Game of Thrones - Season 8 - Game Over

@marino: Honestly, the plot and motives have been so undercooked this season, that I’m not exactly engaged. I’m wondering if I’m not hanging on every word any longer as doing so has lead to disappointment this year...I feel like I chose to just ride it out after that disastrous third episode.

For the first...six seasons, maybe, EVERY time the screen went black and inhale sharply hoping for one more scene. I’d be thrilled and invested. I haven’t felt that once this season.

So yeah, I recall that now. I guess I’m just seeing it out rather than being engaged. I’m actively shit talking episodes as they run with my wife...which would have NEVER happened in previous seasons...fuck, this show lost me hard this year...

@sethmode: Oh, they jumped the coming-back-from-the-dead shark a few times now...what’s once more? ;)

@nutter: The bell ringing was King's Landing surrendering to Daenerys. Tyrion asked her to give them a chance to ring the bell and surrender before she burned all the innocents; the fact that everyone heard the bell ring, and Daenerys still went completely ape-shit, really hammered home her Mad Queen transformation.

I think this season has been fantastic. In terms of theme and meaningful things to say, this season has been the best since the first few seasons, while still retaining the action in the past two seasons. The scenes of Jon/Arya basically wandering the streets as people are brutally slaughtered for no reason whatsoever is one of the most harrowing things I've seen on TV, and reminds me of All Quiet on the Western Front. It's also one of a very small number of episodes that really made me feel bad for Cersei, despite everything she's done. Watching her break down over the episode as she realized that she was going to die and her child was going to die with her was actually pretty heartbreaking. The broad strokes of the episode were fairly predictable, but I expected the battle to be less one-sided, and the slaughter that came after was surprising. I also don't think the show would benefit by being surprising at this point; there's been a 7-season build-up to the events right now, and the possibility space is naturally going to shrink.

Going into the final episode, I would be pretty confident that Dany dies, if not for one thing--her dragon. That thing is nothing but a liability, and having a wild dragon out and about would be complete chaos. Maybe Jon will do something with it, but that's assuming he even survives--which I kind of hope he doesn't, since it's been made abundantly clear that he doesn't have the necessary back-stabbing nature to rule. So, I assume someone is going to kill the dragon, and I'd guess it would be Tyrion or Bronn. Arya probably kills Dany, and then... I don't know what happens in terms of rulers, as the Iron Throne seems like it might be completely fucked now.

All in all, I think this season has been really good at saying something meaningful. Previous episodes didn't have commit to the theme of absolute power corrupting absolutely; I think this last season has done a good job showing that the fight for the crown just makes everyone involved their worst selves, from the monarchs down to the foot soldiers. It doesn't feel like we can get a real "happy" ending, just that we can get an ending where the cycle of unnecessary and ruinous violence, all for the sake of a goddamn metal chair, finally ends.

On a final note, I think it's fitting that the King's Landing fight killed WAAAAAAY more people than the Winterfell fight; once again, the show proves that White Walkers, as a reaction to humanity's brutality, could never hope to match it.

ep 4: Dragons strong, gonna light'm up. Oh no. Dragons weak.

Expectations subverted.

ep 5: Drogon is exposed, how we gonna do this. Drogon strong.

Expectations subverted squared.

@ares42: I don't think it's that big a heel-turn, honestly. Dany's solution to pretty much every problem has been outright murder and power through fear, from when she escaped Qarth to when she roasted the Tarlys. The only difference is, in previous seasons her murder-happy ways were seen as liberating, because she was slaughtering slavers and other unsavory characters. That said, there's been no reason to think she would be a merciful queen, if looking at her actions from an outside perspective. Once her close personal friend and two of her children were killed, I think she just stopped pretending to care about ordinary people.

@acharlie1377: Yeah, I replied a few moments ago that this season lost my interest and I’m just sort of seeing it through. I’m watching, but I guess I’m just now realizing just how much I’m no longer invested.

I’m not looking at my phone or multi-tasking, I just kinda want to see how it ends. In past seasons, every episode’s ending was bitter sweet. Now, an episode’s ending means “that happened, time to lock up, clean up, and get some sleep.”

I’m trying to enjoy the show for what it has become, so I guess I’m not paying as much attention, because details seem to matter less than broad strokes...even so, it seems like I missed something they beat home repeatedly.

@acharlie1377: She has always been ruthless, but as you point out she has been ruthless towards the guilty. She has at no point shown any sort of malice towards the innocent and gone out of her way on many occasions to help and protect them. If the fact that someone has murdered people ruthlessly would make them willing and happy to slaughter innocents then why does any of the characters on the show care about protecting people ? There's basically no main character on the show that hasn't murdered someone.

@acharlie1377: I think this possibility has always been around with Danny, to your point. This season just accelerated her in that direction quickly and somewhat haphazardly.

I think it was, in action, a turn...if not in her character. In the past her resulting to riot, execution, etc. seemed justifiable due to circumstance. Here, she had no such excuse. They’ve also really hammered home her wanting the crown because she wants it, rather than past seasons’ reasoning of righting wrongs, freeing the enslaved, etc.

I think the “turn” got sudden and heavy-handed, but I think it works, broadly...largely due to the fact that there have always been warning signs...

