So. That's it then, is it...GRRM+D&D? The only character I can hope to see again is, happily, my fave Melisandre--because prequels are promised. But no sequels.
Well, depressingly...stunningly...I cannot say that the finale is truly satisfying or that I love it. I liked parts of it, mostly from the latter half. Because in the first, once again, fans have vastly outdone the actual plot. And tragically, these last four episodes are light-years from fulfilling the series' promise and potential. It would have made infinite sense for Bran to have warged Drogon and caused Dany to lose control--explaining why she suddenly changed course once we saw the dragon shadow from Bran's vision passing over the rooftops, and why we never saw any closeups of her attacking the city. Folks were suspicious of him from the first episode ("why did he choose that moment to have Sam tell Jon of his parentage...?") Instead, what goes down is more straightforward. Dany thanks her two foreign armies specifically (what about the northerners?), and claims that their continuing mission will be warring to liberate all oppressed peoples everywhere. Oh, okay. Where else exactly now? That's a bit new. (And except she started here by oppressing/eliminating a population for no reason. XD The conquering armies slayed her enemies, yes, and then some...the people she wanted to free and rule...suddenly she thinks she wants to just kill everyone in the world?? This fuckery, what even is it?)
Disappointed Tyrion chucks his HotQ pin and is taken prisoner. "Ho boi, errybuddy in Westeros gon' hate me now..." It still makes no sense. The whole thing hinges on something unbelievable. Of all the ways the story could've gone...this? The Daenerys of two fucking episodes ago was still rational. Losing Rhaegal and Missandei and whatnot really drove her to this kind of paranoia about Cersei--she used the innocence of the KL residents as a weapon against you? Kiiinda, n'really? Her attempt to was dumb because you're on a fuckin' DRAGON and she didn't actually surround herself with a big ball of citizens. The bottom line is that all you needed to do was go roast her specifically. That was it. Precision strike. She'd lost. Of course there was no making peace with her. No getting past this. The rampage was a narrator's excuse to wreck KL and create an ending where neither she nor Jon sits on the throne. The person razing KL and from then on wasn't
her. And the fact that I do not believe in her heel turn tarnishes this conclusion. They didn't make me believe it. I guess I just have to accept that the genetic predisposition combined with extreme trauma resulted in a psychological break. Still seems a cheap, shitty trick to pull on this awesome character. A few of her past choices might have been questionable, but nothing represented a fraction of this loss of logic. Trying to push that she was on a slippery slope to it is bull.
So now they're all traipsing through the ruins of the stupidass city ("I kinda forgot I wasn't going to be queen of the ashes and give myself a shit-ton of rebuilding to do!") That wasn't part of her plan for KL, it was unnecessary. But she seems fixated on the throne...which, momentarily will no longer exist. Her death is appropriately tragic. She is Jon's queen, now and always. Drogon melts not his last-Targ cousin or whatever the fuck Jon is to him, but the throne itself, then flies off eastward with his mother's body lying in a hind claw. ;-; If she can't have it, ain't nobody gon' have it. He sensed it was at the center of all this mayhem, like the One Ring or the money Lucy tried to return to the Monte Carlo casino...'cause he damn sure wasn't stupid enough to think the chair killed his mum.
Still no mention from any of these
imbeciles that they should have considered just assassinating Cersei. Or telling KL to evacuate.
PAUSING TO ASK: WHO were the actors that surprised EW's Hibberd on set for the finale? There was literally nobody surprising here. Unless maybe it was Nikolaj & Lena, playing their characters' corpses. I was on the lookout for people we thought dead reappearing in some form, or people from way back in the series no one would've anticipated seeing again, or flashbacks, or SOMETHING. Shouldn't have read all those damn hyping articles; so much setup to be let down.
