Game of Thrones, Season 8 Finale: The Bitter End

Grief is the price we pay to love. And what show were we more infatuated with as a culture than Game of Thrones? So now that it’s dead, we’re mourning – there’s no other way to describe the anguish and betrayal and disappointment. We’re not only mourning the death of the quality of GOT as a work of art (it has declined in terms of plausibility with respect to space-time as well as the loss of interiority for many of our protagonists): we’re mourning an intellectual property that captivated us for a decade (longer if you read the books), that we invested many hours of our time and energy in. So now that it’s over and it didn’t disappoint to disappoint, it feels like a sucker punch, but really – they’ve been subtly warning us about this outcome all along. We just didn’t want to listen.

On an existential level we use fantasy as a genre to escape the often harsh, boring reality that is modern human existence. Sure, tragic things happen in fantasy/sci fi properties, but in fiction, we can arrange for evil to be easily identified and defeated at the end of the story – which isn’t at all how evil operates in real life. The main characters can survive and walk off happily into the sunset – the divorce rate in America proves the opposite is true more frequently than not. Fantasy is utilized to be cathartic as much as it’s used to thrill and entertain – but clearly, Game of Thrones was not intended to fit into that mold. GOT is an epic fantasy that used magic and divine prophecies as misdirects, red herrings – it is a story that had few satisfying conclusions for its principle characters and the underlying hints at fate and divine intervention turned out to be irrelevant. In other words – Game of Thrones is a fantasy that, though it rolled with dragons and smoke monster babies and resurrections, operated with real life software. How often does the best person for a leadership role actually get the job? How often do faithful people pray and genuinely believe only to have bad things happen to them again and again? How often does it seem like someone is meant for greatness but ultimately they flame out before they can get their name in the history books? ALL THE DAMN TIME. So what we’re really mad at is the fact that George R.R. Martin (Benioff and Weiss didn’t write the ending, after all – they just condensed/altered the route to get there) “broke the wheel” of the paradigm of the fantasy genre – he denied us our righteous, happy ending. He denied us the cosmic importance we sought for the Starks and Targaryens. He created an amazing story with compelling characters and then stopped short; the equivalent to making Star Wars beginning at Phantom Menace only to end it on The Empire Strikes Back. Perhaps the ending in the books will feel more organic and satisfying, with more attention/credence paid to the supernatural elements– but that gives me zero comfort.

Anyway, lemme break it down.

First of all, I started crying during the opening credits because my husband remarked that this would be the last time we ever got to hear the theme song “live” and it made me super emo. Loved that King's Landing was accordingly demolished and missing any sigils behind the Iron Throne to indicate who would ultimately (not) be occupying it.

The first person we see is Tyrion, who is wandering through the silent streets, Jon and Davos not too far behind. They pass a few people still living, completely shell-shocked, but mostly they pass charred bodies and mutilated corpses as ash rains down around them. Tyrion wants to head into the Red Keep alone, which alarms Jon, who is increasingly suspicious of Grey Worm and the Unsullied (rightfully so). He offers him men to accompany him, but Tyrion declines – he’s going to see if Jaime and Cersei escaped, after all – slightly treasonous behavior that he’d rather not have an audience for. He gets to the tunnels and finds the entrance caved in – except for a narrow gap in the bricks at the top. How convenient – a path only a dwarf or a child might be able to squeeze through.

He also super quickly and easily finds what he was hoping not to – the Lannisters’ corpses lightly buried under fallen bricks, signaled by the sight of Jaime’s gold hand. Tyrion has a good cry because he is now the final Lannister in Westeros and his rescue attempt was for naught.

Meanwhile, Jon and Davos are making their way to the Keep, and are dismayed to find Grey Worm and his crew slaughtering the defeated Lannister soldiers. Jon lays hands on Grey Worm in an attempt to stall the war crimes – nearly resulting in a full on brawl between the Northmen and the Unsullied right there in the street. Grey Worm gives the Nuremberg Defense (he’s only following orders), and Davos diffuses the situation by pushing Jon to address the policy with Daenerys directly.

