Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones packed so much into its 78-minute run time that I’m not even sure where to begin.
The Battle of Winterfell is over, and we’re left with the fallout of the Night King’s invasion; the revelation that Jon Snow is actually Aegon Targaryen; and the reality of Cersei’s iron grip on the Iron Throne–and Daenerys’s iron resolve to take it.
This was an incredible episode, though I certainly have a few quibbles that I’ll expound upon momentarily. There was a lot to take in, and I’m afraid I may need to watch it a second time to nail down every detail.
Let’s start by talking broad-strokes story stuff before ruminating over each of the cogs in this machine.
The Feast Of Winterfell
Things get off to a merry start. All our heroes are gathered around Winterfell’s hall, drinking and eating and toasting one another’s bravery and good looks after the battle against the Night King is done.
Wait, no, sorry. Things get off to a very grim start, with Dany weeping over Jorah Mormont’s corpse, and Sansa over Theon’s and Sam over Dolorous Edd’s. Jon gives a powerful speech before they burn the dead.
Later is when everyone turns to drink and merriment. Tyrion, Podrick, Jaime and Brienne play drinking games. Tormund continues to earn what I can only describe as “They should make a Tormund spinoff show”. Even Dany seems okay at first, gregariously handing over Storm’s End to Gendry, and giving him his lordship as son of Robert Baratheon–bastard no more. (Later, when he proposes to Arya she shoots him down. She’s not the marrying type, but at least he’ll be a lord now and can find a nice lady).
At a certain point, everything starts to take a turn for the worse, as nights of heavy drinking so often do. Daenerys is generous in her words of praise for others, toasting Arya as the “hero” of Winterfell. But when she watches Tormund and the others sing Jon’s praises, as they commend his bravery, his return from the dead to “keep fighting” and his willingness to ride a dragon (who else would do that but a mad man or a king?) her eyes grow very dark, indeed. Like black orbs, where only thoughts of power and envy can live and fester. Varys watches with concern, the same concern I felt watching her change from generous leader to . . . something else.
“I worry about her state of mind,” Varys tells Tyrion later. Tyrion is clever. He says that’s their job, as advisers of a monarch, but he knows what Varys means. They haven’t forgotten her father, Aerys, the Mad King.
Feasting and merriment turn to battle plans. Dany wants to push on to King’s Landing immediately. Sansa suggests they wait and let the troops rest and recover from their wounds. It’s a rational and perfectly sensible suggestion, but Daenerys responds with anger and pettiness. “I came here and helped you and now you dare suggest that we let the fighters in our armies rest?” is basically her response, and Jon backs her, much to Arya and Sansa’s dismay.
I suppose before we go any further, we should talk about that scene between Jon and Dany (before we talk about that scene between Jaime and Brienne). Dany comes to Jon all sugar and spice and everything nice. She says she’s not one to beg, but now she’s begging that he tells nobody of his true identity. It would only create division, she says (and that’s true) but he tells her, despite her cloying attempts to manipulate him, that he owes at least Sansa and Arya the truth. “We can all still live together,” he says. “Yes,” she responds, all ice and daggers. “And I just told you how.”
This is an interesting episode because Daenerys is so bad in so many ways throughout, and yet she’s also clearly not as vile as Cersei. Varys is right to not trust that she’ll be anything other than the tyrants she truly believes she’s destined to overthrow. She is showing every sign of megalomania. But she’s still not executing innocent women on the battlements of King’s Landing. Missandei’s death was . . . horrifying. Cersei is beyond redemption; as bad as Daenerys has gotten, I think she still means well.
“You’re not a monster,” Tyrion tells Cersei as he pleads with her to relinquish the crown. But she is a monster. She is “vile” as Jaime puts it, as he departs Winterfell to go be with his twin. I’m not sure he’s vile, but he’s still in love with her in his own strange way. But is Daenerys vile? Or is she simply a little bit mad, a little bit too obsessed with power and destiny and this ugly, uncomfortable Iron Throne?
In many ways, that’s what separates her and Jon Snow the most. he doesn’t want to be king. She wants to be queen so badly that she’s willing to lie and manipulate and be a very shady, very unlikable person. But she’s still no Cersei. Will Varys try to kill her? Will Arya come into the picture somehow? She and the Hound are riding together again, and both of them have “unfinished business” in King’s Landing.
