RJ Writing Ink

Game of Thrones, “The Iron Throne” Series Finale Review

After eight years, 73 episodes, and too many deaths to count, Game of Thrones is over, and our watch has ended. It redefined what can we can do with a TV show, influenced a decade of pop culture, and became the most popular show in the world.

It’s so popular, that economic experts are saying that millions of people will either were going to call out sick on Monday or be less productive. It’s going to cost the economy millions.

I’m going to write something that looks back on the series as a whole, but this will focus on the finale. So, did it end up being everything we hoped for? Laura Prudom of IGN noted that it ended up being as bittersweet as George R.R. Martin said it would. The end of a good story’s often bittersweet, though it feels more bitter than sweet, in this case.

Picking up after Daenerys has burned King’s Landing, Jon and Tyrion try to come to terms with what they saw. They’re both wracked with guilt and grief, but it’s Tyrion who gets the message across. Peter Dinklage gave his last performance as Tyrion everything he had, the grief he feels very visible. It’s not until he gets to the crypts that we see his best performance. Digging through the rubble until he finds the bodies of Jaime and Cersei, Tyrion breaks down in tears.

No matter how much she hated him, Tyrion could never bring himself to hate his sister. The bitter irony to this scene is that, despite all the times his father and sister tried to get rid of him, Tyrion was the last one standing. The last of the Lannisters; he was alone.

And now the rains weep o’er his halls, and only one soul to hear.

Daenerys, meanwhile, revels in her victory. In the Red Keep, she tells the Unsullied and Dothraki that they’ve “liberated” King’s Landing. Now, she intends to do the same to the rest of the world.

Say what you will about the story, but everything about this scene was flawless. The cinematography was perfect, Emilia Clarke was giving her all, and the whole thing drove home the fact that Dany has become that which she swore to destroy. The fact that it reminded me of a Nazi rally only drives that fact home.

When Tyrion resigns as Hand in disgust, Daenerys arrests him for treason, and he spends what he thinks are his last hours trying to convince Jon that she must be stopped. Jon tries to remain stoic and say that she’s his queen, but we know he’s lying to himself. He still wants to see the good in her, but Arya and Tyrion point out that if he does nothing, then Daenerys will eventually kill him and Sansa.

Even though Jon knows he has to do it, he makes it a point to ask Daenerys one last time to stop this madness. It’s who he is. But this is what Daenerys has become. The Game has corrupted her, twisted her good intentions. The only reason people let her get away with it, us included, is because we saw the people she burned as jerks. The Warlocks, the Slavemasters, the Khals.

I had made peace with what happened next, but on the inside, it still broke my heart when Jon stabbed Daenerys in the heart. Sensing his mother’s death, Drogon comes in the throne room and tries to nudge her lifeless body in vain. Everyone expected that he would try to kill Jon, but instead, he turned his on something else: the Iron Throne. Where Balerion the Black Dread forged the Iron Throne, Drogon the Winged Shadow reduced it to molten metal.

This was a powerful moment for me, one of the best in the series. People have said dragons are as smart as humans, if not smarter. And in this moment, Drogon was smart enough to realize that while Jon may have been the one to do it, it was the Iron Throne and all it stood for that killed his mother. It was like a curse that had torn Westeros apart, and the carnage we’d seen in the show was only a fraction of the bloodshed. Homes plundered, dominions in ruin, all to grasp at the Throne. Drogon made the smartest decision out of anyone in the show, and decided that no one should have that power. Then, he took his mother’s body, and flew away from Westeros, never to return.

Game of Thrones “The Bells” Review

My head is still spinning from what I just saw, but I think I can still sum it up in a few words: what. The heck. Just happened? I will tell you what happened. We just saw one of our favorite characters on Game of Thrones cross the line from benevolent ruler into full-on tyrant. We saw an entire city burned to the ground, and a few of the show’s longest running characters die, some of them in a stupid and unsatisfying fashion.

First, though, let’s address the giant, fire-breathing elephant in the room: Daenerys Targaryen. As the show has progressed, she has become one of my favorite characters. We’ve seen her be ruthless towards her enemies, but we’ve also seen how kind she can be to those she calls her friends. She sincerely wanted to give the people she ruled a better life, and inspired genuine loyalty in people.

Ever since she came to Westeros, though, the show seemed determined to break her. She lost her main allies, then she lost Viserion, Jorah, Rhaegal, and Missandei in rapid succession. By the time we see her in this episode, she’s broken and vengeful. Most people would feel like that. But what she does in the climax of this episode makes her cross the line into becoming the very thing she swore she wouldn’t.