Pausing again: Fuck kind of lame-ass title is this? "The Iron Throne," really???? Not "A Dream of Spring?" None of the other better suggestions I've seen, just that?!?! Well, it was one of the casualties, anyway. Why were so many of the writing decisions phoned in this season? Looks like Bran's bloody wheelchair is the new Iron Throne! All came down to...that. And the whole "#ForTheThrone" campaign was supposed to be a distraction from the...oh, fuck it, I'm done being a broken record.
Backtracking a bit...
Tyrion painfully asked Jon to end Dany's reign. It apparently wasn't going to create the better world she'd had her sights on for so goddamn long after all...siiiiigh. They both love her and believed in her (same, boys. Same.) Jon tried to be understanding of why she made such an unwise decision. When Tyrion went and found Jaime's & Cersei's bodies, I'd thought HE was gonna find Dany and ask her to explain. Funny how the Imp ends up a Hand again. Even though he did a massively shit job last time and was on freakin' trial.
He concludes that Dany must have become high on power and ceased to be a killer only of the evil--that she's entirely lost sight of herself and everything, and her understanding of "break the wheel" and "liberate" and "better world" have become deluded. It's so fuckin' tragic. She became a senseless psychopath in ten seconds. You wanted to see her see it through, or die trying. Not becoming what she was determined not to be. Honestly, it would've been so much more acceptable to THINK she's gonna snap, then have her at the last minute pull back & NOT snap, and die somehow in pursuit of her goal. This was such a shitty end to the journey of someone who deserved A throne, if not the iron one. She could've returned to rule in Essos, if sailing to Westeros wasn't gonna work out so hot in the end. I'd be infinitely less sour if something had happened to Dany besides "went bonkers." Looking back over the series, it's just so...wrong...;; She was one of my fave POVs in the books. She and Jon did both know what good was and could have built a good world together. Mondo suckage. Dreaded it. I hate that it turns out Robert was right to want to kill her way back in S1, and Cersei was right to warn her people of the dangerous "foreign" invader with her savage foreign armies.
If the city were absolutely refusing to surrender...if Rhaegal and/or Missandei were still around and she lost them during/after this battle...if she saw citizens demonstrating that they saw her as an evil invader and actually somehow supported their cruel and tyrannical Cersei (shouldn't be the case especially since she has folks on her team who could/should've spread the truth about her to the smallfolk)...MAYBE THEN I could have bought what she did. Driving her to become the monster they thought she was.
However, the Dany we know wouldn’t randomly mass-murder a population of subjects who were posing no problem to her, who’d given her no reason to suspect them as guilty of anything worthy of execution. There was simply no reason, no motive if she was in her right mind. It wasn't vengeance or punishment for anything. Moments ago she wanted to rule over these people. Suddenly she’s nuts and only wants to liberate them from life itself (a perspective, okay, but not one she’s previously explored. I mean, it kinda eliminates or vastly reduces the "future generation" anyway, huh? xD) What they reduced Dany to was either "Blonde Targs be cray" or "She had headphones on and people in the streets were flipping her off." Damned shame.
Jon carries out prisoner-Tyrion's sad, terrible request when he realizes poor Dany's too far off the deep end to call back to reason (plus fucking Tyr's gonna be executed otherwise & tbh is probably just trying to save his own ass again more than anything...and I guess there's Sansa to consider too, eew. Plus Jon himself, Arya, etc.) This brand-new Dany is not our Dany; she's lost it and speaking totally uncharacteristic nonsense, save for wanting to rule side by side with Jon. As they should've wound up deciding to do in the first fucking place. But yeah, Jon has to Old Yeller her. And so he's 'banished' to Ye Olde Night Swatch for it, which ain't too shabby. (He'll be the only member? xD Have to retake them ol' vows? No biggie.) He didn't want to be king, and nobody could have forced him to accept it regardless of how big a stink they put up. Living up north with Tormund, Ghost, and the Wildlings--that's a pretty damn sweet ending for him, actually. Yanno, unless the dead rise again (watch out for Gilly's baby? WW relatives? Bran's still marked? What about Arya? Just spitballin' here. Wildlings can always act up again too, I guess.) Brienne should've
at least gone and apologized to Tormund for making the wrong choice though. ;p There could still be a relationship there...