@ares42: Well that's my point; she's never been cruel to the innocent, but we've never seen a situation where the innocents were not on her side. All we've seen is her killing bad guys and assuming "oh, she's a righteous queen," when I think the reality is she would've killed anyone in her way, good or evil. There are multiple scenes of her going too far, the crucifixion of the slavers and the burning of the Dothraki elder wives to name a few that come to mind. From an outside perspective, she's a tyrant with 3 dragons who kills and sometimes tortures anyone who stands in her way.

Honestly, the Dany thing I think is not perfectly done, but is fine. The show has always kind of vaguely been about how there is very good and very bad in most people, and those that are mostly just outright good are rubes that end up dead (like the Starks). It's not unbelievable for me at all that Dany used the Breaker of Chains concept just to get where she needed to get to exact her vengeance, it just wasn't very well done in the grand scheme of things because it happened so quickly, and with too many little things that still didn't make sense because the idea didn't have time to grow like it is in the books (granted, the books also have the benefit of being able to show us what her character is thinking).

Not to harp on it, but the Jaime thing is just the worst, and it's really what made the episode just unbearable to me. I was so confident last week that he was just going to KL to try and kill Cersei, and THAT'S the outcome we get? I don't even give a shit about the prophecy nonsense or what-have-you...in fact, one of the things I hope that the books do is give prophecies the middle finger because they're all stupid and CRAZILY telegraphed...but it just doesn't make any sense for Jaime's character arc. Or, I guess as someone on Twitter said, it's now just Jaime's character circle.

@nutter: It's definitely a bit fast, I'll admit that. If there's one thing I can't avoid criticizing about this season, it's that this probably should have been a full 10-epsiode season, not 6 extra-long episodes.

@ares42: I’m hyper-critical of the show at this point, but I’d say Danny has been much grizzlier in her murders all along. Burnings, riots, crucifixions, did she feed folks alive to her dragons at one point?

Ned surely killed a lot of people in war, but there was never anything to suggest anything beyond a call of duty, I guess. Same can be said for most Starks not-named-Arya.

Horrible, horrible episode and I was never a Dany fan. They ruined her and Jamie this episode. If Jamie hadn't slept with Brienne it wouldn't have been quite so bad. Turning Dany into a villain was idiotic. The Hound vs Mountain fight was lame, compare that fight to Viper vs Mountain or Ned vs Arthur Dayne. The destruction lasted too long, it was boring.

This show degraded almost as bad as Dexter and Heroes at this point.

@acharlie1377: Agreed. I was THRILLED to hear that the last two seasons would be fewer episodes with varying episode length to fit the story. I think TV needs more of that.

I just think that the product has felt like something that could use more time to breathe. I loved the slow, methodical, thoughtful pace of earlier seasons. I treasured the five minutes I’d get of Arya and The Hound traveling north once a week.

I’d love to still have that, but it’s not what I have. I’m trying to enjoy it for what it is, I’m just struggling with it more than I thought.

Here’s hoping for a bloody, surprising, and well thought out final episode next week!

I'd say that's straight up untrue. Everywhere she went in previous seasons no one showed any love for her before she helped them out. The people of King's Landing hasn't shown any resistance to her, the people in charge has. Just like everywhere else she has gone. It wasn't like she showed up in Mereen and then all the slaves came running out to worship her. Over and over she has turned the populace against the rulers who stood in her way.

@ares42: Wow, there are GoT fans defending this episode? SMH, no Dany has never shown to be straight up evil. Is she as nice or honorable as Jon? Hell no, but she had morals and a code. She helped stop slavery and offered the Tarly father and son a way to save their own lives. At this point she's worse than her father, Cersei, Joffery, Ramsey, Euron, etc. She's done a worse and more evil thing than anyone who has ever been on the show.

This would be like the Punisher going crazy after two of his friends die then he blows up most of NYC. Punisher isn't a boyscout, but he wouldn't want to hurt/kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people. The show should've had her execute all the Lannister troops who surrendered then the situation would be gray and have some nuance, but no, nuance died once the show caught up to the books. The show screwed the White Walkers, now they've screwed up Dany and Jamie. Their two story arcs this whole series plus Bran's feels like a waste of time at the moment. Tyrion has already seemed like an idiot the last two or so seasons, now he's the man who (accidently) help destroy king's landing. All the honorable men who protected Dany like Ned, Jorah, Barristan, and others look like fools too.

That Dany turn was just lazy and rushed writing and wholly unearned, to me anyways. I'm kinda just in it for the spectacle and to see it through now. Kinda cool/fucked up that a knife to the brain didn't even kill zombie Mountain.

The thing about Daenerys going crazy is that it's always something that's had some build up, it's always been a reasonable possibility, but they've botched the execution of it so badly that it feels like it comes out of nowhere anyway. If anything, what the past 2 seasons have been building up is that she'd get close to snapping, but pull back from it, and I think that's a more interesting arc for her character overall. Similarly, the Targaryen madness thing has always seemed stupid, building up to Cersei going crazy and trying to burn the entire city would have made more sense if anything, make it less familial curse and more about power changing people. But that got botched too.

The Jaime stuff is abysmal, it's the actual worst part of this episode. Euron has officially surpassed Ramsay as the worst thing in this show.

So who's going to regret their name more, the Anakins of the world or the Daeneryses? Probably the Anakins, but it's a tight race now.

