Yeah, there was something unique in how the opening sequence was put together. I can’t quite put my finger on it other than it felt detached? Like we were watching a historical recounting, rather than a sequence of current events.
Yeah, that style is a pretty fun narrative trick that gives the impression that what you’re watching is a sequence of events that can not be stopped. It makes it feel like everything is pre-ordained.
I like it that they feel the viewer doesnt need to be led around by the nose. Assume some ability to figure things out.
The opening sequence was fantastic. It’s something I don’t think GoT has done before with the music being front and center in setting the mood and slowly drawing out the suspense. Between this and the John Snow battle sequence last week, it’s really cool to see the show experimenting with stylistic approaches (and totally nailing it).
You don’t need anything obvious like a “Two Months Later…” title card, but let’s not just handwave a few weeks of travel time. It’s still jarring to see Varys on that ship at the end after you’ve seen him halfway around the world a few minutes ago in the episode. He traveled from that meeting back to Mereen, a substantially longer journey than Jaime’s from The Twins to King’s Landing - which as presented in the episode took the same amount of time. It requires the viewer to dig into the narrative and fill in a sequence of events, which assumes a lot.
OK, here are my thoughts on the finale after thinking on it for a few hours that may or may not have actually been me sleeping.
First, Qyburn’s Murderous Moppets were a little too vicious and too efficient for my tastes. Sure, Pycelle needs to die because Cersei always hated him, and the scene where Lancel drags himself slowly over to try and defuse the bomb was tension-filled, but both required pre-teen children to be hyper-effective… in a show that regularly scoffs at superhuman feats.
OK, the Sept getting blowed up was telegraphed all over the place, so the only surprise there was that there wasn’t a surprise. For me, the biggest disappointment was never finding out what - if anything - Margaery had planned. If it was just that her brother would confess and become a monk… well, that’s pretty lame. But you know what’s ever more lame? Not knowing what absolutely everyone else had planned. What was the High Sparrow’s goal in putting Cersei on trial? Did Tommen and Margaery have a big double-cross planned? What did the Faith really hope to accomplish? We’ll never know because they just snuffed all these people out.
Maybe that’s a huge meta-commentary on complicated plotting by D&D and/or GRRM - “Ha ha, you thought that we had a big, complicated political ‘Wow Moment’? Well joke’s on you! Sometimes these things are disrupted by people with explosives!”
That would be OK, except… we spent a LOT of time in the Sept with Margaery, Loras, Tommen, and the High Sparrow the last season and a half. A LOT. And it’s all pretty much for nothing. All those reasonably-cool character moments rendered fairly moot.
That said, I did like some of the Kings Landing stuff. Tommen’s suicide was unexpected and well-directed. Cersei’s revenge on Cruel Nun was fairly creepy, and at least now we know that Mountainstein has at least a fair amount of agency. And Lena Headley looked great in the black armor/scale getup… very Disney Wicked Queen.
I liked the scene in Dorne simply because Dianna Riggs told the interchangeable Murder Sisters to shut up and sit down. Varys being there told us what he’s been up to, which nicely distills something like 200 pages of the books down into a single four-second reveal.
The stuff at the Twins was fine. Jamie telling Walder Frey that he’s very close to being Surplus to Requirements was a nice scene. I’d be happy if Jamie just traveled around Westeros next season telling people off. Arya’s reveal and the Frey Pie was a decent enough sot to fans of the books, but more on that later. It’s interesting that Arya’s back in the West already, and hopefully we’ll learn why she thought it was best to start her revenge spree rather than visiting her family up North. Also, killing, butchering, cooking and serving a couple grown men to the Lord of the Castle seems like it would have taken a LOT of effort and been REALLY had to conceal.
Sam is finally where he’s supposed to end up, and I liked the shot of the white ravens flying out of the Citadel.
