Dany’s Unsullied and Dothraki armies show us order and chaos, respectively.
She never wants to miss an opportunity for vengeanceeven if she’s dead.
They enter the massive Dragonpit, which was once an arena the Targaryens used to house their dragons.
Credit: Macall B. Polay/HBO
The sequence was shot at the ancient ruins of a Roman gladiatorial amphitheater outside Seville, Spain.
He looks like Darth Mountain.
The Hound stares at him dead in his nearly dead eyes.
“You know who’s coming for you brother…you’ve always known,” The Hound promises.
We might not get the Cleganebowl in this season, but it sounds like it will happen.
The representatives for the Starks, Lannisters, and Greyjoys take their seats.
And that’s perfect.
Cersei wants to know where Daenerys is.
She’s not used to waiting for anybody.
She’s the queen!
But oh, Dany’s coming.
She learned this season about the persuasive power of showing off her dragons in person.
Daenerys enters this gladiatorial arena of verbal combat.
There’s a pause.
Truly powerful people don’t talk first.
Tyrion tries to pop kick open the discussion and Euron rudely breaks in.
Euron demands Theon surrender or he’ll kill Yara.
Cersei is embarrassed by her doofus ally.Shut up and let the grown-ups talk.
Jon Snow (Kit Harington) does his inconvenient truth presentation on the disastrous effects of global cooling.
This is his big moment.
He’s been running around saying, “Winter is coming and it’s worse than you think!”
But what if The Hound opened that crate and the wight just played dead?
Like the cartoon frog that would only sing when nobody else was watching?
Jon would be humiliated, and the meeting would become pointless.
Thankfully, that doesn’t happen.
The wight rushes out acting all demonic and scary and goes straight for Cersei.
The Mountain is pretty unimpressively useless in defending her.
Jon calmly demonstrates how to kill it.
Euron actually asks a smart question: “Can they swim?”
For once it’s good to be a Greyjoy.
Leave it Euron to take a stab at wrangle a post-apocalypse hookup with Daenerys right in front of Cersei.
He tries to express this in the most polite and honorable-sounding way.
So there’s no truce!
And notice nobody was drinking the wine or eating the snacks that were left out on the little tables.
Jeez, the Lannisters kill one family at a feast and everybody gets all paranoid.
Everybody is unhappy with Jon Snow.
Even Daenerys is annoyed and she was the one pressuring him to bend the knee the whole season.
Tyrion: “Have you ever considered learning how to lie, just a bit?”
Red Keep:Tyrion goes to talk to Cersei.
In real life,Peter DinklageandLena Headeyare good friends and love having scenes together.
It’s been a while since they’ve had their chance, and they go full tilt here.
Cersei accuses Tyrion of plotting the destruction of their family.
And for this first time, she admits Tyrion didn’t kill Joffrey.
And you know what?
… Cersei’s right about that.
Yet Cersei has also been the one most in charge since Tywin died.
So she’s also criticizing herself and her own fitness to rule.
In fact, the more Tyrion tries to convince Cersei of his good intentions, the angrier she becomes.
“I don’t care!
I will not hear it!”
This is more raw emotion than we’ve perhaps ever seen from her.
At one point, Cersei is on the verge of ordering The Mountain to even kill him.
She just barely contains herself.
He broke the only rule that she has.
If she kills him, then in her mind she’s no better.
Tyrion suddenly realizes that Cersei is pregnant, and of course can’t help but blurt that out.
It clicks into place for him: Her unborn child is her hope.
That’s her reason for even considering this.
Speaking of getting pregnant, back at the Dragonpit, Jon and Dany have a little chat.
This might be the most relaxed we’ve seen them together.
When she says it aloud like that it does sound rather stupid, and Jon points that out.
Daenerys issogetting knocked up.
Cersei comes back in.
Tyrion has swayed her.
Or at least they think he did.
Red Keep: I almost feel sorry for Cersei.
This episode has been an emotional gauntlet for the queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
Now comes arguably the toughest moment of them all: Jaime.
She rather smartly deduced why Viserion wasn’t among Dany’s dragon entourage and thinks the dragons are vulnerable.
She’s dispatched Euron to Essos, where he’ll stock up on some guyliner and buy more troops.
Her plan is simple: Let them fight them, we’ll kill whoever’s left.
This is decision time, and he makes it: Jaime will ride North.
The Mountain is there, ready to kill Jaime.
“I don’t believe you,” he says, and boldly walks away.
It’s unclear what happened.
Did The Mountain misunderstand?
But Cersei could have followed up with a verbal order to her massive kill-bot.
Yet once again, she didn’t do it.
She couldn’t kill Tyrion, whom she hates.
So how can she kill Jaime?
If you do that … well, what’s the point of living?
She must let him go, even though tactically it’s a poor decision.
Letting Jaime leave might even result in her eventual downfall.
But as a man once said:The things we do for love.
Jaime rides out of King’s Landing, hiding his golden hand, and he sees it: snow.
Winter has come to the south.
Cersei can’t hide from this.
And as one incestuous relationship seemingly ends…another is about to begin.
She does what he advises.
But she doesn’t just think about Arya.
She thinks about him.
