Edmure is low-key maybe the worst person on the show. Barely even useful as a pawn. Getting shushed by a badass teenage girl was the best ending for him.
Okay. Another thing I just figured out: Why the ending felt almost....sterile to me. And lonely.
At the end of the series, other than Sam and Gilly, I don't think...a single major character is in a romantic relationship. No one even appears to have friends! Or have intimacy of any kind!
This is actually staggering to me – what happened to "the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives"? When Sansa is crowned, there isn't a SINGLE FAMILIAR FACE in the room. Theon is dead, Brienne is in King's Landing, Arya is launching her travel blog, Jon is up north. Who does she....eat breakfast with? Who sits with her when she's sad and exhausted? Every single major character at the end of the series except for Sam is basically alone. I can't get over this. The lack of human intimacy, the way the series ends....I don't know what to do with that!
I’m glad people didn’t get paired off, but I really wanted Sansa and Arya to be together in Winterfell. I’d want my sister with me. But if you love somebody, set them free, I guess?
While they certainly love each other more than they did at the start of the series, I think both Sansa and Arya understand that they need to give each other some freedom. Arya is not Brienne, she's not there to put down roots... at least just yet. I can see Arya eventually coming home for good to serve Sansa and be her hand.
Yes, exactly. I can see Arya going off to explore. But everyone else? The whole point of the Starks is that they stick together. And people are loyal to them because of their honor. And instead, each of them is completely alone, no chance of the Stark line continuing, either, as far as I can tell.
Everyone seemed to lose everything that was actually important.
The cost of war, right? So many of these thousands-of-years houses are virtually wiped out, but someone else was wiped out before them. It feels like even if a wheel is broken, per se, another wheel takes its place.
Man, when the council started up that petty argument about whether or not brothels fit into Sam's "sanitary" reconstruction, that was my reaction. Like, oh, we can't even try—it's just gonna be the same old shit.
I felt like that worked? Like no matter insane shit people go through, they’re still just people muddling through - upheaval can happen quickly but real change takes longer, and probably has some fits and starts. I may be overlaying this show with real life too much, but there were scenes from this season that felt very strongly paralleled to our world.
I was fine with it, in large part because if none of the wars had ever happened, they would have all left home eventually to form their own households or careers anyway and probably would have seldom seen each other. Through all their hardships, now they actually do have some bit of agency over their own lives.
On the other hand, they're at peace with each other and their fates, and each of them has been alone for so long chasing their own fates that I don't think a stable home life being subservient to a sibling would jive well for any of them (least of all Arya). I choose to believe that the threads of their lives will separate them and bring them together many times in the future.
Also, the faces in the throne room at Sansa's coronation are unfamiliar to US, but I bet Sansa knows each of them well.
I sort of liked the fact that basically everyone ended-up unhappy in some way and not completely fulfilled. It seemed melancholic-ly fitting after everything that's happened and everyone who's died
Honestly, I'm genuinely out of sorts today, and this is exactly it. Everything is set right, but Jon says goodbye to his family for the LAST TIME and everyone goes their separate ways.
(i also feel unbelievably bad for brienne, who in addition to mourning jaime is also gonna have to make an alliance with davos, invent feminism, AND put up with bronn and tyrion and sam "well, actually" tarly for the next decade, but that's neither here nor there.)
I’m also wondering why she’s even in King’s Landing. Didn’t she want to be with Sansa? (Arya can take care of herself.) Why didn’t we get a scene of them together?
Maybe Sansa said "can you stay here and take care of my idiot philosophy grad student brother? Because otherwise someone's going to push him out a window again."
Yeah, I see Sansa wanting someone she trusts to take care of Bran. Not that she doesn't trust Tyrion, I think 50% of Tyrion becoming Hand has to be him making it up to the Starks personally (let's not forget Cat thought the dagger used to almost kill Bran was thought to be Tyrion's) and 50% making it up to the entire realm. That said for as much as Sansa trusts Tyrion (were these two ever divorced? annulled?), Sansa also knows Tyrion shifts allegiances so she'd rather have someone in King's Landing who she can 100% rely on.
ALL I WANTED. Honestly, between Sansa getting a crown and her weirwood leaves dress and Jon petting Ghost, I'm actually satisfied! (My satisfaction does not mean this was actually a good ending.)
This is what frustrates me the most. I'm not necessarily bummed out about where any of the characters ended up, but could they have gotten there in a cheesier, hokier way?
This is what drives me nuts. Effectively, this is a happy ending, written by writers who have no idea how to make that work or feel earned. So we're left with everyone disappointed--it's not really happy, but also there's no real emotional payoff, just box-checking, because the foundation wasn't solid enough for some of these moves. We can fill in the gaps, but the writing doesn't stand alone.
Exactly! Where everyone ended up actually works for me, but we needed like 3 more episodes to get there. We spent like 8 minutes (10% of the episode) watching Tyrion walk around the Red Keep before even finding his siblings. And twelve seconds resolving where the eff Arya was going and why.
While I wish that the Starks could just flipping TALK to each other, I loved Sansa’s breezy, “You’re going to be great, Bran, real proud, but I’m outtie!”
YES. I feel like she got the best possible ending for her. She gains what her mother and Robb died fighting for, she rules the North, and she has a family secure enough that yes, they can all be separated but she doesn't have to worry about them being in danger.
If Robin Arryn continues his glow up, I can definitely Sansa divorcing Tyrion and marrying him. And I think Robin Arryn would be happy to drop his last name so Stark continues, he's that kind of a guy.
There is a non-zero chance that after about six months of lugging King Bran up and down the billion stairs of the Red Keep, Ser Podrick is gonna invent the ADA
Outside of the quadriplegia, I'm pretty sure Bran's never going to have children because he's going to spend all his time shoving his brain into, like, a house cat to see what it's like. No sensible woman will put up with that.
Maybe this time someone will insist that the Kingsguard don't have to be 100% celibate? But I don't know, even if they still are, Pod is also so driven by loyalty and service that I'm not surprised he would follow in Ser Brienne (YES) and her footsteps.
Yeah, I was like "Okay, so is Bran's first order of business going to be like 'Well, since we get to start from scatch how about some EFFING ACCESSIBILITY in King's Landing?'" but you're right. He's the king, he'll have people to take care of him however he wants. It's Ser Pod the Golden Dicked that's gonna get tired of if and invent some shit.
I've already complained about this too much on Twitter, but the "Sorry, Tyrion, he didn't mention you at all!" joke really annoyed me. Not only is it a dumb, derivative joke but it makes NO SENSE. Like, if Tyrion was a character with an inflated sense of his own importance in the story, sure, good goof. But dude's been Hand three times! He invented the current political system! He went from condemned and exiled to running the kingdom! He murdered his dad, a very important figure in his own right, and was under suspicion of assassinating the king! I mean, I know Ebrose isn't a historian by trade, but that seems like A BIG OMISSION, my guy.
Amen! Tyrion's often been the guy behind the guy/gal, but he's always been at the center of the action. Leaving him out of history is...a choice.
(Note: I would like to attend a panel discussion of HBO's best guys behind the guys, feat. Stringer Bell, Silvio Dante, Tyrion Lannister, and Gary Walsh.)
And how big was this time jump that the maester satisfactorily captured EVERYTHING that happened since we last saw him and got the book off to King’s Landing? Plus made a copy of it since I doubt he’s giving away the only one?
Yeah, that was a choice. It felt weirdly ominous in that "Shit, history's going to be forgotten again if they keep that up," way and I'd like to think that Bran smirking as he says "That will improve," isn't just about his council affirming his reign together (that "Long may he reign" had to be intentionally scattered and not at all 100% confident for a reason) but all of them working together well and yes, improving on that book.
I totally thought she was going to kill Jaime or Tyrion and wear their face to kill Cersei. Instead she gave up on 7 seasons of training to be an assassin because she had a brief heart-to-heart with the Hound.
All of the magic and prophecy talk was utterly abandoned and it’s infuriating - why did I watch Gendry and Shireen and other people I’m forgetting suffer for no payoff?!?!?!
I wish that was the case, but remember how she was all sassy with Jaquen upon leaving Braavos - 'a girl is Arya Stark and I'm outta here!'. Then she used the faces with the Freys. She was absolutely Arya there, just as she was with Meryn Trant.