@brackstone: The Jamie vs Euron fight was so random and it wasn't well done at all. It's weird that Yara wasn't in the final battle. She should've confronted him, if not killed him. The idea that Jamie would leave Brienne just to go die with Cersei is pretty stupid. They should've made Brienne like Jamie, but Jamie not like her back nor bang her. His storyline would still suck, but he'd be more likable and it'd make more sense. Tyrion STILL trying to talk Cersei down through Jamie was laughingly dumb.

Yeah, this is my biggest complaint...it's not that the evidence isn't there, it's just that what is there was kind of only hinted at at most for 6.5 seasons, then became more possible when she roasted the Tarlys despite being asked for mercy, and then just all of the sudden "Oh actually, she's fully nuts". There's room for that turn in there, it just was all crammed in at the last minute and that makes it feel more botched as you say than outwardly out of character.

I'll just add that like what @brackstone is talking about my problem isn't that she turned mad, but how. There are plenty of other ways they could've done it that wouldn't have been so counter-intuitive to who she is. They could've illustrated how she was losing her ability to judge between innocent and guilty (which could've lead up to the start of this episode except Varys was actually innocent). They could've moved the parade scene (with the northerners scowling at her) from the first episode this season to the previous episode and it was while they were traveling through a southern village. Instead of the atrocity last week they could've had them intercept a convoy of fleeing southern ships and after she let them go it turned out they told Euron about their location which lead to the ambush. Just give her any reason to not trust the southern populace instead of "I'm gonna contradict my primary character feature".

I actually laughed out loud when Euron showed up on that beach. Perfect comedy writing.

They ask so much of these actors, we are lucky to get to watch them. Emilia Clarke is meant to portray the entire descent into madness from rationality of her character from a single still shot of her face, no dialogue, nobody else in the scene, riding a CGI dragon. Lena Headey had maybe 3 lines in this entire episode, she is meant to carry the entire emotional weight of what is happening, the culmination of a 73 episode arc just through her expressions. It's remarkable that they even get close, that it's readable at all.

What was meant to have happend to Grey Worm, by the way? Dany's turn I understand, they've set it up for a long time, however poorly communicated it was. But aren't the and the unsullied supposed to be exemplary soldiers, intractable, following orders perfectly? What he did made no sense to me. Even logically as a solider, if he wanted to kill those men because of what happened to Missandei, why not round them up and slaughter them, since they'd all surrendered? Or was the idea that he saw the dragon still attacking and inferred that they were meant to keep attacking too, despite the bells ringing? I didn't understand what they were trying to say with it.

@gerrid: I feel like Grey Worm, for better or, more likely worse, was just an extension of the Dany the mad queen thing. It still definitely didn't add up to me.

But again, this is the only time that she tried to get the populace to turn against the rulers of a city, and they didn't do it; she even says something in this episode to the effect of "the people turned against their masters overseas, why don't they do it here?" She feels like she gave these people a chance to surrender before the battle started, and by them not rising up against their ruler, they've stood against her. Her ruthlessness wasn't necessarily as pronounced before as it is now, but you can see signs of it even in season 2 (when she's turned away from Qarth initially, she IMMEDIATELY launches into a spiel about how she will burn Qarth to the ground).

I read the review for this episode on IGN, and the reviewer made a point that really stuck with me; they noted that how you feel about this season depends entirely on how you wanted/expected it to go. I never liked Daenerys as a leader; even as far back as season 2, I felt like her stated claim to the throne wasn't based on her deeds as a liberator, but on her lineage as a Targaryen. She continually stated she was the rightful heir to the throne and that it already belonged to her; the people of Westeros and their opinions never mattered to her, and she never seemed to consider that a person should earn the throne rather than be given it by bloodright. When she was being set up as the hero was my least favorite part of the series, because no one bothered seriously challenging her core ideals, and I always thought she was too cruel and angry to be a good leader.

Similarly, I thought Jaime's turn was completely in character for him, and necessary for his redemption. He is not a good person; regardless of who he is now, the totality of life involves attempted child murder, murder of a family member, and even in season 5/6 he tells someone (I think Blackfish's nephew?) how he will kill anyone for Cersei because he loves her. There's never been a moment of the show, from about season 4/5 onward, that he's shown any emotion but love for her. Further, he's tried to redeem himself, but as much as viewers (and Brienne) want to accept him as he is now, Jaime realizes he doesn't get to just wash himself clean of his past and move on. It's a less heroic sacrifice than dying in battle, but I thought it made sense.

The reason I love this season so much is that it's dared to do a thing that so few shows and movies do anymore; it attempts to strip back the inherent "likability" of protagonists we see on TV, and get us to understand that, without these years of being conditioned to root for these characters, their actions might seem monstrous. Bojack Horseman, though a way different show, does something similar; we're conditioned to root for the main character because we assume they're a fundamentally good person, but if that person's actions were framed in a less positive light, it might be hard to maintain that assumption.