She has Arya brought into the Great Hall.
Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) is smirking his final smirk in the shadows.
Arya asks, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Sansa starts reading out a list of charges: treason, conspiracyour hearts are in our throats.
ButGoTis messing with us.
“Do you deny it…Lord Baelish?”
Sansa, Arya, and Branthey know.
They all know all of Littlefinger’s crimes.
Arya presses Littlefinger"My sister asked you a question"and we cheer.
The sisters are finally working together!
He betrayed Ned Stark, of course.
And he shoved Lysa out the Moon Door (ehhh, we’re okay with that one).
Littlefinger says she can’t prove it.
Baelish demands to be returned to the Vale, but there’s no escape.
“I might be a slow learner, but I do learn,” Sansa says.
She doesn’t really want to do this.
Shetotallywants to do thisand never takes her eyes off Littlefinger the whole scene.
Bran doesn’t much care about anything and is probably already watching one ofHBO’s upcomingGoTprequelsin his mind.
Littlefinger falls to his knees and begs and cries.
He’s utterly humiliated.
This too is a callback and one that actorAidan Gillen reveals in our interview.
Killed with his own dagger, and nobody is more shocked than he is.
The climb is all there is."
Littlefinger started from the modest of houses and climbed higher than anybody would have expected.
But he reached for one rung too many.
Later, Arya and Sansa have a chat.
“The lone wolf dies but the pack survives,” Sansa declares.
Later:Samwell (John Bradley) arrives.
This might not seem like a big deal, but it’s huge in the show’s history.
Sam was the final majorGame of Thronescharacter to have his own separate storyline.
No more lone wolves; they’re all in packs.
Sam has a chat with Bran, who explains he’s now the Three-Eyed Raven.
The subject of Jon Snow thankfully comes up rather quickly.
Can you imagine if it did not and these two just chatted about ravens and food?
We’d be dying.
Bran tells Samwell that Jon Snow’s mother is Lyanna Stark.
He truly has Targaryen blood.
Bran says Jon needs to know who he really is.
Perhaps everything has worked out for the best and/or worst.
Sam surprises Bran by knowing something Mr.
All-Seeing didnotknowthat Rhaegar married Lyanna in a secret ceremony.
This triggers Bran to have a vision where we see Prince Rheagar marrying a happy and non-kidnapped Lyanna.
It’s impossible to understate how big of a deal this is.
It means Robert’s Rebellion and the overthrow of the Targaryens was built on a lie.
It means Jon Snow has no business being King in the North.
It means Jon Snow has every right to sit on the Iron Throne.
Oh, and Jon’s name isn’t even Jon!
You know nothing, Jon Snow, not even your real first name.
Yeah, we’re not entirely thrilled by that either.
Plus there’s the whole incest thing.
Which we get to watch next.
For all of season 7, we’ve been certain-ish that Jon and Dany are related.
In other words:GoThas taken us from “incest boo!”
to “incest yay!”
and it only took seven years to do it.
I love that this next sequence has no dialogue.
There’s some voiceover, but between Jon and Daenerys there is only silence.
They have talked enough.
They both know what’s looming between them.
Jon knocks on her cabin door…
Jon knows why he’s there.
Dany knows why he’s there.
And he knows that she knows why he’s there.
I need time to get used to “Aegon”).
How do we feel about this happening?They’re finally together!
She’s his aunt!
It’s so hot!
He’s her nephew!
They’re so awesome together!
Do they have snacks for afterward?!
Afterward, lying there, they look into each other’s eyes.
This is not Drogo sex, or Daario sex, or Ygritte sex.
These two are inluuuuv.
It can’t, right?
Theon tries to rally his few remaining men to support him on a mission to rescue Yara.
They prefer Euron’s island tactic and want to go home.
Their leader beats the hell out of Theon and tells him to stay down or he’ll kill him.
Faced with the choice of backing down or facing death in the past, Theon typically chooses backing down.
So he keeps fighting.
The man knees Theon in his castrated groin and is confused when Theon isn’t wounded.
This isn’t meant to be funny.
Theon breaks into a big smile for the first time in years.
Because he realizes: All that was taken away from him can no longer hurt him.
Eastwatch:The Army of the Dead finally reaches The Wall.
Not bad: Their march only took seven damn seasons.
Anyway: Tormund and Beric watch in horror as hundreds of thousands of wights gather at The Wall.
But the builders didn’t figure on The Night King getting a zombie dragon, did they?
Viserion blasts the wall with blue fire.
Aww, it matches his eyes.
The wights pour through the broken Wall.
The Great War is on.
Some interviews for you and thoughts:
Can Dragonglass kill a zombie, if the zombie is a dragon?
When you think about it, nearly all of Tyrion’s plans this season have been disastrous.
But they did result in the summit meeting.
The prospect of Jaime Lannister partnering with Daenerys and Jon Snow in the final season is especially exciting.
Fans asking on Twitter about Tormund and Beric.
“Will they survive the first episode of season 8?”
This was a good time for Baelish to bow out.
I also have a post speculating about theseven big questions Jon’s parentage raises for the final season.
The nickname “Littlefinger” refers to two things about Lord Baelish.