Man, I hope they do more with Benjen/Coldhands in the next ten episodes, because as it stands that was a huge waste of a character introduction. Meera could have actually been made to escape without his help, which would have made Hodor’s sacrifice all the more powerful. As it is, we got a fun battle-scene out of him and… very little else. Because of him we know that the Children can make non-Other undead at will, but we kind of already knew that because of Mountainstein. Seems like a waste of time.
The Tower of Joy finally sort of told us who Jon is, but why draw out the reveal that Rhaegar is the father? As near as I can tell, the inaudible whisper serves only to allow Bran to reveal it to Jon at the same time the audience hears it… but we all already know, right?
OK, now my big issue with the episode and maybe the season as a whole. Jon gets declared King in the North! Why?
He didn’t hardly do shit all season. He wandered around and mostly failed to get anyone to join him, then he disastrously leads his few forces into a death-trap from which he escapes with a handful of men only when Littlefinger pulls him out. Sure he beat the crap out of Ramsey, and I guess he fought pretty well before his own men trampled him into the mud trying to escape the trap he had led them into, but that doesn’t seem like anything all that inspiring.
Not to mention that Sansa did much more visible work for the same goals. She was present and active in the recruiting efforts, she was the one who rode in with Littlefinger to save the day, and she’s the one with the Stark name. Seems odd that Lady Mormont would point to Jon rather than Sansa.
And I’m just pretty heartbroken over poor Manderly. I understand that they didn’t have time to do the Frey Pie thing or him holding Rickon or all of his schemes (though I’d argue that if they cut out all the wasted High Sparrow sermons maybe they COULD have), and I accept that, grudgingly. And again, I liked the fact that they nodded to that whole thing by having Arya cook the Frey Brothers. But it was disappointing to see Manderly reduced to a cowardly tub of whining opportunism when he was such a cool and nuanced character in the books. Ah well.
Tyrion got a reasonably-decent speech in. And Danys’ dumping Daario was pretty well done. The scene of the fleet setting out for Westeros was nice. I would have been tickled to see a bunch of the Dothraki puking over the sides, but I guess that would have taken some of the gravity away from the shot.
It kind of occurred to me that this episode would not have made a bad series finale. Jon is victorious and has what he wants and needs to defend the Wall. Sansa is 180 from the sallow, spoiled brat she was before. Cersei is childless and bereft, sitting on a hollow iron throne, ruling nothing but a smouldering Kings Landing. Danaerys is sailing towards a Westeros where there are no Great Families left to oppose her. Tyrion has found respect and worth.
I thought, that with all of the glances to Littlefinger, this was us getting to see how he has always lived his life. Never mind that I orchestrated the whole vale coming to the rescue situation, cheer on Jon Snow. Since I am not a warrior, I never get the praise I deserve. I don’t think he is going to be very helpful to Jon in the future.
I thought the episode was pretty fun, but it is clear that they are using a sledgehammer rather than a hammer to nail the final few bolts into the show as it ends. I dislike the fact that so many game-changing events happened in one episode, while the rest of the season felt like it dragged things out, and all of that time wasted last season with the Dorne stuff. This episode felt packed to the gills. Clearly they had time to space all of this stuff out, but they crammed it all in.
Also, I guess Lancel is just seriously weak, one quick gut stab and he can barely drag himself 100 feet. Arya would have swam 1000 feet and parkoured her way over to those candles in no time.
Aside from my complaints about how weird it was that nobody was allowed to leave the Sept of Baelor being a bit weird, especially after the months of us watching the crown and sept becoming combined as one. Like… I guess the church still doesn’t trust Margery to leave? It was weird, like we were back at the start of the season again, with the Monks pushing people around all of the time.
That fucking music though. So well done. The scene between Danerys and Tyrion was spectacular. “I have never believed in anything, but I can’t help but believe in you” So satisfying.
I thought that the time jump was jarring, and they could have done something to signify that time had passed. “Cersei it has been weeks! What do we do with Tommen’s body?” A line somewhere subtly hinting at time passing. I figured it out, but until after a few confusing moments of, how did they get there already?