The surviving edifice of the Keep is draped in a Targaryen banner, which reminded me of the many swastikas that were hung over the sides of bombed out buildings across Europe during WW2 – I think this was intentional. This whole sequence as Jon goes to find Dany is visually stunning – some of the best film making (in a technical sense) of this season. Jon is staring up at the banner – we along with him – so he doesn’t notice that the pile of ash-covered rubble in front of the building isn’t rubble at all – it’s a sleepy Drogon. The dragon sits up and shakes off the ash and glares at Jon, but allows him to walk into the building before taking to the air, to pick up his Mom - this makes no sense guys, where is Daenerys if Drogon is down here?

Jon makes his way past the courtyard full of celebratory Dothraki – not seeing Arya as she stalks the gathering from the side. Arya must have doubled back after riding the horse away from ground zero at the end of the previous episode– it’s not out of character, she would have wanted to at least see what was up with Dany after having multiple buildings almost dropped on her. Drogon swoops in; I'm still not sure if Dany was making a grand entrance or if he was just flying in alone coincidentally. Either way, Jon climbs the stairs to see Daenerys approaching, giving us the coolest shot on the show ever of Drogon stretching his wings way behind Dany, but the angle makes it seem as though Dany has sprouted her very own dragon wings (I’m a sucker for visual symbolism – the implication is obvious, I hope). 
 

Somehow (because the laws of spacetime don’t exist anymore) Grey Worm beat John up to the platform, preventing him from confronting her, so he slinks off to the side so she can make her victory speech to her army.

She thanks the Dothraki for fulfilling their promise to destroy her enemies – recycling her rallying speech after she burned the Khals (which was recycled from Drogo in his conqueror's speech in Season 1). She praises the Unsullied for their service, congratulating them that though they were raised as slaves they were now themselves ‘liberators’ who freed a nation from a tyrant, and who will go on to keep liberating oppressed peoples the world over. That’s right folks – Dany is no longer content to control the lands bordering the Bay of Dragons (formerly Slaver’s Bay) and the Seven Kingdoms, it seems – once King's Landing is squared away they will be liberating the rest of the known world. She has fully bought into her own white savior bullshit, fully embraced the family motto of ‘fire and blood;’ Jon and Arya look on in disgust as Daenerys’ followers celebrate.

About now Tyrion comes up from behind Dany, who immediately brings up the fact that he freed Jaime against her wishes. “Yeah, but you burned a city full of women and children,” he responds. He chucks his Hand pin down the steps, which makes the Unsullied cease their enthusiastic spear tapping. She has Grey Worm arrest Tyrion for treason, and then she storms off before Jon can get a word in.

Arya sneaks up on Jon, who is understandably surprised to see her. “I came to kill Cersei…but your queen got to her first,” she deadpans. “She’s everyone’s queen now,” Jon sulks. Arya seems like she would have seriously considered assassinating Dany, but it’s clearly something that would hurt Jon, so she leaves Dany’s fate in his hands. Besides – she killed the Night King, it would be criminal to give her Dany too.

