Game of Thrones Season Finale Recap: That Was Fire
Well it’s over. The finale came and went, and now we have no more Thrones for an entire year. No more Game of Thrones, no more basketball, no more hockey, no more football, and just a long summer ahead if your favorite baseball team sucks like mine does. I think right now I’m supposed to feel sad about this.
But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t even come close. Because even though the show ended hours ago, that was the single greatest episode of Game of Thrones of all-time and I’m still tingling. I don’t say that lightly; I remember the Battle of Blackwater, Hardhome, Watchers on the Wall, The Red Wedding, and all of the other contenders. I was the one telling people to chill saying Battle of the Bastards was the GOAT episode, trying to put in perspective how deep this show’s stable of great episodes is. But last night had action, it had plot progression, it had dialogue, it had big reveals, it had triumphant moments, it had deaths, it was beautifully shot, it was beautifully acted, the tempo was perfect, the pacing was perfect, the music was perfect, the order of events was perfect. It was damn near flawless. It was the best episode of Game of Thrones ever.
And this was the season that Thrones needed. There’s no denying that Season 5 was a considerable dip from the frantic pace of Seasons 2-4, and for the first time there were whispers that the show was overrated, that the showrunners couldn’t get ahead of the books and still maintain the consistent quality of the early seasons, that the writers had entirely lost the plot. And now all the people who are saying that look like the people saying Lebron doesn’t have a killer instinct so there’s no way he can beat the Warriors in the finals.
My hopes weren’t even that high given how it’s usually the penultimate episode, not the finale that Thrones usually uses to make a splash. And when the “Previously on…” segment came on and was Dorne, my heart sank like you’re having fun at a bar and an ex who you hate just walked in; “But I was having so much fun, and now he/she is going to get drunk and start a fight, cry, try to hook up with one of my friends to make me jealous, and ruin everything.”
But the Dorne scene was concise, interesting, and impactful. Look, that storyline sucked Season 5, and the writers knew it. That’s why after one brief return this year, they all but ditched it for the season. But if anyone can save it moving forward, it’s an Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, who has absolutely nothing to lose and nothing to even live for besides being able to someday drink wine out of Cersei Lannister’s hollowed-out skull. And since her ancient lineage is now forever ruined and the granddaughter who meant everything to her is dead, we can expect even more reckless abandon and the IDGAF attitude that makes her wonderful. She’ll cuff a sand snake or anyone else who pisses her off, because the crazy old bird who just didn’t care now cares even less. Varys coming back and promising a Targaryan alliance (“Fire and Blood” is the words of House Targaryan, their version of the Stark’s “Winter Is Coming”), Cersei shouldn’t get too comfortable on that chair she’s sitting on.
Speaking of Targaryans, Dany is now sailing to Westeros with an armada of insane horsemen, dickless samurai and three dragons. The Vegas odds of her being able to take the Iron Throne would be roughly the odds of a tidal wave versus a beach hut. But it’s never that easy for Thrones, and to see what curveballs the writers throw her way so it’s not just a full season of a brutal, unstoppable assault is going to be fascinating. One other encouraging sign is how much of a hand (no pun intended) Tyrion had in such a huge decision for Dany such as to leave Daario. The biggest black mark against this season (other than Arya being able to just walk off a stab wound and parkour across Bravos no problem) is the lack of the Half Man. Knowing how vital Dany sees his advice means the show’s best character and the best actor is going to have a significant role moving forward and be back in a big way next year. While he might not be the dominant character of the show ever again like he was for a long time, I expect him to get a lot more screen time next year than this.
In related news to characters who are going to be featured a lot more heavily next year, the Arya Stark Revenge Tour is officially underway.
In case anyone was questioning if her hatred for those who wronged her family had cooled off in her time away and would temper her ruthlessness, she put a spike in those thoughts pretty quickly. A golf clap to the writers of the best drama show of all-time for drawing inspiration from the best comedy of all-time by having the method of her first execution mirroring the forever immortal episode of South Park “Scott Tennorman Must Die.” While I root for Thrones to give us unexpected twists, ambiguities, and hurdles for characters to overcome because that’s what makes the show unique, I actually hope they don’t do that for Arya. Give me blood. Give me gruesome kills of hateable characters. Make her 100% a vehicle for fan service. Leave the proverbial pushing boulders up mountains for Jon and Dany, but let us see Arya kick some ass. We deserve it.
Speaking of characters who can make a big impact in the North, Samwell Tar-….You know what? I’m not going to waste your time or space on this blog writing about Sam. You all saw it. It was self-explanatory. There were a lot of books and Sam likes books. I’m very happy for him. Let’s move on knocking out secondary plot lines before getting to the two things you keep waiting for me to talk about.
The best theory in all of Game of Thrones Internet fan culture was definitively proven last night; Jon Snow isn’t Ned’s kid after all. For people who like to read these theories, the evidence for this was so overwhelming that it’s been accepted as fact for a long time. Here’s a quick five sentence rundown for people who are confused about what exactly you just saw and what it means. If you know it, you can skip this next paragraph.
