Cinematography - First off, truly awesome direction. Less of a battle like BoB and more of a massacre like Hardhome, with everything reflecting this - the combat is not cool, only brutal, with limbs and heads hacked off and burned men screaming on the ground. All coupled with low shots of people fleeing through claustrophobic streets or cowering with loved ones, accompanied by fire, falling rubble and hellish ash-shrouded wastelands. Unfortunately, like BoB the visual feast was undercut for me by utter bewilderment at the character decisions that set these events in motion. One thing that’s stuck with me since I heard it in a YouTube analysis video the other day is that D&D don’t want to see their actors act per se, they want to see them emote. Hence lots of non-verbal scenes and close ups of faces, which adds to the visceral but slightly empty feeling of the recent episodes.
Varys - Our favourite bald spymaster has gone from distrusting Dany for no particular reason last episode to having legitimate reason to think she wants to burn everyone, and just in case you hadn’t clocked that he was marked for death, there’s a short empathy scene of him being nice to a child. Incidentally, Dragon must have a Bunsen burner nozzle to regulate his fire, since he can torch Varys in one scene without singeing anyone else nearby, and disintegrate whole sections of castle wall in the next. That shot of him looming out of the dark behind Dany was pretty awesome though.
I’m not sure how Tyrion found out about Varys’ betrayal (unless he was pre-empting it), let alone why he would immediately rat out the man who’s been his ally for much longer than Dany, and moreover who (in the show at least) is the least biased in serving the interests of The Realm. Judging by the way Dany threatens Tyrion next scene, and what happens later, damn did he bet on the wrong horse...
Jaime and Tyrion - This scene, a pleasing mirror to Jaime setting Tyrion free back in season 4, was probably the best character scene of the episode, though my god have they eviscerated Jaime’s character arc. Not only do they prove that, yes, he hasn’t grown out of his toxic relationship with Cersei after all, he also loses his striving to become a true knight who protects the innocent, by making no visible effort to keep his promise to Tyrion and ring the bells, thus saving thousands of innocents, in favour of simply making his way doggedly to Cersei.
The Battle - Now, I’ve already mentioned my understanding that this episode is framed as a horrible slaughter rather than a battle, but damn if Cersei shouldn’t be asking for her money back on the Golden Company. Captain Strickland wins an award for most hapless commander. All those bolt throwers also seem to have taken a nosedive in effectiveness since last episode, almost begging the question of why Dany didn’t press home her counterattack on Euron’s ambush instead of leaving her fleet to be massacred.
Dany - Dany looking all haggard in her first scene is effective if extremely blunt foreshadowing of how the rest of the episode would go. The books do somewhat imply that Dany is going to go “dark” at least for a time, after trying so hard to be a mother to her people (symbolically locking away her dragons before finally flying away on one, forgetting the name of the child Drogon killed, the hallucinations of her brother that she has “forgotten our house’s words: fire and blood”), so I was expecting something like this to happen. But it feels...rushed.
Throughout the show, until a couple of episodes ago, Dany was clear in her desire to not be just another tyrant, and though she could be impulsively heavy-handed (crucifying the masters, burning the Tarlys who wouldn’t kneel) she never targeted unambiguous innocents. They even wrote the Slavers as backstabbers who go back on their peace agreement with her, to leave her morally unstained in killing them. We’ve not seen her display paranoia until now either. Her character arc doesn’t flow easily from what we’ve seen before. Add to that the fact that she’s not as isolated as the writers want us to think she is (Dorne supports her, and Yara on the Iron Islands, and probably the Reach too) and that flipping out over someone spurning her advances is Cersei’s thing not Dany’s (yeah, Jon spreading the secret of his parentage was dumb as hell, but there are mountains of evidence that Jon doesn’t want the throne, and every reason to believe that he’d step down for Dany if his identity ever went public). Even if we take Dany’s decision to reject the surrender as an impulsive one, it still makes no sense. She looks up at the Red Keep, the symbol of her stolen birthright, the place where her true enemy is standing...but instead of burning that place to the ground, she destroys the entire city around it? If she still had even a shred of an end goal in mind, she wouldn’t do the one thing that undoes everything she ever fought for and was guaranteed to turn everyone against her.