Jon goes to visit Tyrion in his cell – which is basically just a spacious storage room since the dungeons are caved in, so this is def the nicest place Tyrion has ever been held captive. The conversation that takes place is a rumination on the roles love and duty play in life, but it’s really just Tyrion asking Jon to put Dany down like a rabid dog for the good of the realm. “Love is the death of duty,” Jon says at one point, which is devastatingly poetic – so obviously Jon didn’t come up with it and Tyrion calls him out. Actually, it was Maester Aemon from the Night’s Watch – who Jon has realized by now was his great-great uncle. “Sometimes duty is the death of love,” Tyrion counters. This was one of the more meta moments ever in the show; Tyrion has commentary about Daenerys that makes her brutal transition into a dictator seem less out of character. He rambles off all of her strategic wins against the patriarchy – destroying Slaver’s Bay, killing the nobles in Mereen, killing the Khals in Vaes Dothrak – and reminds us that at each of these turns, we cheered her on and rooted for her victory. She began to see herself as a grand hero in the story of the world – the underdog, the person destined to “break the wheel” and change the world for the better. So when she was sitting on the defeated walls of Kings Landing, considering the options in front of her (mercy for/total annihilation of the remaining enemy), remembering all of the loved ones that had been taken from her to get to that point and the threats to her legitimacy as a ruler – she abandoned mercy and chose violence, much like the tyrant that proceeded her. Daenerys Targaryen outdid Anakin Skywalker in his own story – a child of prophecy destined to bring balance to their worlds, who began with noble intentions and was corrupted into becoming the very monster they were fighting to eradicate. As per The Dark Knight: "you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

Jon doesn’t want to kill Dany – on some level, he still loves her. But he knows that if she’s allowed to ascend to the Throne, anyone who challenges her authority will be put to death, and the Seven Kingdoms will effectively become a tyrannical dictatorship that would make Cersei Lannister’s reign seem like a buffet of rainbows and unicorns. Even if he doesn’t want the Iron Throne for himself – Tyrion insists that it would be folly to let Dany have it: they should have listened to Varys. Jon leaves the room, his inner conflict evident.

We return to Dany, who finally made her way up to the throne room (well, what’s left of it). The scene is filmed and scored as if we’re watching a religious moment – and for Daenerys, who has dreamed of this moment for her entire life, it kind of is. This is her Promised Land - she looks at the Iron Throne with awe and if it weren’t for the fact that she just murdered thousands of innocent people on her way up there, I would have shared her reverie. Her walk is a shot for shot remake of her vision from the House of Undying, which was a callback that I appreciated for symmetry's sake but since prophecy ultimately means dick, it's sort of annoying. She lightly touches the arm of the throne, on a rounded pommel of a sword – when Jon appears in the doorway behind her, breaking the spell. His arrival was framed in the way you would show the killer appear over the Last Girl’s shoulder in a slasher flick – another great bit of cinematography.

She doesn’t seem unhappy to see Jon – she tells him that when she was a little girl, she had no concept of what 1000 swords looked like because she couldn’t even count to 20. She envisioned a mountain of metal - this is a direct reference to how the throne is actually described in the books - it's probably 4 times as tall than the one we're familiar with, complete with makeshift steps. Just some inane smalltalk – no outward reflection of the fact that she just massacred a city. 

Jon brings up that Grey Worm was executing the conquered Lannisters and asks if it was true that he was carrying out her orders. She makes the same frowny face that every mid-level bureaucrat has made when justifying a cruel policy to their employees and confirms – “we can’t get by on small mercies.” She then launches into a monologue ripped right from the Delusional Dictator’s Handbook – that her war crime was an act of mercy – that she had righteously vanquished a tyrant who used innocents as a shield against her, that Jon just can’t conceive of the utopia only she can build because it hasn’t ever existed before – like when she was a child and couldn’t count past 20 to picture the Iron Throne.

Again, the Darth Vadar parallels are too prevalent to ignore – she asks Jon to rule the world with her, like Vadar asked Luke to rule the galaxy at his side. But rather than reject his evil relative’s offer, fleeing to fight another day like Luke Skywalker did – Jon embraces Dany and tells her she’ll “always be my Queen” – and then stabs her in the heart.

This is the second time Jon Snow has held the woman he loved as she died as a result of his necessary betrayal, except he didn’t actually kill Ygritte. He killed Dany in a way that mirrored his own murder – stabbed face-to-face by people he knew and trusted. Dany never gets a chance to utter a final word – her confusion outweighing whatever anger she must have felt.

