Renly Is Right!

No, the White Walkers won’t kill everyone. A bold prediction but I stand by it. The Night King dies and with it the majority if not the whole army, and that’s it. The insta-win button gets pressed.

Correct (easy) prediction is correct.

The defense of the North will be the doom of many many characters. I’ll say that the Stark family is quite safe excluding Bran, who may die because he’s too big a weapon. Edd survives because that’s what he does. If Beric is still alive he gets a final death. Jaime does something stupid and glorious and dies, which doesn’t do any good to Cersei’s thinking. The rest (all the various side characters in Jon’s and Daenerys’ groups) I can see either way, depending on the circumstances. Some shock deaths, some last stands, some sacrifices, the usual.

Shock death: Edd, check. Last stands: several, check. Sacrifices: several, yep. But Bran survived, Edd didn’t, Beric didn’t and Jaime did, so ¼ of those was correct (and Beric was the easiest one).

Sam, Gilly and little Sam all live happily ever after. Lalala, I can’t hear you.

THEY DO! This was the best part.

Qyburn goes all Frankenstein with the body of the wight and ends up doing something stupid right in the capital. He won’t survive the season, there’s a Hand pin on his chest.

Qyburn did die, but he didn’t do any experiments with the body of the wight. That would have been a fun if time-consuming way to tie up the two plotlines of the Dead and Cersei. After saving the world, the heroes come to King’s Landing, where Qyburn is just testing out stabbing someone with a knife made from the weird substance found in the wight’s body...

So is on Tyrion’s chest. Hmm. But I don’t see him dying. As I said, I’m optimistic. The world will need clever emphatic people after all this. Bronn retires with a box of treasure.

Tyrion didn’t die, and he still has the pin on his chest. Bronn’s box of treasure is Highgarden and a position as the Master of Coin.

Cersei is far too dramatic to leave the throne alive. Her baby will get born before that happens, and Daenerys has to decide what to do with her. I’m thinking that the baby is a girl. Send her away? But what if she grows up to gather an army, just like her? Can she take that risk? And if she can’t, how is she different?

Nope, Daenerys attacked before the birth happened, and what would another dead baby have mattered in that attack?

Daario Naharis shows up leading the Golden Company. Elephants on an open field, thank you. Team Jon and Team Daario will have a bitter fight, which ends with Daario’s death.

Daario didn’t show up, not even to fight on Daenerys’ side. But his Second Sons will have work to do, on one side or another, once the masters hear that the dragons are gone. And I don’t feel bad about missing the elephants. Daenerys would have just burned them.

Speaking of Jon, since him and Daenerys ruling together would be too simple, I’ll throw a curve ball and say that Jon will sit on the throne, as going from a bastard to the king of seven kingdoms would be a nice escalation… but Daenerys has worked so hard for it, Jon has never wanted it, she deserves it more… hmm… maybe have a vote? Jon winning the game of thrones without ever wanting to would be funny, I’m not going to lie.

You sweet summer child. Oh boy oh dear. Still, there was a vote, and someone won the game of thrones without ever wanting it.

Theon will rescue Yara in a final triumph after a large PTSD attack. Euron dies, Yara rules the Iron Islands. This happens early in the season as Euron is such a nice mid boss before Cersei and the Night King.

Euron lived for surprisingly long, and neither Yara nor Theon ever confronted him again. Yara got the Islands back off-screen.

The Hound and the Mountain almost have the duel the Hound promised, but something zags instead of zigging. The Mountain dies anyway, but the Hound doesn’t.

Here I was trying to be clever, and see where it got me?

Was that everybody? Melisandre predicted that both her and Varys will die on Westeros, but didn’t specify the date. I don’t think Varys gets to see the world he has spent his life trying to create, and Melisandre goes down while keeping the Dead at bay with the Lord of Light’s powers, because she has fulfilled her purpose or something like that. I would like for the Lord to stop treating people as his pieces on a game board.

Yeah, Lord of Light, stop that. 

So, picking five deaths now is like shooting fish in a barrel (not that I have ever tried it), but that’s the tradition here. More main characters give more points. Let’s see, Cersei, Jaime, Qyburn, Euron, The Night King. Plus as a bonus Beric, The Mountain, Daario, Varys and Melisandre. Very conservative choices, says I. Random generator picks the following out of 31 names (for the record, two seasons ago it was 50, and now I tried to list absolutely everyone still alive): Daario, Cersei, Jaime, Qyburn, Tormund. Once again the random generator copies my answers. Least likely to die, it says, are Robin Arryn, Gilly and Lord Royce.

As Daario didn’t show up, he also couldn’t die. Computer also guessed Tormund’s fate wrong. Otherwise we were both correct, but they were easy choices. See how I didn’t pick anyone from the Stark family? I would have been wrong but that would have been bold.

And the final big thing: What’s the ending? How does this end? Things may go super bad in between, many will die horribly or get tortured, but in the end Westeros will survive. My ending would be that the Dead are defeated, but the Winter is still on, and the food shortage will be a very big problem. One character will say to another “We will survive this if we only work together”, and fade to black. The end. Then the audience can review the rest of the show and come to their own conclusion of whether these people are doomed and will all die, or if they have learnt something in these eight seasons.

That last Small Council scene was the closest to this, but it wasn’t underlined. Tyrion pointed out how they have poor to feed, but the talk quickly turned into the usual small council squabbling. So… have they learnt something? The last scenes with the Night’s Watch and the wildlings working together did end with a positive note, but I’m not so sure about the South…

So it’s over now. Laughs were made, tears were shed and faces were palmed. And finally, I can’t no longer be spoiled. I have lived in my own bubble where I watch an episode (a year or more later than others), write my own commentaries, make my own theories of all the mysteries, come up with my own inside jokes and then move on to the next episode. If someone said something about the show I quickly nope’d out. It’s been fun.

So, now that I am done, will I travel to the wonderland of the Internet and read stuff about the show? Maybe some analyses, to see if I thought the same as others? Maybe there’s some funny memes? Do I feel like finding out?

Nah.

I have some idea about the general opinion of the show in the Interwebs (I believe the proper expression is “burn it with fire”), and don’t feel like negative engagement is my thing. It’s the whole “Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans”-thing which didn’t sit right with me even when I was a big-time SW fan, and I don’t want to step into that again. Covers of the score, art, yes, bring me that, but otherwise I feel like I can continue to enjoy this show as only a viewer, without lateral engagement.

There’s going to be a spin-off series, House of the Dragon, starting in 2022. Will I do the same with that series? Never say never, but I grew almost nine years with this show, I don’t know if I will have time in the future to spend a work day’s worth of hours per episode. And I’ll likely have read the general lines of that series from all the tie-in-books of ASOIAF, which will make theorizing either super easy or super frustrating, the latter if the makers use the written stuff the same way the makers of period pieces use history books.

Speaking of that, these last two seasons had that sort of feeling. Like, if you read actual history books, obviously what really happened was a lot more messy, with continuing small skirmishes, less intense interpersonal drama, many more claimants and bannermen, and Daenerys was actually three different people composed together (one of them died of pneumonia between important stuff), that sort of thing. When the historical events were divided into 13 episodes, the important battles stayed (in a simplified form) and other details were scooped around them.

As a final bonus, some superlatives.

Best character: Olenna Tyrell. No contest. The Queen of Thorns, now and always. Not someone I’d like to spend time with but extremely entertaining when on screen.

Best main character: Oof, this one is much harder. Generally I let main characters do their main character stuff and attach myself more to the side characters. Those who are not chosen ones or master assassin trainees. Is Sam main character enough? He had his own plot lines. That’s good enough for me. Being a coward is not easy, and by still doing brave deeds he was braver than most. He valued knowledge and earned his happy ending with his family. And he was just so charming. So Sam is my pick.

Character whose death I most enjoyed: The choice is between Joffrey, Stannis and Ramsay. With Joffrey and Ramsay I was just so happy that they were finally out of the show, and seeing Stannis get executed by Brienne for killing Renly was really sweet. Tywin’s death was almost this. First he gets smacked by Cersei’s confession that the kids are not Robert’s, and his precious legacy is a lie, then his hypocrisy with Shae is shown, and finally he gets shot while in a privy. A big contender there, but losing him from the show was a big loss, so that drops points.

Best episo… no, that’s too hard, best season: Season 4. The King’s Landing stuff that season was just superb. Tyrion, Tywin, Olenna, Oberyn, Varys, Littlefinger, Cersei, everyone was at the top of their game. Losing most of them by either death or exile was a big loss. And the battle on the Wall was great.

The element I could most do without: Boobs on the screen just to have boobs on the screen. I like boobs as much as anyone but I prefer lore lessons and boobs separately, mixing them together didn’t enhance either. 

Most visceral reaction to death: Oberyn’s death. It was just… eww. Of all the horrible deaths that one was the most awful in the way it was depicted.

Biggest surprise: The Red Wedding. So great, so awful. In the book universe: How much the fourth and fifth novels differed from the show. I don’t envy anyone who, after adapting the third book, had to adapt essentially two road trip novels with several new plotlines started and nowhere near resolved when the books suddenly just stop. They were nice reads and hooked me, but I don’t feel anywhere closer to the end after them than I did after A Storm of Swords.

Best king/hand -combination: If Stannis would ever in any possible reality agree to it, I think Renly as the king and Stannis as the Hand would have been a good combo. Renly being the charismatic second Robert with some reforms (he complained about Robert only hunting in his last years), and Stannis as the one leading the boring administrative work.

Most useless gods: The Seven. For the most wide-spread religion in Westeros, they certainly didn’t do much. Or if they worked in mysterious ways, they sure were glad to give all the credit to the

Most frustrating god: The Lord of Light. Aargh.

Character most likely to have just walked to the wrong set: Mace Tyrell. I’m not sure he ever figured out what kind of show he was in. But he was glorious.

Best battle: Blackwater gets points here for being the first. I was used to Rome-type fade to black (which the first season used too), so an entire episode spent in one battle was something great. And the wildfire explosion was just awesome.

Best example of season one’s budget: The royal hunt of the great boar consisting of the king and three others walking in a forest.

Best beard: Ser Rodrik Cassel. Eight seasons and none could surpass him.

Best dresses: I liked Daenerys’ dresses this season, but now that I’m refreshing my memory with pictures, she also had a great blue one in season 3 and a white one in season 5. I also liked Cersei’s wide-sleeved red dress in season 2.

There, the end has come and I survived the game of thrones. Does that mean that I won it? Now I have several seasons’ worth of Blu-Ray bonus materials to watch, time to get on that. If you read this far, thank you for sticking to it. 

King’s Landing is in ruins. The liberators, Jon, Tyrion and Davos walk amidst the rubble and the dead. A badly hurt human walks past them, looking mostly like a wight. They worked hard so that wights wouldn’t walk on the streets of King’s Landing, and look at the place now.

Outside of the few citizens still alive in these opening scenes, very few common people are seen during the rest of the episode. After they had their grand death scenes, they moved back offstage so the high and mighty could discuss if more of them get killed or not. And who gets to sit on the pointy chair. That is important.

Grey Worm has found some living Lannister soldiers, and plans to rectify that immediately. Jon tries to stop him, but the orders have come from higher up. You know, that woman you bent your knee to? So Jon has to leave him to continue.

Grey Worm is taking this “We are evil now” memo very quickly to heart. But Grey Worm, you can’t be Daenerys’ Dragon (a TV Tropes term), she already has a literal one.

The falling ash is turning into snow. Tyrion gets to the lower levels of the keep. The dragon skull hall wasn’t completely caved in, as I thought it would have been. If Cersei and Jaime had stood a little to the side, they would have survived. Not that that would have helped them much. This way their deaths didn’t include dragonfire.

Daenerys has a victory parade, and has a cool grand entrance with the dragon wings visual trick (that sadly no one except Jon saw from her actual audience). This black dress is also super cool, maybe her best one. It could be because “evil is cool”, or because black is simple and just works. I wonder who makes them for her? And whether she gave special instructions that black is now the color.

Tyrion gets a closure. Instead of wondering for the rest of his life if his siblings escaped or not, he knows the truth now. And that’s the last straw. When Daenerys dares to note his treason, he notes back that she destroyed a city, and removes his Hand pin.

Daenerys must wonder how traitors just keep on turning up again and again. They see her dragon, right? She has Tyrion arrested.

Jon goes to meet him, after hearing from Arya that Daenerys is a killer. She knows a killer when she sees one, she says. You mean when you see her killing thousands? That’s the education you got in Braavos?

Tyrion points out that Daenerys must have killed more people than Cersei and Tywin together. I… don’t know about that. King’s Landing has a lot of people, yes, but Tywin was part of many wars during his life, using people like the Mountain to spread terror, and, well, there was that place called Castamere?

In one of his books Brandon Sanderson had a burning of an entire city and killing all of its people as a dark hidden secret of his warlord character, which was finally revealed in a flashback. He later commented that for story impact reasons it was just one city, but for a warlord, that would sadly actually be a rookie number of sacked cities.

Tyrion has been bad at reading people lately, but here he finally gets to do something big: He talks Jon into killing his queen. If Lannisters are good at something, it’s getting royalty killed.

He even uses the words of one Targaryen, Aemon, to tell another Targaryen that it is his duty to kill the third Targaryen. Nice work there.

He asks if Jon knows anything about the afterlife, as he has experience of being dead. But no, Jon has nothing. Generally in fantasy stories, if the afterlife is not the point of the story, the great beyond is kept as an unknown. And even in something like Coco, where the afterlife was the point, it was made clear that there’s actually something else after the afterlife where souls eventually go… or is there? Nobody knows. And I like it that way. If the Lord of Light manifested now and told explicitly that yes, there is an afterlife, and burning people is doing them a favour, just as I said, here, I have graphs… Nope. That wouldn’t be fun, and would at the same time widen the fantasy world too much and lose the wonder.

The similar wonder happens when reading historical novels. Characters of different, existing or currently extinct, faiths telling about what their faith teaches of the afterlife. And, well, they exist in a fictional story. Even if the story tells of a known historical event with named people from history, it’s still a story inside its covers. So who knows, maybe the characters are correct inside that story.

Tyrion tries to analyze Daenerys’ sudden attack on civilians. In his opinion, the reason was that Daenerys has had good results every time she embraced violence and vengeance. And every time she didn’t, her enemies eventually betrayed or ambushed her, starting with Mirri Maz Duur. Jorah was a big expectation, but he’s dead now, so there. So with that simple feedback, and people saying they loved her, she eventually crossed the line and just killed everybody (I see a very big leap here but I have never led an army). And now when people say that killing everybody was bad, those people are traitors. It’s miraculous how traitors just keep piling up.

The reason Tyrion gets through to Jon’s head is that he was honest. That same honesty which didn’t work with Varys (and when Varys tried to be honest with Tyrion and Jon he got burned) works very well with Jon. 

So Jon goes to meet Daenerys, who is in the Throne Room. And it’s the throne room of her vision from back in Qarth. Back when I saw it, my simple description of it was “The roof has been melted with dragonfire, but the winter has come and everything is in snow.” I didn’t have any other thoughts about it, as if it was a vision of the future, well, the future can change. Especially in long-running TV shows where real life can make changes necessary. Both the winter and dragonfire destroying castles were a long way away.

That’s the funny thing with time, it moves forward. Both the winter and harrenhalling the Red Keep have now happened. And Daenerys enters the throne room, her destiny.

The fireboxes Joffrey inserted into the room are trashed on the floor, covered in snow. Daenerys climbs the steps to the Iron Throne and touches it. Pop, main quest done. But she never gets to sit on it (it must feel cold to the butt now).

Jon arrives. The queen and her closest ally at this point are alone. There’s no Queen’s Guard, no Blood of Her Blood to protect her from… let’s say anyone from Westeros at this point. 

Daenerys talks about how this was a great win and how she’s going to create a new world. It won’t have any room for those who lived in the old one, of course. Those who have learnt to play game of thrones and cynically look just for new ways to get power and keep it wouldn’t learn the new utopian ways. (People like Sansa, I presume). Daenerys presses all the wrong buttons while talking. People can’t use the innocent to hinder her, if she doesn’t care about the innocents! That’ll teach them! She keeps talking only about the future. If she looks back she is lost.

Jon makes his decision, and they embrace each other. And the sound of smooching gets interrupted quickly by a sound of a knife sinking in. At first I wasn’t actually sure which one stabbed which one. I wouldn’t have put it past Daenerys at this point to stab Jon, for planning to betray her too. She would have been right.

And so passes Daenerys Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, the Protector of the Realm, Stormborn, the Breaker of Chains, Khaleesi of the Great Plains, the Queen of Dragons’ Bay, Unburnt and the Mother of Dragons. Long list of titles, and I’m sure I have forgotten some. She was maybe the most main character of all of them. The entire Essos plotline of the first six seasons was about her, with her own side cast. And when she came to Westeros, the entire last phase of the story was about a) her, and b) the Dead. And she outlasted the dead.

Her death also marks the last death of the entire story. On the foot of the titular throne of games. She got closer than most, but still no cigar.

And from the courtyard there comes the screech of a dragon. Oof. Drogon has entered the building. Jon can’t fight it and doesn’t even try, as he’s too crawled up in his heart to even react.

Drogon’s reaction here makes me more sad than Jon’s. It’s the difference between animals showing their affection and main characters doing their main character sad stuff. Drogon looks at the mother’s killer with a hurt expression, but after the initial pain changes into anger, he does not blast Jon with his fire, but instead directs the force straight into the Iron Throne.

After this episode I had to revalue my view of dragons of this world. Are they merely animals, with instincts which cannot be properly understood, or do they think? (In ways that cannot be properly understood). Drogon is the only known dragon alive left in the world. Jon has burnt himself in the past so he’s not even an honorary one as Daenerys was. So now Drogon is all alone, and the reason for that is really that damn chair. Daenerys couldn’t let it be, which killed Drogon’s siblings and finally herself, when she was consumed by vengeance. The game of thrones the humans played ended up almost destroying them all, and it did destroy everyone Drogon cared for. But that’s very abstract thinking, so if that’s what Drogon could gather from this scene, it shows a lot of intelligence.

Then Drogon picks the Mother of Dragons up and flies away, into the unknown. And so leaves the last supernatural creature of the show. The story of magic coming back to the world ends with the magic leaving.

Except for Bran. Who knows if he even has a human’s lifespan anymore, never mind if there will be more Three-Eyed Ravens in the future.

The next fortnights are skipped, and we continue when the leaders of the current Great Houses have arrived to King’s Landing to discuss what to do now. Everyone who has raised a claim to the throne is dead now, and so are those who have mixed the soup for mysterious motives.

