, “she IS the queen.” And Tyrion stands there, wondering if he’d been
speaking gibberish this whole time. So he tries one more thing:
“And your sisters… do you see them bending
the knee?”
Jon pauses, looks stricken. He says they’ll
be loyal. “Why do you think Sansa told me the truth?!” Tyrion pleads. Jon says
they don’t get to choose, and Tyrion says, “No, but YOU DO. And you have to
choose now.”
And Jon leaves to go see his queen.
Christopher: Before I continue with the recap, I need to correct you on a
specific point: Benioff & Weiss were not forced to bring GoT to a quicker
conclusion than they would have liked. HBO was happy to let them do two
ten-episode seasons for seven and eight, but they made the choice to condense
them. I bring this up because I’d also assumed that the studio execs were
repeating what they’d done to Deadwood
and Rome (and the ghost of Firefly haunts us all), but no—the
choice was artistic rather than fiduciary, so I’m not overly sympathetic to
B&W’s blunders.
As Jon walks purposefully to see Daenerys,
we have what is, on rewatch, the most comical part of the episode: the pile of
snow shifts and moves and Drogon emerges. Presumably the attack on King’s
Landing really took it out of him, enough that he fell asleep long enough to
become covered in snow. But the erstwhile Targaryen scion’s approach is enough
to wake him (or perhaps he’s just standing guard) and he turns to regard Jon
quite closely.
This moment is very interestingly shot: we
do not get a close-up, as we have in the past, of Jon facing the dragon from
just a few feet away. Instead, the moment unfolds from a distance. Drogon
stares at Jon for long enough to make it anxious, but then curls up again in
his snowdrift.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now:
dragons are just giant cats.
Jon enters the Red Keep, and in a
transition that is both symbolic and quite nicely done, disappears into
darkness as Daenerys emerges from it—him descending into the dire task he must
perform, her seeing for the first time the light at the end of her long tunnel.
She emerges into what remains of the throne room, which isn’t quite as she saw
it in her vision. There is more roof and walls missing, for one thing. But
sitting (miraculously) intact is the Iron Throne itself, and Daenerys walks
slowly toward it as Lord of the Rings-esque
music plays. The music is a nice touch, as it evokes precisely the kind of
generic clichés we expect from traditional fantasy—the Chosen One approaching
the throne of destiny, etc. One imagines that that is the narrative unspooling
in Daenerys’ mind as she regards the object of all her labours. She approaches the
throne; she touches it; but, crucially, she does not sit in it. Either sensing
or hearing him, she turns to see Jon Snow standing in the entrance. And in that
moment, just briefly, the Music of Destiny switches to a few notes of the GoT
theme. I missed that on my first viewing; whatever else one might complain
about the final season, the scoring of this show has never been anything less
than top drawer.
Daenerys regards Jon, then turns back to
the throne, and tells a little story. “When I was a girl, my brother told me it
was made with a thousand swords of Aegon’s fallen enemies.” This, indeed, is
the story of the Iron Throne as told in the novels: the swords of defeated
enemies, forged into a throne by dragon fire. (Devotees of the novels like
myself cringed the first time we saw the series’ version of the Iron Throne: it
was too perfect, utterly unlike the mass of misshapen steel and iron described in
the novels, with points and edges protruding so that an unwary monarch might
cut him or herself; Aerys the Mad King was described in his later days as
always having scabs on his hands and arms from these hazards, and in a key
scene King Joffrey cuts himself while in the midst of a tantrum while sitting
on the throne). Daenerys continues, with childlike wonder, to remember what it
was like to try and imagine what a thousand swords might look like. And now I’m here is the obvious
end-point of her narration, but Jon doesn’t let her get there. “I saw them
executing Lannister prisoners in the street,” he practically spits at her.
“They said they were acting on your orders.” “It was necessary,” Daenerys
responds, obviously a little irked to be distracted from her reminiscence, but
Jon is having none of it. “Have you been down there?” he demands, outraged.
“Have you seen children—little children!—burned!” Daenerys’ response—that it
was Cersei’s fault for using them as human shields—is of course weak tea. She
is similarly unsympathetic to Jon’s plea that she forgive Tyrion, reminding Jon
that he, too, has been ruthless with people who betrayed him.
I kind of wanted Jon, in this moment, to
give her an itemized list of the people he has executed. Did he behead Janos Slynt
so as to make an example and cement his authority as Lord Commander? Well, yes,
but the man was a treacherous cock napkin. He killed Mance Rayder as an act of
mercy. And the others he executed? THEY MURDERED HIM. Nothing really in the
realm of “I let my beloved brother escape and he ended up dying anyway.” Duty
is the death of love, indeed.
He pleads with her to forgive everyone, and
in this moment we see how, had he been able to see past the incest ickiness and
marry her, he might just have been an ameliorating element in her reign. But,
having burned an entire city to the ground, Daenerys is at her Macbeth moment:
“I am in blood / Stepped in so far
that, should I wade no more, / Returning
were as tedious as go o'er.”
Her
initial response to Jon is one of the most interesting lines from the episode,
and indeed from the entire season: “We can’t hide behind small mercies.” It
evokes what she said in the previous episode, about how Cersei saw mercy as
weakness, but Daenerys’ rule will be all about mercy—for future generations. The “greater mercy” becomes synonymous here
with “the greater good.” Jon doesn’t see or accept the distinction. “The world
we need won’t be built by men loyal to the world we have,” says Daenerys. “The
world we need,” Jon counters, “is a world of mercy. It has to be.”