He cradles Dany for a few minutes, remaining with her even as Drogon sweeps into the room, alerted to his mother’s death either through instinct or the severed magical connection that linked the pair. My waterworks kicked in again at this part as he nudges Dany like a dog would, trying to wake her. Drogon is now entirely alone in the world – the last of his kind, his human companion dead. So it makes little sense to me, considering Jon could have been the only conceivable person to murder Dany, that Drogon didn’t roast him on the spot. Rather, in his rage Drogon unleashes hellfire on the Iron Throne itself, completely melting it. Is it because Jon is also a Targaryen and whatever magic they have over dragons prevented Drogon from turning on him? Or because Dany had a blade through her chest and the throne was made out of blades and it triggered him? It’s probably just that Jon has plot armor because I don't think Drogon is sentient enough to parse out it was really the mania of seeking the Throne that got Dany killed. Anyway, Drogon picks up Dany’s body and glares hatefully at Jon Snow one last time before launching himself into the sky with her, never to be seen again.

There you have it – after 8 seasons and countless maneuvers, no one takes the Iron Throne, because it has been destroyed. Anti-climactic, much?

Oh wait, there’s more! We do not get to see the immediate aftermath of Dany’s death – the next person we see is Tyrion, who has been imprisoned for at least a month or two’s worth of beard growth. Grey Worm marches Tyrion to a familiar place – the Dragon Pit outside the city, where the parlay took place at the end of season 7. Awaiting him are all of the other main characters – Bran, Arya, Sansa, Brienne, Davos, Gendry, Sam, Yara Greyjoy, as well as some of the secondary characters – Robyn Aryn, Lord Royce, Edmure Tully (Catelyn Stark’s brother, the groom at the Red Wedding). There are other lords from the Seven Kingdoms present that aren’t important enough to be given official names but are clearly important enough to merit an invite to these peace talks.

Apparently this meeting is taking place to determine the release/sentencing of Tyrion and Jon Snow – who was imprisoned for Dany’s murder by the Unsullied – and to decide who actually gets to claim the title of Regent of the Seven Realms. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY GODDAMN SENSE! So we’re lead to believe that the Unsullied and the Dothraki have been occupying King’s Landing for about 2 months, holding Jon hostage to keep the Northern army from attacking them. Sansa and Arya want Jon released so he can return to Winterfell, but Grey Worm refuses because he murdered their Queen. And he sure as shit won’t be letting Jon claim the throne, even though as the last Targaryen he is entitled to it in accordance with dynastic succession. Davos offers Grey Worm the Riverlands as a peace offering to retreat to with his people since the former citizens have all been wiped out there. I’m sorry, but who the fuck is Grey Worm to be making demands!? I guess we’re also supposed to assume that Grey Worm still has the allegiance of the Ironborn and the Dornish – how else would they be getting supplies in to the city, if it’s surrounded on land by the Northmen?

Good ol’ Samwell Tarly suggests that the people should elect the next ruler of Westeros – and is promptly laughed off the stage. “Why don’t we give my horse a vote as well?!” Lord Royce cracks. Democracy isn’t a laughing matter but like Daenerys told Jon – these people have no concept of a world outside of feudal monarchy – it’s been that way for 10,000 documented years. Now that some of the tension was broken, an uncomfortable silence followed. I’m not sure there was a greater Sansa moment than when she shut down her uncle for attempting to nominate himself King. “Sit down, Uncle.” Lady Olenna would be proud.

Tyrion is given the space to pontificate about what should happen – though as Grey Worm rightfully pointed out – why is a treasonous king-maker and current prisoner the go-to person for political advice? Tyrion has made more tactical errors than anyone else at this powwow but they still all want his input!?

