#cleganebowl

Meme template I used 🤣🤣🤣

“For the Hound, violence is the only semblance of pleasure that remains. He has little interest in women, nor in starting a family. But at least he’s self-aware – he fully understands how twisted he is, and explicitly warns Arya not to be consumed by revenge during “The Bells.” It’s good advice; Arya’s “kill list” is a warped fantasy that has weighed heavily on her, and letting go of her bloodlust might just allow her to live a happier life.

The Hound’s journey has sometimes meandered, but it always seemed as though he was searching for a release of some sort, an end to his suffering. And he almost met his end by the blade of Brienne of Tarth; after his recovery, he looked as though he might even find peace.

For the Hound, violence was a crippling addiction that granted the temporary illusion of power, the man dominating his victims the way his brother once dominated him. Surely, letting that toxic lifestyle go, finally putting down his sword, would have been a truly happy ending for Sandor Clegane.

But the fans had other ambitions. “Cleganebowl” was an ongoing meme throughout the series, the fans picturing an epic showdown between the two warring brothers. The idea was satisfying, sure, but a surface reading of the brother’s twisted relationship.

The two men didn’t really have the rivalry imagined by the fans; they hated each other, undoubtedly, but the Mountain had moved on. The scar he left on his little brother was psychological, the Hound’s propensity for violence forged in fire – murdering the man who’d turned him into a murderer wasn’t going to heal him.

(…)

The Mountain’s enraged reaction upon seeing Sandor wasn’t organic; it was certainly what the fans wanted, but it didn’t have a solid foundation in the story.

After all, the Mountain died long ago, a literal zombie puppeteered by Qyburn. This is the tragedy of his story, an agent of violence transformed into a walking dead man. The Hound threw himself into the fire, just so he could burn his brother’s corpse.

It was a stunning visual, and at the time, genuinely felt like a win for Sandor. But really, it was a victory for the Mountain. Sandor never managed to escape the effect of his elder brother’s abuse; he followed him into the flames of self-destruction. From beginning to end, Sandor’s story was desperately sad.

(…)

My ideal ending for Sandor would have seen him retiring, enjoying a peaceful life, backing down from bar fights and munching on chicken, finally strong enough to ignore his worst instincts.

Though admittedly, it wouldn’t have been quite as cinematic.”

“There are no seeds for this fight planted in Martin’s books. “Cleganebowl” is just something fans cooked up when it looked like both the Hound and the Mountain had, against all odds, survived death in the last book, A Dance with Dragons. Positing that the Hound was secretly a character named “the Gravedigger” and the Mountain was secretly a character called Ser Robert Strong, some readers wondered, “and wouldn’t it be cool if they fought each other?”

The cyclical nature of all of this is satisfying on one level. Fire is the reason Sandor left King’s Landing in the first place—he infamously spat “fuck the king” when asked to rush into the wildfire-lit melee of the Battle of Blackwater.

And so he returned to the city, braved the fire, and ended his brother in the flames. Sure, the Hound technically died doing something heroic in eliminating Cersei’s bodyguard, but is it a satisfying conclusion for Sandor? Especially when his brother, Gregor, is actually long dead. The show made some attempt to humanize the Mountain in his final moments by having him disobey Cersei, but this still felt like a sad ending for Sandor. A vengeance mission to eliminate a zombie lacks the soul this particular redemption arc deserves. Especially when Rory McCann’s best scene of the entire series is a tender, surprisingly sensitive reckoning with the emotional wounds his brother left on him.