This was the most consequential episode inGame of Throneshistory.
Several fan favorites are dead.
Daenerys went Full Targaryen.
The loyalty of Dany’s remaining supportersincluding Jon Snowis now in question.
And Arya decided to choose life over vengeance.
“Episode 3 was too dark.”
Oh, you think so?
How’sthisfor some battle clarity?
“The first battle was overhyped.”
Okay, here’s a second battle that was kept totally secret.
“Not enough major characters died in the first battle.”
Well, buckle up buddy.
Dragonstone: The episode opens on Varys, which isn’t a good sign for him.
On the beach, Varys intercepts Jon Snow as he arrives.
Varys urges him to take the crown for himself and Jon, of course, refuses.
“Every time a Targaryen is born the gods toss a coin,” Varys says.
In the castle, Daenerys looks unlike we’ve ever seen her before.
She’s visited by Tyrion who informs her that somebody has betrayed her.
“Jon Snow,” she says.
In a way, Dany is correct.
Daenerys sees this as Sansa’s treachery.
So many fans blasted Sansa last week for not keeping Jon’s secret.
But notice what Dany is saying.
Couldn’t this have been a clever Littlefinger-like plot rather than a moment of weakness confiding in a friend?
Watching that scene, it was tough to tell.
Perhaps it was a bit of both?
Sansa was throwing a bomb into Dany’s inner circle and had to know it would explode.
For Tyrion, this is a tough situation.
Tyrion likes Varys, who once saved his life.
But Tyrion is also a survivalist.
Later, Grey Worm gets Varys from his room.
The Spider taking off his rings really got me.
He’s brought to the beach.
This is where Melisandre once sacrificed heretics to the Lord of Light so many seasons ago.
“I hope I’m wrong,” Varys tells Tyrion.
“Truly I do.”
But you might see it in his faceVarys is certain he’s right.
Tyrion gives him a kind touch, the last he’ll ever feel, and Varys looks surprised.
Now the rest of him is consumed a magic-induced fire as well.
Why, exactly, was Varys executed?
It’s not made perfectly clear.
Plus his conversations with Tyrion and Jon treasonous as well.
We’re supposed to be entirely on his side, morally speaking.
Tyrion also brings up Meereen, which is an important reminder of Mad Queen foreshadowing.
Remember Dany’s first instinct when Meereen was under bombardment by the slave cities in season 6?
“I will crucify the masters,” Dany declared.
“I will set their fleets afire.
I will kill every last one of their soldiers and return their cities to the dirt.
That’s my plan.”
Tyrion talked her out of it.
At the time we thought,Well, Dany probably didn’treallymean it.
She’s said other things like this too along the way.
Time and again, we dismissed such talk as bluster.
And once again, Tyrion gets Dany to hold back, or seems to.
If successful, he’ll ring the city’s bells signaling for Dany to stop the attack.
Dany then reveals to Tyrion that Jaime Lannister was caught trying to sneak behind enemy lines.
She warns Tyrionjust as she warned Varys last seasonthat she will execute him if he betrays her.
So what’s Tyrion going to do?
Again, like Varys, he goes for broke.
He visits his imprisoned brother and decides to release him, just as Jaime freed Tyrion in season 4.
Tyrion rightly realizes Cersei is far more likely to listen to Jaime.
The two have a very touching and emotional goodbye.
“If it weren’t for you I never would have survived my childhood.
You were the only one who didn’t treat me like a monster.”
Tyrion also reveals a secret passage out of the Red Keep for the two to escape.
Tyrion knows he’s never going to see his brother alive again, one way or the other.
And Tyrion now seems dead either way.
But by sending Jaime in his place, Tyrion is committing treason.
But doing nothing and risking nothing is also the selfish move that Cersei would have done.
King’s Landing: At first, Daenerys' attacking King’s Landing is super gratifying.
Euron escapes to safety.
For Daenerys, the battle for King’s Landing is now pretty simple.
Once she gets all the scorpions, the city is hers.
Red Keep: Qyburn gives Cersei the bad news.
Cersei is in denial as always.
“The Red Keep has never fallen, it will not fall today.”
So much of the lead up to the big turn is directed with such gorgeous precision and suspense.
Ramin Djawadi nail-biting score ratchets the tension to another level.
We get a standoff.
Jon Snow, Grey Worm, and Davos with the Unsullied confront the remaining Golden Company troops.
Dany on Drogon perched on the city ramparts.
Cersei staring out from the Red Keep.
Cries from the people to ring the bells.
Will Cersei ring the bells?
But somebody does anyway.
She looks fine about this, perhaps even relieved that the decision was taken out of her hands.
The Lannister troops throw down their swords to surrender.
So this is over now right?
But Dany has other ideas.
She’s high on destruction.
She doesn’t want peace.
She’s staring at the Red Keep and looks furious.