This
episode, and the season leading up to it, will be justifiably pilloried for
lacking nuance and subtlety, but this moment is an exception … alas that we
don’t get a more sustained argument on these points. Because both Daenerys and
Jon are right. Daenerys’ Nuremberg speech was chilling in the way it spelled
out precisely the kind of utopian vision that can only be realized through
blood, and which quickly becomes the opposite of what it intended. But she’s
not wrong here when she says that change cannot be effected by people invested
in the status quo. At the same time, Jon articulates one of the most basic
principles of any just society, which is that “cruelty is the worst thing we
do.” Small mercies in his perspective are not qualitatively different from
large mercies, and that foregoing small mercies and small-g good in the name of
the Greater Good is ultimately self-defeating.
Daenerys
promises that the new world order will be one of mercy. “It’s not easy,” she
says, “to see something that’s never been before.” This line made me think of
our long-standing fascination with post-apocalyptic narratives: from The Road to The Walking Dead, one of the key points of these stories’ appeal is
our inability to think outside of our current system, making the prospect of
burning it all to the ground appealing (which I’d also argue is one of the
biggest factors in Trump’s election, but that’s a WHOLE nother blog post); that
Daenerys quite literally burned everything to the ground is a key element here,
as is what follows on this argument between her and Jon.
Jon Snow
may know nothing, but he’s not a complete idiot. He’s loyal and honourable to a
fault, but also recognizes megalomaniacal delusion when he sees it. When
Daenerys promises him that her new world order will be good, he asks her how
she can be sure. “Because I know what is good,” she says.
Yeah. A
shiver ran down my spine when I heard that too, dude. All that was missing was
her adding “Believe me!”
“What
about everyone else?” he asks desperately, still hoping for a lifeboat. “What
about the other people who think they know what’s good?” And, reading from the
tyrant’s handbook, Daenerys replied, “They don’t get to choose.”
Well,
that tears it. Daenerys implores Jon to help her build this world and break the
wheel with her, and he says, “You are my Queen, now and always,” but “always”
in this instance means “for at least the next twenty seconds.” They kiss
passionately, but are interrupted by the inimitable schhhkk sound of a blade being slid home … at which point we have
our answer to the question of who would be the one to kill Daenerys. Jon of
course weeps over her body, and in the background we hear Drogon’s
perturbations as whatever psychic link he had with Daenerys is cut.
I want to
say that the true grief in this scene belongs to the dragon: Jon might have
loved Daenerys, but it is the moment when Drogon nudges her inert form—and
makes little mournful sounds—that made me cry a little.
Drogon
then rears up over Jon and screeches his grief and rage more loudly, and for a
few moments we wonder if this is the end of Jon Snow, too—will he be immolated,
in spite of his Targaryen blood, for the murder of Drogon’s mother?
For a
moment it looks like it, as Drogon opens his maw wide and we see the tell-tale
signs of fire at the back of his throat … but instead he lets loose not on Jon,
but on the Iron Throne itself, melting it down to molten metal.
As I
mentioned earlier, I called this moment, though not in this particular way:
I’ve been saying all season that an appropriate and satisfactory end to the
question of “Who sits on the Iron Throne?” would be (á là the Faceless Men) “no
one,” and that the best way to accomplish that would be having Drogon burn that
damned thing to slag. But I’d always imagined Daenerys being the architect of
that choice … unlikely, but a more radical way to conclude a fantasy narrative
(or perhaps not that radical, as it would be of a piece with Frodo tossing the
Ring into Mount Doom—the destruction
of power). Instead, it is the dragon that makes that choice, which is … well,
interesting. One of the funniest things I’ve read about this episode suggested
that Drogon is either extremely intelligent or just kind of dumb—either he
recognized that the Iron Throne was the object of his mother’s desire that
corrupted her and perverted her good nature, or he saw the dagger sticking out
of her chest and thought “DIE, YOU CHAIR OF KNIVES!”
Whatever
his motives, he tenderly picks up Daenerys and flies off, leaving Jon Snow
looking more bewildered than usual.
Fade to
black. And then we’re back to Tyrion, lying in his cell.
Nikki: I’m with you that Drogon is the true
sympathetic character in this scene, and he made me well up, too (made worse
when my husband quietly said, “He’s… sad.”) And it didn’t surprise me that he
intuited that the throne was the cause of all of this, that, as I said last
week, they could have stayed across the sea and have been perfectly happy,
three dragons and their mum, but she wanted that damn throne. After all, as you
and I have insisted from the beginning, the dragons are very, very large cats
with wings. And anyone who thinks a cat doesn’t walk into a room, immediately
intuit the situation, and show its utter disdain or delight based on a number
of complicated machinations in their brains… doesn’t own a cat.
One
question I have about the section you covered: You mentioned that Drogon is
covered in snow and rises up out of his snowbank, but do you think that might
be ash? After all, just earlier that same day the sun was shining and it was
hot out, based on the clothing the people of King’s Landing were wearing, and I
don’t think winter came that suddenly to King’s Landing… (especially since
we’ll see three weeks later it’s hot again). But I wondered if it was supposed
to be an indication of just how much
stuff Dany burned, that there was that much ash still floating around,
enough to entirely cover Drogon.
But now
our queen is dead, and I’m in mourning along with Drogon. I adored Daenerys,
right from the beginning, and had pledged my loyalty to her House, and despite
everything, I miss her already, and I’m gutted to see the end of her. She could
have been so amazing for Westeros before things went wrong. And as my husband
said, he thinks if a man had made those decisions or said the things she did
leading up to the penultimate episode, they would have listened, but he thinks
in the end, Varys didn’t want a woman on the throne.
I will
admit… during the scene where Jon shivved Daenerys, I was convinced it was Arya wearing his face, thinking there’s no way Jon
could actually do this. But it was Jon. I keep thinking we’re going to get a
callback to the Faceless Men, but there’s a reason we don’t: Arya doesn’t think
of herself as no one anymore.
But oh my
god, what a beautiful corpse Dany made. :::tears::: I cried a lot as we saw
Drogon flying over the sea, Daenerys clutched carefully in his left claw. She
was born in the middle of a great storm, and now she returns, disappearing into
a stormy sky. It was so beautiful and sad and I can’t believe her story is
over.