PETS FOR THE GOODEST OF DOGGOS, YES YES YES FINALLY. Pupper smoochings. Nymeria's pack never showed up to help, though, which was a definite downer. Only had the budget for a few pats, no more wolves?
(It's one thing to subvert expectations, and another to straight-up let people down on countless counts. -.-)
Missandei's death has made poor Grey Worm ruthless against his queen's (perceived) enemies. He wants to execute the surrendered Lannister soldiers since 'the new world they want to build won't be built by those loyal to the old.' Course, your new world has a better shot at taking if you at least give them a chance to choose it, and you, instead. Truly say, "I'm here to break the wheel of tyranny and tit-for-tat violence. Embrace my radicalness. You'll dig it." In the end, GW sails the Unsullied to Naath, presumably to protect Missy's people.
Just gotta avoid those butterflies, guys.
The council of lords and ladies and such gets kinda into Sam's suggestion of democracy after laughing it off (hey now let's not dismiss the idea of dogs & horses voting out of hand)--but stops short of collecting votes from everybody. They themselves settle pretty swiftly on silver-tongued Tyrion's suggestion. He explains the seemingly out-of-left-field choice of "King Bran." (Good story, lol--cool story bro. What a story, Mark. Did D&D kinda forget how to write one? ;p) You'd think Tyrion of all people could put forth a better case, at any rate. Maybe once upon a time. `-` And of course Sansa thinks it should be her. Bran's happy enough to accept, because apparently THAT was his destiny. Not living in some tree (so the prior 3ER didn't HAVE to do that?), or being Lord of Winterfell. This explains his uselessness all season?
He refused to help anyone because this was all just destined? (When did he learn that? Sometime between season 7 & 8, by all accounts. How much tragedy could have been averted? How long's he gonna live?) Whatever. At this point I was still counting on his eyes turning blue at the end, our Little Shop of Horrors-esque hint that a reinstated Night's Watch is gonna have to be heavily restocked.
What's Bran done to earn this? Still feels a little random when he was never a contender, but could've been a logical advisor/Master of Whisperers or even Hand if he's ever actually willing to be useful on his own. :/ (What do you do with a character to whom you've granted nearly unlimited potential knowledge? Have him sit around doing nothing for anyone and then crown him king, naturally!) He just seems to sit back and do nothing, volunteering little useful information unless prodded--and I couldn't believe nobody was prodding him!
As Jon's cousin and the one-time Lil' Lord o' Winterfell, at least he is related to the "rightful" king; if they opened it up to everybody there'd be lots more choices to work through, just among people we know of. But was anyone gunning for him? And at least we can reason that Hodor, Jojen, Summer, Leaf, etc., died for the sake of a possibly-decent or unbiased ruler who
miiiiight start breaking the wheel for poor mad Dany? You might as well have considered nominating Sam or somebody, too, though, if you're deciding that the bloodline thing sucks and merit is where it's at. What good have Bran's powers done? He had to be prodded into helping take down Littlefinger. We're called back to the episode-2 moment where Tyrion sits down to hear Bran's tale. Maybe something in that helped convince him that of everybody left, he was the best candidate. Maybe his dispassionate raven-ness makes him more impartial and less prone to human stupidity. There's also the information access factor. Idk. Yay for the establishment of democracy, I suppose...? Or a step toward, anyway.
I’d feel better if more people had died and Bran was the clear best choice left. (And obviously if Dany had gotten a realistic end.) But tbh he and Sansa shouldn’t have been among the survivors. You want a king who can be a Peeping Tom whenever and on whomever he wants? 0_o “You looked beautiful [insert private situation...]” Bit Big Brotherish for my taste. Wild when leaks that sound like crack fanfic turn out to be for real.