Here is the Google doc that I have prepped ready to share with my friends once they've watched the episode tonight. Apologies for the poor grammar and cussing:
Things I liked:
-Sansa
-Ghost
-When Danaerys had dragon wings
-That D died at the beginning of the episode
-The performances from all the actors
The worst things:
-Drogon's grasp of poetic justice and metaphor (also just realised that his name is only one letter from dragon wtf kind of lazy ass naming is that)
-Brothel bantz and that entire scene. We needed literally zero comedic levity in our final episode, all that was required was emotional pay off.
-The entire deciding jury scene but particularly the Sam/democracy L0l2
-Arya going on a gap yah instead and not fulfilling the green eyed prophecy and not using her faces once this entire fucking season. We had to sit through her whole damn apprenticeship for what?
-Tully rocks up from where???
-The transition between Jon killing D and ending up... Where was that actually?? How did they know he killed her? How could they skip over Jon being taken captive? If Greyworm is suddenly filled with this murderous rage that is vindicated and justified by his 😍😍queen then he sure as hell would've killed Jon on the spot. Literally moments before, they were building to that possibility
Other notes
-I don't have a problem with Bran as king in theory but it's not in his character arc and 'why do you think I came all this way' is the worst line in this GD script
-Jon is Targeryan for what??? He had the opportunity to comfort Drogon and ride on that bad boy to claim his rightful throne??? Like sure Jon had been meh the past two seasons and sure there's some resolution in him ending up at the Nights Watch and maybe itd be too easy an ending for him to be king but I'd prefer that over BRAN FLAKES. OK, maybe I do have a problem with Bran as king. We didn't need the perfect king, we needed the right one. Bran gets to be a good king cos he has a good story? Fuck your meta bullshit, give it to Arya if that's your logic.
-l feel like there could've been so much potential for great storylines within the Dothraki for the entirety of GoT actually. Glad that they weren't actually killed off but don't really understand how there are so many of them left
-Not one word from Gendry this episode. Not even a yearning glance at Arya
-Jamie and Cersei were killed by one layer of rocks and would've survived if they'd been a few steps away then?? Ok?? And Tyrion just found them like that?? Ok??
-So everyone's just ok with 6 kingdoms + the north? No questions about how that's going to work in practice and how that goes against their Great New Chosen Ruler deal?
Seriously... for an episode that was 50% clunky pointed commentary about US foreign policy, the racial/colonial troping & imagery in the episode was, as it has been for the rest of the show, very not good
Dany named Drogon named after Khal Drogo. But I fully agree with a lot of what you said. A lot of inconsistencies/plot holes they didn’t have time to flesh out or explain because there wasn’t enough time.
Why do I feel like I'm being fussy to expect basic coherence and logic??? I keep swinging between anger at the sheer stupidity of the solution, (So the North just gets to say Thanks, no thanks? And everyone is cool? And Bran is just cracking jokes about being omniscient? And the Unsullied just leave? And the Dothraki evaporate? etc) and wondering if I'm just meant to let it go. But some basic logic matters! Surely! Even with great performances, amazing cinematography...is it not too much to ask that things just make sense??
Also wtf, Brienne should have been WRITING HER OWN DAMN PAGE.
Yes! Another 'cool' moment that is illogical. Like they wanted her to be leader of the Kingsguard so they stick her there. But they JUST SAID that Sansa is a Queen. So obviously Brienne would be her Queensguard. fuuuuuck
I can kind of appreciate a lot of the scenes if I mentally sketch them onto a much larger timeline with more plot development in between (and Ghostie getting petpets was most of what I needed this episode to do). But two things I can't get over or retcon to my satisfaction: 1) How did anyone in that dragon pit council have any leverage over the Unsullied and Dothraki to tell them what they can and can't do with their prisoners?? 2) And the Iron Islands and Dorne are just totally cool with the North getting to go its own way, without making their own equally valid and historically justified bids for independence??
Every time I see people in shows writing with quill and ink like that and *not* sanding it to set the ink, I yell, "THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!" I...may hae issues.
Good. He didn’t deserve all that. She did her diligence in writing it; let them work for that lovely spin she gave him when she had every right to burn book him.
Let’s hear it for unappreciated Meera Reed, please, who never even got a thank you or a return appearance. (RIP tinfoil theories that made her Jon’s twin.)
House Reed--tragic victim of the cowardly decision to downplay or fully cut out all of the mysterious magic elements of the story (warging, weirwoods, greensight, old gods, R'hllor, prophecies, Faceless Men, floating castle in a mysterious untraversable bog)
So the political arrangement they end up with is massively unstable, right? Bran is completely checked out, Bronn is one of the most powerful people in the realm despite being massively unqualified and having no base of support, and if the North has seceded (and taken their armies with them), other kingdoms will want to do the same. But I guess the credits rolled before war breaks out again.
Not to mention that Bran having no heir is gonna lead to a succession crisis. The next time they hold that council, every powerful family is gonna be angling to get themselves on the throne and establish a new dynasty. And the Iron Islands (and maybe Dorne and even the Vale) are 100% going to secede, which will turn into a whole thing. Honestly, this was the quickest about face from "politics are inherently messy and cyclical" to "but maybe everyone will just do the right thing!" since the BSG finale.
Electing a king is an improvement over the old system, as it provides a once-in-a-generation chance to course correct from a shitty heir. But you still have a lot of the same problems.
The succession of the North does leave the door open for other kingdoms to leave and that for sure could happen, but it means that the remaining kingdoms are a coalition of the willing so perhaps there will be less resentment and unrest, at least in the short term.
I sort of assumed that the King and Three-Eyed Raven are now the same role, so Bran will eventually pass it on to the person of his choosing the way the previous TER did.
the inconsistent standards are what drove me nuts – who gets offered a chance for redemption and when and why. jon, tormund, tyrion, jaime, all of these white dudes did TERRIBLE things and committed awful crimes, and learned and were forgiven. and daenerys comparatively gets condemned – not even for the war crimes but for having the audacity to say she unambiguously stands by her own decision-making??
like, don't you get the sense that if when jon had confronted her in the throne room, she had cried, and said "yes, you're right, this was awful, what i've done just now is awful," he would have IMMEDIATELY forgiven her and....she would have gone on to rule????
a million and one things drove me crazy about this but the hypocrisy here is what i am currently stuck on. also can't believe "the scene where tyrion meticulously tucks in chairs" is a real thing that happened and not just something the internet made up as a joke.
Oh, and I never bought that Dany was Jon's true love. Obviously she's supposed to be, but they just had so little interaction. I could see her getting interested in him, but I never really believed he loved her as deeply as he loved Ygritte. And now, obviously, I was supposed to.
Yeah, I have absolutely no problem believing my dude will bounce right back with a nice woman among the Free Folk, get married, have a clutch of nice Free children, and be a crotchety old man north of the Wall. Because I really can't imagine he will miss Dany.
HARD AGREE. Although I guess when the actors marry in real life, it's hard to sell the chemistry with someone else! Kit and Rose's chemistry just jumped off the screen.
Ahhh my comment got all wonky. I definitely though Jaime was going to have made it somehow (partly because of the way the actors were behaving on social media which was not in line with how other actors have departed the show), Burbank I’m fine that he’s dead. HOWEVER, I wish that Tyrion had seen the hand and tried to dig it up, only to see that it was no longer attached to Jaime. No bodies to say goodbye to, just the last bits of the Lannisters being a Hand with a hand.
So Jon's true parentage as Aegon Targaryen was just a red herring? What?
Why did Tyrion have to work to convince Jon that something had gone wrong with Dany? Stupid.
I don't like having the Stark children separated forever.
I read a prediction that it would end with Bran on the throne and Jon in the North (based on Tolkien's influence on GRRM) and I can accept that, but the execution was terrible. The hero's arc should involve Jon gaining *something* of value at the end. He looked miserable.
That part where Tyrion was prisoner and Jon was defending Dany saying, "But she's our queeeeeeen" was absolutely bonkers. So much for "he's stupid but knows right from wrong"
Jon getting to range in a White Walker-free North with Ghost by his side and a wall between him and the politics of the Westerosi kingdoms is pretty much the best outcome his character could have dreamed up for himself. I just saw relief on his face. My bet for the books is that GRRM has the characters wind up in the places the show did, but that Jon takes the throne, sends away the Unsullied and Dothraki, convenes the council of lords, and fucks off to the North of his own accord.