And then
the screen goes black. And then it opens on Tyrion, who looks like Tom Hanks in
Cast Away and I was like wait, what?
What’s happening?
(I guess if you’re going to do this in six episodes—and wow,
thank you for clarifying that bit about it being B&W’s choice, which makes
it even more aggravating—you have to skip over some finer details to move this
story along.) It’s a few weeks later, and Grey Worm shows up and lets Tyrion
out of his cage, and takes him to a council meeting at the Dragonpit—ironically
an area built by the Targaryens as a place to keep their dragons, and famously
the place where all of this bloodshed could have ended if only Cersei and
Daenerys had managed to hash out a deal last season.
Sitting
there are the most powerful people in Westeros, all united in one council. I
wasn’t 100% sure who everyone was there, and perhaps Chris can chime in on his
pass to fill in the blanks, but here are the ones I knew:
The first
three were Samwell Tarly (obvs), someone I didn’t recognize, but who might be
associated with Highgarden? His outfit was a little flowery. Beside him is Frank
Edmure Tully, that dipshit brother of Catelyn’s who, unfortunately, is the
Head of House Tully, I presume, and whose sentences are always cut off when
he’s trying to do something noble (see below). I poke fun, but I was THRILLED
to see Tobias Menzies appear one last time on the show!
Next,
House Stark is super-represented in Arya, Bran, and Sansa.
Next, we
have Brienne, who doesn’t seem to be representing a House, per se, but is
definitely one of the most powerful people in Westeros (to which I say… YAY
YOU!); Ser Davos Seaworth, who isn’t exactly from a great House either but
having served as such an important advisor, I’m glad he’s seen as being a VIP;
Gendry Baratheon; and some other dude I couldn’t place, perhaps from a House
loyal to House Baratheon, which, until Daenerys recently legitimized Gendry,
had been an extinct House.
Next is
another person I don’t know, but I will presume he’s from the North given his
fur collar; Yara Greyjoy, looking fierce; and another unknown whom I think we
can safely presume is the Prince of Dorne, given the golden robes and the fact
he looks exactly like the other Dornish princes.
Finally,
as I exclaimed on Facebook… ROBIN ARRYN looking shockingly good-looking after
an entire run on Game of Thrones
looking vaguely inbred, here to represent the Vale as the head of House Arryn;
Yohn Royce, whom we all remember as the advisor to Robin, given that Robin was…
vaguely inbred; and another man I can’t place but who looks sort of familiar:
I’m assuming he’s a Northman and we’ve seen him at Council meetings at
Winterfell? Or maybe he’s just Kenny Rogers, not sure.
And of
course, we have Tyrion, last of the House Lannister, and Grey Worm, leader of
what’s left of Daenerys’s followers.
ANYWAY…
suffice to say, these are some important folks. But before anyone can talk
about Tyrion, Sansa wants to know one thing: “Where’s Jon?” He was supposed to
have been brought out along with Tyrion, presumably to represent House
Targaryen, although it’s not clear who actually all knows that fact (or if they
want anyone knowing that). Grey Worm
explains that King’s Landing is now the city of the Unsullied, and they decide what happens to Jon. Yara
Greyjoy speaks up and says the Ironborn do not give up their loyalties lightly:
they’d pledged fealty to Daenerys Stormborn and Jon Snow killed her; he should
die. Arya tells her to say one more word and she’ll cut her throat. It’s an
interesting back-and-forth, given that Yara let her brother go to defend the
Starks and die with them at Winterfell, but the Starks don’t know that about
her. All they know is Jon Snow did what he did to save his sisters.
Thankfully,
Ser Davos is the reasonable one (natch) who stands up and says let’s stop all
this talk of slitting throats, and he thanks the Unsullied for fighting with
them in the North against the Dead, and for sacrificing so many of their men in
that battle. He suggests the Unsullied go to the Reach and start their own
House. He calls for an end to war. Grey Worm argues that they don’t want
payment; they want justice. Jon Snow took the life of the woman who liberated
them.
Tyrion
cuts in and says it’s not for him to decide. Grey Worm shouts at him, but
Tyrion keeps going. He says it’s up to the queen or king to decide. Kenny
Rogers says they don’t have one, and Tyrion says, “You’re the most powerful
people in Westeros, so choose one!” Grey Worm tells them to go ahead. Everyone
sits silent, and looks at one another, or faces the floor, and of course, the
absolute most qualified one stands: Edmure Tully.
It’s an
extremely funny moment, as he stands and begins to speak with such gravitas about
his experience in two wars (where he spent one as a POW, but he doesn’t mention
that) and his experience in statecraft (which is negligible at best) and at
this important juncture—
“Uncle…
please sit,” says Sansa, cutting him off mid-sentence. Edmure looks at her with
surprise, and, rejected, turns to sit, banging his sword against a pole. It’s a
fantastic moment, and Menzies is SO good in this scene. (You can actually see
Maisie Williams looking like she’s trying not to laugh once he’s sat down.)
Yohn says they have to choose someone.
And
that’s when Sam stands up. He explains that whoever is king or queen will rule
over everyone, so shouldn’t the decision be up to… everyone? And for a moment,
I thought oh my god please don’t make this a cheesy moment where they break the
wheel by embracing democracy and changing everything in one fell swoop—
But the
supporters of the Vale all begin laughing, and Edmure asks if they should give
the dogs a vote too. If you listen closely, you’ll hear, “cough Trump cough gerrymandering
cough electoral college” and the
laughter continues. Whew. They want to move forward, but not THAT far forward.