...oh, fuck this. SAM OF ALL PEOPLE, AT THE VERY LEAST, SHOULD HAVE THE BRAINS TO PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER AND SEE THAT BRAN IS THE ULTIMATE VILLAIN. Little scumbucket got the outcome he wanted. All this omniscient POS did was tell Sam to reveal Jon’s parentage at a hella shitty time, leading ultimately to this shituation wherein he’s king and Tyrion is back in the position he most enjoyed. He then sat back like a worthless bump on a log, declining the lordship of Winterfell and awaiting this rubbish. Bran was interested solely in sowing discord. Yes, ultimately if they were intelligent they would’ve resolved things by simply announcing “Yes the crown would rightfully be mine, but seeing as how I DON’T WANT IT, I’m passing it to her.” “Kthx.” “Swell. I’ll help ya in some capacity.” “Cool beans.” Fucking bullfuck garbage...
-Davos is such a good mediator, lol.
-Whoa, let's not be threatenin' Yara, Arya. Your names are anagrams of one another. (And why'd you abandon your dream horse?)
-I think Bronn may have been wrong; not even death will shut Tyrion up.
-"You will be my Hand." *faux-fluster* "Oh, no, Your Grace, ME? Why, I never...oh, I couldn't...oh, well if you insist!"
["I'll get food by pretending that I don't want food." "That's stupid." "I'll prove it!" "Oh, you don't have to prove it; I believe you're stupid."]
Tyrion's such a true Lannister through & through, right to the end. B-| And he's got the real power now. The Small Council will probably run most things while
creepy-possibly-evil-possibly-entirely-disinterested-in-people-will-we-ever-really-know Bran snoozes...
-So Bran didn't attempt to tell Aerys to burn all the walkers, thereby accidentally driving him to "burn them all" madness? That would've been coolio, and called back to the Hodor thing...Hodor never even showed up as a wight, WTFH...
The happy little council of Sam, Davos, Brienne, Pod (?), & Bronn (lawwwwwl, love every one of his lines and the fact that this dude finally got everything he ever wanted xD) feels a bit pat. Throw together the surviving folks to aid and advise Bran, whom I guess still needs advising despite being an all-seeing birdman. x-p
That scene was almost straight comedy to lighten the mood. Right slap in the face for Tyrion not to even be mentioned in the book. xD But at least there we have a completed Song of Ice & Fire, teehee (and who hadn't seen that coming?) And oh, my outrage at not getting the honeycomb-and-jackass brothel joke punchline. Bet they only wrote the first line. -.- And Bran wants to find Drogon? Hunh. Interesting. To offer condolences? ;; }:-/
(Sam's mum is Lady of Horn Hill? Davos' wife is...dead because he couldn't give less of a shit about her?)
Teared up a bit when Brienne filled in Jaime's pages, as I'd been counting on. (Should've written "Saved Brienne of Tarth from a bear, knighted her, and then took her virginity" or something. Notes about his performance. ;)
AND WAS THAT INK DRY??? Again when Arya did what so many expected: decided to travel west of Westeros, to the edge of the maps, to find what's there. Chills when she said "That's where I'm going."
It's probably just the eastern coast of Essos anyway. Be nice if she had a travel companion (or spin-off potential), but I'm sure she'll pick up at least one along the way. Maybe she'll destroy somebody's bike and they'll follow her around forever demanding she replace it...catching all the Pokemon along the edge of Planetos before falling off (what, we don't know their planet isn't flat...or what size it is...) Actually, she should take Hot Pie and operate a traveling food wagon!
"You were exactly where you were supposed to be." (Does that mean him yelling at undead-Viserion DID distract the WWs for Arya? Well, that makes sense...don't ask me to believe she got in there without assistance.)
In one of the most foreseeably dismaying results, fucking Sansa gets to be Queen in the North. Because of course her brother's got no problem turning "the Seven Kingdoms" into the less cool-sounding "Six Kingdoms."