I think it’s time we talked about Brienne and Jaime. After the drinking game, Jaime follows Brienne to her room and they end up very awkwardly making love. I kind of hate it, honestly. I know people are shipping this and whatever, but no. I really liked them as friends–friends who really loved one another and respected and admired one another. Maybe Brienne was in love with Jaime, but I think he loved her in a different way and there’s something about sex that cheapens that somehow. It didn’t help that the actual scene was just . . . uncomfortable to watch.
To make matters worse, Jaime bails on her in the end. I don’t think he’s going to save Cersei or be with her, and I’m not sure why he made Brienne think that. I guess I’m just a little confused by the whole thing. Curious to hear what you all think of this coupling. And poor Tormund–heartbroken right up until the random wench throws herself at him. “You can touch me,” she says, when the Hound tells Tormund to piss off.
Other things I’m not quite sure about:
- Rhaegal dying like this, after such an epic battle against the undead. Sure, have a ballista wing him and take him out of action, but having several hit on the first foray strikes me as just grotesquely Hollywood. Catapults and ballistae are a lot like mortar fire. You usually have to take a couple shots to hone in on your target, especially when it’s a moving target. Hitting a dragon several times on the first volley is . . . implausible to the point of me wanting to throw things at the showrunners in protest.
- After Rhaegal dies, Dany and Drogon make their charge, but she veers off when it’s apparent that a dozen giant spears will soon head in her general direction. A nice solution to this problem would be simply flying behind Euron’s ships and burning them from the rear. He can’t shoot backward or it would hit his masts and sails, so fly behind and burn them all. But no, she just . . . flies away?
- This leads to Euron decimating Dany’s fleet because I guess ballista technology is really advanced in Westeros or something. They capture Missandei and later kill her. Easy as that. Euron and his OP magic fleet. What can I say? Euron could have been such a great character but instead it’s just nonsense. Euron is far too overpowered and in desperate need of a nerf. He makes Cersei much stronger than she ought to be.
- The whole scene with Bronn and the crossbow felt superfluous. There’s no way someone like Bronn would actually believe that any of the Lannisters would give him a Riverrun or Highgarden. These are major Houses (each being one of the Seven Kingdoms) and a sellsword like Bronn, well, it’s ludicrous and a silly thing to even introduce to this story so late in the game. At least we now know that Bronn has fast travel powers, though. That’s something.
- I guess crossbows are just massively overpowered in this show. Bronn can cow two lions with his. Euron can magically kill dragons with his. Not quite what I expected from either encounter, alas.
I was very worried that Tyrion was going to get shot to death there at the end, but they killed off a secondary character instead. I’m glad, in a way, as I think that would be a terrible way for Tyrion to go. Still, why would Cersei bother sparing him when she had no qualms killing Missandei?
Okay, I’m going to wrap this up for now and follow-up with further thoughts tomorrow. There’s a ton to unpack from tonight’s episode. This is one problem with the whole “fewer, longer episodes” format. Hour-long episodes were more contained, easier to follow, with clear stories that centered around some (but not all) of the characters. It was easier to follow. Here we just have so many moving pieces that it becomes overwhelming. Sam and Gilly are expecting! Tormund is taking Ghost and the Wildlings back to the “true North”. Varys is possibly going to try to kill Daenerys in his relentless quest to serve the Realm.
Oh, and I almost forgot the scene where Jon tells Bran to tell Sansa and Arya who he truly is after they swear not to tell anyone but later Sansa tells Tyrion anyways. What a cool scene that might have been, except that they skipped all the important bits and didn’t show us how Arya and Sansa reacted.
Oh well. I think this was a good episode. A dense, at times funny, at times horrifying episode. But also an episode that suffers badly from the one thing that keeps diminishing an otherwise great show: Time, or the lack thereof. The showrunners wanted out. They wanted to be done with this project and go make Star Wars movies. And so we must rush to the end, pack it all in as tightly as possible, kill off dragons on a whim and slapdash our way through important relationships. And that’s a shame. I was entertained tonight, no doubt about it, but I was left a little cold when the credits rolled. What did you think?