Grey Worm
asks if Tyrion wants the job, and he says no, of course not. He steps forward
and asks, “What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags?” No. “Stories. There’s
nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No
enemy can defeat it, and who has a better story, than Bran the Broken? The boy
who fell from a high tower and lived. He knew he would never walk again, so he
learned to fly. He crossed beyond the Wall, a crippled boy, and became the
Three-Eyed Raven. He’s our memory, the keeper of all our stories. The wars,
weddings, births, massacres, famines. Our triumphs, our defeats. Our past. Who
better to lead us into the future?” He’s right. Think of how many people in
your Facebook or Twitter feeds whose politics are the opposite of yours, but
who watch all the same shows, read all the same books.
Sansa looks shocked. She points out that Bran’s not interested and he can’t
father children. Tyrion says that’s what makes him the perfect choice. They all
know what the children of kings can do, and “his will never torment us.”
He turns
to Grey Worm. “That is the wheel our queen wanted to break. From now on, rulers
will not be born, they will be chosen. On this spot by the lords and ladies of
Westeros, to serve the realm.” He approaches Bran and says he knows he doesn’t
want it, nor does he care about power, but if they choose him, will he wear the
crown? The camera pans in, and Bran says in that infamous monotone, “Why do you
think I came all this way?”
I will
admit, it’s only on thinking about it later, he seems like the perfect choice:
someone who doesn’t want war, who isn’t power-hungry, who barely speaks, who
knows everything that has ever happened in Westeros and why, and what’s to come
so he can avoid the bad and focus toward the good. But, in the moment, I went,
“BRAN?!” Ahem. Yes, Bran. And
with that, we get a Stark on the throne. Not Robb, not Sansa, not Jon Snow… but
Bran. And everyone else sitting there agrees. Except, of course, his sisters,
who are like, “Mom always loved you best
and now this godDAMmit.”
Sansa
turns to her brother and tells him she loves him, and will support him, and
he’ll be a great king. But the people of the North have seen too much to ever
bend the knee to anyone ever again. “The North will remain an independent
kingdom, as it was for thousands of years.” Bran quietly nods, in complete
agreement as a Northman himself.
“All hail
Bran the Broken, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord
of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.” To which Bran says, “Um,
thanks, but… could we discuss this whole Broken
nickname?”
He
immediately tells Tyrion he wants him as his Hand. Tyrion very quickly turns it
down, saying his counsel was terrible when he was Hand. Bran refuses Tyrion’s
rejection, Grey Worm disagrees and refuses to hand over his prisoner, and Bran
reassures him Tyrion will spend the rest of his life trying to redeem himself.
Nope, says Grey Worm, not good enough.
And so,
in a scene I swear was filmed last—note how Kit Harington’s hair is about six
inches shorter in this scene than it is in the very next one—Tyrion goes to
give Jon Snow the bad news.
Christopher: I will confess that I am ambivalent about
how all this falls out. On one hand, we’re witnessing incremental progress:
kings or queens whose rule is established not by patrilineal descent and divine
right, but by being chosen by the representatives of the kingdom’s power
brokers. A number of reviews I’ve read have suggested that Westeros is inching
toward parliamentary democracy, but really, it’s more of an extreme version of
the electoral college, with the executive’s term limit being his or her
lifespan. And keeping the title of king or queen is not just a misnomer, but
misleading. I wasn’t expecting the kind of pure democracy Sam proposes, but
perhaps something more along the lines of pre-imperial Rome would have been workable.
Also,
Tyrion’s rationale for Bran as, essentially, the “keeper of the stories,” only
works for Bran’s reign … unless, at some point in the near future, Bran trains
a new Three Eyed Raven to take his place, at which point the principle of the
monarch selected by the newly struck electoral college falls apart.
(Also,
I’m with you on being delighted to see the return as Tobias Menzies as Edmure,
though for me he’ll always be Brutus from Rome).
There is
also the rather sticky question of why the North gets to be its own kingdom,
while the other six don’t seem to be particularly concerned about submitting to
the rule of King Bran. When Yara first pledged her loyalty to Daenerys, she
hedged—would the Iron Islands be forced to bend the knee, or could they be
their own fiefdom? As I’ve mentioned previously, Daenerys was far more elastic
on that question than she ever was with Jon or Sansa, but then that was back
when she was still in Essos and needed a fleet of ships to bring her home.
Yara’s loyalty to Daenerys in this scene is quite staunch, but one wonders
whether the notoriously independent people of the Iron Islands would be
quiescent about surrendering their sovereignty when the North refuses to do so.
The same goes for Dorne, which in the novels is characterized as almost as
reluctant as the Iron Islands to suffer the rule of a king or queen not of
their own.
(Again,
questions that could have been answered with world enough and time).
When
Tyrion gives Jon the “bad news” that he has to go back to the Wall, Jon asks
the question that I think most people watching had: “There’s still a Night’s
Watch?” Because … well, seriously. Why is there still a Night’s Watch? The
ancient enemy that first prompted Brandon the Builder to raise the Wall is no
more, and the lesser enemy that had become the Night’s Watch’s primary foe
(i.e. the wildlings) are now something resembling allies. So why in the name of
the old gods and the new do we still have a Night’s Watch? “The world will
always need a home for bastards and broken men,” says Tyrion. Seriously? So
this is basically now a make-work project? Will we at least be changing the
terms of reference for the men in black? Perhaps they can be something like the
Peace Corps now? “I am the shield that guards the realms of men” doesn’t have
quite the same resonance when there isn’t really anything to guard AGAINST.
Perhaps
the Night’s Watch functions in this way just as a means of saving Jon: the
Unsullied want him dead, his family want him freed, but this is a useful compromise,
even if the actuality of “taking the black” isn’t really a thing any more
(you’ll talk about this in your final pass, Nikki, but my own sense of that
last scene when Jon rides north of the Wall with Tormund and the wildlings was
that he wasn’t going to return—he was heading north to live as he did for a
time with Ygritte). It hasn’t escaped many commentators that Tyrion’s
observation “No one is very happy” could easily apply to fans of the show.