(And evidently no one else is interested in self-governance any longer?) So undeserved. Talk about unearned. That girl never did anything to change my view of her. She remained a selfish, lame, dumb, devious, untrustworthy, useless, whinging brat the entire way. Ew. "Uncle, please sit." Ugh, fuck her. The dragons should've eaten "ther quern irn ther nerth." The North
could ask for better. She didn't give a single shit about the potential consequences of her oathbreaking. Being Ned's daughter is the best thing she's got going for her.
Disgusting that she gets a happy ending and Dany doesn't. Quick, fetch an assassin. The Starks really wound up doing pretty well for themselves after seasons of us pitying them, though.
(Maybe a little too well...) Separated again, but fairly contentedly this time (way more so than last time xD), and they don't have to remain apart forever.
My my, how Sweetrobin's grown though, eh? Didn't recognize him the first time! Honestly his glo-up might be the most surprising thing in the whole finale.
Eeyup. Unsatisfactory.
Well then. Bring on the deleted scenes (please?), the 2-hour documentary, the prequels...Comic-Con...milk of the puppy (yes puppy)...
Other notable points:
-How long is Jon going to live up yonder, now that he's apparently fulfilled his purpose in resurrection (i.e., to protect the world from devastation and to unite all peoples within their nation?
Perhaps he still needs to denounce the evils of truth and love, extend their reach to the stars above, etc.)
-No Jonerys babe after all that motherfucking foreshadowing, what the ever-loving unholy fuck. I was afraid of them letting things just fall by the wayside. Cersei's last baby may as well not have existed. "Mad Queen Dany" should've been the red herring, not Jonerys tot.
-Dany: *describes the book version of the Iron Throne from her naive vision*
-Tyrion: *helps my OCD by fixing the chairs but leaves one on the right side too far forward, making it even worse*
-"Not that I've seen." Well, the LoL was holding you for resurrection, boyo.
-"Lord of Lofty Titles"--oh, the legendary Davos/Bronn banter we'll never get to see! Even my dad laughed out loud at that. (Shouldn’t Bronn be master of WAR rather than coin tho??)
-STANNIS THE MANNIS LIVES ON!!! 8'D #OneTrueKingOfGrammar #MasterOfGrammar #AintGoneBeNoMoCoin
-Brothels>ships?
-Did I miss what happened to the Dothraki? Did they sail back home? (Oh wait, they went with the Unsullied to Naath? Or got dropped off where they came from? They just became tools for Dany's use?)
-Epic music at the end ;.; Thank you, Ramin.
And what else is MISSING that would have improved the final season/episode?
-Meera, Jaqen, Daario+Second Sons: How are they all? Guess they're just gonna keep doing their things, holding down their forts? Why no part in the final proceedings? Jaqen ought to be pretty proud. Guess he probably knew what he was actually training Arya for, even though he wasn't even. The new king wouldn't be here if not for Meera; she deserved one hell of a better sendoff, & where's Howland? How come no other Dany supporters from the east ever showed up to fight the dead or take KL even more easily--just the extra Dothraki and Unsullied she Amazon-Primed??
-HOT PIE, where is mah boi? Still bakin' dat bread, makin' dat dough??
-For the millionth time, all the red priest(esse)s of Essos, the Lord of Light's presence...I just wanted to feel that in the latter half of the season...wanted my girl to come back into it somehow (yeah Davos was pondering those mysteries at the feast, but not only should we have seen a special tribute to her, we NEED that damn prequel!) What did Varys hear in the flames--"Dracarys?" Was he suddenly a psychic in episodes 4+5 because the voice had predicted an inferno caused by a friend, and his own death by fire?
-Generally everything
here: the Long Night should've been longer and intertwined with the Cersei/KL storyline rather than dividing the season into two awkwardly handled halves. That wasn't just another battle. It deserved at least a couple of 1v1 face-offs with the NK. Let's say TLN was the end of the series? Last shot=Mel? I'm for
it.