Ramsey said it best: "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention"

@acharlie1377: Agree 100%

Perhaps the turn isn't for us, but for those who follow her. The most moral and just characters in the story all laid down everything to follow her - giving up their families and their lives for her and her cause. And now it turns out she was just pretending all along and is happy to murder her own subjects by the thousands, with the battle already won, for no purpose. That is a huge reversal for those characters to witness.

yeah, this is the thing. i'm kind of 'whatever' on the larger plot at this point- it's not particularly clever or interesting but the dany heel turn makes enough sense. however these final character moments are completely collapsing under the weight and pace of the screenwriting.

i'm beginning to think shows that spend years slowly developing characters are incapable of ending gracefully when you have "epic" events as the basis for a conclusion. one's tempted to think that an ultimate climax is what makes the most satisfying ending- but i think more often than not the complex characters end up getting completely reduced to set dressing for action sequences.

if you look at something like star trek TNG's 'all good things' (which is my favourite television conclusion of all time)- part of the reason that thing works so well is because it draws on the past of the characters and their relationships to produce what's essentially another episode with heightened stakes and consequences. it's still dialogue driven- and so you spend real time with the characters you've come to love.

somewhere along the writing for this last season someone decided the reason GoT fans showed up for years was for these final action sequences (as opposed to emotional arc of someone like jaime lannister or varys)- which is why we end up with a hamfisted cleganebowl and what felt like 20mins of arya wandering through rubble. it really feels like they consulted with a production team that has produced World War 2 urban action sequences, and somehow thought that made more sense than spending more time with cersei.

I think the people defending Dany's turn are kind of missing the point of the detractors' real complaints about the turn of events in this episode. Nobody's denying that her turn to villainy wasn't foreshadowed or telegraphed seasons back (hell I pretty much called it at the beginning of the season when discussing the show with a friend). It's the execution that's completely lacking. She literally goes from slightly rattled to committing genocide in the span of 2 days. Even her father took years for his mental health to degrade to the point where he became the Mad King. Her seeing one of her dragons die and her advisor be decapitated isn't really convincing enough for me to buy her going full Hitler for something that had nothing to do with the people of King's Landing in the first place. Not to mention she suffered much greater personal tragedy in the past when she lost Drogo and her son, and still didn't really go completely ape shit.

To the people that say she has always been ruthless and burned anyone who got in her way, nearly all of those were either enemies that refused to yield or complete pieces of shit (such as the slave masters that crucified all those children). She's never committed full on genocide on a city just for the sake of it. In fact, seasons back, where she was presented with the burnt corpse of a child that one of her dragons casually murdered, she was so horrified, that she locked her dragons in a cave to prevent anything like that happening again. She was ruthless, but only when the situation called for it. Her just deciding to go psycho in the last second when pretty much the entire city had unanimously surrendered felt like very contrived set piece writing that was there simply to get the story from point A to point B. Dany going full on Griffith is fine on paper, but we need much more than half a season to effectively communicate that, let alone a single fucking episode.

Arya being shoved into the fray also felt very contrived as well. It felt like a dumb plot device the writers cooked up in the last second to give her enough motivation to kill Danerys. Cleganebowl was fine. Jaime going out with Cersei was fine. I really don't understand people's shock at that scene-it felt pretty consistent with what we've seen of Jaime's character throughout the show. Overall, this was simultaneously both the DUMBEST and the most entertaining episode of the season so far. The cinematography and visuals were gorgeous-much better than the battle of Winterfell. At times it felt like you were watching a moving painting and at least it didn't feel like a struggle to sit through the way ep 1, 2 and 4 felt.

Story/Writing: 4/10

Production Value/Spectacle: 9/10

Now that I got that off my chest, here are some memes:

@gerrid: @sethmode: I think that, with too little airstrip left before landing, Missandei’s death kinda became a quick and dirty shorthand for both Dany and Grey Worm to go vengeance-mode.

As for Grey Worm’s training, I think the idea is that his relationship with Missandei...humanized him, so some of that cold, never knew love, bred and raised for war stuff was chipped away at.

@mellotronrules: A lot of these characters should have died ages ago, or gone off elsewhere and been done, but they have all stuck around because they are popular or the writers like them. So now they run into the problem of having to tie everything up in a short space of time, and it feels rushed. It also reduces the impact of each ending, because they happen so quickly one after the other.

@acharlie1377: I like the outcomes of the plot on this season. I feel getting there has been rushed, poorly justified, and not in keeping with the quality with the first 6 (even 7) seasons of the show.

I don’t take issues with where we are, merely that getting here felt cheap and poorly thought out.

@mellotronrules: I’d rather see the characters killed off in the game of political subterfuge that was the basis for so many seasons.

I don’t need to have awesome super hero moments, one in a great while is plenty. It’s cheap and fun, but it’s empty calories. It can’t sustain a story.

I’m still super annoyed that The Night King was a wet fart. All these years of whitewalkers, valerian steel, dragon glass, doomsday prophesies, the lord of light moving pieces around the board, and no one of real consequence dies, plus the army is dispatched of in one night. Also, all that steel and all that dragon glass was basically a mcguffin as the Night King had a level 3 group rez spell anyhow.

So much build up, and nothing. They could have done the whole “man and the lust for power is the real monster” thing by having some of the political games play out under siege by the dead. Have people stab each other in the back, thinking too much of the throne and of how to leverage an apocalyptic threat in their favor...something to keep the themes of the show going without building for years to a dude what got killed the same way that a giant got killed earlier in the same battle.

I’m not a guy who likes shows to explain everything, but GoT has always been so good with the lore, rules, callbacks, setting the stage, that A LOT of this season just feel shat out in broad strokes.

@gerrid: Regularly killing fan favorites well is something this show has always done well. It’s a bummer they stopped.

@atastyslurpee: I don’t want a happy ending.

But I don’t want glorified fan fiction either.

Is it possible that Danaerys wasn't actually going mad, but instead had just pragmatically decided she was going to destroy the city in order to make everyone terrified of her? I suppose it's a kind of madness, but rather than her flying into a rage we are meant to read it as cold and calculating ruthlessness?