Oh, it would have been completely different if he'd been shown making any choice for himself. But as he got to the Night Watch I thought "He hates it here". They needed to make the fact that this was everyone's (Sansa's, anyone's) secret plan on his behalf, and that it was his choice, more explicit. I can write that story in my head, but I shouldn't need to.
Maybe it was just me and my unwriterly preference for happy endings (or for characters to end up happy, I should say), but I think Jon was fine with it. I agree that he was unhappy at first, but in the last shot of his face, I saw his expression go from quiet misery to a peaceful acceptance. He was back where he started, in the situation to which he had resigned himself at the start of the show: wifeless, childless, basically exiled - but he found himself and more in the wildling wilderness, so it makes sense to me that it’s where he ended his story. I don’t think he ever wants to fight and kill again, and with the Walkers gone and the wildlings ready to be left alone, Castle Black is maybe the best place in Westeros to live a relatively quiet life.
Also really appreciate that the reluctant king does not actually become king in this series. It's the one subversion of trope that Benioff and Weiss didn't manage to mangle.
I'm dead sure that this is not GRRM's actual ending. If Bran is the Westerosi Giver, he should end up in The Citadel with all the knowledge. But since we spent 20 mins on the Maesters, can't have that work out. It makes no political sense to put Bran on the throne.
I'm definitely pleased that I correctly predicted the end of the Iron Throne, though.
Jon's parentage not paying off worked for me, because at least that reinforced the (sporadic) theme that things like law and prophecy are weak in the face of political reality.
My most charitable read is that Jon being a Targaryen is the only reason why Drogon didn’t fry him. But yeah, weird that literally no one brought it up at all in that council meeting. It reminded me of that Office scene with the 5 Families that Andy/Kevin got all hyped for.
Yea, but he was like 15 feet away from a MELTING IRON THRONE and didn't even have his eyebrows singed off? I am not a dragonfire expert, but that seems unrealistic...
Actually, I think he likes being among the Free Folk, as they’re the only people in Westeros who genuinely don’t care that he’s Ned Stark’s bastard or Rhaegar Targaryen’s lawful son. The Wildlings genuinely don’t care, which must be quite refreshing for him.
Bran is an omniscient, long-lived, non-human who can invade people’s bodies, who pushed the Dany/Jon conflict leading to mass murder, hear death, and his kingship, and who has constantly-wrong Tyrion and BRONN on his council. This is actually a hellish dystopian nightmare!
I guess I appreciate that Robin Arryn kept his mom’s titty cut-out tradition alive, though.
So the two most out of place scenes this season—Bronn gets crossbow from Cersei; Bronn appears in winterfell and threatens Lannister bros—only existed so they’d have him on the small council...for some reason?
Bronn is what Littlefinger aspired to be. Chaos is a ladder and in times of unrest, there is always some scheming jerk who gets himself into power and in like 2-3 generations that family is just as noble as everyone else.
i'm still not over the acting choices jerome flynn made when bronn appeared in winterfell for one second, specifically the choice to have bronn snort a full mountain of cocaine immediately before barging into that unguarded tavern
Also, if we're getting cheesy endings, if should have ended with Jon coming upon horse bound Benjen Stark in woods, who says "I've waited a long time for you, nephew." AND THEN THEY SAUNTER OFF TOGETHER!
My other dream was for Melisandre to rip off her face during the battle of Winterfell and reveal to Arya that she's actually JAQEN HAGAR and they take down the army the dead TOGETHER!
I did really enjoy all the parallels at the end with the beginnings of other characters arcs - Jon's queenslaying of Dany mirroring Jamie's kingslaying of Aerys and how that's defining moment for them; Aemon being in the Night's Watch as one of the last Targaryans and now so is Jon - and the fact that basically we've returned to a softened version of the status quo from season 1 politically.
I'm very happy about the Queen in the North and the fact that Snow and Ghost are back together. I still feel incomplete, and always will, because Arya and Nymeria never reunited. Why couldn't Nymeria have been used instead of that inexplicable white horse that showed up in the penultimate episode (and then never got explained ever again)? I found out I'm not alone in my distress about Nymeria - there exists a great deal of fanfic about Nymeria Stark and her band of wolves. I will light a candle and pray that GRRM's version A) will come out and rectify these things and B) include a reunion. For real: when I first read the books back in the day, I got hooked thinking that this was a show about dogs. After all, getting the pups was like the first major Stark plot-point.
Also it is SO annoying that Brienne was looking through the book about Jaime rather than looking at a page about how she is a badass knight. Also she was the only one on that council who wasn’t Master of anything other than “chicks never want us to have fun brothels amirite lads”
The book records the lives of those who have taken on the mantle of the Kingsguard, so her page would have just started and someone else would record her actions
ANOTHER THING: why did the Watch still exist. what the FUCK are they watching for. Why would the wildlings go back past the Wall anyway. Didnt the entire conflict there arise because they wanted to live on the land south of the Wall, and doesnt Sansa deliberately say thousands of Northern men die? UGH the incoherence of the plot drove me mad
I think they wanted to be south to avoid the Night King but now that he is gone they want to remain free and avoid pledging to loyalty to a king so they're going back north. Plus spring was coming so the "long winter" was over and they could return to their preferred way of life.
re nights watch and John, I think the implication is that he has joined the free folk and will be living with them from now on as a quasi king beyond the wall. If we think about it, his happiest times was when he was living with them and Yigritte, so maybe he wanted to go back and continue to be a bridge between the free folk and the Queen in the North?
I had the impression that the Night's Watch doesn't *really* exist anymore, that it was a convenient excuse to get Jon passage to the North without being killed by the Unsullied.
Kind of wish they'd actually shown that rather than making us struggle to connect the dots!
But like ... Unsullied had enough leverage to demand Jon's exile but not enough to do anything besides stand aside and say "yeah OK" after Tyrion's Reading-Rainbow-ass speech and accept Bran as king and TYRION, their PRISONER, as his hand?
that is what I understood as well -- send him north and then he gets basically what he wanted, to join the free folk and live without weird politics and being forced to led men to war. He can be a quasi leader (or king beyond the wall) without ever having the same pressures that real kings have that he detests. And honestly he never wanted a big leadership role, and the free folk don't do big leaders so the more I think about it, the better his ending works.
Tyrion does mention that the world will always need a place for bastards and broken men, which I mean, it can kind of fill that role, even if it's just a retreat for the boys to hang out and hunt
Well, the ice zombies are dead? So the Wildlings can live above the wall in relative peace now, I guess. The Watch might be there to keep the Wildlings from getting any territorial ambitions about the land below the wall, or what's left of the wall. I got the sense that Northerner/Wildling relations were not good.
What was with the weird cutaways this season? When Bran warged at the Battle of Blackwater, and we saw the raven flying -- that paid off into nothing. And when Tyrion was by the fire at Winterfell and asked Bran to tell him his story -- nothing was revealed that Tyriod could have used at some point. There were other times like this, I just can't think of them. The writing used to pay us back -- pat us on the shoulder for watching at paying attention to these things. It all felt useless and weird.
I dont understand why they kept mentioning food stocks as an issue. Another thing pushed to our attention only to mean....nothing. Winter literally lasted a month.
I'm just glad the show is done now, mostly? It is my secret hope that GRRM announces the publishing of the next book today. Everything that happened this season and last feels like a rough outline or someone who was maybe a little drunk when they watched the good version of the show telling you how it happened.
It felt exactly like bullet points. Dany: Goes Mad King/Hitler. Arya: Becomes Christopher Columbus. Sansa: Queen in the North. Bran: ruler. Jon: shrug emoji.
Still peeved that not only does Jon kill Dany, but that it's sneaky betrayal intimate partner murder, instead of some semblance of justice, even a show trial would be better than true love's murder/kiss.
WEIRDLY, i disagree? Like, I'm a big ol' wuss, I would rather be stabbed quickly in the arms of my lover saying comforting things to me. But I do totally get it.
When Tyrion was sitting in that makeshift prison contemplating being burned alive, I got the willies thinking about the same - given a choice between gruesome execution and surprise fast murder, I’d much rather not see it coming.
I initially wasn't sure what I thought about fans saying the end of Daenerys' arc (7.5 seasons of a flawed but no-more-awful-than-anyone-else-in-GoT human followed by thirty minutes of 'INSTANT DRAGON HITLER who must get stabbinated by the heroic white dude For The Good of the Realm') was inescapably misogynistic. Then certain parts of Twitter lit up with 'lolilol1 this is exactly like all SJWs ever dude awesome' and I was just done. So done. I wasn't ever a huge Dany stan during the run of the show but I sure am now.