Now I’ll freely admit, Dany is terrifying when she’s out for revenge, but her wrath was always targeted. When she lost Drogo (perhaps to deliberate deception, perhaps to overly high expectations on her part) she didn’t kill the whole Lhazarene tribe. When her close friends were butchered in Qarth, she didn’t avenge herself on the common people. She was betrayed again and again in Meereen, but never slaughtered indiscriminately. Even after her capture by the Dothraki (her likely turning point in the book), she didn’t burn all of them. And she didn’t execute all of Tarly’s men for their leader’s defiance.
It’s an unexpected twist, sure, but a pretty nonsensical one. Maybe D&D were going for a theme of revenge being a futile endeavour that burns people up - Grey Worm goes all out for revenge too, presumably for Missandei’s sake, while Sandor quite literally burns for his, and doubtless Dany won’t survive the finale - but I’m not sure we weren’t just being served a plot twist.
Jaime - When Euron leapt off his disintegrating ship, you just knew he was going to be back for a final one on one, and my money was on Yara...but instead he bumps into Jaime, a character he has no particular history with. Judging by the dialogue, I almost wonder if it was an attempt to make Jaime a “kingslayer” twice without him having to kill Cersei (the repetition of history being a big theme in the books). I was a little disappointed that Jaime didn’t beat Euron to death with his golden hand, but I did laugh at Euron’s frustrated sigh when Jaime drags himself up, as if he’s remembering that a single stab is never enough to down a main character. Not to mention his final words - “I’m the man who killed Jaime Lannister!”...I could almost hear Jaime shouting back “Suck it, Euron, I won’t die until it’s dramatically appropriate!”
Arya - A relative high point of the episode was Arya’s journey with Sandor; much like Dany’s endgame, I can believe that ultimately turning away from revenge and reclaiming her identity will be her path in the books too (identity being another of ASoIaF’s big themes), though again the execution feels rushed. She finds her family again, only to leave on her final mission, only to be talked out of it in a two-minute scene once they get there - while her scene with Sandor is good, her closing her eyes as she resolves to let revenge go almost feels like she’s thinking “you waited until we got here to tell me this!?”
Of course, her being in King’s Landing gives us a PoV to follow as we stagger through the chaotic, apocalyptic scenes in the streets. I note that Arya’s plot armour is weakest at her right temple, as she takes a gash here in the exact same place as in episode 3. The scenes are however very nicely shot, and her connection to Sandor is emphasised by the swifts cuts of the two of them being battered around and then by her finding his horse in the final scene. That final scene is, incidentally, beautiful - with the empty street, the post-apocalyptic clouds of drifting ash, and a somber reprise of the show’s main theme that turns into the symbolically appropriate Rains of Castamere as the credits roll.
Sandor - With his relationships with the Stark girls concluded, there was nothing left to do but have that final showdown with his brother. My worry that a battle with an undead shadow of Gregor would be unsatisfying was alleviated somewhat when Gregor rebelled against his creator; clearly, there’s enough of the Mountain left in there to hate his brother.
After Qyburn’s abrupt death and Cersei’s rather sheepish exit we get a reasonably cool-looking fight, and I was even impressed that a suit of armour actually did something this episode (until Sandor forced his sword right through Gregor’s body, at least). Gregor makes the usual big-guy-vs-little-guy mistake of throwing his opponent away instead of hanging on and tearing him apart - say, crushing his eyes like he did with Oberyn...oh wait, then he does!
Throughout the fight, I was convinced that Sandor was going to use the conspicuously burning wall torch behind them to kill Gregor (fire kills wights) and thus bring the story of his fear of fire and the man who gave him that fear full circle. They do sort of imply this by the two of them plunging off the tower into fire, but since Sandor was blind at this point some of the impact of it being a conscious decision was lost. Eventually being destroyed by hatred and revenge does also work as a resolution to Sandor’s arc (even if they quickly-abandoned book ending of him finding peace at a sept would have been more hopeful), assuming that’s what the writers were going for.
Jaime and Cersei - Their death didn’t hit me nearly as hard as it should have; between disappointment at Jaime’s character regression and appeals to motherhood being the only way D&D know to make Cersei seem sympathetic, I just didn’t buy this attempt at last minute redemption.
All in all, one of the better episodes this season, though still hamstrung by the Rian-Johnson-esque scriptwriting. If nothing else, I’m very interested to find out how Dany plans to explain herself in the finale.
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