Destroying King's Landing also severs the link to the Lannisters and lets her start fresh without having to worry too much about being surrounded by people who don't want her there. Dany is just executing carefully judged realpolitik, it turns out. Perhaps this also explains what Grey Worm did - she told him to do it?

Saying that, theorising about deeper motivations or plot points behind these past two seasons has been a fool's errand, since probably the writers will do their after episode special and say something like "the city reminded her of Mereen, and she just snapped, without Missandei there to calm her down", making all of the better ideas you come up with pointless.

@nutter: Is it? I'd argue the series, books or show, has not been good about killing fan favorites since Ned.

Defenders of the episode still seem like they're grasping at straws to me. Dany being the most evil person should've been getting developed seasons ago if the writers wanted to do this. Examples of good character development are Hank from Breaking Bad, Zuko from Last Airbender, and Wesley from Angel. I'd formerly put Jamie on that list, but they screwed up his ending. There was a way for him to go back to Cersei, but that wasn't it. Dany would kill her enemies, but not even Cersei or Tywin would do what Dany just did. Dany and Arya are both murderous, but neither one would destroy a city with a million people in it.

I feel like the show was probably going to do the popular theory of Cersei losing then her plan b is to use wildfire to kill everyone but Jamie kills her to stop it. However, too many people guessed it so they randomly switched to this crap. Next week they'll probably kill off Dany and Jon then have someone unexpected rule like Tyrion, since the show is about subverting expectations first and spectacle second, not good writing.

Trying too hard to subvert stuff is one of the many reasons why Last Jedi sucked. If I was Disney I wouldn't trust the showrunners with Star Wars or any other big projects... go get the Russo bros.

The guy in video gets it, he's overly dramatic, but he's right when it comes to Dany:

we're in complete agreement there. it's just a shame that the show runners didn't see it that way. it all feels so clumsy.

@sethmode: Yeah, you’re right. Maybe not favorites, but key players is the more accurate take.

Put me in the camp that thinks the Dany heel turn was poorly done. As several have mentioned, her roasting myriad innocents for no reason doesn't jive with what her character has been literally the rest of the show. I know she's been ruthless at times in her pursuit of her "rightful" claim, but for fuck's sake, it feels like half the show was spent trying to establish how virtuous she is, only to have that completely tossed aside at the end. Seriously, if anyone rewatches the entirety of the series on DVD, this is going to feel even more out of place than it does right now.

I get what the show was going for from a "power corrupts", Targaryen "mad king/queen", "rule by fear" thing, but even for that, it could have been done better. They could have had Cersei and her soldiers actually cluster with the innocents and force Dany to burn them all to take the throne (which I honestly thought was the route they were going to go), or have her own forces start losing the battle and be forced to roast everyone to win. Both of these scenarios would have accomplished the same thing of having Dany reveal her "true character" and willingness to do anything for the throne without such a hamfisted genocidal spree for no goddamn reason.

It didn't even make tactical sense. The bell ringing meant she'd already won, and hell, if she still had bloodlust to satiate, go roast the tower with Cersei in it and/or her surrendered soldiers for good measure. Missandei avenged, throne taken, fear established. Boom. Instead, Dany decides Cersei can wait and just starts torching civvies for funsies. What? Why? This not only makes no sense in the moment and goes against everything she's supposed to be, it feels like a cheap, hasty effort to make her an overvillain so she can seemingly get justifiably usurped at the end. I'll have more respect for the show if she actually holds onto the throne as the most horrific tyrant of all, but it sure feels like she's getting set up for her fall and a "happy ending" that's going to feel very forced.

The episode wasn't all bad, though. I thought Cleganebowl was solid, the Arya scenes were terrific from a cinematography standpoint, Varys' death was appropriately prescient, and the Tyrion/Jaime scene was one of the best of the entire show. I actually appreciated Jaime's ultimate return to Cersei, because that did feel in character for him. Jaime always tried to be better than he was, and we as the audience always wanted him to be, but in the end, he's the guy who'd push a kid off a tower for Cersei and the show never forgot that. The Euron fight was dumb and bad, though. Dude should have just been roasted on his ship, and Jaime was way too able after getting stabbed multiple times. I assume Euron is actually dead (please be dead) and that Jaime/Cersei got crushed, but the show could still pull the "surprise, they're alive" thing, and I sure as shit hope they don't.

This was one of those episodes that felt rushed. GoT's pacing has always been its biggest failing, IMO, and this was one that felt particularly abrupt, and not in a cool "wow, I didn't see that coming!" way, more in a "they're blazing through this huge fucking deal of a main character's complete 180 because this is the penultimate episode in the series" way. It's these times when I think about episodes where so much time was wasted on Bran and the tree people, Sand Snakes, Ramsay torture, etc. I get that some of that was "finish the book, George!"-related, but man. Here we are at the end and they're trying to cram everything in. They're doing an adequate job overall this season IMO, but there's a good argument that a bunch of things needed to be a little more fleshed out than they have been.

They can still salvage things with the last episode, so I'm going to hold off on being too critical just now, but if this turns into basically the third X-Men movie where Jon kills Dany to spare the world of her tyranny, it's going to be a bit of a letdown for me. Maybe they've got something up their sleeve, but it feels like they've left themselves two routes of Dany killing off all her friends and becoming a true despot or the all-too-convenient "gift wrap the throne for Jon" scenario that would seem fairly unearned. I guess I'd prefer the former, but at this point, I'm honestly kind of hoping for a wildcard where say, Tyrion ends up on the throne. Fuck it, he's the best actor and character on the show anyway. #TeamTyrion

I think this season really is a "you get what you put in" kind of deal.