Varys spent the last two episodes trying to bring Daenerys to her senses, only for his pleas to fall on deaf ears. So when he learns that Jon’s the true heir to the Iron Throne, he goes behind Dany’s back and tries to back Jon. That leads to the spider’s demise, though, as Daenerys sentences him to death by Drogon. I liked Varys a lot; he was one of the few people on the show who stood up for the little guy. His death also made me think the spoilers I heard about on Reddit were true.

They were only half right in the end. On to the moment we’ve been waiting for: the fall of King’s Landing.

The last episodes made it seem like Daenerys and Cersei were more evenly matched: she lost a lot of her forces fighting the White Walkers, she lost most of her fleet, and then Rhaegal. Cersei, meanwhile, had the Golden Company, the Iron Fleet, and lined the city walls with Scorpions.

This is what said walls looked like after after Dany was done.

Instead of getting another Blackwater, the “Battle of King’s Landing” is more of a total butt-whooping. The Scorpions suddenly become useless as Drogon levels the walls and Daenerys’ armies mow down the Golden Company. The Lannister soldiers are no match against the enemy and just get cut down until they decide to lay down their arms and surrender the city. For a brief moment, it seems like King’s Landing will be spared further bloodshed. But then Daenerys chooses to ignore that and set Drogon on the Red Keep, burning thousands of innocent civilians and prompting her army to sack the city.

Even Grey Worm gets in on it, killing the Lannister soldiers even after they surrendered. All Jon, Tyrion, and Davos can do is watch helplessly. It gets worse, though. Drogon ends up igniting the wildfire caches below the city, setting the city even further ablaze.

Amidst all this, Arya and the Hound make it inside the Red Keep to kill Cersei and the Mountain, despite that almost certainly leading to their deaths. This gave us one of the episode’s better moments as the Hound manages to talk some sense into Arya, telling her revenge isn’t worth what it does to people. It’s something Arya’s needed to hear for a long time, and the fact that its coming from the Hound give it the most impact. Arya decides to abandon her quest for vengeance and return home, but not before calling the Hound by his name, Sandor, for the first and last time. It’s a very touching moment that almost made me cry.

As for Sandor, he finally got to face his brother in the Cleganebowl. And honestly, it was anticlimactic. The duel between Oberyn Martell and the Mountain was cooler than this. As the Red Keep crumbled and burned, the two brothers dueled to the death, though there wasn’t anything left of the Mountain to kill. In the end, the only way Sandor could kill his zombie-brother was by throwing them both out the tower into the fires below.

The worst part of the entire episode, though, was how it ended the stories of Jaime and Cersei Lannister. After throwing away all his character development to go back to Cersei, the two reunite after Jaime kills Euron Greyjoy (who died smiling because he thought he killed the Kingslayer). Instead of killing her like so many wanted to see, they just reaffirm their incestuous love for each other as they try to escape. Instead, though, they end up dying in the crypts as the roof collapses thanks to Drogon and Daenerys.

Ever since I started watching this show, I wanted to see Cersei Lannister die for her crimes, but with the way the show kills her, I feel robbed! Cheated! I wanted to see her face justice for what she wrought, but instead I felt pity for her crying about not wanting to die. It seemed like a lazy, rushed ending to one of the best characters in the show. That’s right, I called Cersei one of the best.

So it looks like nobody wins in the Last War, and everybody loses. King’s Landing’s in ruins, and it will take decades to rebuild the city. Two of the series big story arcs end up stumbling to the finish line, and Daenerys did just what her father would do. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO TO ROOT FOR ANYMORE!!

The one glimmer of light was the cinematography in the sack of King’s Landing. The overhead shot as Drogon was burning everything was a pleasure to look at, but the real highlight was the shaky camera moments seen through Arya Stark as she just tries to survive. The people who did that deserve an award.

Arya also manages to survive, and thanks to a Deus Ex Horse, she leaves King’s Landing behind. I want her to go back to Winterfell or just spend her life with Gendry, or find some measure of peace. But if the theories are to be right, she may have had added Daenerys to her list.

Its official: Game of Thrones has jumped the shark. I don’t know if it did it in the last episode or this one, but it has. Thankfully, the show has only one episode left, so we don’t have to worry too much about seeing it post-shark-jump. The downside is that there’s no way they can resolve all the show’s plot threads in that time. It’s impossible. I pray that the show can still end on a high note, but I don’t even know anymore.

There’s only one week left before the series finale which will decide where Game of Thrones will stand in the history books. As of now, though, I’m more looking forward to the series finale of Star vs. The Forces of Evil, which comes on that morning.

I Give “The Bells” a 2/5. Burn it All