This would be a delicious time frame for a short story, as I’m sure the world is holding its breath and for example the Iron Bank is having a lot of strategy meetings. The wars have stopped as no one knows what’s up. The Northern armies have stayed outside of the walls, waiting for orders. The city has been governed for several weeks by the Unsullied and the Dothraki, likely with an iron fist in the name of the dead queen.

These last years have taken a large toll. When Davos offers the Unsullied land in the Reach, he says that the people who used to live there are gone. No wonder Bronn gets it in the end, rebuilding it with the winter going on will take a long time.

Jon is kept as a prisoner, and Daenerys’ death by a knife to the heart is common knowledge. How? They were alone, and Drogon took the body and flew away before anyone saw it. There was a blood stain on the floor, yes, but blood stains were everywhere in the city that day, and they don’t have DNA scanners. What anyone knows is that Drogon flew away and no one saw Daenerys since. Maybe she flew away with him, to think, or there was another complication like in Meereen when she disappeared too. Jon accidentally made a perfect crime. So how was he caught?

...yeah, it’s Jon. So it happened like this:

Tyrion points out that Jon can’t be judged before there’s a king or queen in whose name he can be judged. So the leaders here have to make a decision. Of the Great Houses from the beginning of the show, we have:

- Robin Arryn, of the Vale, with apparently Royce still as his regent

- Sansa Stark of the North, with her siblings

- Gendry Baratheon (of Storm’s End, if he has even seen the place yet)

- Prince of Dorne, who the subtitles give no other name. Likely a Martell, cousin or something.

- Yara Greyjoy, of the Iron Islands

- Edmure Tully, of the Riverlands

And some assorted lords and ladies and heirs and courtiers, like Brienne, Sam and Davos. Some unnamed lords of one place or another (subtitles call them Lord 1, Lord 2 and Lord 3). The main point I have here that surprisingly few surnames disappeared completely during the show. Just the Tyrells, which is unsurprising as they were the best house. But many were close, with just one character remaining.

Tyrion talks them into elective succession, and makes Bran the first elected king of the sev… six kingdoms. Sansa speaks three sentences and acquires independence to the North. At this point no one is going to say no to that. So the Starks finally did well coming South.

Yara doesn’t try the same, the Iron Islands stay under the Red Keep’s crown. It’s a matter for the future if she keeps her word to Daenerys and the Ironborn start sowing.

Will Bran be a good king? Considering the previous rulers, he has a very low bar to get over. He has easy access to compare what decisions the previous rulers did well and what they did badly. And he can literally see everything people do. There can be no Littlefingers in his court or no bannermen harboring rebellion without soon receiving a letter from the king saying to knock it off. That’s a good thing, but it also smells a lot like the Big Brother. Let’s hope he will be a good king to the end of his days. Whenever that is. The last Three-Eyed Raven lived a long life, but he was rooted to a weirwood. Bran may want to pass that.

Tyrion becomes the Hand of the King again, and Bran appeases the Unsullied by sending Jon to the Night Watch. So the last Targaryen is out of any future claim disputes.

The rest of the episode is goodbyes. Tyrion tells Jon that he may well visit the Wall again in the future. And then he’s out of the dungeon, escorted by two wandering crows, to bring him back home.

On his way he meets his cousins, and says farewells. It’s possible they’ll see each other again, as long as no wars or things like that come between them. Except that Arya plans to sail west, like Brandon the Shipwright did. He never came back. No one has. So she will either have great adventures there in the west, or die because of… well, anything there. Maybe once you sail far enough west you end up at the farthest place in the east, the Shadowlands beyond Asshai, of which the stories say little and that little is ominous, but from where came the three dragon eggs.

Grey Worm gets ready to leave this stupid continent. What people he didn’t lose here he started to hate, so 0/5 trip. All the time it was supposed to be his last campaign before retirement, he was supposed to die in it. Instead he was the only one to walk out of it. The Unsullied sail for the Isle of Naath, to live free.

The Dothraki leave as well, for their own big grasslands. Hopefully they get some Faith of the Seven artifacts with them as souvenirs, like the statue of Baelor (their khaleesi’s ancestor), so they don’t have to go back to Vaes Dothrak empty handed.

Brienne has been named the Lord Commander of the King’s Guard. From the first woman to be a knight, mere months ago, right up to the biggest knightly profession there is in these kingdoms. Knowing the good people of this world, there will be hostility. There will be murmurs, mocking songs, some lord may even open his mouth in the court. And after he has been taught the error of his ways, it will eventually become just a thing that is, and time will tell how unique she will be in the history of the King’s Guard. What I mean to say, is that the hurtful words won’t stop even in her new position, but at least she is right next to the ruler of the realm if people say them in her presence.

Even though that king is not Renly. 

She completely whitewashes Jaime’s actions in the White Book. She tells of how he fought against the Targaryen forces, and then the Dead in Winterfell, and afterwards “escaped imprisonment” and died protecting his Queen, completely omitting that he actually changed sides twice there.

Which makes me wonder again how these events and people will be remembered in the future. This book may be copied down during the following centuries, and scholars will use it as a primary source, but will add an asterisk that the way events are told here can be misleading. 

As seen in the theatre production in Braavos, the events will also be immortalized by art, and someone with a quill and a sharp ear for iambic pentameter may well write a series of historical plays, which will influence the way people will see these characters. With titles Joffrey I, Part 1, Joffrey I, Part 2, Tommen I, and Cersei I. Maybe even Bran I or a prequel Robert I, if the series is popular.

Or there will be a scholarly work right after the wars end. Samwell brings for Tyrion to see A Song of Ice and Fire, detailing the wars after the death of King Robert. I see what you did there. But it’s actually a sequel, I point out, as the first part of the series is right in my bookshelf. The World of Ice and Fire, which in-universe was written by Maester Yandel of the Citadel, detailing the history of Westeros and Essos up to the series’ beginning. I have only read bits and pieces of it, as it describes hundreds of years of history in broad strokes and so is quite dry and full of names. Maybe now that the series is over I’ll use it to scratch my Westeros-itch.

The Small Council continues to be the Small Council (which was one of the best parts of the early seasons), even with all its members replaced. They talk softly, use each other’s titles and politely disagree with each other, while the camera slowly shows the still cracked map of Westeros. They better work quickly before those cracks get any wider.

A horn blasts once at Castle Black. Jon is back from his little excursion to the South. The gate is closed behind him and the screen goes black.

So the ending is… not happy, but… content? After years of fighting, that was the best to hope for, and of getting even that I remained doubtful. There were no big revolutions. The wheel still stands. The poor stay poor and mostly the same great Houses rule the same pieces of the kingdoms. The Small Council still has people looking for number one. The winter will be rough for the poor. Sure well-meaning people were raised to some high positions, and the king will continue to be elected by them if they stay alive longer than him, but they are still single people in a grim world.

But on the other hand, maybe some things are better than in the beginning. Dragon’s bay is free (if the loss of dragons doesn’t make the masters bold again, but that is a question for the future), most of the Stark kids lived, and glass ceilings were shattered (whether they will systematically stay shattered is another question for the future). The current leaders were just raised to their positions and so won’t themselves likely plan for rebellions for some time. As the winter is still upon them and everyone is tired, wars won’t happen right now. The rest of the winter will be hard, but if they work together…

Epilogue: The best leitmotif, the one promising excitement and new sights, rises and plays as the Stark kids continue their lives. Arya and Needle go to have new adventures in faraway lands. Sansa gets crowned as the Queen in the North, to the yells of enthusiastic Northerners (if there’s one thing I have learnt here, it’s that the people of the North really like royalty in the North). I can’t see if Glover is there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not, as his family is still wrong and always will be.

And Jon… he’s back among the people who respect him. I don’t know who could be the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch currently as everyone named is dead, but come next vote Jon must be a big favourite if he still wants the job. Currently the Night’s Watch has a new sort of job to do: They are the shield that guards the realms of Men, and some of those realms are on the north side of the Wall. So the Watch helps to resettle the wildlings to the Lands Beyond the Wall.

Ghost is still in the Castle Black waiting for Jon, and reunites with him (<3). They leave to the north with the wildlings now that apparently the worst of the winter has passed. A green plant tries to grow from the snow, a dream of spring. The group continues into the shadows of the Haunted Forest.

The map hasn’t changed, not even to show Dragonstone instead of the Last Hearth. But next week there should be a lot more smoke. Oh hey, the stairs of the Red Keep, no wonder they got so much focus on the map.

Varys is very worried, so he plans to commit treason. He wrote letters, we don’t know to whom, but likely to all the rulers of Westeros. That would have made Daenerys’ position harder, as while picking between Cersei and Daenerys is hard for them, picking between Jon and Cersei would have been much easier. Same situation as with Stannis releasing information about Joffrey’s real father: Those who already were against the Lannisters believed it, others thought that Stannis made it up to get the claim. It didn’t change much. Varys is now wishing for the third option to get traction because of the rulers’ biases.

And he’s also already trying to poison Daenerys? Hardcore. It’s her luck that she doesn’t have much of an appetite these days. 

Varys goes to whisper in Jon’s ear when he arrives to the shore, and… is that a lizard running before them? I can’t get a good picture since it’s so small and just a couple of dark pixels when it’s not moving, but it’s right when Jon says “She shouldn’t be alone”. I wonder if it was planned that it would be on camera but no close-up worked, or if it just decided to photobomb. Most likely photobomb. Outside of crows and wolves, there haven't been many wild animals on screen, not even in establishment shots. Even that almost mythical boar that was the end of Robert was never seen.

Tyrion goes to tell Daenerys, who isn’t mentally in the best place right now. She thinks that there are traitors all around her, or if not traitors, then naive fools. She’s not even wrong. And so Varys is brought out of the castle in the middle of the night. The night which is dark and full of terrors.

Varys and Littlefinger were both political animals, who played the game, knew the secrets, moved the pieces and were very good at what they did… until suddenly the world changed around them. Both of them had poor tries as their last maneuvers. Littlefinger tried to have the Starks go against each other, which was one thing he should have known the Starks Don’t Do. He also couldn’t see that Sansa didn’t trust him at all in the end (even less than others who said they didn’t trust him but still did what he said). And the biggest thing, he didn’t account for magic allowing her to spy on his entire life. 

And now Varys put too much trust in other people, much too quickly. He saw that they were People Trying To Do Good, and so thought that he could easily just ask them to support him, by pointing out how Daenerys is losing it. It didn’t work, and talking outright of treason amidst Honorable People who are Loyal To Their Queen… too rash, Varys, entirely too rash.

And as long as Daenerys is your queen, treason shall not go unpunished. Varys gets barbecued, hoping that he deserved his fate, and that the world he was trying to create will come even if he won’t see it.

Yeah, about that…

Daenerys is more distraught than ever. Or more Targaryeny than ever, considering how she is getting more paranoid and seeing enemies everywhere on Westeros. And she’s not exactly wrong, considering that she would have been poisoned if she had had more of an appetite.

She has a PR problem. She sees that nobody loves her here. She has to rule on fear alone now. But why does she want to rule then? Wouldn’t she rather go back to Meereen and rule there instead, now that she has perhaps liberated the slaves there for good (no news from there for a long time, though)? No, she doesn’t. She wants the Iron Throne. Because it’s her by right? She says that it’s to help the poor people she wants to liberate from the tyrant rule, and that may well still be true, even though she mocks them for not rising up themselves like the slaves of Slaver’s Bay did.

(Later it turns out that these specific poor people are sacrificable. But the future generations!.. Oh yes, they are sacrificed too, thank you for noticing.)

On the eve of the battle, everyone gathers near the walls of the King’s Landing. Arya and the Hound arrive in the night, too bad they had no hurry on their way here. They should have outridden the Northern army by weeks and arrived in King’s Landing long before them, but apparently they spent enough time with Hot Pie at the Inn of the Crossroads to arrive after the army.

I have to give credit to the guards the army has posted. They figured out that Jaime had to be captured, instead of allowed through (like they let Arya and the Hound just pass, without apparently telling anyone about it), even though he was explicitly part of their coalition in Winterfell. What was the difference? Maybe Jaime acted more suspiciously, maybe they had word from Winterfell, or maybe they just allowed Arya through because of the whole “I killed death”-thing.

Tyrion visits Jaime. While there’s no love lost between Cersei and Tyrion, Jaime loves Cersei and Tyrion loves Jaime, so Tyrion wants to try a trade. Allow Jaime to go rescue Cersei and have her surrender the city. Trade the lives of her, the child and the good people of King’s Landing to the life of Tyrion, who is very likely toast right after Daenerys finds out. Tyrion is playing the part of the old Darry guard, who helped save Daenerys and Viserys from the fall of King’s Landing and brought them to Essos. Circle of life? Nope, as we’ll see. Daenerys will break that circle.

They both once again hug for farewell, thinking that this is the last time they see each other. This time they are correct. This time it’s Jaime who is going to leave the old dragonskull way, the difference being that he won’t make it.

The next day everybody is ready and waiting, except for the good people of King’s Landing, but nobody has time for them. The lines of scorpions are ready, waiting for a scaly wing to puncture and a queen to drop… here she comes, straight from the Sun.

And the Iron Fleet is gone. 

And the walls are gone.

And the gate is gone.

And the Golden Company is gone.

Now I’m glad that they didn’t bring the elephants.

All the defenses are pieces of rubble, and the armies get to attack the panicking city.

Well that was fast. Two minutes and the winner of the battle has been resolved. The rest is just cleaning up. Or actually the opposite of that. Messing up. Yes, that sounds more correct.

I thought that the scorpions would be a more difficult nut to crack. They were super effective against Rhaegal, even without considering the sneak attack bonus. But fool me once, etc. Coming from the Sun got Daenerys close enough to burn the ships before more than a few scorpions got to even shoot, never mind hit. The contest between the dragons of old and the new military development ended up with the dragons winning… or not. Rhaegal was killed by those same machines. One alive dragon can’t make more dragons, but scorpions - and even better weapons once they are developed - can easily enough be constructed. There’s nothing mystical about them, suspiciously powerful even though they are.

The comet back then heralded the return of magic to the world. The White Walkers showed up, the Lord of Light gave his priests powers, the dragons returned, the warlocks of Qarth re-found their magic… they will all be gone soon again, right? The last hurrah of magic, it upturned the world’s order and shall soon move back to the legends.

Not soon enough for the people of King’s Landing. After breaking all the defences, Daenerys sits down to wait for Cersei’s move. Cersei takes her time to think of an out, but finally is out of options.

With no prompt from Jaime, or anyone, she orders the bells to ring. Maybe she thought to beg for her child’s life. Daenerys… does not like this. She decides to burn the city anyway, instead of only bringing justice to Cersei. On the ground level, Grey Worm decides the same and attacks the Lannister soldiers, for revenge and things like that. Insert here everything I said about Ellaria’s plans of avenging her loved one by killing a lot of people. The main problem being that it just creates a lot more widows. Daenerys has a solution for that problem: She makes sure there will be no widows left.

And the next thirty minutes is watching people die horribly. In the latter half Arya tries to escape, falls unconscious a couple of times, and watches everyone else near her die, including the mother and the child who acted as the faces of the common people. Not really much to say about it. Things are awful.

What I do enjoy in these scenes is seeing the Red Keep as an actual physical thing in the world which is not just in the background in an establishing shot. It’s actually in there, Daenerys flies around it, pieces fall out of it and almost splatter Jaime when he walks below, and characters are in the open air when they walk inside it and suddenly the wall breaks down. It’s more alive this way, just before it dies.

Jaime goes for the secret entrance, and there’s… Euron. Using his powers to turn up in inconvenient places. He challenges Jaime to a duel, just for the fun of it. They are both doomed anyway. And he actually stabs Jaime! I have never been that fond of Jaime, but at that point I was entirely on his side. You are some last-minute addition, Euron! You can’t just come and kill the Jaime Lannister! After all that he’s done! There are so many other characters who have much better claims to kill him, one of them should do it. You getting the kill wouldn’t be… it wouldn’t be fair… oh yes, I forgot what show I was watching for a moment there.

The brawl ends with Jaime killing Euron. The smug pirate dies, laughing that he gets to be the one who killed Jaime Lannister. Sorry, but no one will sing about it. Jaime might have gotten back out if the stab wounds didn’t slow him down, and so technically you did kill him as much as Daenerys did, but no one will know.

In the city the hidden wildfire pots begin to blow up. No one has cleaned those up yet? Well, everyone who would have known where they were was killed during the last fall of King’s Landing… So the Mad King gets his wish, twenty years later, by the hand of his daughter.

The Hound and Arya are already in the map room. I like that at this point it is not even explained how they can get from the courtyard to the most guarded place of King’s Landing. They just do that. After everything they have done, it’s all part of the day’s work.

The Hound sends Arya away, seeing as they are too late and Cersei will die soon anyway. He doesn’t take his own advice, he has promised everyone this duel.

The duel almost doesn’t happen, because The Red Keep keeps crumbling. It creates a nice apocalyptic set piece for when The Hound arrives. The rest of the Queen’s Guard are quickly killed by him. I don’t remember any of their names anymore, the ones I do remember like Boros I’m quite sure have already died.

Anyway, when The Mountain is moving for the duel, Qyburn goes to stop him. And the monster kills his creator, bashing his head to the rocks. I should have seen that coming. 

Qyburn was an odd fellow, who seemed to be mainly interested in getting to do science his way, with no denials from the stuffy Citadel maesters. Outside of killing Pycelle, which I’m sure he did get pleasure from, he didn’t seem to be emotionally invested in any of Cersei’s activities, good or bad. He just saw her as the ruler who could sponsor her the most, if she stayed in power. Would Tywin, or anyone else, have put him into the Small Council, never mind making him the Hand? Nope. So he attached himself to Cersei.

I was going to comment on the map in the Map Room, and how when Cersei enters the room, a rift enters the map from the sea and rips Westeros in half. Clear symbolism of Daenerys’ arrival, and I picked it up! Good job me. But on second watch I saw that the rift came from the Sunset Sea, meaning west, not the Narrow Sea. So it was unlikely that it was symbolism after all. But even if the rift came from the east side, what would have been the chances that it actually was intended as symbolizing anything else than Cersei’s crumbling rule? I know that big special effects shots like these are planned and discussed a lot when they are created, and so are details like tablecloth colors and symbols on patchworks, but still surprisingly often shots are like they are just because they looked cool like that.

I’ll still call out these possible connections, even if nobody in the creation process thought of them. But the next one is deliberate, The Hound even said it aloud to Arya: He is killing himself here because he can’t let go. He and The Mountain are on these collapsing stairs, knowing it’s very likely neither of them will be getting away at this point, especially not if they keep fighting each other. But they fight, stab and punch each other anyway. Killing each other is more important for them than surviving. There are even fast cuts to Arya almost dying on the streets, when the person who could have helped her is still on those stairs, consumed by vengeance. And isn’t that exactly what that whole White Walker invasion thing was about? The entire moral of the story? A lone wolf dies, but the pack survives?