Also what this show did to the dragons was atrocious and I hope Drogon flew away and found some nice people in Essos to bring him goats occasionally :'(
I’m choosing to believe that Drogon is taking her body back to Valyria via some sort of dragon homing sense, and he’ll live there happily with the other dragons until they have a large enough army to burninate the people and take back the land.
Okay if I am being *extremely generous* to the writers, I really like Drogon bringing her body back to Essos as a symbol that no matter how much she thought Westeros was her home and her birthright, she still grew up in Essos and could never have understood enough about Westeros to rule it. Her dragon knew it and she, on some level that she couldn't admit to herself, probably also knew it too. But also they gave us NO INFORMATION ON WHICH TO DRAW ANY CONCLUSIONS so fuck 'em.
I enjoyed the scene with King Bran ditching the counsel to warg out, implying that peacetime governing is super-boring to everyone except a handful of responsible weirdos who actually like it.
I have very practical questions, like who exactly there is left to rule who wasn’t slaughtered at Winterfell or Kings Landing (since both Cersei and Jon called their banners, presumably leaving nothing but women and children behind... who were also slaughtered if they sought refuge at the strongholds which we’ve established most did). They decided to keep ruling from the ruins of King’s Landing as the capital? Ok, but who cleared the streets of the MILLION burned bodies? Who exactly is rebuilding the fleet/ city, let alone using the brothels? (Again, all fighting age men in the realm were pretty much conscripted to these two battles). If life has been continuing as normal outside the two locations, then how do they feel about their fates being decided by a Council of POV characters? Where are the food stocks coming from? Why on earth would a vengeful Grey Worm take the entire army and just... sail away instead of pursuing his ‘justice’ when again, he has most of the remaining military might around at his disposal? Sigh...
Y’know, having a character who hates Cersei Lannister and the Lannister family SO MUCH that they want something more than simple defeat and move on to vengeance and general destruction would make a lot more sense if it was Arya, or really any of the Starks. But instead, it’s Daenarys, who… basically never interacted with Cersei? The Lannisters weren’t even responsible for overthrowing the Targaryens, that was Robert Baratheon and THE STARKS, who she was (basically) fine with.
Yeah other than blowing up the Sept - what did Cersei actually do that made her a tyrant? Dany's only example was that she used innocents as human shields....shields she needed...to protect herself from Dany.
At this point Westeros is so hilariously small that Jon got tried by a jury of his siblings, siblings' uncle and cousin, various people who had sworn loyalty to him or Sansa, his best friend, a pirate who hates him but is also his foster brother's sister, and some extras, and it's like yeah those are the surviving registered voters, what are you gonna do
But also, what the hell leverage did any of those people have over the Unsullied and Dothraki to make themselves the deciders of Jon's fate? Sure, there's an army of northmen outside the gates, but if Grey Worm killed Jon (which would have made the most sense based on character arc) the northmen could have...sacked King's Landing?
who were the unnamed lords at the council? Are they supposed to be like the only remaining living lords? Why didn’t Dorne also claim independence? Have the maesters not discovered the earth is round? No one has sailed west?!
“Bran has the best story” did make me lol. Like, the show runners themselves didn’t agree, guys. They’ve clearly had no interest in Bran from the beginning, although now we at least know why they kept him around.
Yeah, it’s particularly hard to accept when the showrunners themselves thought Bran was so boring that they literally left him off the show for an entire season!
EDMURE HAS NO REASON TO BE ALIVE BUT HE COULD STILL GET IT
Edmure is low-key maybe the worst person on the show. Barely even useful as a pawn. Getting shushed by a badass teenage girl was the best ending for him.
Thank goodness I'm not the only one! I mean he's trash but he's cute trash idk sue me
I have a severe crush on that actor. Why does he always play trash people?
Hellll yeah he could.
Okay. Another thing I just figured out: Why the ending felt almost....sterile to me. And lonely.
At the end of the series, other than Sam and Gilly, I don't think...a single major character is in a romantic relationship. No one even appears to have friends! Or have intimacy of any kind!
This is actually staggering to me – what happened to "the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives"? When Sansa is crowned, there isn't a SINGLE FAMILIAR FACE in the room. Theon is dead, Brienne is in King's Landing, Arya is launching her travel blog, Jon is up north. Who does she....eat breakfast with? Who sits with her when she's sad and exhausted? Every single major character at the end of the series except for Sam is basically alone. I can't get over this. The lack of human intimacy, the way the series ends....I don't know what to do with that!
I’m glad people didn’t get paired off, but I really wanted Sansa and Arya to be together in Winterfell. I’d want my sister with me. But if you love somebody, set them free, I guess?
I think their relationship is best served with some distance!
While they certainly love each other more than they did at the start of the series, I think both Sansa and Arya understand that they need to give each other some freedom. Arya is not Brienne, she's not there to put down roots... at least just yet. I can see Arya eventually coming home for good to serve Sansa and be her hand.
Again, I need the fic
Yes, exactly. I can see Arya going off to explore. But everyone else? The whole point of the Starks is that they stick together. And people are loyal to them because of their honor. And instead, each of them is completely alone, no chance of the Stark line continuing, either, as far as I can tell.
Everyone seemed to lose everything that was actually important.
I’m pretending that Sansa will require anyone she chooses to marry and procreate with to take the Stark name.
The cost of war, right? So many of these thousands-of-years houses are virtually wiped out, but someone else was wiped out before them. It feels like even if a wheel is broken, per se, another wheel takes its place.
Man, when the council started up that petty argument about whether or not brothels fit into Sam's "sanitary" reconstruction, that was my reaction. Like, oh, we can't even try—it's just gonna be the same old shit.
I felt like that worked? Like no matter insane shit people go through, they’re still just people muddling through - upheaval can happen quickly but real change takes longer, and probably has some fits and starts. I may be overlaying this show with real life too much, but there were scenes from this season that felt very strongly paralleled to our world.
I was fine with it, in large part because if none of the wars had ever happened, they would have all left home eventually to form their own households or careers anyway and probably would have seldom seen each other. Through all their hardships, now they actually do have some bit of agency over their own lives.
On the other hand, they're at peace with each other and their fates, and each of them has been alone for so long chasing their own fates that I don't think a stable home life being subservient to a sibling would jive well for any of them (least of all Arya). I choose to believe that the threads of their lives will separate them and bring them together many times in the future.
Also, the faces in the throne room at Sansa's coronation are unfamiliar to US, but I bet Sansa knows each of them well.
I sort of liked the fact that basically everyone ended-up unhappy in some way and not completely fulfilled. It seemed melancholic-ly fitting after everything that's happened and everyone who's died
Honestly, I'm genuinely out of sorts today, and this is exactly it. Everything is set right, but Jon says goodbye to his family for the LAST TIME and everyone goes their separate ways.
Tormund and Jon get to hang out! And Tyrion and his counsel buddies will bicker a lot, but ultimately be very close. (But you're mostly right.)
The books are definitely better about showing relationships than the show, so I'm hoping we get more of this with Sansa in the books
Totally agree with this comment. And it's not even clear what Sam's status is: how is he now a maester when he has Gilly, little Sam, and a newborn?
(i also feel unbelievably bad for brienne, who in addition to mourning jaime is also gonna have to make an alliance with davos, invent feminism, AND put up with bronn and tyrion and sam "well, actually" tarly for the next decade, but that's neither here nor there.)
I’m also wondering why she’s even in King’s Landing. Didn’t she want to be with Sansa? (Arya can take care of herself.) Why didn’t we get a scene of them together?
Maybe Sansa said "can you stay here and take care of my idiot philosophy grad student brother? Because otherwise someone's going to push him out a window again."
Yeah, I see Sansa wanting someone she trusts to take care of Bran. Not that she doesn't trust Tyrion, I think 50% of Tyrion becoming Hand has to be him making it up to the Starks personally (let's not forget Cat thought the dagger used to almost kill Bran was thought to be Tyrion's) and 50% making it up to the entire realm. That said for as much as Sansa trusts Tyrion (were these two ever divorced? annulled?), Sansa also knows Tyrion shifts allegiances so she'd rather have someone in King's Landing who she can 100% rely on.
SANSA HIVE ROLL CALL
"Well Sansa finally has a crown so I can't say they didn't give me what I wanted" - me, last night, trying to find the silver lining.