Folk who can't wait for LOTR are getting a live action video game with fewer CGI animals and seem happy

Folk who actually thought Martin had a chance of pulling any of this out of the muck are angry... and blaming the showrunners. I kind of hope that the nonsensical "the last two books are already written" rumors are true just so we can laugh through the next month or two.

As someone who largely fell off the books post-knot and lost interest in the show in the second season before catching up to "see how it all ends" and who still argues that frigging Spartacus did a better job of political intrigue: Holy crap is this is a steaming pile. But it is interesting

As a few have mentioned, the seeds for Mad Dany have been there since at least Book 1.

• Her Dothraki horde are basically your stereotypical barbarians, right down to raping and pillaging. And her idea of being A Good Queen is saving one or two people (and basically turning them in to slaves...).
• And one of those people she totally saved by turning into a sla-servant killed her rapist husband (Martin made it clear that it was not consensual because Martin) and rendered her barren. I guess she got a few dragons out of her suicide though
• I think she torched the shaman dudes, but I forget. She torched a lot of people though
• She Rescued The Slaves. By engaging in a false bargain and murdering a LOT of slave masters and support staff. Yes, I am pulling the "what about the janitors on the Death Star" card, but collateral damage is an important point (and a really bad Ahnold movie).
• With her new army of child soldiers who have been trained to unconditionally follow whoever their master is, she now has an army that "loves her" and she uses them to Liberate desert kingdom 1 (Mereen? I am going to call it Mereen).
• Then we spend two or three books doing nothing but watching her torch any former slavers who get uppity and run a kingdom into the ground because nobody trusts her or wants to deal with her and she won't deal with anyone who doesn't fit her vision of Good. I think this was when Barristan died because of an uprising? And the dude she was banging tried to usurp the chair? And she ended up in a desert after Drogon torched a few kids and got an even bigger horde?

So we are now at the point where the books end. We have a woman who believes everyone she rescues loves her and doesn't realize that she is just another slaver of a noble. She has an army of child soldiers who are so fucked in the head that they can't make a decision as to who to follow and another army of barbarians that would make Conan complain about stereotypes. So let's switch to the show

• She arrives and Asha/Yara totally loves her and isn't just flirting with her because that is what she does to everything
• The Tyrells like her because she might kill Cersei and get revenge. It is safe to assume that Emma Peel informed Dany of all the fun shit the Lannisters have done
• Jon has a rock hard winky for some reason and totally loves an opportunity to escape from any responsibility while getting a little strange. He feels so happy when he is around her. Almost like what having a mother would be like.
• So Dany is awesome. Everyone loves her and she is totally going to stop this crazy zombie horde that her backwards boyfriend is complaining about.
• Oh noes. She lost one of her babies. Let's head North and everyone will hug her and tell her how much they love her and are sorry
• Mother fucking bitch! Her boy toy's sister is a complete a-hole and is annoyed about things like suddenly becoming her vassal and having to feed a much larger army that doesn't know how to fight in the terrain and are wearing desert clothing during a siege. Oh well, at least she has Jon
• Huh, for some reason Jon cringes when she touches him and is spending a lot of time in the bath scrubbing furiously. Weird. Oh well, it is war time!
• Huh... Evidently charging into the darkness and attacking zombies with thin spears was a bad idea. Ah well, at least now all of her armies fit on three boats. She just has to push off the cannons and any defenses. But it is totally worth it because I guess we can bedazzle them?
• Huh. So apparently Jon is her nephew. Fucker seems to not want the throne and that is good. But why doesn't he want to bang anymore? This is totally a win-win. They get to unite Da North and The South AND get some Targaryen incest action.
• So evidently sailing south with the only defenses being an injured dragon and a queen who is too busy making sure everyone can see and love her was a bad idea. One dragon to go!
• Oh Noes! Her favorite slave is now decapitated! And nobody cared or acknowledged how fucked up it was. All them Kings Landing folk must love that Cersei lady.
• Fucker told his bitch of a sister and she told Tyrion who told Varys! Jon said he wouldn't betray her! Doesn't he understand that family comes first? Oh no, what if he loves her?!?!
• Yay, Varys is dead. But why did everyone look so horrified?
• So Jon says he is sorry but he still won't make the beast with two backs and one grandma? He doesn't love Dany either!
• And now Jon and Tyrion, who both betrayed the queen they claim to love, are only engaging in a sack under protest and are insisting that they can end the war themselves? Whatever

Which gets to the moment of stupidity. The strongest claimants to the throne other than Dany have insisted they could end the war with minimal bloodshed. And then they end the war with minimal bloodshed. And all the people on the ground are going to see is that some lady on a dragon set the bay on fire (... again) and burned a bunch of buildings. And her nephew and his buddy who explicitly can't fight (I love every Davos scene, but why was he there?) are on the ground and accepting surrenders and being praised for stopping the raping and pillaging barbarians.

I think it could have done with a lot more character work, but the groundwork was definitely there and folk have been running "What if Dany is a Mad Targ" theories for as long as we have had R+L=J and Secret Targ theories. More on screen work would be nice, but eyebrows isn't that good of an actress and her most logical confidant for this kind of discussion already played the incest card last season.