The Mountain has never been much of a pack person. He’s the quintessential brute character, turned up to eleven as everything in the show is. So he has absolutely no redeeming qualities, not even any “he had a rough father”-backstories to Tell Us How He Turned Up Like He Was. He was just an all-around horrible person who was gladly used as such by Tywin and Cersei. And after his resurrection, there was a question of how much he was who he was before anymore, and how much a Frankenstein-monster-robot instead. But the Hound’s reaction was that yup, it was still him. Maybe it says a lot about The Mountain that there was such a small difference.

The Hound could have been a similar character. Good thing he met Sansa. Shielding Joffrey would not have made him think better of people, but Sansa, and later Arya, were different. Not that The Hound ever changed his opinion of what kind of a world he was living in. He tried, when he retired to that redshirt village, but he never got to forget what kind of people were also living in it. Including him.

So these two people who never let go of their fiery hatred of each other fall.

Into the fire.

Down below, Cersei and Jaime find out that the way is shut. Cersei has before her a pile of rubble. It can’t be schemed to go away, she can’t yell at anyone to do anything about it and she can’t use violence to get rid of it. It’s over.

So she begs, and that doesn’t help either. Cersei Lannister, The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, previously The Queen Mother, previously The Queen by marriage, who at her best could get the King killed without being associated with the deed, and at her worst almost lost the city to a barefooted guy giving out soup. She was the daughter of Tywin, meaning that she was always in his shadow, and by being a daughter instead of a son, was forced into her position against her will. But she tried to be her father so much, and the realm (and her) suffered for it.

And never forget “We have another wolf”. So her begging doesn’t do much for my sympathies. Jaime, who during the entire series has almost grown to be a better person, but has always allowed Cersei to drag her back down, embraces her and tells her how “Nothing else matters but us”. If that’s true, why did you two forcefully keep your teeth in the power of the throne, which is the lynchpin of the kingdoms where so, so many other people matter to your lifes? You would never have been in peace near that pointy chair. It’s because Cersei was afraid of losing power. She had been too close to it, and had created too many enemies to let her go away in peace. The name Lannister had already created many of those enemies centuries ago, and she was no Jon in healing old disputes. She played for the win, because losing was not an option for her. But if you keep playing, eventually someone beats you.

Cersei loses the game of thrones.

And now the rains weep o’er her halls, With no one there to hear...

So, the winner here is the Lord of Light? So much fire and burning humans. Fire has beaten the ice. Can he please incarnate into a body so that he can be punched?

It’s the finale next time! At long last. Any last minute predictions? Well, Cersei and Jaime are missing, maybe dead, maybe not, and no one has shovels big enough to dig their corpses up to make sure. If they escaped, they would be a thorn on Daenerys’ side, and who helped them escape? Tyrion has failed Daenerys for the last time. When Bronn comes to ask for his Highgarden, Daenerys would much rather give him Tyrion than just give out the richest kingdom to some sellsword for allowing Tyrion to live long enough to betray her.

As much as Daenerys has wanted that throne, I’m afraid that she is not going to get it (if it’s still in one piece). During the last two seasons, I said that it seems like we are on our way to a victory where Daenerys gets the throne. There was only Cersei left to seriously contest her claim, and after the finale of the sixth season Cersei (and the Night King) were looking like the final bosses, and the rest of the show would be action figures hitting each other until only one side stands, which would be Daenerys’.

It did happen, but there’s still one episode left, and everyone not in Daenerys' coalition is dead. So we still have time for some more game of thrones inside that coalition. Yay. 

If Daenerys goes all Mad King on Jon, for some reason or another, and tries to execute both him and Tyrion, Arya will be ready to act. And what then, if Daenerys is gone? We will get someone to the throne who has never wanted it, and has outright refused it already. Someone who may not have to say that he is the king, because the people like him. Fancy that. And with Tyrion as his Hand. I’ll bet that Tyrion survives. At this point, Daenerys is the only one standing between anyone and them living to the end of the last episode.

It’s snowing here. The winter is upon us once again. Good thing that here it doesn’t mean mythological monsters coming with the cold.

In Westeros the monsters have been defeated, and the entire world is no longer under existential threat. Time to mourn the dead and celebrate.

Last time I didn’t say anything about Jorah Mormont’s death. The post was running long, and I didn’t want to write an eulogy because I wasn’t sure that he actually died. I have been wrong before. For example, Ghost did survive. If we saw him running back from the Dead I missed it, and so declared him dead too early. Turns out he actually was just out of the frame the whole time.

But Jorah. He had a backstory of having a bad marriage and ending up selling slaves (”Things we do for love”), and getting banished from Westeros by Ned Stark. All of that was in the backstory, told by him telling his story (and other characters mentioning the slaver part). Since it hasn’t come up much since the story was first told, it hasn’t been on my mind when watching the character. Jaime did his worst deeds right on screen, Jorah’s bad stuff was in his backstory.

Okay, there was that time he came to Daenerys’ service originally just to sell her to Robert for a pardon, but he regretted it immediately once the first assassin arrived, and has served only her since. He kidnapped Tyrion, with whom he had no personal grievance (until he had spent long enough listening to him), but wanted to buy a pardon from Daenerys by offering her someone threatening her crown. Ooh, nice parallel. And another: Again he was taking someone’s freedom to get something for a woman he loved. Then he ended up as a slave himself. Maybe the people he sold ended up in a similar situation. After that he was out on the fields searching for Daenerys, and after that searching for a cure for grayscale, so we didn’t get any comment from him about abolishing slavery that would have mentioned his backstory, and him having taken part of benefitting from the bad system they were removing.

But his slaving days were all in the backstory, and after seasons full of events that are themselves hard to keep track of (who was whose ally back then? Who betrayed whom? Did these two meet before and what did they say?), the events that happened long before the first episode seem less relevant. Daenerys has allied herself with every family that was part of Robert’s rebellion, except the Baratheons themselves, who are no more. Even the one Lannister who actually killed her father is now in her in-group. The historical reasons don’t matter narratively anymore, the important stuff is what people have done on screen.

After the smelly funeral and Jon’s speech of everybody having set aside their differences, it’s time for the afterparty. People drink, eat, love and Daenerys gives out titles she doesn’t have yet. I said that Baratheons are no more, but Daenerys gives the name to Gendry, and names him the lawful son of Robert Baratheon. If the “true heir”-hullabaloo of Jon and Daenerys doesn’t end up being a big enough mess, there’s that line back in business now as well.

Davos speaks with my mouth and complains to Tyrion about the Lord of Light. He told them to do what he said, they fought and died, and died, and finally won, and what now? Melisandre died as well and now he’s quiet. How do they know he didn’t plan everything this way and now Cersei has an easier job of killing them all? “I don’t imagine thinking about that subject will leave you any happier than before”, Tyrion answers. And I think that’s my cue to drop the subject too.

The first half hour is the celebration. The war is not over, but here and now, they are alive. The last episode is unlikely to end with even this sort of good feeling, or with this much time to spare for small moments, so better celebrate now. Some don’t get what they want, both Tormund and Gendry get their courting rejected, and Daenerys feels like an outsider, and that her queenship in Westeros has been poisoned by Jon’s revelation.

She wants him to promise that he’ll never tell anyone, and have Samwell and Bran promise it too. But Jon feels like he owes the truth to Sansa and Arya.

Why?

Like, I do like honesty, but at this point telling the truth benefits them absolutely nada, if you don’t want anyone to start thinking game-of-throney, and Jon absolutely doesn’t. If he continues to be Jon Snow, and marries Daenerys, and so gives her the public relation benefits of being married to the saviour of the North and leaves the ruling of the North to the Starks, who will be good allies because of Jon… what benefit is there in telling Sansa or Arya about his parents? Bran can tell them that he saw the past and Lyanna and Rhaegon actually loved each other, and never mention any baby which nobody knows about. Lying by omission can be done if someone’s hat is really ugly, and especially if saying it aloud could start another civil war.

So Jon goes and says it aloud. But before it he sworns them to secrecy. Which lasts for five minutes, and before the end of the episode Tyrion and Varys know about it as well, and start game-of-throneing the situation. Nice job, Jon.

The morning after the celebration, there’s a hungover war council. The list of casualties includes half of everyone. That actually sounds small, considering how small the last pockets of resistance were at the end of the battle.

News from afar tells that Yara succeeded and has taken command of the Iron Islands. No idea how, but Euron coming back after a long absence, only to spend his kingly time on Cersei’s lap and fighting her wars must have been one rallying point. It’s not like Yara has a much better track record, but if you raise your butt, your seat gets taken, that’s the rule.

And Dorne’s new prince has re-allied Dorne with Daenerys. Maybe this time they’ll actually come to battle. I doubt it, there’s no time and who is this “New Prince of Dorne” anyway?

The plan is to siege King’s Landing and tell the people that once Cersei is out, nothing bad will happen to them. Missandei’s point that they’ll get sympathy points for saving the world gets shot down, as people won’t believe them and Cersei can turn the tall-tales against them. Sure the maesters will believe once enough of them see the battlegrounds. There will likely be scientific expeditions to study everything about the battle, the Wall and the enemy, but to the good people of King’s Landing, what does it matter?

Or more importantly, the bannermen. If enough of them call it quits, Cersei’s rule ends there. But when she blew up the sept, they rewarded her with the throne, so I’m not putting much faith there.

The plans are made, Jon’s secret revealed and the army leaves soon. Before that, Tyrion and Jaime get a visitor. Bronn has come all the way up north to see them. He gives out a rant of how he has served the Lannisters, who promise a lot, sure, but that’s all he gets, promises and empty titles. I enjoy this Bronn, more of him please. No nonsense, no listening to “power resides where people think it resides”-speeches, in a couple of minutes he gets them to promise him the Reach. Another Lannister promise of course, their reputation for paying their debts has been overblown. I especially liked Bronn’s point about how the great houses all started with someone who was good at killing. “Kill a few hundred, they make you a lord. Kill a few thousand, they make you a king”. Having Bronn in the Tyrells’ old place would be sad, I’m not that sure how good he would be in the actual ruling, but at this point it’s whatever. Will they even live long enough for that to matter?

Arya and the Hound leave on their own, they both have “unfinished business” in the capital. The Hound is going to duel the Mountain, and Arya will try to take out Cersei. Which makes me realize: The allied side has a Faceless assassin, who has already managed to wreck the Frey house. Seems like the easiest option to remove Cersei without having to dig her out of the Red Keep. Arya could even play-act Cersei afterwards and forfeit the throne peacefully. Seems easy enough for her, why not try that first before attacking?

Because only she and Sansa know that she can do that. And they know how to keep secrets better than Jon.

Sansa and Tyrion have a talk. Sansa doesn’t trust Daenerys, but she doesn’t trust anyone that much these days. And she knows that Daenerys knows that Jon may be a problem for her claim. Sure they may wuuv each other, but in Sansa’s experience, that hasn’t stopped anyone from doing awful things. So she lets Tyrion on the secret. To have him notice in time if Daenerys wants to deal with the problematic claim with force? Or to have the idea of Jon being the better choice for a ruler, more electable, to simmer in Daenerys’ court member’s minds? That ends up happening, so points to her if that was her goal.

Daenerys’ coalition is so wide that it has problems keeping itself steady long enough to get a hit on Cersei. Cersei’s side doesn’t have that problem, it’s just promising the spoils of war left and right.

Farewells. Tormund says that he’s going to take the wildlings back beyond the Wall. “They need room to wander”, he says, and there’s a lot of free real estate there now. Jon asks him to take Ghost with him. So Ghost actually got the end I hoped for him; he’ll live out there in the wild, just out of frame. I’m happy.

As it’s very unlikely that the action will come back North anymore, this is the end of the show for the wildlings. Many, many, many of them are dead, but the people known as wildlings survive to populate their lands again, because of a) the gathering up that Mance led, and b) the trust they had when Jon came to offer alliance. Without either, Beyond the Wall would be a very quiet place now. Hopefully they, the Night’s Watch and the North continue to have friendly terms in the future, it would make the Night’s Watch’s job much easier.

Farewells to Sam and Gilly too. It’s not impossible that they’ll show up closer to the action later, people move fast these days, but this seems like a happy end for them too… Argh, what am I doing, I’m foolishly lowering my guard. That’s just when the alien hiding in the shuttle makes a jump scare. 

Still two more episodes, then they and I can be at peace.

Speaking of sudden jump scares, Rhaegal gets hit with one just when entering the Dragonstone air space. While Daenerys was off saving the world, Euron has been busy mass-producing the black arrow throwers. Now his whole fleet has them, and as will be seen soon the King’s Landing has been filled with them too. So just as Daenerys predicted, Cersei spent the truce getting prepared for round two.

After the last episode, I wondered that, if the White Walkers appeared now in the 21st century, they would be easy enough to handle with modern technology and weaponry. Mass-produce obsidian-tipped bullets, and the whole army of the dead is gone before it gets a start. Or just bomb them. The dead didn’t know how to use any weapon more complicated than a sword. Like the Elves of Discworld, in the industrial revolution they are out of time. Would the same end result happen to dragons, if they arrived on Westeros a thousand years later?

Back to the episode. Rhaegal, who survived fighting the Dead, including another dragon, gets shot down unceremoniously. Pulling out a victory will not be that easy after all. As long as the enemy has Euron, who can apparently do just about whatever.

His ballistas seem to work by magic, as not only can they pierce a dragon’s hide, but also hit with the power of powder-powered cannons in ship-to-ship fight. Anyway, he gets away with destroying the fleet. Tyrion jumps to water, a mast falls on top of the camera and everything goes dark.

If this was the end of the episode, it would already have been a regular-length one (55 minutes at this point), but no, we are not ready yet. The survivors get to the shore, Varys and Tyrion included, but Missandei is captured.

She is brought to the capital, and oh hi, Cersei, long time no see. Cersei has opened the gates of the Red Keep for the good people of King’s Landing, so Daenerys can’t just melt the castle down. She is also going to go with her and Jaime’s child being actually hers and Euron’s. “XX Lannister, of golden hair…”

Rhaegal dying upped the tension, but doesn’t actually change much narratively. If Daenerys wants to burn down everything, she can do it as well with just one dragon as long as the story is on her side. The change is that there’s now proof that dragons can be killed with human weapons, and not just with Night King’s trustworthy shoulder. And that getting more dragons is now impossible, if it wasn’t before (I don’t remember their sexes, and if they were close relatives that information is lost to history).

Then it’s another round of the party game “Let’s try to talk Daenerys out of killing everybody”. Varys is very worried, and so is Tyrion. Daenerys agrees to make appropriate sounds of not wanting bloodshed and asking Cersei to surrender, but she sees no hope in it. In her mind, the only way forward now is to sack the city and dig Cersei out of the ruins of the Red Keep. If that’s the only way to remove a tyrant, then so be it.

Varys is very afraid that after all the scheming and planning he did to keep the Targaryen heirs alive and finally put one of them to the throne, he’s only found a new tyrant to replace another. To which I say that Cersei is currently the worst option and she is the one on the throne, so one problem at a time. Varys seems to be thinking that if they swapped Daenerys with Jon now, they would get more Southern lords to join them against Cersei, which Daenerys can’t do. But would Cersei forfeit the throne even in that case? No, she wouldn’t. So a siege would have to happen anyway until she is removed by force.

When Varys started the plan many years ago, why was he thinking that it would work and the Targaryen heirs would be better rulers than Robert, anyway? Because the exiled Targaryens had to beg and so would grow up more humble? Didn’t work with Viserys. Another question: Why then did he give up so easily and send the assassin when Robert ordered it, with no safeguards?

Varys’ days are numbered at this point. He has now spoken of treason aloud. Tyrion can’t possibly keep it secret from Daenerys if he’s afraid that Varys will act soon.

People keep talking like Cersei’s fall is a certainty. No matter that they just got their backsides handed to them, Tyrion, Varys and even Sansa seem to have no doubt that Daenerys will now just get more angry and bring down fire and blood on her enemies.

When Jaime realizes this, he looks into his heart, and finds Cersei there. The same woman who threatened to have him killed the last time he saw her, and actually sent an assassin after him when he did leave. And still Jaime thinks that that’s the person he wants to be with. Jenny Nicholson said once “Loving something unconditionally doesn’t mean that you love it more. You just love it sadder”.

Well, Jaime has half the continent to cross, and plenty of time to think. Maybe he should think before setting out to these long journeys.

The last debate begins, on the gates of King’s Landing. Everything is empty on this side of the walls, and the city itself gets only a short glimpse and is otherwise not seen.

Empty vista, just these royal characters talking to each other, mixing their personal dramas into a large soup. The people whose lives they are discussing are elsewhere, not seen. Earlier in the episode they were shown as little dots, pieces of play, to be moved from one place to another. 

Both sides show their Hands, but Tyrion does not find Qyburn cood talking company, and walks up to Cersei. She enjoys the chance to make him wonder if she would really shoot him there and then, but ends up not doing that. For now, killing the Dragon Queen’s dear advisor is enough cruelty for one day.

Tyrion tries to call on her self-preservation instincts, by promising safety for her and her child if she steps down. There’s no use calling on her good side, and Tyrion doesn’t. “You hate the people and they hate you”. This doesn’t work, her pride comes before self-preservation. She was ready to poison both her and Tommen when Stannis almost breached the gates, no mercy asked. She won’t ask this time either. So she has Missandei executed.

Is it just cruelty for cruelty’s sake because she feels confident? Or does she want Daenerys to attack too soon and too rashly, so her last dragon can be dropped from the sky as easily as Rhaegal was? Or does she think that the lords will rally to her when they see how Daenerys attacks cities like the Targaryen conquerors of old?

Missandei and Grey Worm made the mistake of planning for their happy end too early, rookie mistake. But I still thought that Grey Worm would end up being the one who dies, he had “one last mission before retirement” written all over him.

First Jorah, now Missandei. Rakharo vanished somewhere (if he died at some point I missed it), ser Barristan died, Daario was left behind… she has lost her closest companions from Essos. Grey Worm was never much of a talker, and Tyrion and Varys have only seen her in the conqueror mode. No one can remind her of her beginning, when her army fit into one small ship, and the whole world was against her but she still tried to find the best options.

This episode was movie-long, or would be if movies weren’t so much longer these days. And all of it was battle. Battle, fighting, loud noises, battle. It was exhaustive to watch at the last 30 minutes, I have to admit, but it was earned. After teasing the monsters for so long and setting up the battle for several episodes, this was the time. The show has long since moved on from the battles being quick fades to black to spare the budget, so there’s been a lot of them lately. And now this Promised One should be the biggest of them all, with all the 80 minutes received for watching people die.