His opinion is that the crown should go to the most intriguing person at the gathering: *drum roll* Bran Stark should be the next King of Westeros. WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK. Bran “I’m going to go now” Stark!? Vacant-eyed supernatural encyclopedia Brandon Stark!?!?!? Apparently the annoying qualities Bran has picked up as the Three-Eyed Raven have been making him uniquely suited to the role: he is essentially incorruptible because he isn’t strictly human – by his own words he no longer “wants” - not political power or money or anything else. He is incapable of greed or avarice. Who better to lead them all than a dispassionate guy who literally knows everything there is to know about their history upon request and is guaranteed to not abuse his power? The choice is rational, albeit wildly dissatisfying for the audience. Tyrion insists this plan will fulfill Dany’s dream of “breaking the wheel” of oppression and is what is best for the people.

The first person to object is – no surprise here – Sansa Stark. “My brother’s dick doesn’t work so he can’t have heirs,” she blurts. “Irrelevant!” Tyrion replies – “the ruler should be chosen by a committee comprised of aristocrats from now on, so Bran’s inability to procreate is a non-issue!” Her next argument should have been that the previous Three-Eyed Raven was like, several hundred years old when he died but she declined to continue. Basically everyone shrugs and agrees to elect Bran – except for Sansa. Again. “The North must remain an independent kingdom,” she whines. Well, Bran doesn’t give a shit about things like sovereignty – he concedes to be ruler of the Six Kingdoms. He immediately chooses Tyrion to be his Hand – which Grey Worm objects to, perceiving the appointment as being a reward for his misjudgments, and Tyrion objects for the same reason. “It’s not a reward – it’s a punishment, because now he’ll have to spend the rest of his life making up for his mistakes,” Bran says. Perspective is a bitch, isn’t it? Well, Bran’s Jedi mind trick actually works – Tyrion agrees to serve as Bran’s Hand, and it is agreed that Jon Snow will be sent North to the Wall the reinstate the Night’s Watch – which makes ZERO SENSE because there is no White Walker/Wildling threat to protect the realm from. Tyrion justifies the decision by telling Jon that the world will still need a place to send its bastards and broken men, which… I mean, if we’re breaking the wheel, shouldn’t we be doing away with the notion of illegitimacy and establishing prisons for criminals and all that?

Either way, Jon is released so he can say farewell to his siblings – Sansa, the usurper of throne of the North, Bran the Broken, first of his name, King of the Andals and the First Men blah blah blah (there have been like 7346734874 Brandon Starks throughout history so all the flattering nicknames must have been taken already - I would have gone with 'Bran the Weird'), and Arya, who is so bored now that she has no names on her Kill List that she’s decided to pull a Frodo Baggins and leave her homeland forever in search of whatever lies west of Westeros (she expressed interest in this as early as season 6, when she talks about it with Lady Crane in Braavos).

The Unsullied and Dothraki leave Westeros as part of their treaty – setting sail for Naath, Missandei’s place of birth, presumably to liberate the slaves there. Sure, why not, let the war criminals be someone else’s problem!

We watch the very first Small Council meeting take place under Bran’s reign – this is the only part of the episode that I actually smiled. So Bronn is now the Master of Coin and the Lord of High Garden – having gotten his fuckin’ castle, the Crown’s debts to him are paid. Ser Davos must have been promoted to Lord of somewhere; he is now Master of Ships, hoping to bum some coin off Bronn to rebuild the navy and the ports of Blackwater Bay. He’s also the Master of Grammar, as per Bronn. That’s character growth – Davos couldn’t even read a year ago, and now he’s correcting other people’s speech! Can he be my grandpa, please? Anyway – Sam shows up in Archmaester robes, which I guess means he’s going back to Maester school? What happens to Gilly and their unborn child? Is Lil Sam the defacto Lord of Horn Hill? This loose end bothered the shit out of me! He presents Tyrion with Maester Ebrose’s book recounting the events following King Robert’s death – titled “the Song of Ice and Fire,” because we needed another allusion to Tolkien before the show ended. Brienne enters the room in her Lord Commander of the King’s Guard finery with King Bran, who is being rolled in by Pod – also in King’s Guard armor! Yay, Podrick is a knight of the realm!