ALL I WANTED. Honestly, between Sansa getting a crown and her weirwood leaves dress and Jon petting Ghost, I'm actually satisfied! (My satisfaction does not mean this was actually a good ending.)
This is what frustrates me the most. I'm not necessarily bummed out about where any of the characters ended up, but could they have gotten there in a cheesier, hokier way?
This is what drives me nuts. Effectively, this is a happy ending, written by writers who have no idea how to make that work or feel earned. So we're left with everyone disappointed--it's not really happy, but also there's no real emotional payoff, just box-checking, because the foundation wasn't solid enough for some of these moves. We can fill in the gaps, but the writing doesn't stand alone.
Exactly! Where everyone ended up actually works for me, but we needed like 3 more episodes to get there. We spent like 8 minutes (10% of the episode) watching Tyrion walk around the Red Keep before even finding his siblings. And twelve seconds resolving where the eff Arya was going and why.
Exactly! So much wasted time in this episode, so many unearned resolutions.
Thank you. This is also my opinion.
QUEEEEEEEN. That crown and her hair and dress just absolutely murdered me, I’m hers 4ever 5ever
*draws sword* The Queen in the North!
I love this thread noting the styling parallels between the Queen in the North and the 'Virgin' Queen. https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/1130318538990870529
QUEEN IN THE FUCKING NORTH
I just changed my twitter bio to acknowledge the Queen in the North lol
While I wish that the Starks could just flipping TALK to each other, I loved Sansa’s breezy, “You’re going to be great, Bran, real proud, but I’m outtie!”
YES. I feel like she got the best possible ending for her. She gains what her mother and Robb died fighting for, she rules the North, and she has a family secure enough that yes, they can all be separated but she doesn't have to worry about them being in danger.
If Robin Arryn continues his glow up, I can definitely Sansa divorcing Tyrion and marrying him. And I think Robin Arryn would be happy to drop his last name so Stark continues, he's that kind of a guy.
Queen in the North, 4ever
The Queen in the North.
The Queen in the North!
Queen in the North!
There is a non-zero chance that after about six months of lugging King Bran up and down the billion stairs of the Red Keep, Ser Podrick is gonna invent the ADA
Bran would have done the ADA bit himself but he's too busy warging into armadillos and other non-native animals
I would love to watch like a very Sword in the Stone/Once and Future King version of Bran just trying out being different animals.
Outside of the quadriplegia, I'm pretty sure Bran's never going to have children because he's going to spend all his time shoving his brain into, like, a house cat to see what it's like. No sensible woman will put up with that.
It is UPSETTING that Ser Podrick "To Know Me is to Know Pleasure" Payne is now a sworn celibate member of the Kingsguard, come ON
pod really deserved a functioning narrative!
Maybe this time someone will insist that the Kingsguard don't have to be 100% celibate? But I don't know, even if they still are, Pod is also so driven by loyalty and service that I'm not surprised he would follow in Ser Brienne (YES) and her footsteps.
Yeah, I was like "Okay, so is Bran's first order of business going to be like 'Well, since we get to start from scatch how about some EFFING ACCESSIBILITY in King's Landing?'" but you're right. He's the king, he'll have people to take care of him however he wants. It's Ser Pod the Golden Dicked that's gonna get tired of if and invent some shit.
They had to rebuild King's Landing from the ground up, like...why not put in some night's watch-style elevators
"invent the ADA" I'm dying... (assuming you're an HR person - well done)
I've already complained about this too much on Twitter, but the "Sorry, Tyrion, he didn't mention you at all!" joke really annoyed me. Not only is it a dumb, derivative joke but it makes NO SENSE. Like, if Tyrion was a character with an inflated sense of his own importance in the story, sure, good goof. But dude's been Hand three times! He invented the current political system! He went from condemned and exiled to running the kingdom! He murdered his dad, a very important figure in his own right, and was under suspicion of assassinating the king! I mean, I know Ebrose isn't a historian by trade, but that seems like A BIG OMISSION, my guy.
Amen! Tyrion's often been the guy behind the guy/gal, but he's always been at the center of the action. Leaving him out of history is...a choice.
(Note: I would like to attend a panel discussion of HBO's best guys behind the guys, feat. Stringer Bell, Silvio Dante, Tyrion Lannister, and Gary Walsh.)
And how big was this time jump that the maester satisfactorily captured EVERYTHING that happened since we last saw him and got the book off to King’s Landing? Plus made a copy of it since I doubt he’s giving away the only one?
HE’S A LANNISTER—just by being Tywin’s son, he’s important
I agree so hard! It must have been a really terrible book, if he left Tyrion out. He's in basically every important plot.
Could't agree more!
Yeah, that was a choice. It felt weirdly ominous in that "Shit, history's going to be forgotten again if they keep that up," way and I'd like to think that Bran smirking as he says "That will improve," isn't just about his council affirming his reign together (that "Long may he reign" had to be intentionally scattered and not at all 100% confident for a reason) but all of them working together well and yes, improving on that book.
Loose ends: I'll start. Why did Arya never get to use her bag o' faces? Checkov would not have approved. Bag o' faces should have gone off.
This show was a full Checkhov’s gun rack
I totally thought she was going to kill Jaime or Tyrion and wear their face to kill Cersei. Instead she gave up on 7 seasons of training to be an assassin because she had a brief heart-to-heart with the Hound.
All of the magic and prophecy talk was utterly abandoned and it’s infuriating - why did I watch Gendry and Shireen and other people I’m forgetting suffer for no payoff?!?!?!
I think it’s because once she reclaimed her identity coming home to Winterfell, they wouldn’t work anymore. They only work if you are “no one”
I wish that was the case, but remember how she was all sassy with Jaquen upon leaving Braavos - 'a girl is Arya Stark and I'm outta here!'. Then she used the faces with the Freys. She was absolutely Arya there, just as she was with Meryn Trant.
Absolutely. I loved when she got rid of the Freys but it felt like they forgot this superpower in S8.
I am thoroughly disappointed that no faces came off. Dis.App.oint.ed
Drogon took the body and presumably no one saw, so did Jon rat himself out about killing Dany? He’s forever the worst.
*Enter Unsullied to Throne Room where Jon is standing*
Unsullied: Yo, where's Dany? Did she take Drogon out for a ride?
Jon: I MURDERED HER! WITH MY DAGGER!
Unsullied: Oh. Well where's her body? And why is there no evidence? Where did the dagger go?
Jon: I KISSED HER DEEPLY AND THEN PLUNGED MY DAGGER INTO HER BREAST AND WATCHED HER DIE
Unsullied: I mean we don't have a body and she tends to wander off so maybe we'll just wait and see?
Jon: I HAVE BEEN LIVING IN ANGUISH SINCE IT HAPPENED 45 SECONDS AGO. I AM NOW YOUR PRISONER.
Totally. Him with his continuous little scrunchy "I live for honesty" face, even when stabbing Dani.
He did not want to be king THAT BADLY
He OBVIOUSLY did because he is a WUSS and DUMB.
You KNOW he did tho
Here is the Google doc that I have prepped ready to share with my friends once they've watched the episode tonight. Apologies for the poor grammar and cussing:
Things I liked:
-Sansa
-Ghost
-When Danaerys had dragon wings
-That D died at the beginning of the episode
-The performances from all the actors
The worst things:
-Drogon's grasp of poetic justice and metaphor (also just realised that his name is only one letter from dragon wtf kind of lazy ass naming is that)
-Brothel bantz and that entire scene. We needed literally zero comedic levity in our final episode, all that was required was emotional pay off.
-The entire deciding jury scene but particularly the Sam/democracy L0l2
-Arya going on a gap yah instead and not fulfilling the green eyed prophecy and not using her faces once this entire fucking season. We had to sit through her whole damn apprenticeship for what?
-Tully rocks up from where???
-The transition between Jon killing D and ending up... Where was that actually?? How did they know he killed her? How could they skip over Jon being taken captive? If Greyworm is suddenly filled with this murderous rage that is vindicated and justified by his 😍😍queen then he sure as hell would've killed Jon on the spot. Literally moments before, they were building to that possibility
Other notes
-I don't have a problem with Bran as king in theory but it's not in his character arc and 'why do you think I came all this way' is the worst line in this GD script
-Jon is Targeryan for what??? He had the opportunity to comfort Drogon and ride on that bad boy to claim his rightful throne??? Like sure Jon had been meh the past two seasons and sure there's some resolution in him ending up at the Nights Watch and maybe itd be too easy an ending for him to be king but I'd prefer that over BRAN FLAKES. OK, maybe I do have a problem with Bran as king. We didn't need the perfect king, we needed the right one. Bran gets to be a good king cos he has a good story? Fuck your meta bullshit, give it to Arya if that's your logic.