Oh, and there’s still three episodes, several villains and the whole game of thrones to go. After the end of the world. Life goes on, which I guess is a positive message?

The episode starts with a quick heads up of where everyone is, and where the armies are, ready to fight. The only thing missing is the enemy. It is out there, somewhere in the dark.

Watching into the abyss. Nothing watches back, or not?

A lone rider approaches, but it’s not a White Walker. Melisandre arrives from the night and gives Jorah cryptic orders. Jorah just rolls with it at this point, and Melisandre makes every arakh of the Dothraki burst out in flames. I have to say, those are some well trained horses. Then Melisandre moves inside the walls.

I feel like I’m hitting the same dead horse every time when I ask about how much does the Lord of Light see beforehand, and what his end goal is? Everyone being in his religion? And since no one can pray for him if everyone is dead, he tells his priests how to save the world.

But the light of the arakhs gives the Dothraki the courage to charge straight at the darkness, which could hold anything, starting from holes in the ground, and that’s the end of them. The greatest cavalry in the world, Dothraki on the open field, snuffed out just like that. And the battle has lasted for a minute.

So, Lord of Light, did you know that would happen? And you did it anyway? Because you needed them - and Ghost! - dead, for some future purpose? To make Jon suffer more? Otherwise the Night King wouldn’t have come forward? Is that what you are going to go with if someone asks?

What I have gathered is that this is not the usual theodicy problem of “If the God is all-powerful and all-good, why do bad stuff happen?” No one has said that the Lord of Light is all-good, he likes human sacrifice. He is also not all-powerful, as his arsenal seems to be “Tell people to do X, and what is going to happen if they do or don’t”, and some tricks with shadows, fire and resurrection. If he was all-powerful, I don’t think he would have the patience for any of that.

Of course, if you can see everything that people will do if you tell them X, then that is very powerful by itself. What have the other gods to offer? The Old Gods, if they are real and the reason Bran has powers, show what happens now or in the past. The Lord of Light can see the future. Or just calculate well enough as to guess mostly right every time?

Anyway, trying to figure out the motives and methods of an extranatural being, whose only interface to the story is through what the priests say, is a fool’s errand. But I don’t like it if everyone turns out to be a plaything for some mysterious thing who is never seen and can’t be punched in the end.

The first part of the battle ends abruptly, a quick breath and here we go for the next hour. On my first watch I couldn’t figure out what was shown in that very short glimpse of the enemy before the camera moved back. On pause I see that it’s a giant wight. It felt like a whole wall of the wights, which put in my mind a funny visual. Think about it, them standing on each other’s shoulders, and then the whole wall of them falling on top of the Dothraki when they come near. Splat.

As they say, what you can’t see is more scary than what you can see… or more funny in this case.

Jorah survived the first clash. Ghost didn’t. Goodbye Ghost, I enjoyed your constant companionship and presence just out of the frame. Maybe he didn’t die, but went there. Just out of frame, living happily ever after.

The dead come out of the darkness and instantly wreck all the defenses the defenders have, catapults, shield walls, everything. That was expected, considering how well shield walls usually hold in TV (maybe ten seconds). Everything becomes confused, Daenerys and Jon attack from above. Why didn’t they attack with the Dothraki? Well, when the enemy leader can one-shot your dragon you don’t go blindly to the enemy in the dark, showing right where you are with fire. Unlike Jorah and the Dothraki. That was very stupid.

Jon sees the White Walkers on the border of the Wolfswood, but before he gets to attack them, the winter arrives. The Night King brought it with him. The winds of winter wreck everything even further.

Nice, I wondered what the Dead can do against two dragons who can burn thousands of the enemy in a minute.

In the confusion of the storm of swords, Sam gets to see one of his last friends die. I was certain that Edd would survive. That’s what he does! He’s the grumpy guy who somehow turns up alive every single time, no matter how unlikely he himself deemed it. And he was a delight. But no. At the same time, Edd represented the last of the Night’s Watch. Jon has moved away to larger circles, and Sam, while still a brother, has been training to become a maester. Edd was the only named character still fully in the black, and after this episode the Night’s Watch is not needed anymore.

In this story, I mean. Is this the end of the White Walkers? Or will they return, one day, when the nights grow cold and the kings forget… Was the Night King the first Night King? And how much of the strength of the Walkers now can be blamed on Craster, who outright gave them more members?

The wildling population has been decimated, and decimated again, and after this night the Walkers are as well, so what is there to guard against anymore on the Wall? I can see it falling out of use if the people think that the Walkers are gone and the Lands beyond the Wall are now empty (and could use settlers from the South side of the Wall, if anyone wants to move there anytime soon). There’s also the matter of the spells in the Wall’s foundations. Can anyone remake them?

The dead’s tactic is to just run towards the enemy in absolutely no formation and then kick, bite and hit it with weapons until it stops moving. I’m sure that there are ways to counter that kind of attack, if it can also counter the enemy having no concept of self-preservation and there being a lot of them.

The retreat happens, with the Unsullied making sure that it happens in good order. I read a bit about Spartan upbringing, which was absolutely horrible, and surprisingly ineffective in action. It was good for propaganda and to make the enemy scared of you, but abusing people for their entire childhood did not actually a supersoldier make. But in this universe it does, and the Unsullied are the best at handling the situation of standing your ground when thousands of moving corpses are pushing your shield.

And then Grey Worm sacrifices them, or would have if they didn’t die already before the trench got lit. Melisandre prays the Lord of Light to light it, and he takes his sweet time with it. To make sure that as many of the Dead are in the trench as possible? Which means waiting until all the Unsullied on that side are dead. Hmm.

Poor Hound, the best weapon they have against the Dead is also the best weapon against him.

Bran goes to borrow the ravens, and locates the Night King. He is just ordering his forces to walk into the fire and stay there. Talk about lack of self-preservation…

It works, they get through and start to make a pile next to the wall.

The next ten-fifteen minutes are a blur of a battle. The wights attack and get further and further into the castle, people die a lot, named characters get to show their great skillz and so on.

In previous large episode-long battles there has been people on both sides whom we have followed and who have their own dreams and plans, and season-long arcs clash in the battle which determines how the rest of the show will go. Comparing them to previous large-scale fantasy battles I watched before this show was a thing (LotR, Narnia, Harry Potter), the difference was exactly that. In those the other side was made up of existential threat monsters, and the possible defeat meant that everyone is dead now and the story is over as everyone is dead. In previous seasons it was clear that some characters would die if they lost, but the show wouldn’t have been over

But this battle, this battle is exactly that. Which is why I had no doubt of its outcome. The Dead have to get defeated, the last episodes won’t be Cersei hearing that the North has fallen and getting on a ship to another continent. But many will die, like in the next scene, where Lyanna Mormont is guarding the gate when someone knocks on it.

They should really get a giant-proofed gate to Winterfell, this is a second time that one has wrecked it. Of course, if all the giants are dead and unmoving after this night, it doesn’t matter.

Lyanna gets a warrior’s death. Shame she doesn’t get to grow old, she would have been a good bannerman and a leader, by the Northern culture’s measures. But she had the choice, and she picked this death and protected her people. Hopefully it mattered, I don’t remember seeing any other giant wights after this one was destroyed so maybe this was the last one and the crypt isn’t breached or Theon smashed to the ground too early because of Lyanna. Thank you.

Jon and Daenerys climb over the storm, and the resulting view is very background-worthily beautiful. Westeros is beautiful when it’s not covered in blood and excrement.

Aaaand there’s the Night King with his dragon. He attacks, and is then gone again, baiting Jon and Daenerys to come back to the storm. They comply.

Arya sneaks around in Winterfell’s library and other rooms, hiding from the wights. The situation has very Battle of Hogwarts vibes. The enemy is in the place which has meant home and safety for this character (for Sansa the Boltons poisoned the place a lot but Arya didn’t see that).

She can’t hide from the forever, and when they hear her, it’s time for screaming and running. And running again. This castle is really big. Finally she gets to Beric and the Hound, and it’s time for a Last Stand.

If Joffrey had been a nicer kid he would have gotten a great sworn shield out of the Hound, he does take the job seriously when he actually cares. But the Last Stand belongs to Beric Dondarrion, he has the most experience.

All three get to the hearth hall, but Beric is too wounded to live much longer. His final death bought the life of Arya. And Melisandre comes to tell that this was why the Lord of Light brought him back so many times. “You’ve kept him alive so that he can die at the proper moment”, Snape would say.

Arya gets the hint of what her role is according to the Lord’s plan. Nice callback to Syrio Forel. “What do we say to the God of Death?” And, as everyone has been saying, Death is what they are up against.

The Night King gets bolder. He goes to attack Winterfell himself. And gets immediately slammed by Jon and Rhaegal. And it’s the dance with dragons as the body of Viserion and Rhaegal go at it with claws and teeth.

The clash of kings ends as the Night King falls into the storm, annoyed. Rhaegal is hurt and goes to the ground, dropping Jon. No idea where it went after that. Daenerys finds the landed riders and starts blasting the Night King with everything she’s got.

Aaand… dragonfire can’t harm him. No idea if it would have worked with the regular Walkers, as in Hardhome that one Walker just walked straight over a regular fire. Anyway, now Daenerys gets to see how it feels when someone else does the same trick as her.

After being blasted by dragonfire, the Night King looks only annoyed. He has just two facial expressions, serious and annoyed. He was given simple instructions: Destroy humans, and now he just tries to do his job if people would let him.

Here’s Jon trying to get a final duel to determine the future of the world. Since the beginning he’s been the greatest swordfighter, who has practiced and fought with ser Rodrik, Allison Thorne, wildlings, Rast, Thenns, wights, White Walkers, Ramsay Bolton, more wights… and now when he meets the final boss face to face, one to one, on the apocalyptic empty battlefield… the boss doesn’t have time for this, he has his job to do, and he can pull thousands of new underlings to deal with Jon.

The feast for crows gets delayed, as the dead defenders rise for a second turn on the same map but on different colors. Now everyone still alive has many many more problems. And from the quick shots it can be seen that the named characters already are almost alone. How did they hold even this long? It’s because of the camera. When it’s not looking, everyone can relax. A long time ago Robert died off-screen but that hasn’t been a problem for characters for a long time.

The Walkers want to be a part of the victory and do some actual walking. And when they do walk, they do it very menacingly, so I understand why it’s their brand.

When the Walkers were seen for the first couple of times in the early seasons, they were usually shirtless. But since Hardhome they have used more clothes. Why?

It will stay a mystery, they won’t tell.

Tyrion spends a lot of time in the crypt thinking that if he just were up there seeing what was happening he would figure out something. Sansa thinks he would just die, and I agree with that, especially as he is so out of his depth nowadays. I didn’t figure out the twist of them being in the crypt and the enemy being able to raise the dead, as obvious as it is in hindsight. But Tyrion is smarter than me and he still missed it. And if I had thought of the possibility before it happened I would have waved it away thinking that the bodies must be too old by now to be of any use even if they could be raised. Well I would have been wrong, they are springy for their age. But Ned isn’t one of them, decapitation has been useful against the Dead. That’s perhaps a relief, Sansa wouldn’t want that kind of a reunion.

Daenerys rescues Jon but makes a rookie mistake of landing in the middle of an enemy-occupied battlefield. Drogon gets swarmed but gets off, without Daenerys. Luckily Jorah is savvy enough to know that Daenerys hasn’t yet not got herself into these situations every time she is in a battle, so he knows to be there to help her.

Music starts. First on piano, then other instruments join in. Last time that happened the piece was called “Light of the Seven”, and it ended with an explosion. So the end is near, the clock is ticking. 

The complete destruction of everything. Jon tries to get to Bran but the body of Viserion enters the arena. Now Jon gets to fight a dragon, on foot. You missed the big boss but here’s a dragon, you get to be a proper fantasy hero, just slay the dragon.

In the weirwood the wights stop attacking Theon, as the Night King has arrived. The rest of Bran’s defenders have died. Theon brought a small force of Ironborn to Winterfell, again, and they were no match for attackers, again. Theon has been deemed a failure and a loser by about everyone (including me back when he tried to be a villain but sucked at it), but he has succeeded in three things now: Saving Sansa, saving Yara, and now saving the world by holding the dead and the Night King back for long enough.

Bran comes back to his body to give comfort to this lost and found man. “You are a good man. Thank you.” Now was this Bran Stark who said that, or The Three-Eyed Raven Who Was Bran Once?

Theon takes his cue and tries once again. And fails. The Night King isn’t exhausted, and kills Theon with a simple stroke. And then it’s the end.

The Night King walks to Bran, and wants to show him how the fear is for the winter. He savors this final confrontation, which perhaps is allowed after so many millennia of trying. Similarly how this episode is the end of those eight and a half years the Others have lurked in my mind, ever since the first vision of them beyond the Wall. No wonder this is also my longest post yet. 

Just when everything was going well for old Nikey, Arya arrives out of nowhere, and goes all assassin on the Death itself. These blue eyes shut down now, and he becomes part of the winter landscape.

The Walkers explode as well, and the Dead fall. The sound of their screeches moves back to the songs and legends.

Epilogue: Now Melisandre is no longer needed for her Lord, so she gets to die. Of her own choice? Does she have any choice? She drops the necklace, and walks out of the castle, to be claimed by the ices of winter, with the fires of the rising sun harboring a dream of spring.

The End.

Or no, wait, there’s three episodes left.

Just how big casualties this battle had, anyway? Is there any sort of army left here for either Daenerys or Jon to challenge Cersei? Pretty much everyone in the end was completely swamped by the dead, it’s lucky there’s anyone left.

Stannis said once (only in the book if I remember correctly), that he used to think that he had to get the throne to save the realm, but then he realized that he had to instead save the realm to get the throne. And then he went and got himself stuck in the snow, because it seemed smart to him at the time.

Anyway, now Daenerys has saved the realm. The hole in the Wall and the giant pile of the dead bodies outside and in Winterfell (or a giant pile of burned bodies) should show to any doubters that it was real. How much of an opinion boost will she get from Cersei’s bannermen and allies for that? Or does it matter at all, as they seem to be happy being under Cersei even though she is, you know, Cersei. And blew up their religion’s most holy building.

So I don’t expect there to be any big riot that would topple her from the throne, the resolution (in the form of a big battle, of course) will happen long before the good people of King’s Landing can do that. I mean, they tried, in the form of the revolutionary High Septon, and it didn’t work.

I have become much more sympathetic to the old chap after his torturing, humiliation of prisoners and pressing for confessions are fading from memory, and Cersei’s reign is on the forefront. His end goal would have been breaking the wheel too, and seeing how the rulers’ main complaint of him was not that he was enforcing horrible laws in the name of his gods, but that he was applying those same horrible rules to them too (how dare he!)... yeah.

When the show started, the main focus was on the Southern politics and wars and so on, but all the time there was the clock ticking behind the Wall. At some point, none of this will matter anymore, as the Dead come and gods protect us if we are not ready.

Turns out we aren’t. And the Southern politics didn’t go anywhere. The Dead will likely get defeated in the next episode, otherwise there wasn’t a point in spending an episode first in the preparing for a great battle, and - very likely - the whole next episode on the actual battle. The Dead will stop here, but at what price?

And after the survivors walk or are carried out of Winterfell’s burnt ruins and see the fallen army of the Dead, they will still have Cersei and the Iron Throne and family trees to worry about. A lovely thought. Life goes on.

But in the beginning of the episode that is as far away as the end of the world. Jaime gets an audience with the Queen, and it goes well, considering the circumstances. Or the circumstances make it go better than it otherwise would. Bran gives out that he remembers what Jaime did to him, but doesn’t tell the others. That one would have tipped the scales, all the rest he could label as acts of war during wartime. And his good deeds have consequences too, which is nice. It’s almost like those video games where you can pick choices and at the end the game remembers them.

Redemption is an interesting thing. Usually in fantasy stories when the bad guy decides to become good they die immediately, so there’s no moral dilemma of whether they should still be punished or not. 

An example from old Star Wars novels is Kyp Durron, who was one of Luke’s pupils in the new Jedi Academy. He was influenced by an old evil Sith spirit (those are just lying around everywhere) and killed millions of people. In the end he became good again and received pretty much no penalty. That was a big cause of debate to fans back then, I’m too young to remember.

But by being a great Jedi, he must have saved millions and millions of more people later during his career, so isn’t that a much better outcome than if he was incarcerated for the rest of his life? What use would that have been? I don’t know, I don’t think that a case like that can be mapped out to the real world that well.

Bran follows this line of thought. Whatever happened, here they are now, and now Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven so who cares of what Bran thought back then.

He says he is no longer Bran, but something else entirely. I don’t think there was any mind swap, he is still the same person with mostly the same brain. But as he now sees everything in the past and the present he must feel like he is outside a normal person’s life. He can take an universal view of the world which doesn’t care about specific people, and so he must take that view for the sake of the world. At least that’s how he thinks.

Gendry doesn’t take Arya’s weapon order seriously until she shows that she knows what she is doing. Arya seems to have made the plans herself, and doesn’t seem to have discussed it with anyone. Considering that the Dead have a self-destruct button in the form of the Night King, and the defenders have a trained Faceless assassin among them, putting one and one together should work.

Or not, since he’s on a dragon currently. That, and the Dead not needing sleep,and not leaving any good faces, puts a wrench on any plan to just go to the army and assassinate the big boss. She can’t exactly hide among them.

Winterfell is becoming spiky as a metal concert. The problem with fighting the Dead is that there’s no manual. The Night Watch managed to escape the Fist of the First Men, but that one and the Hardhome were so chaotic that few lessons of the enemy could be learnt there. As I see it, the dead have the advantage that their “morale” is perfect and they will fight until completely destroyed. They also won’t be scared of any injury when doing stunts. But they don’t do any actual maneuvers, no shield walls, nothing like that. And when not directly ordered by a Walker to go to specific places, they have even less tactical thinking. So there should be ways to distract them or otherwise make them spend their forces to stupid things.

The problem is that the Walkers direct them to do just that anyway (walk over the cliff, the first thousand will soften the rest’s fall), because they feel like they have the numbers. And they are right in that.

Daenerys is angry at Tyrion for not figuring out that Cersei lied. Jorah goes to talk to her about it and asks her to forgive him. She does, but has there yet been a time when someone does something she thinks is bad and she just… doesn’t threaten them, or outright kill them, or send them away, or get talked out of it by someone else? I don’t remember. If the only thing stopping her from burning everyone is that people talk her out of it every other time… In a vote I’d be on Jon’s side.

I also like her gray-and-red dress, more than the ones she wore on previous seasons. And it's some color amidst all the black in Winterfell. Speaking of clothes, Lord Royce still wears his metal breastplate everywhere. Sounds cold up here.

