#got 6

Jon being told to kill Dany ti me and time again? To hide the knife twist. Despite Jon killing Mance for mercy or exiling Melisandre for burning ONE girl.

Let's compare it to the Rohirrim. Both Tolkien and Jackson show us the rohirrim riding to Gondor in a race against time. We don't wonder if the will come but rather if they will arriba before Minas Tirith falls.

That's good writing.

Hi there!

The best twists are the ones that are prepared and that you could have seen coming.

I mean the siege of Minas Tirith is a classic in that regard. We know the Rohirim come (and we might even suspect they come in time), we know Aragorn tries his best, we know Eowyn is among the Rohirim. But did anyone predict the Witch King being killed by Eowyn and Merry, Denethor's madness and Faramir's almost death?

Sigh!

D&D could have shown Sansa waiting anxiously for the Knights of the Vale to arrive. We could have seen her meeting LF, telling him that she did not know he would come, we could still have had Jon in dire need of relief. I mean I rather like the episode with BotB (mostly because Sapochnik did a splendid job) but the Knights of the Vale could have been handled better.

For everyone accusing, “you’re just mad that your fave didn’t win/you just wanted her to live/you just can’t handle shocking tv” -- 

Y’know what was a fantastic example of Game of Thrones pulling a shocking twist that actually worked? That I thought was brilliant even though it involved the violent death of a character I was not ready to say goodbye to?

Margaery Tyrell.

I love Margaery. She’s probably my second-favorite character in the whole series. She’s quick and clever and manipulative, and she weaponizes femininity. She’s a great foil for Cersei, because they have a lot in common, but their values are so different, so they exercise similar means to vastly different ends. I always wanted her to be a POV character in the books, and I was delighted when the show cast the absolutely incredible Natalie Dormer and gave her a bit more of a spotlight. I would have watched her forever. I would never have wanted her to die.

But when she did?

It was satisfying. Not because I wanted her dead, but because it made such sense for the story.

Margaery’s playing the game, but what she fails to realize until it’s too late is that, while she thinks she’s playing chess with Cersei, Cersei has, in the grand tradition of spoiled children who realize they’re losing, knocked over the board. And that fits in line with everything we know about Cersei. She’s a scorched-earth kind of thinker, and she has been since childhood.  Of course Cersei would blow up the Sept out of spite, to avoid the consequences of her actions. (And of course she would think that would be a perfect win, while failing to see how that would affect Tommen -- because she doesn’t actually know her kid, she loves the idea of him more than the reality.) Margaery isn’t perfect; she trusts her own gameplay too much, and while she’s certainly not naive, she -- like Olenna also cops to later on -- has a failure of imagination where it comes to Cersei. Tyrion falls victim to the same flaw. No one else is quite willing to believe the depths of Cersei’s perfidy, and they pay for it.

(This is also, btw, a way in which Cersei’s character is also done a disservice by this season, but that’s a whole other essay)

But what’s really great is what we see of Margaery in those final moments. She’s still playing the game, and she’s playing it gloriously. She’s absorbed in her new role as Virtuous Queen -- but that glint is still behind her eyes, particularly when the High Sparrow mutilates Loras, and it hints at something that will never have the chance to play out -- how she and the High Sparrow would have to keep maneuvering around each other.

And then, watching mile-smarter-than-everyone-else-in-the-room Margaery realize what’s actually going on -- guh, it was so good.

Because Margaery is smart enough to realize that something is up. She puts the pieces together. “Cersei understands the consequences of her absence and she is absent anyway, which means she does not intend to suffer those consequences. The trial can wait. We all need to leave.” She may not have guessed exactly what will happen -- because who could imagine that Cersei would take out a quarter of the city to avoid prosecution? -- but she knows it’s going to be bad. And so in her final moments, she drops the Virtuous act to try and get everyone the hell out. It’s not her fault the High Sparrow is too absorbed in his self-appointed holiness to listen to her. She dies striving to counter Cersei’s maneuver. She fails, but she’s still herself as she fails.

It makes sense for Cersei; it makes sense for Margaery; it doesn’t destroy who Margaery is in her final moment.

And so, the story satisfies.

I wanted Margaery to live. I wanted her to win her battles against the High Sparrow and Cersei. I wanted good things for Margaery. I was horrifically shocked, but it didn’t make me angry. It told a good story that was true to the characters and to the audience’s expectations. I can’t remember exactly when it occurred to me, “Holy hell, Cersei might blow them all up”. She’d inquired about the wildfire I think in the previous episode? So that was on the table. I knew that. I could see it heading in that direction. But you still have time to think, “Well... she wouldn’t really, would she? Or even if she would... someone will stop her, right? Or at least figure out how to escape? This... this won’t really happen, will it?” But she would, and no one does, and it does.