“Was it
right—what I did?” Jon asks. “It doesn’t feel right.” Tyrion gives what, in my
professional opinion, is a very professorial answer: “Ask me again in ten
years.” Which is to say: in this moment, I have no idea. Let’s let time and the
consensus of history have its say, and I’ll get back to you. Tyrion places a
comforting hand on Jon’s shoulder, and turns silently to go. “I don’t expect
we’ll ever see each other again,” Jon rasps at Tyrion’s back. Tyrion pauses,
and replies, “I wouldn’t be so sure. A few years as Hand of the King would make
anyone want to piss of the edge of the world.” I rather loved this line, as
it’s a callback to the first season: Jon, frustrated by his status as a bastard
and inspired by his Uncle Benjen, decides to join the Night’s Watch; Tyrion, in
Winterfell with the king’s retinue, doesn’t return with them but heads north to
see the Wall and “piss off the edge of the world.” He ends up in the group
traveling with Jon.
From
there, we follow Jon’s sprung-from-prison steps down to the docks, where he
suffers Grey Worm’s hateful gaze, glaring down at him from the poop deck of a
ship—we learn through some brief exposition—bound for Naath. Missandei might be
dead, but the dream still lives: having turned down the offer of lands and
titles in Westeros, the Unsullied are making like trees and getting the fuck
out of the continent. It’s uncertain whether their arrival will be welcomed by
the peaceful inhabitants of Missandei’s home island, but presumably future
slave-catchers will have to negotiate with the business end of a shit-ton of
spears.
Jon
carries on to where he meets up with his siblings. Sansa is apologetic about
the deal that was struck. “Can you forgive me?” she asks, and for a long moment
it seems … maybe not? But then he says, “The North is free, thanks to you.”
“But they lost their King,” Sansa replies, albeit with the slightly smug tones
of someone who no longer has to kowtow to whom she’d once understood as her
bastard brother. Jon observes something we’ve all known for a few seasons now:
that Sansa is the best the North could ever ask for. They embrace. When Jon
tells Arya she’s welcome to visit him at Castle Black, we learn her plan: to
sail west beyond what has been mapped.
Not sure
what I think of Arya’s ending … I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense,
as eight seasons’ worth of learning to fight and kill has rendered her unfit
for any role besides hired assassin—which, of course, being a basically decent
person and having rejected her membership in the Faceless Men besides, is not
really a career option. So … she now means, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, “To sail beyond the
sunset, and the baths /
Of all the western stars, until I
die”? Or is it meant more as an evocation of the end of The Lord of the Rings, in which Frodo, too marred by his
experiences as the ring-bearer, departs for the west across the sea? I suppose
it’s a sentimentally symbolic choice, which means it’s entirely out of step
with the sensibility of GoT.
And then, he kneels before the new King. “Your Grace,” he says. “I’m
sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.” “You were exactly where you were
supposed to be,” Bran replies, in that cryptic monotone that, I’m predicting,
is going to drive his royal subjects a wee bit batshit in the coming years. Jon
then walks down the pier to where his tender awaits, and his siblings watch him
go … the remaining trueborn children of Ned Stark watching their erstwhile
bastard half-brother, actually their trueborn cousin, take his “punishment” and
head north.
(I just want to ask: are we supposed to believe that Jon is genuinely
aggrieved that he has to go to the Wall? He doesn’t seem happy, but it made me
think of Ricky Gervais’ bit of stand-up about the Book of Genesis, when God’s
punishment for the serpent is that he has to crawl on his belly for all
eternity. “But … Oh, no. Wait. Yeah. You got me. Crawl on my belly? Is this how
I do it? I wish I could fly, like normal”).
From that
scene we cut to what is my favourite moment of the episode (though it goes
without saying, it would have been infinitely more affecting if we’d had time
to see Brienne and Jaime’s relationship properly disintegrate). Brienne—now the
Lord Commander of the Kingsguard—sits with the book in which the Knights of the
Kingsguard’s exploits are chronicled, and she turns to the entry for Jaime Lannister.
We’ve been here before, back when Jaime was the Lord Commander; his paltry
entry was given more weight in the novels, but also played in the series. Now,
Brienne looks at the scant text, which reads:
Squired
for Barristan Selmy against the Kingswood Outlaws. Knighted and named to the
Kingsguard in his sixteenth year for valour in the field. At the Sack of King’s
Landing murdered his King Aerys the Second at the foot of the Iron Throne:
pardoned by King Robert Baratheon.
And then
in a different hand, Jaime’s own: “Thereafter known as the Kingslayer: After
the murder of King Joffrey by Tyrion Lannister, served under King Tommen I.”
Brienne,
being Brienne, reads this laconic entry, and starts to write—as is one of the
duties of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, to faithfully record the
exploits of his or her fellows. She fills the rest of the page, and turns the
leaf over. (And just for the record, Brienne’s penmanship is ON POINT). She
details everything Jaime did, from his capture at the Whispering Wood to his
oath to Catelyn Stark to the bit of misdirection that sent the Unsullied to
Casterly Rock while he took Highgarden.
And his
last deed—which could not have been easy for Brienne to write—was “Died
protecting his Queen.”
After she
finishes writing, she has a moment in which it seems tears might come, but they
don’t quite, and she closes the ponderous tome. It’s our last real Brienne
moment, and can I just reiterate now and for all time just how much I love
Gwendolyn Christie? She has been SO GOOD in this role.
And then
we shift to the true downslope of the denouement, with Tyrion as Hand of the
King essentially re-enacting a scene from several seasons ago as he fussily
shifts chairs around the Small Council table. But I will hand off the final
commentary on this episode to you, Nikki … bring us home.
My watch
is ended.