And hey, is Robin Arryn here anymore? He has disappeared. Of course it would be silly to have a kid up here when he could be in the Eyrie, safer and actually ruling his lands. Maybe he turns up just in time to die.

Daenerys goes to speak with Sansa, trying to bond with her over being girl bosses. Sansa has seen enough queens to do just what Daenerys tries to do to be impressed, and asks what her plans are for the North. Do they get independence or not?

Why not? Sure, it’s half the continent, but currently you own a small island, Daenerys. A good ally is a much better deal than a resentful vassal. But she is Daenerys Stormborn yada yada, and the North is her by right. Shame she never met Stannis.

Theon is back, and Sansa is glad to take him and his small force to defend the castle. They aren’t the only ones arriving, refugees arrive all the time and are divided into those who can fight and those who can’t. Since the Dead arrive in the 24 hours, many and more must still be on their way, coming through the woods when the battle starts. Well, unless the Dead understand that they should simply siege and wait for the diseases and the lack of food to do their work for them, the battle will be short, however it’s going to end.

Davos and Gilly direct people to their destinations. There’s one young girl who has… has… oh. A scarred cheek, reminding both me and Davos of Princess Shireen. Ow. She goes to protect the crypt, and I hope it doesn’t get attacked (because she would wreck everybody who tries, obviously).

Considering that it has now been two episodes in the last season, and no one named has died yet, but almost everyone has gathered here ready for the big battle, the next episode - and ones coming afterwards - will be brutal. I’m not going to make any specific predictions, many side characters will die, some more main characters as well, you know, this is a big one. And since the show will end soon we wouldn’t see much of these people anymore anyway.

The survivors of the Wall arrive, and give the Deadline: the enemy will be here before dawn tomorrow. And I don’t see the battle lasting to sunrise. It’s an army of the Dead and the Night King, and it’s the climax, of course they’ll attack during the night. If they get defeated, that’s when the Sun will rise.

Final plans are made. They are going to meet the enemy on the field. Makes sense when you have Dothraki, But the Night King is the lynchpin. Bran declares that he will come to the field, as he wants to personally kill the Three-Eyed Raven.

This is a very tabletop RPG way of setting up a battle. The players can’t fight thousands of enemies with the usual combat rules. Even if the long battle won’t kill them it gets super monotone fast, so it’s better to set up something they can do and have that determine the battle’s result.

Tyrion is very interested in Bran’s story. Foreshadowing, or simply a character who very much wants to know stuff getting to meet someone who can rewind everywhere?

The goal of the White Walkers is given by Bran as “destroy humans”. That was clear before, but apparently there’s no other motive. They just kill. It’s just death. If they have a plan for after, humans don’t need to know. Maybe the Children made a mistake in the instructions and so they were added to the “kill all humans” command, or the Night King figured out that killing them eases the killing of humans, especially as they protected the Three-Eyed Raven. Anyway, programming is hard, I’d expect that programming living creatures is even harder.

Bran escaped from the cave to the Castle Black very easily if the Night King knew where he was all the time.

Missandei and Grey Worm discuss what their plans are when the wars are won and they can retire. One word: retirony. Take her picture and show it to the other Unsullied while you are at it, Grey Worm. I haven’t had an opinion, good or bad, about these two, they just are around. Of course I wish them good health and a happy relationship, but it feels like Sam and Gilly are using all the luck.

Oh, Ghost is here! But if someone is likely to join the long line of people and dying to protect Jon, it’s Ghost.

Sam worries about Jon not telling Daenerys. Dude, there’s something else on their plate right now, they can worry about that later if there’s going to be a later.

Comparing Sam the Kingmaker with Sam the self-proclaimed coward from the first episodes, there’s a very large difference. But since you can’t be brave without fear, Sam has become the bravest of all. I’m very proud of him.

Then there’s Edd, who is certain they are all going to die. Again. Well, that is one of the safest predictions there is, as long as you don’t specify a date. “And now there’s just us”. The Night’s Watch has dropped like flies already. And now the real winter is here.

But so is The Night Watch. It’s everyone here now. Everyone in Winterfell is now part of the shield that guards the realms of men. It’s not much fun, but some do this every day.

Since nobody is going to have any sleep, a group of people settles to sit beside the fire. There’s a wildling raider, a Southern smuggler, a Lannister squire, the Kingslayer, the Imp and a maiden from Tarth who likes to play with swords. All here and now, in the dark of a cloudy winter night, waiting. It’s a somber event, no matter how much Tormund tries to lift people’s spirits with his tales.

It’s equally somber outside, where the Hound and Beric divide a drink in the night that’s getting colder. Maybe I’m making a mistake watching this now in the height of summer instead of the winter, when the nights are 20 hours long here. I’d be in the proper mood then.

Arya decides to stop thinking of her “people I want to kill”-list (which has grown smaller since many of those fight on her side now) and instead starts “people I want to smash” -list, which currently has just Gendry in it. And she wastes no time with that list.

The discussion in the hearth room moves to Brienne, whom people are surprised to hear is not a ser. Jaime offers to knight her, as “Any knight can knight another.” I think you just made that up. I don’t think ser in the feudal hierarchy is just a title, being a knight is more than just letters before your name. But everyone allows that one, they are going to die anyway. And if they live, Daenerys will approve.

Jaime has his Valyrian sword, half of Ice, the half given to Joffrey and used mainly to cut books and cakes. Brienne has the other half, so Ice has returned to Winterfell just in time to be put in good use. Sam has brought the Tarly heirloom sword, Jon has Bearclaw, Arya Littlefinger’s dagger… that’s all of the mentioned ones, right? All in Winterfell. Nice.

Sam gives his father’s sword, Heartsbane, to Jorah, to honor his father. Legacy, again. Jorah declares that he is going to use it in Old Bear’s memory. He was the first leader who took the Dead seriously, and without whom Jon or Sam wouldn’t have done all they did to prepare.

A new song, Jenny of the Oldstones, with Pod as the singer. It’s not a merry song, it’s about dancing with ghosts. Well ghosts would perhaps be an improvement to those they’ll soon dance with.

Jon spends the last moments before the battle in the crypt, before it gets crowded with people. Now he gets to be dark and alone. Except not, Daenerys arrives, and manages to ask just one question before Jon already spills the beans. He just manages to reveal everything and hammer home that by the law he’s the rightful heir, but before they can discuss it any further the three blasts are blown. So the poorest possible timing.

Oh, a new opening. Super cool. With only three places of importance to show, it can spend its time showing lots of details and fresher events in the sun things. Rings. Whatever they are.

The thing showing the rebirth of the dragons shows also the comet. Back when it showed up in the sky, everyone had different explanations to what it meant. Apparently at the point in history where this model is made, its connection to the dragons has won out. It makes sense, nobody cares about Stannis becoming the Lord’s Champion anymore. If he had won, then maybe, but he didn’t.

The season starts with a kid running in a forest. I have absolutely no idea how much time has passed since the beginning, but this kid must have been a toddler, if not even that, when King Robert came to Winterfell.

Now it’s a different time. A different queen. Daenerys Targaryen, first of her name etc etc, rides North with her armies and dragons.

There’s a lot of allusions back to the first episodes. The elders have fallen and now the young generation have grown into their roles. I have started to rewatch the show from the beginning while I exercise, and some things in those early episodes are just painful to see. Littlefinger did his absolute best to get Ned killed so he could make his moves on Catelyn. Earlier I said that without Littlefinger the war may have been averted, but the cat of Jaime and Cersei was already out of the bag and Jon Arryn would have soon told Robert, and that man would have been furious.

Oh, and Cersei saying “We have another wolf” makes me stop feeling any way sorry about her. Well, there wasn’t much sorry left anyway, she has been busy digging her own hole, but come on.

She is not taking abandonment well. Her entire family (not including unseen cousins and other kin) has either betrayed her or died. Now she plans to add the rest of the first group to the second. After letting Jaime go, she thinks again and now sends an assassin after him.

An assassín, which is Bronn. Out of all possibilities. Of course, she feels like that’s a poetic way to do it, but really. If he feels like the dragon lady is more likely to win, whoops, suddenly a desertion happens. Cersei may have planned this like “If he deserts, then I have found another weak point and can just send another assassin to take care of him too”, but Cersei hasn’t been that good in actual political intrigue. If she can’t just murder her way out or can’t bribe someone to do it for her there’s not much else in her playbook.

Oh, and time to breasts: 20:57. As this is the last season, here’s a fancy graph:

I have no idea if there’s any correlation with anything else that can be seen here and what it can mean. Remove the seventh season and it’s symmetrical, that’s about it. I don’t even remember why I started to mention them. It’s a graph. I have several in my Master’s thesis, too. They seem to be something you have to have.

I really like Daenerys’ white dress with red fabric under it. Looks warm and fancy.

Sansa has called all banners to Winterfell. They are making their stand there, with everyone in one place, leaving as few people to be picked out by the dead as possible so there’s not another Hardhome. The dead get more soldiers with every win, and they don’t need to worry about supplies or logistics. Good thinking, but the people of the Last Hearth, the closest settlement to the Eastwatch, haven’t arrived yet. Oops.

Well, they’ll arrive. Oh, they will. But if the Dead have intel (do they? Once again, how much do the Walkers plan?) what they should do is just siege Winterfell and continue killing everything they find in the North. The dead don’t need food, and they don’t catch illnesses. They can just wait. It’s the living who have a deadline to a battle, or they don’t have enough food to feed their army, as Sansa points out.

The Golden Company arrives at King's Landing, with a new character, Strickland, commanding them. Not Daario, but that was a bit crack theory, as he already commands the Second Sons. Maybe he’ll cross later, with Yara’s fleet, perhaps. There’s so little time left that I doubt we’ll see Essos again outside of a possible ending montage. So if Faabio Naharis wants to be seen (and likely killed), he has to get himself over here.

The Company didn’t bring elephants. Not suitable for long sea voyages, they say. That’s a disappointment, but I understand them not wanting to risk it. Cersei, being Cersei, doesn’t. She wants those elephants. Well, I want them too, so for once me and Cersei are on the same side.

Euron gets to share a bed with a queen. That achievement done, is he more likely now to just skip it if the situation gets bad for Cersei? I’d say not. He’s always been ready to skip it, and he seems like a person who wants more when he gets some.

Yara is rescued by Theon, very quickly. Euron is still in the Red Keep and so can’t confront them. So their eventual confrontation is delayed. I’m as sure about it happening as I’m of anything in this show (which, let’s be fair, is not much). But if there’s a fleet battle before the end, who else could there be but the only ones who still own fleets? Salladhor Saan?

Yara leaves for the Iron Islands, she plans to retake them while Euron is busy. And Theon wants to go to the North to try to pay back for his crimes. Commendable, let’s hope that the dead wait until he gets there.

This episode is full of scenes telling of how much characters have grown during their years of adventuring. Theon now respects the upbringing he had with the Starks and seeks redemption, nobody underestimates Sansa anymore, and Arya respects and protects her. Jon has the loyalty of the North and the Free folk. The dragons, having grown the most during the story, are full grown and can be ridden by people other than Daenerys. (And then we have Cersei, who has learnt nothing, except perhaps how to be a mini version of Tywin, and that playbook doesn’t work anymore).

Flying a dragon bareheaded in winter seems like a great way to freeze your ears off.

“Lord Glover wishes us good fortune, but he’s staying in Deepwood Motte with his men”. I’m not at all surprised. Not at all. As being wrong runs in that family, this was expected. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lord Glover still comes to Winterfell, but he’ll likely walk.

Sam didn’t hear about his family yet, but now he does, and from the executioner herself. It’s a one-two-blow, and really upsets Sam. There’s this super cool new queen who Jon loves and who has come to rescue everyone, and whose followers say they follow her out of love, and also she has executed your brother and father. Sure they walked into it themselves, especially Randall who decided that he can betray Olenna, but he will put a line to Cersei. Grrr. Still, it’s not any easier to Sam. Hopefully Daenerys learns something about this.

And then there’s Bran, who has spent the episode watching everyone. That’s why he’s also in this post at several points looking at you. He knows what you did.

Now he talks Sam into telling Jon about his mother. Sam does it right near Ned Stark’s tomb. “The next time we meet, we’ll talk of your mother.” 

At this point Sam thinks that Jon should be the king, because he would be much better at it than Daenerys. But, once again, they have the Night King to worry about, can they allow themselves to worry about this now? Jon just had a talk with Sansa that any of this doesn’t matter as long as the Dead are marching.

Speaking of the Dead, Tormund and Beric did survive the break of the Wall, and have arrived to the Last Hearth with the other survivors of the Eastwatch. And it’s dark. Super dark. Welcome to the winter. It’s summer on this side of the screen and so I can’t see a thing.

They find trails of fighting, but no bodies, which tells immediately which side won. Beric finally flames his sword so I can see, and they find Edd. Is it Lord Commander Edd now? And does it matter at all? They find the Umber boy, dead, in the middle of an art installation. So the Walkers a) can figure out who is the leader, and b) are sadistic enough to leave messages like this. It’s not a trap, as one dead who is stuck to the Wall isn’t much of a trap. It’s for morale, so the Walkers do understand things like that.

Edd is confident that they can get to Winterfell before the Dead. Something this optimistic coming from Mr. “We are all going to die”, I take as a certainty.

The whole world comes to Winterfell. It’s the place to be now. One hooded character arrives among refugees. It’s Jaime, here to seek redemption in the apocalypse as well. He can start with the familiar-looking person looking at him from a wheelchair.

Starting from the North as is tradition. The Dead are on this side of the Wall. The Last Hearth and Karhold will fall quickly without Jon and Daenerys even getting their troops ready*. After that it’s Winterfell. Seems like a nice place for a last stand, but if the last battle is there the Dead don’t get to see the South, which would be bit of a pity. And it already had a large battle. Still, the image of the Dead sieging Winterfell is too good to miss.

*Making these predictions is hard because armies can move very quickly when your eyes are not on them.

No, the White Walkers won’t kill everyone. A bold prediction but I stand by it. The Night King dies and with it the majority if not the whole army, and that’s it. The insta-win button gets pressed.

The defense of the North will be the doom of many many characters. I’ll say that the Stark family is quite safe excluding Bran, who may die because he’s too big a weapon. Edd survives because that’s what he does. If Beric is still alive he gets a final death. Jaime does something stupid and glorious and dies, which doesn’t do any good to Cersei’s thinking. The rest (all the various side characters in Jon’s and Daenerys’ groups) I can see either way, depending on the circumstances. Some shock deaths, some last stands, some sacrifices, the usual.

Sam, Gilly and little Sam all live happily ever after. Lalala, I can’t hear you.

Qyburn goes all Frankenstein with the body of the wight and ends up doing something stupid right in the capital. He won’t survive the season, there’s a Hand pin on his chest.

So is on Tyrion’s chest. Hmm. But I don’t see him dying. As I said, I’m optimistic. The world will need clever emphatic people after all this. Bronn retires with a box of treasure.

Cersei is far too dramatic to leave the throne alive. Her baby will get born before that happens, and Daenerys has to decide what to do with her. I’m thinking that the baby is a girl. Send her away? But what if she grows up to gather an army, just like her? Can she take that risk? And if she can’t, how is she different?

Daario Naharis shows up leading the Golden Company. Elephants on an open field, thank you. Team Jon and Team Daario will have a bitter fight, which ends with Daario’s death.

Speaking of Jon, since him and Daenerys ruling together would be too simple, I’ll throw a curve ball and say that Jon will sit on the throne, as going from a bastard to the king of seven kingdoms would be a nice escalation… but Daenerys has worked so hard for it, Jon has never wanted it, she deserves it more… hmm… maybe have a vote? Jon winning the game of thrones without ever wanting to would be funny, I’m not going to lie.

Theon will rescue Yara in a final triumph after a large PTSD attack. Euron dies, Yara rules the Iron Islands. This happens early in the season as Euron is such a nice mid boss before Cersei and the Night King.

The Hound and the Mountain almost have the duel the Hound promised, but something zags instead of zigging. The Mountain dies anyway, but the Hound doesn’t.

Was that everybody? Melisandre predicted that both her and Varys will die on Westeros, but didn’t specify the date. I don’t think Varys gets to see the world he has spent his life trying to create, and Melisandre goes down while keeping the Dead at bay with the Lord of Light’s powers, because she has fulfilled her purpose or something like that. I would like for the Lord to stop treating people as his pieces on a game board.

So, picking five deaths now is like shooting fish in a barrel (not that I have ever tried it), but that’s the tradition here. More main characters give more points. Let’s see, Cersei, Jaime, Qyburn, Euron, The Night King. Plus as a bonus Beric, The Mountain, Daario, Varys and Melisandre. Very conservative choices, says I. Random generator picks the following out of 31 names (for the record, two seasons ago it was 50, and now I tried to list absolutely everyone still alive): Daario, Cersei, Jaime, Qyburn, Tormund. Once again the random generator copies my answers. Least likely to die, it says, are Robin Arryn, Gilly and Lord Royce.

And the final big thing: What’s the ending? How does this end? “Everyone dead” would have been my guess in the beginning. Now… I have been surprisingly optimistic since the sixth season. Things may go super bad in between, many will die horribly or get tortured, but in the end Westeros will survive. Or does it?

The theme of working together has carried out through the show. Most of the problems would never have been problems or would have been solved faster if people could just work together instead of doing chronic backstabbing. Well, most of the worst people have died already. My ending would be that the Dead are defeated, but the Winter is still on, and the food shortage will be a very big problem. One character will say to another “We will survive this if we only work together”, and fade to black. The end. Then the audience can review the rest of the show and come to their own conclusion of whether these people are doomed and will all die, or if they have learnt something in these eight seasons.

The seasons 3-4 were a pair, and so were 5-6. These last two are more likely “just” a 13-episode climax, which is fine by me. More time for reunions and not changing the status quo with a battle every single episode would have been improvements (building up to only one or two big battles would have worked as well), but there’s been a genre switch. Just ask Littlefinger how well the return of magic has worked out for him.

Westeros is now a fully fantastical world in an existential battle for survival. Some of its inhabitants still go smoothly from “I don’t believe this is true” to “Fine, it may be true, but if I ignore it it’s only going to affect people far away, and I must be able to profit from this somehow”. Something something climate change.

I watched the first episode of the first season to see the very beginning, when all these characters were introduced. So many of them are dead now, but not actually that many from the main focus characters (and still less from those who survived the first season). But they have all changed, and grown up. People have more beards these days, and much darker hair. Dark dark, everything is dark.

When the season started, the main problems were the Dead and Cersei. Neither seemed that big of a problem. Against the dead there were three dragons, against Cersei there was the fact that everybody hated her. But who would have known, both of them turn out to be bigger problems now than before. The Dead have crossed the Wall and they have a dragon, with no qualms of using it to just burn down everything… or do they?