I think that the stuff with Jaime was excellent too, it is pretty clear that the “I would do anything for her” speech was the last nice thing he was going to say about Cersei. That was showboating, the Old Jamie trying to intimidate. We saw, through his communication with Brienne, that he admires her honor. What he once thought was comical, her devotion to a dead king to be, or a dead mother of a dead king to be, he realizes is really honorable and right. Seeing Walder Frey disgusted him, this isn’t what I want to become, he thought.
Boy is he going to have an interesting conversation with his sister. I think we should all remember that Cersei’s prophecy about her children all dying ended with “And your younger brother will end your life with his hands around your neck”. Yeah. She has basically become a Disney villain, which is a step farther than where we left her in the books (almost pitying her… almost).
While I think the show treads a bit too much into fan-service stuff, and is a bit heavy handed, ruining the subtlety of the books somewhat, when it works, it works. And this episode was full of powerful images, moving speeches and incredible moments.
Jaime might have other things to do. He already dealt with one monarch who wanted to burn down Kings Landing.
I really miss Varys secretly killing Kevan Lannister because he was too effective at his job. Varys popping up to keep the region destabilized is one of the high points of the books for me. In the show Kevan is just sort of there. He’s almost ineffectively passive. I guess it all sorted out in the end anyway.
Also, I wish everyone at the Winterfell meeting had started shouting, “Lady Mormont is the one true Queen of the North!”
Jaqen H’ghar proclaimed it himself in the Hall of Faces: “Now a girl is truly no one.”
Presumably, Arya took at least the one face that resided in the spot where the Waif’s face was put. She had time in the Hall. She may have taken more.
Maybe; that or Arya. Clearly the antipathy between Jaime and Cersei in AFFC has been pushed forward to next season now that she has seized the Iron throne.
If Cersei lives until season 8, I will be surprised. I suppose she may as every show needs a villain, and now we are essentially down to four basically, and of those. Euron is pretty weak as a villain as there is little emotional investment in him.
Villains Remaining: Euron, Night’s King, Littlefinger and Cersei.
Oh yes. Ser UnGregor. But he’s just a part of Cersei now. 4.5 then.
SHAME. SHAME. Now that was vengeance. Giving the Septa up to torture and rape at the hands of an undead monster. Yikes!
SHAME SHAME.
It seemed ripped right from the baptism in Scorsese’s Godfather. And I agree, it was note perfect.
Speaking of perfect, I’m not one to much oooh, oggle and admire dresses on these shows (I do notice when they suck, mind you) but Cersei’s dress was particularly noteworthy and ass-kicking this episode. Totally impressive bit of costume work there.
Cersei’s costuming was spectacular. Everyone’s was, and always is. Natalie Dormer’s more conservative dresses, the Northerner’s furs and cloaks, Dornish flowing robes etc. Such good costume work in this show
Easily the best episode of the season.
Suspense, surprises, pushing the story forward quickly.
My wife and I and everyone at the office agreed…great one.
That’s certainly a valid position to have, but there are not very many reviews today that don’t mention the word teleport for a reason.
Dany gets burned in the book though. I assume there are conditions to this fire proof blood.
I thoroughly enjoyed Lady Morment dressing down the room full of Northern Lords. What a great girl! I predict great things for her in the future. On that note - they are a fickly lot, aren’t they?
The teleporting Varys was rather jarring, but I understand that time apparently isn’t linear in the show. Its just a shame.
Its nice to see Cersei showing everyone just who she is. Edit: Cerseis dress was fantastic!
That intro scene was incredible - more of that kind! Thanks for linking the music. I noticed the music all the way through this episode was quite good, and in the forefront, which I usually dont think it is.
Am I correct in remembering that next season is the last? 10 more episodes to wrap everything up ?
2 more seasons, 8 episodes each instead of 10.