-l feel like there could've been so much potential for great storylines within the Dothraki for the entirety of GoT actually. Glad that they weren't actually killed off but don't really understand how there are so many of them left
-Not one word from Gendry this episode. Not even a yearning glance at Arya
-Jamie and Cersei were killed by one layer of rocks and would've survived if they'd been a few steps away then?? Ok?? And Tyrion just found them like that?? Ok??
-So everyone's just ok with 6 kingdoms + the north? No questions about how that's going to work in practice and how that goes against their Great New Chosen Ruler deal?
"Arya going on gap yah" is the best description of her Christopher Columbusing her ass right off the side of the planet.
Seriously... for an episode that was 50% clunky pointed commentary about US foreign policy, the racial/colonial troping & imagery in the episode was, as it has been for the rest of the show, very not good
Dany named Drogon named after Khal Drogo. But I fully agree with a lot of what you said. A lot of inconsistencies/plot holes they didn’t have time to flesh out or explain because there wasn’t enough time.
Why do I feel like I'm being fussy to expect basic coherence and logic??? I keep swinging between anger at the sheer stupidity of the solution, (So the North just gets to say Thanks, no thanks? And everyone is cool? And Bran is just cracking jokes about being omniscient? And the Unsullied just leave? And the Dothraki evaporate? etc) and wondering if I'm just meant to let it go. But some basic logic matters! Surely! Even with great performances, amazing cinematography...is it not too much to ask that things just make sense??
Also wtf, Brienne should have been WRITING HER OWN DAMN PAGE.
Brienne should have been in the North, right?? She is pledged to Sansa or whatever but now she has to protect… Bran??
Yes! Another 'cool' moment that is illogical. Like they wanted her to be leader of the Kingsguard so they stick her there. But they JUST SAID that Sansa is a Queen. So obviously Brienne would be her Queensguard. fuuuuuck
Her writing his page was such nonsense. Like they're trying to absolve themselves from treating her that way: 'She shows us she's not mad he left!'
Tbh it gave us the best meme of the season so I'm not toooo mad. The one where she's filling in the Burn Book. https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/bqpgfz/jaime_lannister_is_the_nastiest_skank_bitch_ive/
This one: "I've seen fingers longer"
Megan, thanks for that! God, I love the fans more than the writers.
mmm-hmmm
Arya Stark has become Reepicheep
I can kind of appreciate a lot of the scenes if I mentally sketch them onto a much larger timeline with more plot development in between (and Ghostie getting petpets was most of what I needed this episode to do). But two things I can't get over or retcon to my satisfaction: 1) How did anyone in that dragon pit council have any leverage over the Unsullied and Dothraki to tell them what they can and can't do with their prisoners?? 2) And the Iron Islands and Dorne are just totally cool with the North getting to go its own way, without making their own equally valid and historically justified bids for independence??
Same!!! Team Shoulda Made a Regular-Sized Season
Y'all, I really don't think the vellum would have dried as fast as they showed.
Every time I see people in shows writing with quill and ink like that and *not* sanding it to set the ink, I yell, "THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!" I...may hae issues.
Seriously, throwing in some blotter paper would have been so simple.
Yes! I was like “whoa, you have to blot before you turn the page!”
YES that whole time i was like YOU JUST SMEARED ALL THAT INK
OMG, we did some movie yelling at that Brienne bookslam!
Good. He didn’t deserve all that. She did her diligence in writing it; let them work for that lovely spin she gave him when she had every right to burn book him.
Let’s hear it for unappreciated Meera Reed, please, who never even got a thank you or a return appearance. (RIP tinfoil theories that made her Jon’s twin.)
House Reed--tragic victim of the cowardly decision to downplay or fully cut out all of the mysterious magic elements of the story (warging, weirwoods, greensight, old gods, R'hllor, prophecies, Faceless Men, floating castle in a mysterious untraversable bog)
Melisandre: “I am a sorceress with legit powers, and the dark god I serve is demonstrably real. Here, have great deal of proof.”
The people of Westeros: “Hmm. Weird. Go away”
So the political arrangement they end up with is massively unstable, right? Bran is completely checked out, Bronn is one of the most powerful people in the realm despite being massively unqualified and having no base of support, and if the North has seceded (and taken their armies with them), other kingdoms will want to do the same. But I guess the credits rolled before war breaks out again.
Not to mention that Bran having no heir is gonna lead to a succession crisis. The next time they hold that council, every powerful family is gonna be angling to get themselves on the throne and establish a new dynasty. And the Iron Islands (and maybe Dorne and even the Vale) are 100% going to secede, which will turn into a whole thing. Honestly, this was the quickest about face from "politics are inherently messy and cyclical" to "but maybe everyone will just do the right thing!" since the BSG finale.
Electing a king is an improvement over the old system, as it provides a once-in-a-generation chance to course correct from a shitty heir. But you still have a lot of the same problems.
The succession of the North does leave the door open for other kingdoms to leave and that for sure could happen, but it means that the remaining kingdoms are a coalition of the willing so perhaps there will be less resentment and unrest, at least in the short term.
I sort of assumed that the King and Three-Eyed Raven are now the same role, so Bran will eventually pass it on to the person of his choosing the way the previous TER did.
the inconsistent standards are what drove me nuts – who gets offered a chance for redemption and when and why. jon, tormund, tyrion, jaime, all of these white dudes did TERRIBLE things and committed awful crimes, and learned and were forgiven. and daenerys comparatively gets condemned – not even for the war crimes but for having the audacity to say she unambiguously stands by her own decision-making??
like, don't you get the sense that if when jon had confronted her in the throne room, she had cried, and said "yes, you're right, this was awful, what i've done just now is awful," he would have IMMEDIATELY forgiven her and....she would have gone on to rule????
a million and one things drove me crazy about this but the hypocrisy here is what i am currently stuck on. also can't believe "the scene where tyrion meticulously tucks in chairs" is a real thing that happened and not just something the internet made up as a joke.
To add something that’s not a complaint: Edmure showing up again just so Sansa could smack him with a rolled-up newspaper was *kisses fingers*
I can't believe he's still alive
I think everyone forgot about him, which is a pretty solid survival strategy in Westeros.
"in the game of thrones, you play or you drop out"
Oh, and I never bought that Dany was Jon's true love. Obviously she's supposed to be, but they just had so little interaction. I could see her getting interested in him, but I never really believed he loved her as deeply as he loved Ygritte. And now, obviously, I was supposed to.
Yeah, I have absolutely no problem believing my dude will bounce right back with a nice woman among the Free Folk, get married, have a clutch of nice Free children, and be a crotchety old man north of the Wall. Because I really can't imagine he will miss Dany.
HARD AGREE. Although I guess when the actors marry in real life, it's hard to sell the chemistry with someone else! Kit and Rose's chemistry just jumped off the screen.
They never had any chemistry, which made so much hinging on their love feel just clunky.
The pans across the wildlings was basically LOOK: MANY LOVELY WOMEN FOR JON TO LOVE HERE
I felt that they finally sold their relationship this final episode, but the fact that I never believed in it before really weakened it.
I must say I did actually like the parallels between Jon and Maester Aemon. Both foregoing family and the crown for what is right for the realm.
Yes! That was Good.
Things that were good:
Brienne as Lady Commander of the Kingsguard
QUEEN. IN. THE NORTH.
Ghost got pets
Ser Podrick
That’s it, that’s everything that didn’t suck
Tormund lived! I am very happy that Tormund, my rough-hewn ginger love, survived.
The sheer level of corniness of that book Sam gave Tyrion
I was already drawing the line at "STORY is the most powerful thing" and then that showed up and I SHRIEKED
I yelled
HOW DID NO ONE GET CRUSHED BY FALLING RUBBLE WHILE EXPLORING THE WRECKAGE??There should be no floors for you to walk on, Tyrion!
Also, Jamie and Cersei were under three bricks. Three. You think they might have survived!
A light dusting of dirt and trace amounts of blood on their faces!