What do the Dead want? To kill absolutely everyone in Westeros? What do they do then, stand around and slowly rot, killing any animals who enter Westeros as a pastime. Except oh yeah, the dragon. If the flying dead can pass open water (if they can pass water by walking on ice, flying should work too), the Night King can move to Essos or any island and start a new army in a new location.

If that is what he wants to do. His mission doesn’t seem to be to maximize the number of wights, otherwise killing people by beheading (as in the prologue) wouldn’t make sense. The army’s purpose is to kill the living, not to create a civilization of wights (whose mental abilities seem to be very limited).

But the Walkers seem to like art, and rituals. Many of them are grown from Craster’s poor sons. Do they have any sort of civilization or free-time activities?

These are all questions outside the scope of this project, I’m sure.

I’m excited to see the last season. A couple of things before it. First: Checking if I have become any better in predicting things, let’s see the predictions made before the season:

Benjen has been found, so I might as well predict his death once again. It will likely happen eventually.

Finally taking pity on me for calling for his death every year, Benjen finally did it. Very matter-of-factly, simply to get it over with, but he did. What am I going to predict now?

The White Walkers get past the Wall somehow. They blow the Horn of Winter or something to break it. That way they get some damage done south of the Wall too, before the end. With three big dragons beating them seems too easy.

How about when they have a dragon too? That made getting past the Wall very easy. And the Night King has his throwing arm for a couple of more tries.

Bran will do something else magical than just entering people’s heads or having visions. Meera’s father will show up, he was the one who sent his children originally to Bran.

Visions were the big thing, and seem to be the only thing he can do besides mind-borrowing, but he’s making use of them. Meera left to go to her father, but that’s it.

Jon will bring the Northern forces north to protect the Wall. There’s a big setback, as Littlefinger chaoses things up. Brienne and Pod return to Sansa, and will survive the first battle against the dead.

The first battle against the dead hasn’t happened yet (unless you count either of the dragon hits), Jon went South to get an alliance, and Littlefinger tries but fails to setback anything.

Beric Dondarrion will die permanently, and Thoros will take the Hound as his new protected.

Thoros died instead, so no protected. Beric is maybe alive? I’m saying alive as I saw no body.

The alive Starks finally meet each other again (please?). Equally likely is that Arya tries to assassinate Cersei.

They did, they are all on Winterfell as one pack, excluding Jon who is on his way back now.

Nymeria shows up again, leading a half-breed pack of wolves. I missed Ghost in the Battle of the Bastards, it can do something too.

Nymeria showed up, but was done with being a pet. Ghost is somewhere just out of the frame, and outside of the visual effects budget.

The Freys will have a very confined civil war as they debate the succession in the Twins.

Nope, Arya made sure of that. There’s likely some survivors who can debate the new ownership but it won’t matter once Cersei is offed and the lands get a rearrangement.

Yara will challenge Euron, and kill him, becoming the queen of the Iron Islands.

Not yet at least. Yara is a prisoner, but Theon is coming for her. I can’t see Euron surviving the episode where the big confrontation happens, no matter how horribly everything else in it goes.

Cersei will try to marry Jaime officially for Targaryen-points, but there’s no time. It’s everybody against Cersei now. She won’t sit on the Throne in the end of the season, but may not be dead. Qyburn will die, because he is the current Hand.

Everybody is against Cersei, but otherwise no points. She’s still on the throne and Qyburn is alive.

A big battle (not necessarily the only one of the season) will be the Lannister army versus Dothraki (on the open field? Well it was promised long ago).

Yes, Dothraki on an open field, Ned.

Daenerys won’t have the Iron throne yet (maybe she’ll realise that to have the realm she has to save it first), but she’s going to have a new betrothed.

Not a betrothed (at least not yet), but a very very close ally. And no throne. I wonder who I thought to get the throne, since I predicted both that Cersei doesn’t have the throne anymore but Daenerys doesn’t have it yet either. Can’t remember.

Jorah won’t find a cure, so he’ll go down fighting before succumbing to the illness.

He actually found it. Thank you Sam.

Before leaving the throne, Cersei is a sore loser and gets at least one of the Ellaria/Olenna duo killed (three guesses which one I would prefer to go).

:( Not sure if she has already got tired of Ellaria, but at least one of them is dead, yes.

More Olenna! And can we get Highgarden already? Yes, I know it’s winter and so it won’t look its best but can we? I don’t think there will be any other new places. Casterly Rock is another capital that hasn’t been seen but why would anyone go there? Cersei will want Jaime in King’s Landing.

Olenna’s last scene was golden, sudden as it was. Winter!Highgarden was a bit of a disappointment, but there it was. And there was a reason to go to topple Casterly Rock, but they couldn’t hold it. Anyway, not much of a tour of either. Next time.

Varys and Littlefinger have both gathered armies and are ready for the end of their little game. They will meet each other and reflect on what they have gone through, with no need to hide anything anymore.

No time for that, Littlefinger over-extended himself and burnt his fingers. Pity that their last meeting was back in the third season, they could have had things to say to one another.

Was that everybody? Oh, I forgot Sam and Gilly! They’ll be in peace in Oldtown until they have to leave, for one reason or another, back to the North. Sam doesn’t become a proper maester, at least not yet.

All correct. You go Sam.

Wrapping up, the five predicted deaths by me: Benjen Stark, Euron Greyjoy, Ellaria Sand, Qyburn, Jorah Mormont. Jorah is perhaps the only one whose death would be worth more points of these five, but he has that ticking time bomb of a disease. Fine, I’ll change Qyburn to Varys for more points.

Surprisingly, only Benjen from these, but Ellaria can be counted dead for story purposes. If she is seen again, it’s in the aftermath when the land ownerships are wrapped up.

The computer throws dice and gives out the following five names (this time there were only 37 names worth listing, last time I remember there were about 50. People have been busy killing each other): Benjen Stark, Jaime Lannister, young Lady Mormont, Qyburn and Daenerys Targaryen. The least likely to die, it says, are Meera, Arya and Beric Dondarrion. I’m not so sure about that last one…

The truce meeting is about to start, but Daenerys has brought her army to stand near King’s Landing, just in case. Both the Unsullied and the Dothraki. Euron’s massive fleet is protecting the Blackwater, against Daenerys’ fleet of… five ships.

The negotiators are allowed entrance, and are brought to the third hill of King’s Landing, and the one tourist attraction we haven’t seen yet, the Dragon Pit. Which is a big place, but sadly a ruin. Being a large pile of already-cut stone right in the city with no current use never helps any historical building, those stones can be put to a much better use.

As this meeting includes almost everyone of any importance, and also some sidekicks, there’s more reunions. Tyrion says that he missed Bronn. Bronn seems to have his business in order, bringing Cersei’s enemies to her and thinking of retiring with his reward if the negotiation ends with heads on spikes. But if Daenerys wins in the end...

Everyone arrives to the arena, and the Hound begins the game by threatening the Mountain. There’s clearly a duel being set up between these two death-cheaters, but as at any time either of them can be killed by, well, anything, I’m not holding my breath for a super smackdown between them.

Daenerys arrives fashionably late, and brings her two dragons to the dragon pit, and… how big exactly this place must have been in the beginning? Drogon’s wings almost cover the middle of the arena by themselves.

As Daenerys, Jon and Tyrion predicted, their enemies just laugh about the matter before seeing the evidence. After that, they present a bit of theater, as Cersei later reveals. Euron proclaims that he’s moving his fleet to the Iron Islands, away from the Dead, and Cersei gives a practised speech of accepting the truce.

So did they have intel of the evidence, or did Cersei make plans for the low-odds-event that the thing she has ridiculed every time it has come up is actually true. If so, that’s remarkably good planning, from her.

The showing of the evidence was quite a show, Jon used the one wight they had in great detail for everyone to see. Qyburn was especially interested… well, he has practised getting one almost dead man up and running, so searching this body for any clues for advancing the scientific understanding of life and death must intrigue him… Let’s hope he doesn’t create a new White Walker in the middle of the Red Keep.

Cersei asks Jon to promise to go back to the North and stay there. Jon can’t promise that, so the negotiation ends, just like that. Tyrion and Daenerys say that Jon should have just lied and not been so Neddy. But just because others do something universally agreed to be bad, it doesn’t mean you should too. Anyway, Cersei walks out and Tyrion goes to speak to him alone, as he matters the least if he gets killed.

But he doesn’t, even after coaxing Cersei to kill him for what he did. Cersei is too shocked to give the word, and it could also be that she simply can’t give people what they ask from her, it’s completely unnatural to her. She blames Tyrion for killing Tywin, which opened them for their enemies and brought about the dead of the rest of the kids. The legacy of Tywin Lannister… you know, if the only thing keeping everyone from attacking your family is their fear of you, that does not a good legacy make. The legacy of Ned Stark was the North supporting first Robb and then Jon out of respect to him, the legacy of Tywin Lannister was everyone piling up on the Lannisters once he was out of the way.

The result of Cersei and Tyrion’s discussion is that Cersei proclaims to join them in the fight against the Dead, while expecting nothing good to come to herself for that decision. Yes, what did we speak about lying just now?

Speaking of Ned Stark’s legacy, Jon and Theon talk about it. Theon betrayed his memory, but, as Jon says, he was more of a father to Theon than Balon ever was. And so they can use that bond to reconcile, and Jon can encourage Theon to take charge and take the lead of Yara’s men.

Symbolism, Theon is starting to change his weaknesses into strengths. This is symbolised by allowing the Ironborn he is fighting to kick him to the nuts, to no effect. Yes, this is symbolism speaking.

The man says to Theon “Stay down, or I’ll kill you”. When Theon has the upper hand, he bashes his head in with a rock for that mercy. I would say that the Ironborn have a specifically violent way to solve disputes, but… nope. Not specifically, not at all. But Theon gets to be the leader of the pride, and gets to go against the Ramsay-placeholder enemy to confront his trauma. Someone should invent better therapy methods.

In Winterfell, the winter continues to fall from the sky. Littlefinger tries to chaos things up, but his time’s up. There’s no room for him anymore in this new magical and thriller-pace world.

I read A Dance With Dragons last winter, and while I liked most of it, like the writing style, the characters, seeing more of non-royals, and the new locales, the ending was a disappointment. Or rather, that there wasn’t an ending. There’s more books to go (and I hope to get to read them), but this one just… stopped when the page count went over 1000. It had the same problem as the fourth one, people spent a lot of time going from one place to another, so that when they arrived the book was almost over (or in Victarion’s case, it was over), and the end result was just a list of cliffhangers. Like, imagine ending A Clash of Kings just before Blackwater, or last season before the Battle of the Bastards. It felt like the arc of the book was incomplete, and I wasn’t given a reason to care about the new side plots, like which of them will actually matter and which just padded the book until it had to end early?

The funny thing of course is that this show has now the opposite problem of jumping from one set piece to another without build-up or showing of the journey. And when you can’t keep up with this new world, you lose the game of thrones.

Littlefinger schemes a wedge between Sansa and Arya. He doesn’t want a trained assassin in the same castle as he is, now that he has supported Sansa to ladyship and is perhaps looking for a way to make her a queen as well… that was his weakness, stick to just getting power and you’d have much easier job, but no, you have to include getting a specific woman into your plans and that’s when you make mistakes. But it doesn’t matter anymore what he schemes, as magic has entered Winterfell.

Bran can cheat. He can see the past, and apparently can see exactly where and when he wants. So he traced Littlefinger’s steps, and found out all his betrayals. Many of them Sansa already knew, so the rest mustn’t have come as a shock. So the Starks, who value honesty and honor, now can see if they are betrayed or lied to. Once Jon gets to Winterfell, Bran can tell him what Cersei said after they left. Political intrigue, a corner block and most of the wall of the show, has suddenly become useless. The Littlefingers of the world can’t scheme anymore against the Starks. They have Won At Scheming.

The dagger, the dagger, is revealed to be originally Petyr’s. As I said earlier, the only way the revelation could matter anymore would be if it was someone’s who is still living, or someone’s whom we’d never think to order Bran’s assassination. And here we are, it was the Chaos Man. I’m not sure if the dates add up, how did he know of Bran’s fall so that he could hire the assassin, when he was in King’s Landing at the time? Maybe he wasn’t? And why use his own expensive dagger and lie that it was Tyrion’s, when a simple Lannister knife would have worked much better?

In the book the answer was different. Tyrion figured out that it was Joffrey, who stole his father’s dagger and gave it to the assassin. He never confirmed it with anyone, and anyway Joffrey died moments later. I can fully well believe it from Joffrey. But it’s been so long since Joffrey died that at this point one more evil deed to his name wouldn’t mean much. So the culprit is now Littlefinger, and wow, listing all his schemes like that tells how without him the status quo would likely be just where it was in the beginning. He has a lot of blood on his hands. Daenerys and the Dead would still be wild cards, though.

And so the king of the ash heap, Petyr Baelish, dies in the dark main hall of Winterfell, in the middle of the mess he’s spent years to create, without achieving his goals, without any allies and with absolutely nobody going to miss him.

As I have said, for being such a dark and gritty show, the villains don’t get any better ends than those who try to do better, and their legacies are usually worse.

Speaking of both the villains and those who try to do better, Cersei informs Jaime that nope, we are not going anywhere, she used the neat trick called lying. Euron went to get mercenaries with elephants (ooh!) from Essos.

This is enough for Jaime, who storms away, after telling Cersei to have the Mountain kill him for it if she so desires. In the end, she doesn’t, even after threatening him with that. But after listening to her lie and cheat for years, Jaime just says “I don’t believe you” and leaves. See, consequences.

Poor Cersei, losing everyone’s trust and being entirely alone at the end of the episode. Only her massive armies to keep her on the throne. Which is a funny thing, now that I think about it. She has managed to antagonize everybody, but because she has killed everyone in King’s Landing who has criticized her, she gets to still rule, because there is no one else in the city to take the crown from her. She’s taking advantage of the fact that no new important characters are going to be introduced at this point. Euron was the last one, in the season 6 of 8, and even he feels like he exists only as a mid boss so Daenerys’ invasion isn’t too easy, to be killed once fleets don’t matter anymore.

Of course Cersei takes advantage of the fact that her enemies are scary. New Targaryen invasion, with the Dothraki and Unsullied. Nothing like the good old rulers we have here in Westeros, who may blow up the most holy building on the continent to escape a trial and kill the servants of the main religion, but are at least… from the same continent?

It’s still weird that the Seven is the main religion, when it has been the most useless one in actual action. Did they ever do anything? When the Old Gods were driven from the South, were the Seven doing anything to support their believers? Well, did the Old Gods? Does the Drowned God? Well, if Euron’s fleet’s speed is a boon from the Drowned God, that would explain a lot.

The winter comes to King’s Landing as well. Snow will be next season’s color. Along with darkness, but if the scenery gets any darker I won’t see anything on screen.

A song of fire: Sam arrives at Winterfell, safe and sound. He must have found out about his father and brother on the way, but it’s not mentioned. He meets with Bran, and by giving him a hint of where to look, Bran sees the wedding of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. So they were legally married, and their child, Jon, is not a bastard, but the legal heir to the Throne, Aegon Targaryen. Boom. And there’s him and Daenerys being all Targaryeny.

Bigger thing than the heir business, is that Rhaegar is no longer sullied by the rape, which is the main thing he is remembered for. “He was a noble and great knight from the stories, a great prince, and a rapist whose horribleness brought about the rebellion.” But was that lie better than the truth? Or did someone, last generation’s Littlefinger, spin the story for the worst so a proper war could get started?

Anyway, has Daenerys fought all her battles so that she can give the throne to the rightful heir, who is not her, the Breaker of Chains?

A song of ice: Sansa and Arya talk, and remember their father’s words of working together: The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Legacy.

In the Eastwatch-by-the-sea, bad things happen. A dragon is a nuke option, and the Night King uses it gladly. Its power seems to be enough to destroy the Wall and remove the spells as well. And so the dead march to the lands beyond the Wall, bringing a new night with them.

After all the hype of the Wall, it couldn’t even put up a fight when the dead finally arrived. Beric Dondarrion and Tormund try to run to safety, and I can’t see if they succeed. But I’d presume that there would be a clearer shot if they died. And, well, we are talking of Beric Dondarrion here. He could always play dead.

But guess who from the Night Watch survived the apocalyptic event of the onslaught of the dead and the destruction of the Wall? And did it just by not being where the attack happened? My favourite watchman, Dolorous Edd. How does he do it?

So when our fellowship walks on the lands beyond the Wall, they have some beautiful landscapes to see. It’s a nice atmosphere to talk to each other, to catch up and learn to know the new people. Jon and Tormund talk about kneeling. The Free Folk never kneel, and Mance as their leader certainly didn’t. And so they didn’t ally themselves with Stannis and were driven back from the Wall to be massacred by the dead, which was exactly what Mance fought against. In hindsight, as much as I’d like to blame Stannis and his pride, it was Mance’s pride that doomed them in the end. When faced with the exact same choice later, when Jon wanted their help in defeating the Boltons, Tormund joined him.

Jon offers the Mormont sword to Jorah. That Valyrian sword could be a matter of life and death up here, so Jon of course tries to give it to someone else. Jorah doesn’t take it. He is not here to be a Mormont.

Tormund likes to stack his odds against him, so he tells the Hound about the beauty “waiting for him” in Winterfell. Look, you are on a suicide mission, do you really want to talk about someone you want to see again? Tormund doesn’t care, he has lived this long by being tough to kill.

So have all of them. There’s Jon, who has ranged beyond the Wall five times now (I’m counting walking to Mance’s tent too), and been in mortal danger every time. He has been in a lot of fights, but he has always come back. Then there’s Beric Dondarrion, the knight who dueled in tournaments and has survived many battles, alive or dead, Thoros who fights with a drunk’s spirit, Jorah, survivor of Meereen’s arena, Gendry who hasn’t had anything to do but train and the Hound who is the Hound. They also have a couple of redshirts, because they are always useful. The greatest warriors of Westeros, all gathered here, at this time, for a purpose.

Beric doesn’t know what that purpose is, but the Lord of Light has guided them here. Or has he? He sent the Brotherhood vision “Hey, be near Eastwatch soon, big things will happen there”, but did he know what exactly that big thing will be? Jon got the idea very suddenly. And if he saw that the two people he has kept alive will go beyond the Wall, did he also see the end result of that trip? What is the Lord of Light’s endgame? I have thought that he is a “hard god making hard decisions”, and wants the humanity to survive, but doesn’t really care more than that (and that the survivors will worship him). He threw Stannis out after calling him the Chosen One for years. That still seems to be the likeliest explanation. The other is that he wants the humanity to end.

