Game of Thrones
Sky Atlantic, 2am/9pm
★★★★★
Following the intense, Dunkirk-via-Middle Earth barbarism of last week’s episode, where Daenerys Targaryen’s attack on Kings’ Landing reduced it to rubble and bones and death, Game of Thrones’ final episode saw many of its characters contemplate their place in the world.
It’s been an uneven season to say the least, with poor pacing and necessary (though not earned) plot details ploughing through years of storyline like a dragon incinerating a city. The finale, therefore, could never be a perfect episode of television. But it’s a solid, emotionally resonant end to Game of Thrones, with some of the most powerful performances yet, and it handles the mess of last week with a melancholy and deftness that helps smooth some of the rougher edges of a show that has become increasingly spiky and divisive.
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Thrones was a victim of our affection for it; we simply loved it too much. So it is with the inhabitants of Westeros; Robert Baratheon’s rebellion, which we now know was built on a lie, was born out of his love for Lyanna Stark. Jaime Lannister pushed Bran out of a window because of the things he does for love. “Love is the death of duty,” Jon Snow tells Tyrion, who was been shackled and imprisoned by Dany after freeing his brother Jaime last week.
That was a quote from Maester Aemon (a Targaryen exiled to the Wall, no less, which will come full circle by episode’s end) way back in season one of the show, and the finale sensibly looped back to this as Jon reckoned with the fallout from Dany’s rise to power.
The city was dusted with ash that looked like snow, and Grey Worm continued to slit the throats of Lannister forces even after they surrendered. Was this breaking the wheel? Arya and Tyrion both warned Jon that not only will he always be a threat to the new Queen, but so will every man, woman and children that ever came before her conquest. “We will liberate them, from Winterfell to Dorne,” Dany proclaimed. But how can you liberate a continent that doesn’t have slavery? The answer might dwarf the body count of Kings Landing.
As Dany stares at the Iron Throne, still sturdy amid all the destruction, she tells Jon that she always loved the story of how it was created, melted by dragonfire and forged from the swords of her family’s enemies. Despite wanting to scour Westeros clean, Dany is still mesmerised by its folklore, and the stories that survive history–which tend to be written by the winners.
Jon proclaims his love for Dany once more, as she urges him to join her side and rule with her. And then he stabs her in the heart, as his love and his duty come to a head.
Dany’s death is easier to process given the show has slowly distanced itself from her point of view this season. Her decisions last week seemed wholly out of character because, on reflection, it’s been some time since we’ve watched her make many of those decisions. Earlier, speaking to the Unsullied, she says “Will you break the wheel with me?” and it’s in her death that her words make sense. Westeros did not break the wheel alongside Dany, but through her. Put another way: in death she broke the wheel for good.
After a small time jump, we arrive to find the surviving lords and ladies of Westeros gathered at the dragonpit to preside over Tyrion’s trial. There’s Sansa, Arya and Bran, their uncle, Edmure Tully, Sam Tarly, Brienne of Tarth, Gendry Baratheon, Robin Arryn and the Knights of the Vale, Davos, the new Prince of Dorne (still unnamed) and Yara Greyjoy.
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Tyrion quickly earns his freedom by uniting the lords and appealing to a new system of governance. This should be about as thrilling as filling out a tax return, but Thrones has always been interested in examining the concept and structure of power. Tyrion convinces them to crown “Bran the Broken” as the King of Westeros, and his conversation with Varys two weeks ago (‘What if the best ruler is someone who doesn’t want to rule?”) takes on new meaning. Bran has no thirst for power, an archive of every event in history wired into his cerebral cortex, and cannot be blindsighted, as Dany and Cersei and Robert and every other leader has been, by something as simple as human passion.
Better yet, he cannot have children. “Sons of kings can be cruel and stupid,” Tyrion notes. “That is the wheel our Queen wanted to break.”
Sam suggests a ruling system decided by public vote, by both the common people and the lords – a world where love cannot overshadow duty (and a system backed by both the Night’s Watch and the Ironborn).
Much of Thrones’ finale felt like this kind of broad table-setting, giving characters definitive goals or moments to shine. Sansa, who insists the North remains a separate Kingdom, is crowned Queen in the North. Arya takes a ship and sails West of Westeros, where all the maps stop. Bran elects Tyrion as his hand, because “he’s made many terrible mistakes and he’s going to spend his life fixing them”.
Jon, meanwhile, is given a life sentence and sent to the wall, which seems like respite disguised as punishment (it keeps an increasingly unhinged Grey Worm happy, at any rate). Like Maester Aemon, he has become an exiled Targaryen manning the wall, far away from the Game of Thrones, reunited with Tormund and Ghost. It’s a neat visual watching him ride out North of the Wall, as it mirrors the episode’s opener of Tyrion walking slowly through the ash-white streets of the capital. Not all heroes are consigned to the history books.
I gave the episode five stars because I think it’s the best ending possible from the show’s constituent parts. I also think it will age well; it already helps put a lot of season eight’s messier moments into sharper focus. The culmination of love versus duty, then, seems to be what Thrones was about all along, and what a fitting legacy for the show to go out on.