All that being said: Why the hell DID the bells ring? It is made clear that Cersei still thought she could win until a while after that so she didn't surrender. Jaime was going in the back door (hey-oh!) and Arya and The Hound were still mostly wasting time in favor of getting a POV character in place and giving us fan service (CLEGANE BOWL!!!)

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Ah well. I am still hoping the second most incompetent battlefield commander (Jon) dies taking out Dany or something. Tyrion and Sansa for the win!

And speaking from a "what matters?" standpoint: Jaime's arc has been kind of... bad. And Brienne's also fell apart. I am now seriously wondering if either of them make it much past the most recent Lady Stoneheart scene.

@gundato: I don't know how to quote on my phone, and while I liked all of your post the last paragraph in particular was a real eye-opener for me. Didn't think about that aspect of the books and it totally makes sense with how mishandled they both have been after the show ran out of material.

I have no idea how anyone could call it a Dany heel turn. Like no idea. The show has had maybe, maybe, what, three or four straight hero characters? Like for real in entirety if you think about it. Because despite your instinct to just say "The Starks" Bran and Sansa are long past being hero characters. One is a surrogate for the "asshole magic" that exists in the universe that constantly baffles and leaves characters confused as to greater purposes. Sansa has played second fiddle victim character for so many seasons that while she did get some focus this season still feels like the replacement to Littlefinger as opposed to a hero character in many ways.

The only characters the show presented as like straight up so honorable they'd clearly never do straight "horrible" shit was like mainline Starks, mostly males. Tyrion won the audience over but he's still the Hand of the Queen that just burnt down Kings Landing. Ned wouldn't of ever let that happen. That is the kind of the point isn't it? Ned, Rob, Jon and arguably Arya who despite doing horrible things has pretty much had hero's arcs style plotlines brewing and paying off. Sure other bad characters have like, stepped up in times of need, been about honor at moments etc.

So for me, because Dany isn't in the list of names of characters I look at as what I would call a "babyface hero" she didn't heel turn. She went from tweener to heel. The idea that some didn't see it coming either is pretty shocking to me. I guess perhaps your rooting for her? But the seeds were planted not just in the books the whole arc basically in the show for her was always that her power is impressive on the battlefield but TERRIFYING to the other side.

While her turn wasn't amazingly written, I still think it felt in line with the character, basically an over emotional teenager over-exposed to the ways outside of the Seven Kingdoms so that when she gets there she has no idea how the people are, what their values are. She never attempted once to challenge or grow her perspective of the land she was conquering. She's always been a spoiled child with 3 dragons, giving that spoiled child the virtues of someone just/worthy doesn't change said child proneness to throw tantrums that cause consequences. But the show has always done a good job with Dany at least in terms of the perspective I felt. Even since before she was in Westeros whenever Dany does show her rage, I see lists of comments about how many pseudo evils things she did with asterisks about how people were or weren't innocent.

Like yes, your right the show was presenting a lot of her victims with a grey, or a duality to help justify her actions, the presentation of those actions was never done in a heroic or good light however. You'd rarely see other than Dany's cold reaction more oft than not, a dragon down perspective of her carnage. It was always city level, watch the panic on the victims faces. Watch the crowd as she uses the dragon to burn them. The tension was clearly there, no matter what Dany does it's not her intentions it's her tactics that have always TERRIFIED everyone. One of the key things about her arc before the final seasons isn't just that she gets her followers to see her values, and thus gain their trust/love, it's how much she has to work to gain that after completely scaring everyone with her murdering dragons and temper. As people have pointed out on countless occasions she was moments away from doing the actions she took in Kings landing on other cities countless times in other seasons.

That said, while I don't think the writing or pacing have done enough this season, especially in relations to Dany's final descent into the Mad Queen stuff, it's hard to argue that the actual scene composition and themes haven't been nailed. After pairing our hero characters up for the diversion that was the Night King it was nice to see the only actual remaining hero characters (Jon/Arya) get the perspective we oft got of Dany's other tantrums. Only this time with the whole city they knew, for generations they saw armies fighting for and the people they were trying to save get burned to ashes as they tried to escape in Arya's case and just realized he was fighting on the side of the tyrant and not the hero, in Jons. It was powerful stuff from a shot perspective and they got a lot of mileage out of a little in regards to the acting.

I wasn't as upset about the Jamie arc as most. It's...listen I was one hundred percent on the prophecy bandwagon here. I figured he'd go full circle at some point but that the full circle was not him dying with Cersei in spite of himself, but instead him killing the Mad Queen (Cersei) and his own child to fully redeem himself. I will say that the only reason I wasn't really upset about it because it was basically within character. The more I thought on it the more I realized that the scene with Tyrion freeing Jamie was more about Jamie than it was Tyrion. Tyrion's ramble about the bells set up the Dany not caring moment, but it was Jamie sarcastically musing about Cersei winning even though he knew there was zero chance of it actually happening. That combined with his goodbye speech to Brienne kind of makes me see the arc they were going for better. I less think it's a circle as people say, and him only going back because he's in love with Cersei. In his speech to Breinne he even notes that he's a hateful man too. Honestly it just kind of feels like Jamie thinks he's the villain too...so maybe he's getting what he believes he deserves? He could of lived, been with Brienne and been a half redeemed "hero" but if he was as truly honorable as he has always presented himself wouldn't he realize he deserved his penance for his role in all this? Kind of felt like that to me. On top of the love for Cersei stuff.