Now we get to the part of the plan called “How exactly do you plan to get just one dead with you, since they march in an army and the Walkers may well sense what all of them are doing?” Oh hey, there is one! It’s a bear. A dead bear. Which makes me think of how completely the ecosystem here has been wrecked. If the dead kill every animal they meet, have all the mammoths, sabertooth tigers, direwolves and so on gone extinct? These lands are wide, so maybe not necessarily, but big mammals must be in the brink of extinction. After all, humans were entirely capable of wiping out mammoths in our world without any help from the dead.

The dead bear is a terrifying opponent, and being dead doesn’t need any more sustainment than the rest of the army, so if I was in charge of this army I would take animals in it too. But now that I think about it, is there a reason the army is composed of only dead people and some horses? Is it that you can’t make wild animals to work formally for you, even when dead? Horses can be ridden because they were ridden when alive, and humans can do all sorts of things so they are easy to command? But while you can raise bears, the best you can do with them is set them free to kill everything they see.

After the bear, the fellowship sees a group of human dead, led by one of the Walkers. Killing the Walker makes the dead fall down, except one. They decide later that this must mean that killing the Walkers breaks the spells to the ones they raised. That simplifies things. How many Walkers are there? It can be any number between ten and a hundred. But the Night King has raised the most, killing others may remove pieces of the army but killing the king…

Oh, killing the main villain will remove the problem? That’s convenient. But it won’t solve the socioeconomics of Westeros so there’s still work to be done for Daenerys even if the apocalypse is averted.

Tyrion is worried about what can happen if and when Daenerys dies. Hopefully not before she has secured her rule, but even at that point the succession can get messy because she can’t have her own children. Daenerys doesn’t want to discuss that, the throne is top priority.

But… in case anything happens to her, Tyrion will be in big trouble. Let’s hope that the meeting next week will go well… haha, no way it will.

The fellowship ties up the wight, but either its shrieks alert the rest of the army or the Walker who raised it knew immediately what happened. The humans know so little about the rules. As far as plans go, this one wasn’t that well planned. The entire army of the dead follows them to the frozen lake and surrounds them.

Then it’s a waiting game. Thoros is the first one to lose, dying in his sleep during the night. He served the Lord of Light, he brought Beric and the Hound here, and now he’s dead? And doesn’t get any resurrections? Well how nice of the Lord.

The Night King arrives to see what they have here. Their entire army. Surrounding fewer than a ten humans. The million dragon question: Does the Night King know what he has here? It’s the King in the North. Does he know, does he care? He plays with his captives instead of sending his forces some way through the lake (later in the episode we see that fresh water is not deadly to them, so spending a few hundred wights maximum would have allowed them to overpower these humans) or throwing them with projectiles (even if the dead can’t throw anything far or use bows, the Night King himself has a strong throwing arm as we see later). They wait for an easier attack.

Meanwhile, at Winterfell it doesn’t take much to make Arya and Sansa suspicious of each other. They haven’t seen each other for years, and in each other’s eyes the other one has… maybe not changed but intensified. Arya comes back as a tough fighter who can go toe-to-toe with Brienne, and Sansa is a political player who has Littlefinger on her side.

Sansa says that Jon would have lost the battle without her, the Knights of the Vale are here because of her. Yes, that’s true, but Littlefinger talked them to it. Even if Arya can believe that Sansa is not stealing Jon’s throne, everybody knows that Littlefinger is always up for a promotion.

Sansa receives an invitation to the big meeting. Everyone seems to be invited. But Sansa doesn’t go, it smells like a trap all over and Jon has already left the North for months to the unrest of his bannermen. Her going too would make the bannermen wonder if the Starks actually want to die. So she sends Brienne.

Later she goes to check Arya’s room, and finds faces there. I don’t think that she knows what Walder Frey looked like, but someone’s face skin is never a nice find when going through someone’s bag. Arya enters to talk with her, extremely threateningly of course. Her point is that she is very dangerous, but at least for now she is loyal to Sansa, if Sansa is loyal to Jon. Yes, this certainly puts Sansa on the ease. And could someone please talk about that knife everyone swings around?

Daenerys gets the raven and rides out immediately, against Tyrion’s counsel. Nothing new in that last part. He points out that if she dies, everything is lost. That’s true. No her, no dragons, no armies who have sworn loyalty to her and her alone. Cersei will move her attention North, try everything to kill the rest of the Starks and then they all die when the dead come.

So in one corner we have Daenerys, and the other corner we have the Night King. The Queen and the King, and both are insta-win-buttons. Not very democratic.

The ice gets thick enough and the dead attack again. One of the attackers moves to free the captured dead. Why? It’s not like they are going to miss one wight. Have the Walkers figured out what they plan to do? Do they think that there are researchers of spells South of the Wall who may figure out something if they get a walking dead? How much do they know of the contemporary South?

But if they don’t like that humans captured a wight, then bringing it to the South is a good thing, right? Right?

That chinless skeleton got a lot of screentime for an undead mook. When it came back from under the lake I thought that it was going to get to kill someone or do something else memorable, but nope.

All hope seems lost, they are seconds from death, when… the death comes from the sky. Dragonfire and ruin. Three dragons in action start wrecking up the army of the dead. How do you like the song of fire?

I didn’t expect this so soon. There’s still eight episodes to go. Those three dragons could destroy the whole army in a matter of minutes. Daenerys could save the world without anyone believing she did that.

The Night King grabs a spear. Oh dear. Oooh dear. He throws it, and one-shots… Viserion? Their colors are hard to see. Anyway, a dragon is down. Okay, the dead are a threat again. Jon is left behind, Daenerys leaves before everything is lost.

This was not a good outcome. A dragon’s body amidst the army of the dead, I knew what would happen in the aftermath. Viserion’s body is raised as a flying dead. This is not good, not good at all. Can it spit fire? Can it spit ice? Anyway, now they have a flying giant creature. Do the Wall’s spells block flying dead? Can they now just melt it down? Aargh, I knew (not knew-knew but strongly predicted) that this would end badly, and I knew that the dead will get through during this season, but still.

Was losing Viserion worth it? Do they get Cersei and everybody else to listen soon enough so they can prepare for an invasion? Or will there be a big trap in King’s Landing and everything down there goes to further ruin?

Jon gets up, and faces an entire army alone. Again. But here’s the cavalry! Benjen is back! He is actually going to meet Jon again! “Here, take my horse, thanks, bye, oh, I’m dead”. Wow. In a series of quick reunions, he really wanted to get the quickest one. And so Benjen Stark is dead. He survived all these years, alone in the lands beyond the Wall, so that he could join the long line of people who have died so that Jon could live for a minute more.

He better be worth it.

He survives, once more, by a horse bringing him back. This time it’s Benjen’s horse, nice that it gets to finally return.

Jon is put on the ship and they are off. Daenerys is there to see him when he comes to. Okay, I am poor with shipping, but I still felt their conversation. And they seem like they could be a nice couple. They respect each other and know that they both want good for the world. Grading on a curve, that’s really good.

The Dead are still walking. They are not in a hurry. What does the Night King know of the lands south of the Wall? Can he see visions? He may have or may have not lived during the Long Night when the Dead walked in the South last. The White Walkers have some communicating systems, shrieking if nothing else, so even if these guys are relatively new they may have some lore of what’s in the South.

What do they want? The Children created them to kill, so that may be the only thing they desire in their… life. If they get what they want, they’ll march to Dorne and kill everything between the Wall and the Broken Arm. And then… stop? While the people of Essos look at their neighbor and ask what just happened there. Then they’ll wait for the spring before going to see if there are any survivors/resources left. If the spring comes. Maybe the Winter lasts so long that the Narrow Sea freezes over…

That didn’t happen during any of the previous Winters. Maybe some old stories have a hero defeating the Long Night and driving the dead away, but those are just Old Nan’s stories. Maybe the dead were defeated somehow. Maybe they just had to leave because spring came, and the people of Westeros managed to raise the Wall to keep them out.

Now the Wall and its spells are the only thing keeping the dead away. I have a bad feeling about Jon’s mission at the end of the episode, but I’ll talk about that later. For now, I’m still wondering how much the Night King knows about the situation in the South, and how well he could understand anything, being more a personification of the winter and all that. He could have arrived to the Eastwatch already, but he hasn’t. Does he know that the people don’t believe he exists, and if he shows up in full force to the Wall (without yet having a way through) he would soon have every army in the world to face him? This way he can wait for the enemy to make mistakes.

And let’s not forget that everything that has happened during these last years has played directly into his hands. On the Rose Road just south of King’s Landing the fields have been turned into a graveyard, as Daenerys has announced her homecoming.

Jaime wasn’t rescued by Dickon as I had thought, but by the more or less loyal Bronn. So they survive and escape. Good, Jaime has been a prisoner for one lifetime.

But Dickon and Randyll Tarly are taken as captives and brought to Daenerys. She promises to take in everyone who bends the knee before her. The dragon is there to show that there’s another answer for those who want that one.

...The 21st century me tries to think of ways to get more of them into her forces alive, to minimize the loss of human life. Maybe if she had started the battle by burning everything except the people, and then giving her demands? But then the archers may not have been distracted by the Dothraki on the open field and might have hit her? War is bad for you, that’s the lesson here.

Last time I grieved that this battle had no named character killed, so it couldn’t be “the battle where X died”, as every other larger skirmish is. But Randyll wants to make me happier, and tries to be a man of principle. “You are not my queen, the woman who murdered everyone on her way to the throne and to whom I betrayed my lady is.” I growl at him. You can’t just decide when your principles apply and when they don’t. But if you want to die for them now, be my guest.

Then Dickon wants into that hot dying senselessly action too. Daenerys is all too happy to oblige them both. As long as she is their queen, treason shall not go unpunished and so on. By killing these two lords she gets the rest to bend the knee. I don’t know how well historically enlisting the people from the armies you just fought went, but a dragon seems to work as a major part of the rule of fear.

Which is entirely against what the people following her say. Tyrion, Jorah, Varys, Missandei, they all say they follow her because they love her. Tough love.

The tables have turned again. Daenerys lost her allies, but has now wiped out the main Lannister/Tarly army and showed the people of Westeros what a context-switch dragons are.

Speaking of dragons, I have mixed feelings of the dragon designs. Mainly about their texture, which has a lot of small horns and big scales everywhere. It’s almost like spiky hair… and it’s mostly in their neck area, oh dear. I can’t unsee it now. The other problem I have is that their shrieks are too shrieky.. They almost resemble the screams of the White Walkers, but are more nasal, which is not an improvement. Otherwise they are great, between four legs and two legs I choose two legs every time, and they have a sense of weight with them.

Maester Wolkan must have felt a great relief when he went from serving the Boltons to serving the Starks. Then Bran arrived, and things are freaky once more. But at least the Starks don’t feed people to the dogs. Well, not after that one time.

The Grand Maesters have a meeting. In the mail section they have Wolkan’s message of the army of the dead. They pay it no more heed than any other time, and, well, “a crippled boy has come from Beyond the Wall, where he met Children of the Forest and saw an army of the dead coming to kill everybody” sounds a lot of like two-headed chickens being born in a village a long way away. Especially as a raven’s leg doesn’t have room for the entire story.

Sam points out that he has seen the Dead too, and helped Bran “years ago”. Nice, a confirmation of time passing. But the maesters can’t muster the entire South without further evidence, so they ask for more. What if Bran sent one of the warged ravens in the Citadel to knock the maester’s heads?

Sam doesn’t want to wait while the maesters gather info, so he leaves. He has already helped by giving Jon knowledge of the dragonglass, so where will he go now? March up the King’s Road being a prophet of doom, reading those few tomes he took with him? He won’t get far before hearing about his father and brother, and what then? He has an easy way out of taking the lordship, just say “I said vows”, but… as a lord, he could take the Tarly army (or what’s left of it) and march North.

There are many reunions once more, and just as fast people leave again. Jorah can barely say “Hello” to Daenerys before leaving once more for a suicide mission. Gendry shows up still alive, but plans to rectify that. Jon skips visiting Winterfell entirely, they don’t have time for that. Because it’s time for a plan that may or may not ruin everything.

Take a single dead from the army, and bring it to King’s Landing. Okay, I hope that the time between the scenes is spent on more planning, because this has a lot of question marks. If the dead can’t pass the Wall without being brought by humans, is it possible that they break the spells by bringing one over? How can they get just one, when they currently seem to march in one large mass? If they get one, does it survive the journey (the arm Thorne brought didn’t). If it gets loose, can it infect others? The problem is the magic that nobody knows the rules for. This is why they should have consulted Bran before going. Maybe they have. Maybe Edd debriefed him and sent notes to Eastwatch.

The Children created the White Walkers in desperation and were destroyed by their own creation. Will the humans do the same?

Tyrion gets to speak with Jaime again, and their discussion goes without Jaime immediately hitting him. Thank you, Olenna. He actually listens, and gets Cersei to listen too (of course Cersei has already decided to allow for an armistice).

Cersei informs him that she is pregnant. Okay, I predict that the baby will be born sometime in the next season, just so that the Daenerys will have to make a decision: Allow the last heir of the royal house to live, like Varys allowed her to live, or go all Tywin. Should be interesting.

Best line of the episode goes to Davos. “Yes, nobody mind me, all I’ve ever done is live to a ripe old age.” He has also survived almost six seasons of this show, which is a much bigger accomplishment. Jon also quotes Mance Rayder, the original “Hey, what if we worked, you know,  together?” guy.

Oh, Littlefinger. He wastes no time in getting Arya to grow suspicious of Sansa. He may not see Arya when she spies upon him because of the nobody-training, but he knows that she will, because she knows that he has hots for Sansa. So he hides the original letter Sansa was forced to write when her father was in the black cells, where she urges for Robb to swear fealty to Joffrey.

What way will Arya take this? Anyone from the audience? A bad way, you say? Yes, I think that’s correct.

Well, only two episodes to go for the season, so Arya will likely confront Sansa and the Chaos Man sooner rather than later. And also, if the Dead will get through, they will do that soon.

Highgarden has been sacked of all its riches, and Randyll Tarly has his men gathering the harvest from the peasants. The gold is going to the Iron Bank, and Cersei plans to use their new goodwill to get help to destroy Daenerys. And after that, there’s finally going to be peace under her rule.

Bronn doesn’t believe that. Compared to someone like Varys, who plays by the rules of the horrible world but believes that it can change for the better, the big softie, Bronn sees the world as a static dog-eat-dog place, where the only difference is who happens to be at the top at any given time. Soldiers will soldier, and Bronn, even though he is good at soldiering, knows that the clock ticks and sooner or later he will die in battle or from a disease. So he wants out to cosier jobs.

The big question looming behind every other question: is there enough food for the winter? The war in the Riverlands was super bad for the farms, the North missed its last harvest, and now the Reach is being sacked. Let’s say that there will be peace soon (no idea how long the last 10 episodes will take, as people have to move around a lot), and the White Walkers are defeated before the winter has lasted more than a year. At that point Daenerys rules Westeros and has defeated all her enemies. The winter will last for many years, as the maesters say that long summers correspond with long winters, and this summer was very long. Where does she get food?

Okay, we are near enough the end that I can say my prediction for the final end of the show ( :o it’s so close): That “let’s say” situation above, with Jon and Daenerys saying “If we can get the people to work together, we will survive to spring.” Fade to black, and credits.

In “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, there are many adult characters who, during the series, don’t listen to the children, and because of that mess things up for them. In the penultimate part of the story, some of them are in a burning building, and the kids warn them about the fire. It’s clear that if they just listen to the kids, they will get out easily and not die horribly. It’s left ambiguous if they do, so the reader can decide themselves if the characters have learnt anything and so get to live. Something like that would work for this show too. Have the people learnt anything about working together?

Of course, there are two roadblocks before we could get there. One of them is the Night King, the other is Queen Cersei. The latter is currently being congratulated by the banker from Braavos for her quick repaying of debts. She only had to antagonize half of the South and then sack it. Why didn’t Tywin think of that?

Jaime confirms that there is no High Septon, so what does the Faith of the Seven even look like currently? That would be interesting to know, but the point of blowing the Sept up was to remove the Faith from the plot completely, so that’s it. They are gone, as are the Baratheons, the Martells and the Tyrells. Cersei has likely seized all their assets to pay for the war and the coming winter. The common people’s opinion? Doesn’t matter at this point either, events move too quickly to get word from the street. Cersei won’t be removed by an angry mob. The High Sparrow tried that, and failed spectacularly. Daenerys needs to look like a big saviour compared to Cersei before the people will rally for her.

Currently that doesn’t look too good. The invasion force from the East is stuck in the emptied Casterly Rock, and attacking the Lannister army with another invasion force in the form of the Dothraki on an open field, Ned, and a big fire-breathing monster doesn’t give her “the returning rightful queen of the Westerosi” vibes.

She knows that, but if she stays in Dragonstone Cersei just gets more time to get more forces, from the Iron Bank or the recaptured Reach and Dorne.

In Winterfell, Littlefinger gives Bran the dagger. The Dagger. He tries to show his loyalties with this gesture, but… Bran sees things. Oh my goodness. I thought this would never come up, but now it obviously will. Who gave that dagger to the assassin! “The question that started the War of Five Kings”. I thought that nobody would care at this point, because in the books Tyrion figured it out long ago, and the show didn’t show it.

But did Tyrion figure it out right? He never confirmed it with anybody. Or the show can have just changed the culprit anyway, it doesn’t matter what book-Tyrion thought. Ooh, exciting. But for the answer to give any satisfaction, it would have to be someone still alive, or someone dead we thought of as a person who would never do something like that.

Another reason why I didn’t think that the show would ever answer the dagger riddle was that so many of the people involved are dead already. Who can you ask about the events during the king’s visit? But now Bran can just see everything. He likely knows already. For a series where so much of the mystery was “whose side are these people on anyway, who is going to betray whom”, now there’s a main character who simply knows.

But he’s not telling, no. Our Bran says that he is not our Bran anymore, he is the Raven. Now he gets to be the mysterious person with all the knowledge and hidden motives for everything he does. Meera doesn’t like it at all, and leaves him saying “you died in that cave”. Which would make her the only survivor of the whole journey.

Arya is home! Everybody gets a reunion! But first she has to “outwit” the guards. Who are a comedy duo. In this superserious part of the story, in this superserious castle filled with superserious people? I want to know where Jon found these two.

Arya wants to fight with Brienne. They do, and she waterdances. It’s been seven real-time years for me since she started her training with the First Sword of Braavos. Since then I have learnt a trade too and found a full-time job doing it. I have grown up with these people just as much as I grew up with the students of Hogwarts before them.