She could stop all this but … well…she just doesn’t want to.
Dany flies into King’s Landing and blasts away.
Buildings, civilians, everyone.
The Mad Queen has arrived.
Her house words are “Fire and Blood” and she’s delivering both.
Tyrion watches this and realizes:He was wrong about Dany.
Jon Snow watches her and realizes:He was wrong about Dany too.
We watch Daenerys and … wait, were we wrong as well?
Did we already think Dany was capable of this?
Or were we in denial about her murderous ways?
Did we really think somebody who crucified 163 people because sheassumedthey wereallresponsible for killing slaves was a good person?
Remember that scene in season 2 in the House of the Undying?
Dany had a vision of walking through the Red Keep.
The ceiling was broken open and there was this white stuff falling into the throne room.
We assumed that was snow and that winter had come to the South.
But there’s no snow.
We see that white stuff was actually ash, the ash that’s now raining across the city.
Dany’s the queen of the ashes.
So this turn was foreshadowed from the show’s very early days.
There were plenty of moments in previous seasons to support Daenerys going Mad Queen.
Those choices tended to be made when Daenerys was feeling calm and secure.
And she’s never been angrier than she is now.
That is rightly shocking.
Characters hopefully sometimes do shocking things otherwise they’re utterly predictable and dull.
I suspect the key is Dany’s quote earlier about ruling by fear.
She doesn’t just want to win, she wants to teach Westeros a lesson after all her struggle.
If you mess with Dany, this is what happens and now everybody will fall in line.
Of course, maybe this wasn’t about any kind of logic all.
Varys warned about Targaryen predisposition to madness.
Perhaps we’re meant to believe Dany just finally snapped.
The Hound and Arya: The Hound talks Arya into not entering the Red Keep with him.
“If you come with me, you’ll die,” he says.
“Cersei’s dead anyway.
Do you’re gonna wanna die with her?”
Cersei has been on Arya’s list of names for so long.
But Arya decides she’s had enough of death and changes her mind.
I’m disappointed not to get an Arya/Cersei scene because that would have been amazing.
I can’t help but imagine a scene where Arya sneaks in and confronts Cersei andthenchanges her mind.
But killing people has seemed to have less and less meaning to Arya.
And as that happens, life has less and less meaning too.
So Arya chooses to let go of her vengeancethe opposite of Dany.
The Hound, however, feels like he doesn’t have anything to live for.
The Hound finds The Mountain.
I like that there’s little hesitation.
As soon as The Mountain sees him, the giant silently knows and agrees that this is totally happening.
Qyburn foolishly tries to stop The Mountain and gets killed.
They fight and it’s beautiful.
The scene looks like some kind of Renaissance painting come to life.
We get to see The Mountain’s Anakin Skywalker face.
The Hound stabs The Mountain in the eye with a dagger, and that doesn’t stop him.
The Hound realizes the only way to kill his brother is to sacrifice himself toointo the fire.
Peace for The Hound at last.
After the CleganeBowl, we get The Dane BowlJaime vs. Euron (both played by Danish actors).
Everybody predicted CleganeBowl, but nobody predicted this fight and it makes so much sense for both characters.
The fight tests Jaime’s left-handed sword fight training and Euron has a blast.
Is it weird that I sort of admire Euron Greyjoy?
He’s so thrilled to be in this fight that he cannot really lose.
Euron mortally wounds Jaime with several devastating stabs to the gut.
Jaime is still able to finish him off.
“I’m the man who killed Jaime Lannister,” Euron marvels with a smile on his face.
He’s the only character on the show who’s ever been so thrilled to perish.
Jaime finds Cersei who is in full panic mode as reality sets in.
I can’t help but wonder what Tywin Lannister would have done differently if he was still in charge.
Jaime takes his sister down into the cellars where Tyrion told him there was a secret exit.
For a moment, we think they’re going to escape.
They find the passage blocked.
(So, yup, still pregnantHappy Mother’s Day everyone!).
Jaime soothes her by echoing her own words from years ago.
They went out of the world as they came into ittogether.
Many thought that Jaime was going to return to kill Cersei.
But Jaime has always loved her even if we do not.
He’s the friend in the toxic relationship who won’t listen to reason.
The best way to ensure Cersei’s deathif that’s what Jaime wantedwould have been to stay with Brienne.
What the showrunners have done is avoid simply repeating the past or opting for the most obvious paths.
Yet the elements have been remixed to play out in an entirely new and largely unexpected way.
EW will have four big interviews about tonight’s episode.
Oh, and here’s HBO’strailer for the series finale.
Also here are7 timesGoTforeshadowedDany’s Mad Queen turn.
Here’s this week’s podcast on iTunes, Radio.com, Spotify, Stitcher, or stream it below.
Darren Franich and I probably disagreed more than we ever had on an epiosde in this one.