Anyway, I'm not going to defend certain things about the show for sure. Euron is a video game villain, and even then he'd barely be a decent one. He's awful for TV. In general the pacing and wrap up has felt more character drama than Game of Thrones, which I sort of expected especially as we saw how things were building post books. But even before, even in the early seasons where you could get lost in the adaptation you saw the cracks at the seems. Aka you saw that this was still a made for TV character drama so that not just liberties, but focus...was often on different things. I hardly think it's been "bad tier wrap up lol" shit that people have been saying though. Especially if you remove the thrones from it and just think of this as any other TV show wrapping up. While it's not nearly as elegant as something like a Breaking Bad, there is a overall theme and tonal consistency to how certain things have wrapped up. If anything the pacing and such have made it feel too clean, as opposed to completely unearned or entirely out of left field. But like, The Night King stuff is a perfect example to me of audience not understanding show, just based on expectations. The Night King dying in an episode, never revealing his intentions and us getting nothing but that battle is entirely and thematically consistent with what Thrones has been/done for ages.

Put yourself in the position of a casual viewer, who had no idea what A Song of Ice and Fire was and go back to that Season 1. In your mind who is the shows main character? Ned Stark. So when they do what they did, you know how many people were livid, angry, how can they do that? Like again be made about the writing, pacing, or general focus of the show all you want. But the decisions being made are entirely, tonally, what this show has always done. Killing Ned wasn't just a "let's kill the perceived main character" it was also, as the show did for seasons, about making those people who clearly saw all the seeds for investment there upset that the investment led to nothing. Kind of like....how they killed the Night King in one episode. Kind of like...how the Lord of Light was built up for seasons and then just mysteriously delayed, helped Bran stall for time and then helped get Arya to kill the Night King. If anything at this point if your a fan of the show, if your sitting there getting so caught up any of the loose narrative webs with the implication that it is somehow going to end with a sense of purpose/meaning...your the one getting rubed. I guess what I'm saying is, bad writing aside, their decision to end threads abruptly or in ways that don't feel satisfying to the fans of a particular character is hardly something new, and if anything has become such an obvious staple that there really is no reason to expect them.

A lot of fun stuff to read in this thread. Thanks to all participaticng...honestly though, the most fun part will be in a year or so when we get the "real talk, GoT last season was actually really great" Twitter threads...some, or maybe most, by those that right now seem to hate it with every fiber of their being.

As disappointed as I was by aspects of the episode, it just amazes me the levels that the hyperbole hate train can reach nowadays.

@devise22: I think the Danny heel turn terminology is rooted in the show openly acknowledging it more than it being something not readily apparent to viewers.

There have LONG been clear warning signs about her potential to go bad.

I really hope Dany beats the stuffing out of Winterfell and reigns supreme.

It would be a fitting end to the series.

@berfunkle: I kind of like the idea of Dany betraying Da North and then getting wiped out by Asha/Yara and some other tertiary character (are any of the Dorne folk still alive?). Hell, maybe her boy toy she left in Mereen (?) will come to wipe her out.

@nutter: For sure, I guess for me it just doesn't seem like for her it wasn't a potential to go bad. She was always a psuedo villain to me. Always. Like her entire angle was "doing horrible things for great causes." If the audience perception of her was that she was a savior then I question the audience, are saviors as ill tempered, manic, and in general poor at making crucial moral decisions under pressure as she always was? Especially when you consider how ham fisted the show has been presenting the lore, specifically laying out that her lineage all do this, they all go mad. It stopped becoming an obvious thing so when it happened in the episode it felt like the focus wasn't on the "shock" of it but on specifically Arya/Jons reaction during it.

I think it's why I get a little annoyed at the idea that her suddenly being okay with genocide is a sudden thing. Her approach since gaining power has always been in go in with mercy on the mind but punish anyone who refuses to listen to her. As she amassed power in a foreign land she more than bent over backwards almost going over the edge several times without advisors/perspective. But she was conquering lands that weren't her enemy. She came in, and the rest of the North help fill in, the Cersei villain role so well that it was clear as day childish ass Dany wouldn't need more than a few emotional pushes to go over the edge here. The unearned part of it was all just pacing, the fact that all we got was some one off lines about Dany not eating or sleeping to show her reactionary state to the events that have unfolded last several episodes I think hurts it, and gives some of the audience that disconnect.

@devise22: It's not that we didn't see it coming. Her "mad queen" turn was always a possibility, and became a probability once she torched Varys. However, the execution of it was shit. She wasn't really forced to make a character-defining choice the way she probably should have been; she just decided to roast innocents after she'd won instead of going after Cersei for....reasons? It felt so forced. Yeah, the show has had plenty of good, "shocking" moments like Ned's death, the Red Wedding, Arya and the Night King, etc. Dany illogically barbecuing civilians doesn't remotely belong in that camp. I wouldn't care as much if the show hadn't spent so much goddamn time trying to establish her character as the savior. Basically, they oversold that savior angle for most of the show, and then had her pull a complete 180 here and oversold her as the villain. Ultimately, her character doesn't really have an arc. The show expected us to root too much for her in the past, and now expects us to hate her because she just acted in complete opposition to what they'd built her up to be. It feels like a lame bait-and-switch, and it fell really flat. JMO.