Sansa, Arya and Bran. It’s now these three in charge of the North. All of them have seen and experienced traumatic events, and they are, what, teens now? Daenerys isn’t much older than that, never mind Robin Arryn, so of the current rulers Cersei, Randyll and Euron are the last of the old guard, trying to keep these teenagers down. The world usually belongs to the young sooner or later, now it’s going to be very soon.

But that’s in the future. In the past, this all happened before. Jon shows Daenerys carvings in a cave. Made by the Children of the Forest long long ago. This is so cool. I always get a weird feeling when I see cave drawings. If the person doing those was transported to our time as a baby, what would they then do with their life? Would they be an artist? Would they scribble on a lecture notebook? Instead of looking at fire, would they look at Game of Thrones?

The Children created the White Walkers to fight against the humans, but it backfired horribly, and after that at least some Children and some humans had an alliance to not get killed. Was it wide-spread, or a simple necessity for a small group? How long after the first Walkers did this happen? The Night King pictured has a beard, is it a different Night King, or did he rock a beard millenia ago?

Daenerys and Jon are still stuck. Jon doesn’t bend the knee, and Daenerys doesn’t offer armies and dragons without it. And then she gets the bad news. Oh, how the turntables. Now it seems likelier that she can’t win the war without Jon’s support. But there’s no time for the North to march South at this point.

More reunions! Theon and Jon meet again. It’s not a pleasant reunion, with Jon saying that the only reason he doesn’t kill Theon on the spot is that he saved Sansa. Once again I’m glad that the good deeds also have consequences.

With both Daenerys and Tyrion gone, Jon and Theon now have to work together (with Missandei, let’s not forget her) to help her. Can they work together?

The Lannister army gets the gold inside King’s Landing, and are ready to get the rest of the army there as well. Randyll worries about ambushes, so they have some reports of enemy movements. Not that they do them any good, since they are still ambushed.

By the way, interesting rock formations so close to King’s Landing, have we seen this area before?

Dickon seems like he’s got a good head on his shoulders. If there’s no other valid contestant in the end, he can have Highgarden.

Suddenly, they hear sounds. Daenerys has landed on Westeros, the main continent she wants to rule but which she has never visited even as a baby (IIRC?). And she does that offscreen, unless she flew all the time. Tyrion has also returned home, but he just pops up at the end of the episode, to see those he likely commanded during the battle of Blackwater get massacred by the Dothraki and dragonfire.

Here they come! The Dothraki on an open field, Ned! I knew this would happen this season, but it happened what, 10 minutes after Daenerys says she’ll leave Dragonstone to war? The battles this season don’t have any buildup, they just happen. It makes me a bit anxious. Nobody is safe from a sudden battle.

The Lannister forces are spread thin, and so the Dothraki can swamp them easily. Daenerys enters the battle and starts burning all the wagons on the road. I winced.

So the food burns. But the gold is safe. Yay.

Using dragonfire is horrible, but dang they are majestic creatures.

Some episodes ago I told about how every larger battle or massacre has had some named character die in or immediately after it. No offence to unnamed infantrymen, but their deaths don’t matter as much, so it’s good to show that every time a lot of them die, also someone more important to the story does as well, so it has immediate consequences. Last week the conquest of Casterly Rock didn’t have any, but that one was meant to be a distraction on the Lannister side (great job distracting, unnamed infantrymen!).

But that made me very nervous now. There were Jaime, Bronn, Randyll and Dickon, all of them in a position to die, to make this “the battle in which we lost X”. When Dickon saved Jaime in the beginning of the battle, I expected a Dothraki to cut his head off immediately afterwards. When Bronn ran to the scorpion, I expected him to die in dragonfire after shooting the thing. When he shot the thing and it hit the dragon, I braced myself for its death. And when Jaime did his foolish Saint George attack, I shed a tear. A tear for this brave foolish sometimes very horrible man. I laughed when he lost his arm! He gave Olenna the poison that killed her! And now I cry for him, I’m a big softie.

But Dickon saves him a second time (unless he drowns, but I don’t think so), and cut to credits. So none of them seems to have died at the end of the episode. Randyll and Bronn may escape to King’s Landing, Jaime and Dickon get taken prisoners. The dragon may not be able to fly yet, but it’ll survive too.

So, the Queen of Thorns has passed from this horrible world. She was my favourite character. Why? Generally people talk in two different ways: The thugs and other horrible people have their obscenity-filled mouths, and then there are the monologuers, who look at something far away while telling about the moment their life changed and why they are who they are now. Olenna on the other hand was simply sassy, and of the school of thought that when you are old enough you don’t need to be polite anymore. In the episode before the Purple Wedding, she almost started a story about how she once got a necklace, but stopped the story short and threw the necklace away. She knew full well who she was and felt no need to talk to anyone about it.

It’s entirely likely that if she was a real person, I wouldn’t want to be in any contact with her. But she was always a delight while on screen. I’m going to miss her.

But before her fate, we see how Cersei deals with Daenerys’ other allies.

Euron brings them to the court, and Cersei lets him have Yara, and takes him as an official ally in the war. The Dornish prisoners she takes to deal justice on her own.

The alcoholic Queen Mother in his father’s shadow, who squabbled over her son’s attention with his wife, or was outmaneuvered by a man with no shoes, is no more. Good for her, but horrible for everyone in her way. She poisons Ellaria’s daughter, and leaves Ellaria to di… to live in the dungeons with the corpse for as long as it amuses the Queen.

So I take it this is goodbye for Ellaria as well, unless she is found when Cersei gets removed from the throne. I never had a positive opinion of her, some empathy when she had to watch her partner die, which quickly went away when she had the bright idea of killing everybody to avenge him, including his brother and nephew. Still, a horrible person being horrible to another horrible person is not my favourite thing to watch. Unless it’s Olenna using her words.

So Dorne is out of the show? After the new rulers there hear of what happened to Ellaria, they will likely just lie low. I mean, there are no previously seen characters from there alive anymore, so that means it’s over for Dorne. Until the next show, if it features Dorne.

Maybe it will feature Highgarden? Properly, I mean. I asked to see it for ages, but I must say that I’m disappointed with the little we saw of it in this episode. Sure it was winter, and so no pretty gardens of which the place is famous, but why show it then in its poor state, when it could be shown in its proper glory in the next show. Okay, now I’m sounding like a choosing beggar, I’ll stop.

Cersei continues her “I don’t care anymore” -policies by sleeping with Jaime so that soon the whole kingdom will know. No need for a Targaryen queen, she can fulfill that role easily. She also meets with the Iron Bank’s representative, and promises that the Lannisters will win this war, and also promises the moon from the sky while she is at it. The banker perhaps believes her. And with Dorne and the Reach removed by the end of this episode, Cersei may well be the winner. Unless...

The dragons.

Jon arrives to the Dragonstone, and sees them flying around the castle. Cersei may defeat Daenerys’ armies, but the Stormborn has the nuclear option of just burning down the Red Keep and becoming the de facto queen. You reap what you sow, Cersei.

Melisandre doesn’t want to see Jon, and confesses to Varys that she didn’t leave him on good terms. She is going to Volantis, but will return to die on Westeros. That is both her and Varys’ destiny. Spoiler alerts. Melisandre admits to having done horrible things because of her god. I appreciate that, after bringing Jon and Daenerys together she doesn’t try to preach her god to either of them. The Lord of Light is not a god you want to take instructions from.

Varys’ death is pretty much confirmed (or not if he lives to old age on Westeros). He and Littlefinger have gathered their players, they will have one last game to play.

Jon and Daenerys meet at last, and their conversations are surprisingly productive, considering how at odds their goals are. Daenerys has arrived to Westeros, only thinking about the throne. Now Jon arrives with a totally outside-context problem of the army of the dead. At this point Daenerys doesn’t yet know what happened to half of her fleet (and what will happen to the other half later), so she can afford to think only about getting the throne fast. But maybe she will have to save the realm to get the throne.

Tyrion trusts Jon, which shows how worthy a good first impression can be, and talks Daenerys into allowing Jon to mine dragonglass. Good, some good news. Otherwise there was little to cheer about in this episode.

Theon is being put as low as possible, either so that he can triumphantly kill the Ramsay-expy that is Euron, or he will be more and more humiliated with the end result for him being more like Ned Stark’s. I’m rooting for the first option, since therapy being non-existent that might be the best that he can hope for.

Sansa governs Winterfell, and receives a report that they are not going to have enough wheat for the winter. The situation is likely the same everywhere in Westeros. That means that even if they just quickly burn the Dead, they are still going to have a very hard winter. The White Walkers have already exterminated the Children and the Giants, the humanity is next.

But Bran is back! Another reunion! He and Sansa have a discussion about what being the Three-Eyed Raven means, and Bran tells her that he saw her getting raped. Not… not the best thing to say after such a long absence. Seriously, Bran, you could have picked some other moment.

So can Bran see anywhere he wants anytime? He can see the Dead, did he also see their location? Can he spy Cersei, can he see what Jon is up to with Daenerys? Can he make Cersei say “hodor” for the rest of her life? King’s Landing has a godswood, are they needed for visions?

Sam’s little experiment actually worked? So well that Jorah is free to go, and Sam also gets off with a small reprimand instead of a guarantee or anything like that. Fantasy problems need fantasy solutions.

Sam says that helping Jorah was the least he could do after everything his father did for him. It’s great to see how good deeds also have consequences, not just the bad ones.

I read A Feast of Crows between these episodes, and it’s funny how, in these commentaries, I have kept saying that Sam and Gilly and little Sam are super lucky and nothing can come between them, they will survive everything together, and… oops, two chapters in and Jon has already swapped little Sam with Mance Rayder’s son. Seriously? There are some changes that I am happy the show has made, and removing this is one of them.

But reading A Feast of Crows made me realize how big a challenge adapting that book must have been. If season five had some points where it felt like going nowhere, the book had everyone except Cersei just moving on the map, meeting some new people, acting like narrators on a Westeros sourcebook, and just before the end getting themselves into a cliffhanger. Brienne had it worst, ending the book on a noose. I didn’t exactly mind the slow pace or finding out more of the world (I bought The World of Ice and Fire, and will start that after A Dance with Dragons), but I can get the world documentation from source books, from the actual novels of the series I’d want more plot.

Speaking of more plot, the latter half of this episode was super fast. Casterly Rock falls during Tyrion’s small speech, the rest of Daenerys’ fleet is destroyed by Euron’s fleet, and Jaime and the new lord of the Reach storm Highgarden and conquer it.

Both Jaime and Euron cheated, of course. The implicit rules are that you can move to the next part of your story, no matter where it is, as long as you do it between episodes. You get bonus points if you miss an episode because you are travelling. But they both, Euron especially, moved to the other side of southern Westeros in the span of a couple of scenes.

I may have to get used to that. The less characters to keep track of, the more they get to move around when they are not watched, like little weeping angels.

From last episode: “Randyll may be a horrible person, but is he an oathbreaker? The Lannisters and their former allies Freys and Boltons have broken oaths, killed people in a wedding and blown up hundreds of people, does Randyll want to join them?” Sure, why not? He decides to become the lord of the Reach, and betrays Olenna, just like that. You sir have officially moved into my “die as soon as possible, if possible”-list.

Olenna and Jaime have a talk before he leaves her to die. It’s a great scene, and hopefully makes Jaime to think about his relationship with Cersei. It’s not healthy. But he is the only one even a little sympathetic on the Lannister side, so if he jumps ships, the rest of the story in the South will be just Cersei and Euron thrashing around until they are put down and everyone can put their minds on the White Walkers, another enemy devoid of any sympathy.

Argh, Olenna. The glee she has when she finally can confess that she murdered Joffrey. Not Tyrion, not the one whose accusation brought about the deaths of Oberyn and Tywin and all that followed from those two, she. So sweet, and Jaime has already killed her so there’s nothing he can do about it anymore.

Farewell, Queen of Thorns.

There’s a storm in and above Dragonstone. Daenerys plans the future with her Small Council. Invading Westeros would be easy if they wanted to just wreck it. But Daenerys is no Littlefinger, ashes are not enough for her.

She accuses Varys for betraying the kings he served the moment he thought he could get a better one. He answers that his loyalty is to the people. Now I’m wondering how he would have dealt with the High Sparrow if he had been in King’s Landing during that mess.

Sidenote: A big deal was made of the Dothraki crossing the saltwater before it happened, but now afterwards it apparently was not that big a deal. The Dothraki and their horses are not any worse sea travellers than anyone who hasn’t done it before. Especially with the Ironborn manning the ships.

They have a visitor. A red priest from Asshai. Asshai is so far to the east it doesn’t show up on any maps, and there’s little to none information about it in the books I have read. The Lord of Light seems to be major religion there, but it hasn’t had a foothold yet anywhere else, just some red priests and some places of worship. But then at least two red priests in Westeros started to create miracles and call people chosen ones, because the Lord of Light wants to save the humans from the dead. I dislike his methods, but how much has he accomplished in Asshai? Is that place a paradise because they have connections to a god who does something, or is it like everywhere else except they burn people once in a while?

Melisandre tells Daenerys of Jon Snow, King in the North, and how he would be a great ally against their common enemy. She alludes to the white walkers, but doesn’t mention them by name. If Daenerys knows about them, she doesn’t yet care about them enough to try Stannis’ “Save the world to get the throne”-strategy.

That’s why Melisandre wants her to meet Jon. And Daenerys starts with a wrong foot, of course. “Summon Jon Snow to bend the knee.” What if he asks for independence, like Yara? A thought of alliance by marriage must be in Daenerys’ mind as well, that’s why she came to the continent as a single. A king in the North would be a good pick, especially if he is also a good man.

…And he’s also her nephew, which would make the marriage extra-Targaryeny. Oh boy, if they ever find out.

Having Daenerys in Stannis’ old place makes me sad that they never got to talk to each other. An Irresistible force and an unmovable object if I ever saw one.

Jon takes the bait. He leaves Winterfell to Sansa, after grabbing Littlefinger by the throat and threatening him. What did Petyr say about Starks right after Ned did the same to him? Something about how Starks are easy to anger and predictable. Jon rides South. Like Ned  before him, and his father, brother and sister, Catelyn and Robb. Maybe Starks should stay in the North.

Arya thinks so. When she hears that Sansa and Jon are in Winterfell, she gets homesick and abandons her mission to kill Cersei for a while. Time for a reunion!... Jon goes away. Stay in one place, people, please.

Hot Pie! Nice to see him still alive. Hopefully no war comes to Riverlands again so he could be safe for the rest of the show. And now I have jinxed him, right? Arya tells him not to killed, too.

And then there’s another reunion! Arya is surrounded by wolves… oh my god! Nymeria! She has a pack of wolves, and seemingly a good business going on. So when Arya asks her to come with her to the North, she declines. She has a life here. Another happy ending, which hopefully lasts.

For so long I wanted Arya to meet Nymeria again, but I never thought of “what about when they do?” I’m satisfied with this. Goodbye Nymeria, stay alive and don’t eat too many little kids. Oh, they grow so fast.

Speaking of direwolves, Ghost is the only other one still alive, and Jon once again leaves him behind. I wonder how much harder they are to work with than dragons or skeleton warriors.

Cersei rises to the challenge, she has called the nearby living lords to her and is quickly making them join her against Daenerys. Daenerys did kill the masters in Astapor and Meereen, so the rulers in Westeros have a good reason to fear her. They also have a good reason to fear Cersei, as Randyll Tarly points out. Jaime has a private talk with him, promising him the Reach if he betrays Olenna.

Randyll may be a horrible person, but is he an oathbreaker? The Lannisters and their former allies Freys and Boltons have broken oaths, killed people in a wedding and blown up hundreds of people, does Randyll want to join them?

The Dothraki and the Unsullied are the biggest imago problem for Daenerys. She can’t have them out there pillaging villages and torching cities. So she plans to use them only on Casterly Rock, and have Dornish and Tyrell forces to siege King’s Landing.

Olenna! Daenerys gets a bit of wisdom from the rude old woman. Margaery was loved by everyone except Cersei. Now nobody loves Cersei, but she has the throne and Margaery is dead. Tyrion has tricks, but tricks don’t always work. Daenerys must not be a sheep, but a dragon.

Grey Worm and Missandei finally confess their feelings to each other, which bodes bad for Grey Worm’s survival. He may not come back from Casterly Rock, he doesn’t have Sam’s gift for survival. Oh, and time to breasts this season was 81 minutes, which is a record by a very wide margin.

Archmaester Ebrose examines Jorah and says that he’s a goner. He could either go to Valyria or euthanize himself. Sam doesn’t give up, and tries a very experimental cure in secret. No milk of the poppy, just a few sips of alcohol as anesthesia, and he starts flaying him. If any Bolton has become a maester he perhaps could have done better job. Anyway, next episode will show if he’s still alive, but I expect Sam to be reprimanded no matter the result. Unless he manages to smuggle Jorah out in secret after the procedure, which I doubt.

That procedure also looks like Jorah will soon die from infections, but it’s a fantasy disease so I’m allowing for a fantasy solution. If that even works instead of just allowing him to see Daenerys one more time and then dying in her defense.

By the way, I love the little glimpses to the Citadel’s everyday life (well, the parts not dealing with horrible illnesses and chamber pots), as when Ebrose talks about the writing styles of various maesters.

Speaking of people who do experiments the archmaesters don’t approve of, Qyburn shows Cersei his current handiwork. He has led the creation of a black arrow shooter as a defence against dragons. It manages to break the skull of Balerion the Dread, who, if I recall correctly, was the largest of dragons. Daenerys’ dragons are about the same size, so they don’t grow that much larger (and get to that size very quickly).

At this point I wondered if anyone would die this episode. The first episode was build-up too, so the death count was much lower than I expected. But then came the first big battle of the season (I’m expecting several).

Euron surprise attacks the Greyjoy fleet as it’s sailing to Dorne, and does great damage to it. He personally kills two of the Sand Snakes, raising his own villain status, and captures Ellaria, Yara, and the third Snake

I don’t like Ellaria. Her actions may seem similar to Olenna’s (both have poisoned a child, and both are waging war on the Lannisters for killing their loved), but they are not. Joffrey was a king actively doing horrible things, Myrcella was definitely not. Olenna is waging war on Cersei for murdering her family, not because her husband got himself killed in a trial by combat he voluntarily entered. But I could tolerate Ellaria as long as she brings her soldiers.

Now that’s not going to happen. I wouldn’t have grieved if she had died now, but I’m glad it didn’t happen right after the reminder that she is bi.

A big setback for team Daenerys. That’s what you get for not wanting to be the queen of the ashes.

Last season made me very optimistic, I thought that the situation could get bad before the end, and many good characters will die before it, but the end itself could be optimistic, with the dead destroyed and the living finding some peace after everyone who wants war has died.