Nikki: Now I’m gonna cry. (Hold it together, Nik, hold it together.) I too loved Brienne’s
moment, it was so quiet and lovely, and like you, I commented aloud that clearly,
at some point in her childhood, her father must have given her calligraphy
lessons in order to try to make her more “womanly.” I also wondered if she’d
write something like, “Slept with another knight after the Battle of
Winterfell, but then fucked off to King’s Landing to screw his sister, whom
he’d been shagging all along.” But no, our Brienne rose above it (she’s better
than I am) and I felt like this was
the ending her character deserved.
But now
onto the Small Council meeting. As Chris said, I loved Tyrion shifting the
chairs, and then muttering grumpily when everyone comes in and bangs them
around. And to be honest, it’s been so
long since we’ve seen a proper Small Council meeting, it was like we were
back in an early episode, and it made my heart swell.
And then
Ser Davos enters. I love that he gets his due for all the honest counsel he’s
given over the years; who would have thought Ser Davos would outlast Stannis,
the Red Woman, Varys, and Daenerys. He’s a man with reason and love, and I’m
happy he’s here. He’s the Master of Ships, which is a perfect position for him.
But he’s
with Bronn. Now, I understand for many, this is going to be a shrewd decision
on Tyrion’s part: making him the Master of Coin makes sense on the one hand,
because no one can negotiate a bargain better than Bronn. Keep your enemies
close, and all that. But it’s freakin’ BRONN. Of all the other people in the
series who have been reasonable, good people, HE is the one who gets a seat on
the Small Council? A guy who, if he went to Braavos to secure a loan for
Tyrion, and they said, “For double what he’s paying you, we’ll pay you to put a
knife through Ser Brienne,” he’d do it. Only if Tyrion didn’t offer him double that
to NOT put the knife through her. He’s a backstabbing blackmailer, and while
he’s been great for one-liners, he’s about as trustworthy as Joffrey running
the King’s Landing daycare.
Sam Tarly
is there, in the white Grand Maester’s robes, a position that he’s clearly
gotten through taking some quick online Coursera courses and some
string-pulling on Tyrion’s part. The Grand Maester is seen as the most senior
of all the Maesters throughout the kingdom, and Sam isn’t exactly… senior. However, I don’t think it would be a
stretch to think that possibly, all the Maesters in the kingdom have been wiped
out, and that Sam, having studied the texts of the Citadel, would know more
than they do. Besides, Bran is a walking Citadel library, with all of the books
in his head, more or less, so they don’t need a senior member.
But
here’s why Sam as Grand Maester works for me: I think this is yet another
example of breaking the wheel. Why should the most important Maester position
in the kingdom go to the eldest? Pycelle was an old fart who didn’t care about
the laws as much as currying favour with the Lannisters. Why not make it a
meritocracy? Not the eldest Maester, but the most qualified, the best one for
the job. Tyrion’s known Sam long enough to know he has no designs on power, and
is wise (he found Jon’s true heritage, as well as figured out how to cure
greyscale). I think he’s perfect.
He hands
Tyrion a massive book: A Song of Ice and
Fire. How… meta. (My favourite bit here is where Sam says, “I helped him
with the title,” and then looks at the others, beaming with excitement, darting
his head from one face to the other, while they just stare back. Oh Samwell,
how I adore you.)
I don’t
know how much time is supposed to have passed, but I think it’s safe to say…
quite a bit? The Red Keep is looking like it’s been mostly fixed, the floor of
the map room is still broken but cleaned up, the place is livable again. (Of
course, some of this could have happened while Tyrion and Jon were still locked
up.) There’s been time for Tyrion to assemble a Small Council, and for Samwell
to rise to the position of Grand Maester. But even then, I would say it’s only
been a few months? I say all of this because I’m trying to figure out how
Maester Ebrose found the time to write that entire MASSIVE tome in a matter of
months when we’ve been waiting approximately 143 years for GRRM to write volume
6 of HIS version of events. (For those keeping track, Archmaester Ebrose was at
the Citadel, and was played by Jim Broadbent last season.)
But let’s
look past the quickness of writing by hand 1,500 giant pages in perfect
calligraphy (cough). Tyrion immediately begins flipping through the book with
the same concern anyone has who finds out a friend of theirs has written a
memoir: what do they say about me in it? (I will admit to always flipping to an
index of a pop culture academic book to find my name, and it’s often there, but
mostly so the academics can disagree with something I wrote in my books. I also
had an acquaintance write a memoir and found my name in the index, and what he
wrote was neither good nor bad, it just was. Which was disappointing; we kind
of hated each other, and I wanted it to be horrible, which would have been far
more interesting. But the rest of the memoir was shite, too, so what can ya do.
HA.) Like me, Tyrion wonders if he’ll be criticized. Or maybe he’ll be kind?
Tyrion begins flipping pages. “I… I don’t believe you’re mentioned,” stutters
Sam.
HAHAHA!
Frankly, this revelation made this whole meta silliness worth it, mostly
because it’s a perfect representation of the history books: Tyrion was behind
the scenes at every turn, and is arguably THE star of Game of Thrones in a story with about 65 other people vying for
that position. But throughout history, it’s not the kings and queens making
decisions, changing the course of every day: it’s their advisors, the people in
backrooms, the people in the kitchens, the people hiding in alleyways. Their
names don’t end up in the history books, but they were the catalysts for so
many things along the way. Queen Cersei and King Joffrey will be all over the
pages of Grand Maester Ebrose’s book, but it’s Tyrion who was doing the real
backroom deals, making the decisions. It was Littlefinger and Varys who were
changing the course of history. It was Olenna Tyrell who was ordering the deaths
of people who got in her way. They won’t be listed in the book, either, or, at
best, they’ll be footnotes. The beautiful thing about Game of Thrones is that it showed the people who play the game
aren’t necessarily the ones who want that throne. I loved this little tidbit.
And, side
note, when the episode was over, I immediately went over to my first Game of Thrones book and flipped it open
to see if Tyrion was actually, in fact, the first perspective chapter of the
entire series… but it wasn’t. It was Bran. Of course. (The answer was there the
whole time, Dorothy!) And then it flips to perspectives of various Starks
before the first non-Stark entry: Tyrion.