My husband hit me with a pillow when I pointed out the twins were awfully close to the top of the pile that "crushed them to death."
I really thought that was where that scene was going
My Civil Engineer husband was INCENSED by this. "WE WATCHED THE FOUNDATION COLLAPSE! THERE IS NO MAP FLOOR!" he yelled and yelled
Your husband and I have this in common! How did all of the high council wooden chairs survive? WHY IS THE KINGSGUARD BOOK NOT A PILE OF ASH??
Ahhh my comment got all wonky. I definitely though Jaime was going to have made it somehow (partly because of the way the actors were behaving on social media which was not in line with how other actors have departed the show), Burbank I’m fine that he’s dead. HOWEVER, I wish that Tyrion had seen the hand and tried to dig it up, only to see that it was no longer attached to Jaime. No bodies to say goodbye to, just the last bits of the Lannisters being a Hand with a hand.
I really wanted Tyrion to take the hand with him! It would have been perfect on his mantle!
Characters in medieval-set fiction love inventing two things: democracy and crossbows that basically work like guns.
Those ravens Varys was sending to try to drum up support for Jon? No payoff.
I also thought it was hinted that Varys was trying to poison Dany,m (the scene with the young woman saying she wouldn’t eat)?
So Jon's true parentage as Aegon Targaryen was just a red herring? What?
Why did Tyrion have to work to convince Jon that something had gone wrong with Dany? Stupid.
I don't like having the Stark children separated forever.
I read a prediction that it would end with Bran on the throne and Jon in the North (based on Tolkien's influence on GRRM) and I can accept that, but the execution was terrible. The hero's arc should involve Jon gaining *something* of value at the end. He looked miserable.
That part where Tyrion was prisoner and Jon was defending Dany saying, "But she's our queeeeeeen" was absolutely bonkers. So much for "he's stupid but knows right from wrong"
Jon getting to range in a White Walker-free North with Ghost by his side and a wall between him and the politics of the Westerosi kingdoms is pretty much the best outcome his character could have dreamed up for himself. I just saw relief on his face. My bet for the books is that GRRM has the characters wind up in the places the show did, but that Jon takes the throne, sends away the Unsullied and Dothraki, convenes the council of lords, and fucks off to the North of his own accord.
Oh, it would have been completely different if he'd been shown making any choice for himself. But as he got to the Night Watch I thought "He hates it here". They needed to make the fact that this was everyone's (Sansa's, anyone's) secret plan on his behalf, and that it was his choice, more explicit. I can write that story in my head, but I shouldn't need to.
Maybe it was just me and my unwriterly preference for happy endings (or for characters to end up happy, I should say), but I think Jon was fine with it. I agree that he was unhappy at first, but in the last shot of his face, I saw his expression go from quiet misery to a peaceful acceptance. He was back where he started, in the situation to which he had resigned himself at the start of the show: wifeless, childless, basically exiled - but he found himself and more in the wildling wilderness, so it makes sense to me that it’s where he ended his story. I don’t think he ever wants to fight and kill again, and with the Walkers gone and the wildlings ready to be left alone, Castle Black is maybe the best place in Westeros to live a relatively quiet life.
Also really appreciate that the reluctant king does not actually become king in this series. It's the one subversion of trope that Benioff and Weiss didn't manage to mangle.
I'm dead sure that this is not GRRM's actual ending. If Bran is the Westerosi Giver, he should end up in The Citadel with all the knowledge. But since we spent 20 mins on the Maesters, can't have that work out. It makes no political sense to put Bran on the throne.
I'm definitely pleased that I correctly predicted the end of the Iron Throne, though.
Jon's parentage not paying off worked for me, because at least that reinforced the (sporadic) theme that things like law and prophecy are weak in the face of political reality.
My most charitable read is that Jon being a Targaryen is the only reason why Drogon didn’t fry him. But yeah, weird that literally no one brought it up at all in that council meeting. It reminded me of that Office scene with the 5 Families that Andy/Kevin got all hyped for.
Yea, but he was like 15 feet away from a MELTING IRON THRONE and didn't even have his eyebrows singed off? I am not a dragonfire expert, but that seems unrealistic...
Actually, I think he likes being among the Free Folk, as they’re the only people in Westeros who genuinely don’t care that he’s Ned Stark’s bastard or Rhaegar Targaryen’s lawful son. The Wildlings genuinely don’t care, which must be quite refreshing for him.
Bran is an omniscient, long-lived, non-human who can invade people’s bodies, who pushed the Dany/Jon conflict leading to mass murder, hear death, and his kingship, and who has constantly-wrong Tyrion and BRONN on his council. This is actually a hellish dystopian nightmare!
I guess I appreciate that Robin Arryn kept his mom’s titty cut-out tradition alive, though.
So the two most out of place scenes this season—Bronn gets crossbow from Cersei; Bronn appears in winterfell and threatens Lannister bros—only existed so they’d have him on the small council...for some reason?
Bronn is what Littlefinger aspired to be. Chaos is a ladder and in times of unrest, there is always some scheming jerk who gets himself into power and in like 2-3 generations that family is just as noble as everyone else.
i'm still not over the acting choices jerome flynn made when bronn appeared in winterfell for one second, specifically the choice to have bronn snort a full mountain of cocaine immediately before barging into that unguarded tavern
Dear lord, who let Bronn into the Trust Tree? BRONN SHOULD NOT BE IN THE TRUST TREE.
Every time I saw him, I felt like he ought to have died already. And I loved Bronn. But he overstayed his welcome.
In fiction as in life, sometimes the least deserving/interesting/charismatic/strong/smart people survive tough times. See also: Tully, Edmure.
I’ve heard this called the cockroach quotient - the less value a person lends to a situation, the more likely they are to survive.
Yes! That was criminal levels of stupidity!
Bronn is still lord of Harrenhall no?
OH MY GOD HE'S SOMEHOW LORD OF HIGHGARDEN!?!? I adore Bronn but absolutely not.
A Lannister always pays his debts.
More like overpays
So? Highgarden is political coin better spent elsewhere.
Also, if we're getting cheesy endings, if should have ended with Jon coming upon horse bound Benjen Stark in woods, who says "I've waited a long time for you, nephew." AND THEN THEY SAUNTER OFF TOGETHER!
As Arya stands at the prow of her ship, NYMERIA bounds up and gives her a big ol' face lick
YES. This is the content I have been waiting for!
My other dream was for Melisandre to rip off her face during the battle of Winterfell and reveal to Arya that she's actually JAQEN HAGAR and they take down the army the dead TOGETHER!
I did really enjoy all the parallels at the end with the beginnings of other characters arcs - Jon's queenslaying of Dany mirroring Jamie's kingslaying of Aerys and how that's defining moment for them; Aemon being in the Night's Watch as one of the last Targaryans and now so is Jon - and the fact that basically we've returned to a softened version of the status quo from season 1 politically.
Ooo, excellent points!
I'm very happy about the Queen in the North and the fact that Snow and Ghost are back together. I still feel incomplete, and always will, because Arya and Nymeria never reunited. Why couldn't Nymeria have been used instead of that inexplicable white horse that showed up in the penultimate episode (and then never got explained ever again)? I found out I'm not alone in my distress about Nymeria - there exists a great deal of fanfic about Nymeria Stark and her band of wolves. I will light a candle and pray that GRRM's version A) will come out and rectify these things and B) include a reunion. For real: when I first read the books back in the day, I got hooked thinking that this was a show about dogs. After all, getting the pups was like the first major Stark plot-point.
I meant "book series" about dogs. Lol.
Also it is SO annoying that Brienne was looking through the book about Jaime rather than looking at a page about how she is a badass knight. Also she was the only one on that council who wasn’t Master of anything other than “chicks never want us to have fun brothels amirite lads”
Yeah they just had to go back to the brothels for Tyrion's final scene, didn't they?
I feel sort of like this whole episode was "All that depth and subtlety we put in? Just kidding!"
I think I felt the most for a CGI dragon.
Same. Sad Drogon made me sad, the rest made me meh.