Tyrion tries to be official like about the tasks at hand but Bran isn’t really interested – he asks if Drogon has been found yet. When the answer is no, he decides to leave the hard work to the Council so he can go dragon hunting in his head – he really is upper management material!

Part of Brienne’s new job as the Commander of the King’s Guard is to fill in the details of the big book of Knights – so it’s her responsibility to finish Jamie Lannister’s section, effectively determining how he will be remembered by future generations. Rather than being petty and scribbling “fuckboy extraordinaire” like I would have, she writes about all of the redeeming things Jamie did, saying of his ultimate rejection of a future without Cersei: “Died protecting his queen.” Brienne is a woman of honor, and treats Jaime in absentia with a level of respect that someone with such a complicated story doesn’t normally receive in the annals of history. This only endeared me more to her – Jaime pissed me off, but Brienne is still a class act.

We cycle between the conclusion of Arya, Sansa, and Jon’s story arcs. Arya is on a ship with Stark sails, happy to be on an adventure in uncharted territory. Sansa gets the crown she always wanted, and is hailed as Queen of the North. And Jon meets up with Tormund and the Wildlings up at Castle Black, where he is reunited with Ghost. This is the only completely satisfying event for me in the entire episode, to be honest. Such a good, loyal boy!

Jon opts to head North beyond the Wall to go ranging with the Wildlings rather than be Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch all alone for a while. This is the closest we get to watching anyone ride off into the sunset; our remaining Starks are basically ruling Westeros across 3 terrirories, 4 if you count wherever Arya lands if they don't die at sea.

Obviously, this wasn’t what any sane viewer wanted to happen. Sansa and Tyrion got the best outcomes as far as earning what they wound up with, in my opinion. Sam, Davos, Bronn, Brienne, and Pod all fared well too – not sure Bronn really deserves his job, but he has vision at least – bailouts for the brothel industry! The rest are most assuredly qualified for their new jobs. Bran stole the throne without ever once expressing an interest for it, which is so flippin’ frustrating. I don’t even dislike Bran – it just feels like a commentary on white privilege or something (as in – white people be born to privilege and wind up successful through little to no effort simply by being descended from important or influential people). Was the wheel even “broken” if a Westerosi nobleman wound up in charge again?

Dany was obviously the most tragic loss in the entire story – but I have to say, rushed though it felt in the last season to 180 on her principles – she’s the best “fall from grace” character since Darth Vadar in popular culture. In fact, because the prequels dealing with Anakin Skywalker’s path to the dark side were so fucking awful, Dany’s transition is the more convincing and compelling one. I’m not going to go out and burn the Daenerys stuff I own, anyway. She deserved better but I'll make do with what we got.

Jon’s ending was probably the most upsetting for me, if only because there were so many loose ends and red herrings involved in getting there. His whole secret identity and the huge shock of it was ultimately meaningless- whatever Varys was trying to pull off in installing Jon on the Iron Throne was erroneous because he was kicked out of the running for killing Dany. The whole Azor Ahai prophecy was dropped like a hot potato – in the books it will probably be addressed in more depth, but on the show it basically passed from public consciousness with the death of Melisandre. Why was Jon brought back if not to kill Dany and restore balance to the realm? Shouldn’t he have died soon after fulfilling his role, like Beric Dondarrion did? Is he alive because he still has a purpose that we just aren’t going to see pan out?

Cersei Lannister was wrong about one final thing, then. You don’t necessarily have to win or die playing the game of thrones – Bran proves you can win without directly playing, Dany proves you can win and lose by sacrificing your humanity, and Jon proves you can lose doing the right thing and survive. These are unfair and inescapable truths of human existence – truths we weren’t seeking to be reminded of as we watched a show featuring witches and dragons and ice zombies to help us forget about the freefall our society has been in over the course of the last 8 years.

I’m going to try not to be bitter when I recall the time I dedicated to this show. More often than not, it thrilled and entertained, even if it was full of upsetting and frustrating developments. C’est la vie, right? Or more appropriately: valar morghulis.