Bran
enters, wheeled in by Brienne. He begins speaking in that monotone that yes, I
agree with you, Chris, will drive the citizens of Westeros (and mostly this
poor, wretched, Small Council) completely batty in the coming years. Could you
imagine him doing the King’s Speech? “Hello. It is Christmas. Snow is falling.
Falling like ash. Ash upon the fields. Fields of the dead. I have seen the
dead.”
Meanwhile,
people across Westeros are wondering why the hell Samwell Tarly invented the
bloody wireless radio so they have to listen to this shit every year.
Anyway,
he immediately notes that they’re missing a Master of Whisperers, a Master of
Laws, and a Master of War. Tyrion reassures him he’ll be looking at suitable
candidates for all those positions, and it made me wonder who they would be? I
suppose even after a wheel has been broken, you’ll still need a Master of
Whisperers because people continue to conspire. The other two are necessities,
although frankly, Bran could do all three: he can see everyone at all times
(ew) and would know who’s conspiring. He knows all the laws of the past,
present, and future, and he already knows what wars have happened, what ones
are coming, and what would be the best strategies for each.
Seriously,
how are they going to deal with this guy in every—
Oh wait,
he’s leaving Small Council to go warg into Drogon and figure out where he is.
You can just see the “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” looks on
everyone’s faces. (Note that “Ser Podrick” comes out of the shadows to wheel
Bran away—he’s a knight!) I guess one good thing about Bran is, he doesn’t need
an Iron Throne because he’s got a cool chair of his own.
Before I
forget, though, I just wanted to call back to one character I don’t think has
gotten her due: Meera Reed. Remember her? Along with Osha and Meera’s brother
Jojen, they’re the ones who accompanied Bran through a large part of his story
and him becoming the Three-Eyed Raven, and for, like, three seasons she dragged that sled with Bran on it. I’m thinking
he owes a lot of his survival to her. I hope he sends her a Christmas ham on
the day of his next speech.
As Bran
leaves, Tyrion ham-fistedly bids his king adieu with the proper honorifics,
ending with “Long may he reign” and the others, scattered, say it with various
levels of conviction. “That will improve,” Tyrion says sheepishly as Bran is
wheeled out of the room. Ha!
Now
Tyrion reveals that Bronn is Master of Coin (look at Ser Davos’s unconvinced
face when he does), and asks if the Crown’s debt has been paid. In full, he
says. After all—say it with me—a Lannister always pays his debts. And Tyrion
begins conducting business. After listing all of Bronn’s titles, he asks about
securing more money for the kingdom to rebuild. Then Tyrion tells Ser Davos
that they’ll need to rebuild the ships as well. Davos says he can do that, once
the “Master of Coin and Lord of Lofty Titles” secures the money. Bronn snarkily
responds that first he has to ensure they’re not wasting coin, “or soon there
won’t be no more coin.” “Any more,”
corrects Davos. “Oh you’re Master of Grammar now too?” Bronn says.
At which
point I sat up and said, “OMG there’s a Master of Grammar?? I COULD TOTALLY BE
ON SMALL COUNCIL.”
“Grand
Maester!” shouts Tyrion to try to move away from the little toddler boys
fighting at the head of the table. He asks about water purification, and Sam begins
to speak before Bronn cuts him off, and instead wants to discuss reconstructing
the far more important brothels of King’s Landing. (Seriously, someone shoot
this guy with a crossbow NOW.) Sam doesn’t agree with this, and Brienne says
the ships should take precedence, as the camera slowly pans out of the room,
showing us that the Small Council is a new world… and much of the same one it’s
always been.
 |
| I feel your pain, Tyrion. |
And then
Tyrion says, “I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel…” I
laughed out loud. This is an onrunning joke and a callback to previous seasons,
and it’s the third time Tyrion has begun to tell this joke but WE HAVE NEVER
GOTTEN THE PUNCHLINE. In season one, standing before the horrid Lysa Arryn,
Tyrion is asked to confess his sins, and he begins telling one lewd story after
another, nearly every one involving his penis. When he gets to, “I once brought
a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel…” Lysa shouts for silence.
Again in
season six, he’s sitting with Missandei and Grey Worm, and they’re drinking
wine and laughing. Grey Worm is looking at Missandei with so much love (sniff)
and she’s giggling and begging Tyrion for jokes. “I once walked into a brothel
with a honeycomb and a jackass,” he begins. “The Madame says—” and then they’re
interrupted. Since then, fans have tried to come up with the ending of that
joke, and a fan on Reddit
came up with a BRILLIANT one that I wish the writers had incorporated into this
episode:
Tyrion walks into a brothel with a honeycomb and a jackass.Madame: What can we do for you?Tyrion: I need a woman to lay with, for mine has
left me.Madame: Whatever for? And what's with the
honeycomb and the mule?Tyrion: My woman found a genie in a bottle, and he
granted her three wishes. The first was for a house fit for a queen, so he gave
her this damn honeycomb. The second wish was that she have the nicest ass in
all the land, so he gave her this damn donkey...Madame: And what about the third wish?Tyrion: Well... she asked the genie to make my
cock hang down past my knee.Madame: Well that one's not so bad eh?Tyrion: Not so bad!? I used to be six foot
three!
Seriously,
how Tyrion is that joke?! I’m
convinced that’s where he was going with it.
And… our
watch ends at the Night’s Watch and Castle Black. We see Jon Snow approach the
gates, like he did in season one, for a life of celibacy and isolation, for…
what, exactly? I’m with you, Chris, to me, this was the least satisfying bit of
the entire finale. Tormund stands on a parapet looking down at Jon as he enters
the grounds through the gate, and like you I was like, what, exactly, do they
do at the Night’s Watch now?? The wilding is RIGHT THERE inside the grounds.