I thought it was implied that she became the head of the Kingsguard? That’s my head canon at any rate
Yup, that’s why she was on the Small Council - she’s the Lady Commander of the Kingsguard
The book records the lives of those who have taken on the mantle of the Kingsguard, so her page would have just started and someone else would record her actions
ANOTHER THING: why did the Watch still exist. what the FUCK are they watching for. Why would the wildlings go back past the Wall anyway. Didnt the entire conflict there arise because they wanted to live on the land south of the Wall, and doesnt Sansa deliberately say thousands of Northern men die? UGH the incoherence of the plot drove me mad
I think they wanted to be south to avoid the Night King but now that he is gone they want to remain free and avoid pledging to loyalty to a king so they're going back north. Plus spring was coming so the "long winter" was over and they could return to their preferred way of life.
re nights watch and John, I think the implication is that he has joined the free folk and will be living with them from now on as a quasi king beyond the wall. If we think about it, his happiest times was when he was living with them and Yigritte, so maybe he wanted to go back and continue to be a bridge between the free folk and the Queen in the North?
I had the impression that the Night's Watch doesn't *really* exist anymore, that it was a convenient excuse to get Jon passage to the North without being killed by the Unsullied.
Kind of wish they'd actually shown that rather than making us struggle to connect the dots!
But like ... Unsullied had enough leverage to demand Jon's exile but not enough to do anything besides stand aside and say "yeah OK" after Tyrion's Reading-Rainbow-ass speech and accept Bran as king and TYRION, their PRISONER, as his hand?
that is what I understood as well -- send him north and then he gets basically what he wanted, to join the free folk and live without weird politics and being forced to led men to war. He can be a quasi leader (or king beyond the wall) without ever having the same pressures that real kings have that he detests. And honestly he never wanted a big leadership role, and the free folk don't do big leaders so the more I think about it, the better his ending works.
Plus ghost can stay with him forever.
Tyrion does mention that the world will always need a place for bastards and broken men, which I mean, it can kind of fill that role, even if it's just a retreat for the boys to hang out and hunt
Well, the ice zombies are dead? So the Wildlings can live above the wall in relative peace now, I guess. The Watch might be there to keep the Wildlings from getting any territorial ambitions about the land below the wall, or what's left of the wall. I got the sense that Northerner/Wildling relations were not good.
What was with the weird cutaways this season? When Bran warged at the Battle of Blackwater, and we saw the raven flying -- that paid off into nothing. And when Tyrion was by the fire at Winterfell and asked Bran to tell him his story -- nothing was revealed that Tyriod could have used at some point. There were other times like this, I just can't think of them. The writing used to pay us back -- pat us on the shoulder for watching at paying attention to these things. It all felt useless and weird.
I dont understand why they kept mentioning food stocks as an issue. Another thing pushed to our attention only to mean....nothing. Winter literally lasted a month.
I'm just glad the show is done now, mostly? It is my secret hope that GRRM announces the publishing of the next book today. Everything that happened this season and last feels like a rough outline or someone who was maybe a little drunk when they watched the good version of the show telling you how it happened.
It felt exactly like bullet points. Dany: Goes Mad King/Hitler. Arya: Becomes Christopher Columbus. Sansa: Queen in the North. Bran: ruler. Jon: shrug emoji.
I said last night like it felt like I'd read the Wikipedia summary
That is SUCH a good way to frame it.
I like that description.
They did Brienne dirty
Am I the only one who didn't like the dragon wings shot? It looked great but when it happened I just groaned "UGH, we GET IT."
Visually, it was great, but yeah. They really went full cornball for the finale.
Nope, same. My husband and I both groaned aloud.
You are not the only one
Still peeved that not only does Jon kill Dany, but that it's sneaky betrayal intimate partner murder, instead of some semblance of justice, even a show trial would be better than true love's murder/kiss.
WEIRDLY, i disagree? Like, I'm a big ol' wuss, I would rather be stabbed quickly in the arms of my lover saying comforting things to me. But I do totally get it.
When Tyrion was sitting in that makeshift prison contemplating being burned alive, I got the willies thinking about the same - given a choice between gruesome execution and surprise fast murder, I’d much rather not see it coming.
I now badly need fic about Sansa's reign, someone provide
I initially wasn't sure what I thought about fans saying the end of Daenerys' arc (7.5 seasons of a flawed but no-more-awful-than-anyone-else-in-GoT human followed by thirty minutes of 'INSTANT DRAGON HITLER who must get stabbinated by the heroic white dude For The Good of the Realm') was inescapably misogynistic. Then certain parts of Twitter lit up with 'lolilol1 this is exactly like all SJWs ever dude awesome' and I was just done. So done. I wasn't ever a huge Dany stan during the run of the show but I sure am now.
Also what this show did to the dragons was atrocious and I hope Drogon flew away and found some nice people in Essos to bring him goats occasionally :'(
I’m choosing to believe that Drogon is taking her body back to Valyria via some sort of dragon homing sense, and he’ll live there happily with the other dragons until they have a large enough army to burninate the people and take back the land.
He's gonna go find Trogdor FOR SURE.
Okay if I am being *extremely generous* to the writers, I really like Drogon bringing her body back to Essos as a symbol that no matter how much she thought Westeros was her home and her birthright, she still grew up in Essos and could never have understood enough about Westeros to rule it. Her dragon knew it and she, on some level that she couldn't admit to herself, probably also knew it too. But also they gave us NO INFORMATION ON WHICH TO DRAW ANY CONCLUSIONS so fuck 'em.
I enjoyed the scene with King Bran ditching the counsel to warg out, implying that peacetime governing is super-boring to everyone except a handful of responsible weirdos who actually like it.
D-did Bran seriously just get named prom king at a school he doesn't even go to anymore!?
I have very practical questions, like who exactly there is left to rule who wasn’t slaughtered at Winterfell or Kings Landing (since both Cersei and Jon called their banners, presumably leaving nothing but women and children behind... who were also slaughtered if they sought refuge at the strongholds which we’ve established most did). They decided to keep ruling from the ruins of King’s Landing as the capital? Ok, but who cleared the streets of the MILLION burned bodies? Who exactly is rebuilding the fleet/ city, let alone using the brothels? (Again, all fighting age men in the realm were pretty much conscripted to these two battles). If life has been continuing as normal outside the two locations, then how do they feel about their fates being decided by a Council of POV characters? Where are the food stocks coming from? Why on earth would a vengeful Grey Worm take the entire army and just... sail away instead of pursuing his ‘justice’ when again, he has most of the remaining military might around at his disposal? Sigh...
Y’know, having a character who hates Cersei Lannister and the Lannister family SO MUCH that they want something more than simple defeat and move on to vengeance and general destruction would make a lot more sense if it was Arya, or really any of the Starks. But instead, it’s Daenarys, who… basically never interacted with Cersei? The Lannisters weren’t even responsible for overthrowing the Targaryens, that was Robert Baratheon and THE STARKS, who she was (basically) fine with.
Yeah other than blowing up the Sept - what did Cersei actually do that made her a tyrant? Dany's only example was that she used innocents as human shields....shields she needed...to protect herself from Dany.
At this point Westeros is so hilariously small that Jon got tried by a jury of his siblings, siblings' uncle and cousin, various people who had sworn loyalty to him or Sansa, his best friend, a pirate who hates him but is also his foster brother's sister, and some extras, and it's like yeah those are the surviving registered voters, what are you gonna do
But also, what the hell leverage did any of those people have over the Unsullied and Dothraki to make themselves the deciders of Jon's fate? Sure, there's an army of northmen outside the gates, but if Grey Worm killed Jon (which would have made the most sense based on character arc) the northmen could have...sacked King's Landing?
the headline is clickbaity but this got at how I've been watching the show for a few seasons https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/
This is excellent, thank you for sharing!
i thought it was low key atrocious (the show whiffed it with cat in s1-2...A Sign) but when edmure rocked up i full on lol'd
God, talk about a dude failing up....
who were the unnamed lords at the council? Are they supposed to be like the only remaining living lords? Why didn’t Dorne also claim independence? Have the maesters not discovered the earth is round? No one has sailed west?!
“Bran has the best story” did make me lol. Like, the show runners themselves didn’t agree, guys. They’ve clearly had no interest in Bran from the beginning, although now we at least know why they kept him around.
Yeah, it’s particularly hard to accept when the showrunners themselves thought Bran was so boring that they literally left him off the show for an entire season!
Go home, show, you're drunk.
THIS
Robin Arryn got tall and cute.
He did a full on Neville Longbottom and went weirdly attractive
I have a big problem with this. He should be weird looking.
It was weird, right. "Who is that hot guy? Oh, my god. That's not...? That is!"
"Mommy, I'm hungry!!" was all I was thinking when I realized it was him. Wouldn't he be more petulant - not so agreeable?