And seriously, the only reason Jon is
there is because Grey Worm has demanded it. And as you pointed out, Chris,
he’s fucked off with the rest of the soldiers, so why didn’t Jon just go North
to Winterfell and be done with it? Is it because Sansa could feel threatened by
his presence? She knows as we all do that Jon has zero designs on the throne,
so I have no idea why he did the good thing and continued to the Wall. Other
than the fact he’s Jon Snow and has always done exactly what he’s been told.
But at
least I was going to get the reunion with Ghost. And then… the screen went
black. OH COME O—
Oh, it’s
not done yet. The next scene opens on the hilt of Jon’s sword, and that little
direwolf head that always looks a wee bit comical to me in a war scene. And
from this point, as the staggering music of Ramin Djawadi—the true MVP of the
entire series, who has NEVER let us down—plays, we get a montage of where
everyone has ended up. Sansa is suited up with an utterly stunning new dress that has the red leaves of the weirwood tree on
it; Jon walks up the steps of Castle Black; Arya rolls up her maps and her
telescope and walks onto the deck of her ship.
(And I
know this is a deadly serious and beautiful montage, but I started singing,
“Arya Arya Arya the Explarya!” and my husband joined in. I do hope her
cartographer is a flamboyantly gay man who sings, “Here’s the map, here’s the
map, here’s the map, here’s the map, HERE’S THE MAP!” while First Mate Boots
looks on.)
ANYWAY
BACK TO SERIOUSNESS NIKKI. Arya is the commander of her ship and watches the action
around her, as Sansa walks majestically down an aisle flanked by northerners
(you deserve this, Sansa), and Jon walks through the grounds, flanked by
wildlings to see… YES it’s Ghost, minus one ear and looking a little scuffed
around the face but it’s Ghost oh yes WHOSAGOODBOY and Jon FINALLY crouches
down and gives him the big pet he’s deserved for eight years, and the one we
all wanted a few episodes ago. I’m so happy to see this reunion.
Back to
Arya’s ship, now revealing a massive Stark direwolf head on the prow (OMG
tears) and Arya looking calm, happy, and in control for the first time all
season.
The gorgeous, small crown is placed on Sansa’s head and she sits on her
throne, to shouts of “Queen of the North!” by the Northmen who crown her. This
is such a sublime moment, because it takes us all the way back to the first
time we saw Sansa, sitting in a window and sewing with the ladies. Her
obsession with Joffrey wasn’t so much that she was smitten with him, but
smitten with the idea of one day being queen, being led around on the arm of
the King of the Seven Kingdoms, with people bowing down to her because she was
married to the king. This youthful fantasy soon turns into an absolute
nightmare for her, and she’s tossed around from one man to another and
mistreated again and again until she decides to own herself, own her fate, and show
others who Sansa Stark really is. And now men are bowing down before her NOT
because her husband is the ruler, but because SHE is. What an incredible
journey Sansa’s has been.
Arya has
been someone who’s roamed around Westeros, has seen and met so many people, all
with one reason for moving forward: to kill the people on her list. But now
there’s no list, there’s no vengeance; only peace. And it’s left her content—her
brother is on one throne, her sister on another, and at the moment there’s no
danger of anything happening to them. So she can go back to her wandering ways,
but since she’s been along every road in Westeros, she’s now branching out to
discover America, apparently, since she’s going west of the very
British-seeming Westeros. If Drogon is flying east and she’s moving west,
perhaps they’ll somehow meet in the middle. (Unless GRRM is a Flat-Earther, in
which case they’ll just fall off the edges when they get there.)
And we
end with Jon Snow. The man who would be king, who’s been the main character of
the story all along. Who couldn’t die because he was integral to the ending. He
ultimately broke the wheel, has devoted his life to peace and protection, has never
done a single bad thing… and now he’s exiled to the Wall. But in the time he
spent up North, he met Ygritte, and as you say, Chris, that was where he
actually felt like he was at home, among the wildlings. I’m with you. The way
he looks back at the closing gate indicates to me that he’s not returning. Jon
Snow will go and live up in the far north among his people, and he’ll probably
never see his family again. But he has his new family, the people he managed to
bring into the fold for the first time in the history of Westeros.
And as
the Game of Thrones theme song rises
up, we see him, and Tormund, and Ghost, and the free folk on foot, as they
disappear into the trees of the North. And I don’t think it’s an accident that
as they first set off, the camera is filming from the ground, where we see a
green spring plant sprouting up from the snow.
Summer is
coming, and with it a new hope for the future of Westeros.
And… that
is it. The end of easily the most spectacular-looking TV series of all time, a
sweeping epic that was so far-reaching it often required multiple viewings,
books, guides, and Christopher and I recapping along the way.
And now
that my watch, too, has come to an end, I wanted to send out a huge thank-you
to Christopher Lockett, my Brother of the Night’s Watch, my fellow knight, my
associate Keeper of the Book, who has studied at the Citadel far longer than I
have, who shares my passion for the humour of Lord Homer and Lady Marge, who
has joined me week after week for eight years to bring his knowledge of the
books and his knowledge of pop culture to all of us, enriching our experience
of watching this show.
And I’d
really like to thank all of you, who somehow make it to the end of these posts
every single week (my husband constantly says, “NO ONE reads all the way to the
end, you know that, right? We live in an age of soundbytes and your posts are
too… wordy” and I just have to show him the comments to prove otherwise). You
read, you comment, you offer corrections and more insight to what we said here,
and when we were late, you would send notes saying, “Where’s that post?” which was
so flattering. It wouldn’t have been worth missing work two days a week for the
duration of the seasons and massaging sore fingers without knowing all of you
were reading what we said.
I feel
like I now need to go and rewatch the whole series in light of the ending, and
probably will. Until the next great TV show comes along, I say to you:
The day
is bright and full of hope.