Robert’s Rebellion, the war that took place before the events of the show that made Robert Baratheon king, was started for a number of reasons but the spark that lit the fuse was the son of the Mad King, Rhaegar Targaryan, kidnapped Robert’s to-be wife and Ned’s sister, Lyanna Stark. Or so the story goes, but as we found out, Lyanna and Rhaegar were actually just in love and ran away together, and out of their love came a baby. That baby is Jon Snow, but Lyanna knew that if Robert Baratheon found out that her and Rhaegar had a son, he would kill it in a jealous rage but also because that baby would be a threat to him as it would have a claim on the Throne. So Ned took the baby and pretended like it was his bastard, telling no one, not even his wife, raising the boy as a Snow and keeping this secret to himself. Now Bran is the only person alive who knows Jon’s true parentage (except maybe Howland Reed, the guy who stabbed the knight in the back of the head and saved Ned’s life in the flashback earlier this season) which is super dangerous knowledge because it gives Jon an even stronger claim as King of the North due to having true Stark blood, but also means he is technically the rightful heir to the Iron Throne by being in the Mad King’s direct line of succession.
Got it? Crazy shit, I know. Let’s talk about Jon and Sansa now, you’ve been waiting almost 1400 words for it.
Davos knew the dirt on Melisandre, but as I said last week, I think deep down he always knew. Now that it’s been confirmed, the guy who is normally Docile Davos has to do something about it. I don’t care so much about that as Jon’s decision to send her South; We all love Jon, but I worry about him when it comes to making hard choices. Look at the way he risked his life to rescue Rickon despite Sansa telling him that a trap of that exact nature would be set, and he still fell right into it. Look at how he couldn’t identify the growing faction against him in the Brotherhood, or at least how dangerous they would be to his safety. There’s something distinctly Ned Stark-ish about Jon, a whiff of the same nobility and naïve honorable nature that got Ned killed. For better or for worse, the Lady in Red is an asset (to what degree she is an asset depends on how much you believe in the validity of religion in the Game of Thrones universe, there are compelling theories Snow is under the protection of the Lord of Light which is why he looked arrow-proof and was able to drag himself out of a pile of bodies so many time during Battle of the Bastards). To waste that for a tiny, little bitty thing like child murder (hey sort of like his brother Robb hanging the Kastarks for killing Lannister children which was the beginning of the end for him), shows his single biggest vulnerability. If he doesn’t do something about that, while hearing the “KING OF THE NORTH” chants was amazingly satisfying, it’ll end just as well as it did for his brother. Goddamn Starks never seem to learn.
I shouldn’t say that actually. Because one Stark has learned and is smart enough to make those types of tough calls, and she has red hair and a taste for revenge. Petyr thinking Sansa was praying at the tree was symbolic of him still thinking she’s a stupid little girl, and boy was he wrong. In Littlefinger’s mind, Sansa was still a pawn, not an equal, something she straightened him out on very, very quickly. I wrote last week that the best way for the Stark clan to move forward is for Jon to be the symbolic leader and fighter, but her to be the ultimate head of household and decision-maker for that very reason. Baelish is now Sansa’s greatest threat, and the look they shared in the halls of Winterfell confirmed that they both know it. A King In The North doesn’t help Baelish get his ultimate prize, and he has already tipped his hand to her what that prize is. Everyone knows Littlefinger’s a scumbag, but no one sees him more nakedly for the hyper-ambitious, treacherous creep than Sansa. That makes her dangerous to him, and she knows it, he knows it, he knows she knows it, and she knows he knows she knows it. While throwing him off a wall and making it look like an accident would be the safest way to deal with him, I feel like a chess match between the two of them for the rest of the series is being set up. And I think Sansa is going to exploit his biggest weakness, his undying lust for her, and win it. That, and the fact winter is now here, and fighting the Starks during winter is like playing a night game against LSU at Death Valley, or an NFC South team playing a playoff game against the Packers at Lambeau. Much like Cam Newton, no one from south of Winterfell will have enough GRIT for that (as a sports blog, I couldn’t end my recap series without delivering at least one Cam Newton take, that’s against sports blog rules.)
And finally, for the best part of the episode, season, and maybe entire show, Cersei going V for Vendetta on the Sept of Baelor. Even with a million hints dropped it could happen, a slow burn of a setup that gradually clued in people who didn’t see it coming what was happening, the scene managed to be suspenseful and satisfying at the end. It might be the most well-done sequence of the whole series. Let’s break it down from the top.
Maergery and the Sparrow exchanging a look confirmed what most had suspected all along; that Maergery, ever the politician, had stuck some type of deal with the Faith in exchange for her and her brother’s life. The loud confidence of Loras’ confession further compounded that as fact; no one who just suffered months of imprisonment and torture sounds that bold unless they’re reading a script and know it’s the right one their captors wants to hear, and the show it too well-acted to not know that. The entire trial was a masterclass performance by the Sparrow in a bit of meta-acting; he was ending the linage of one of the most ancient and wealthy houses in Westeros, this is his fucking city now, he has the power to topple people like the Tyrells, and he wants all the nobles in the room to know it.
But, as usual, Maergery was the smartest person in the room and identified what was going on when she saw the Lannisters weren’t around. And as usual, people in Westeros underestimated her because she doesn’t have a Y chromosome. And as usual, someone had to pay with their life for that mistake. Or in this case, everybody.
Game of Thrones is driven almost entirely by female characters, with the exception of Jon Snow. And it’s interesting to compare them side-by-side. Maergery is the smartest. Sansa has been through the most. Yara is the best fighter. Arya has seen the most of the world. Dany has the most power and influence.
But nobody, and I mean nobody, is a badder bitch than Cersei Lannister. You can’t be. It’s impossible. There’s cold-blooded, and there’s taking-out-everyone-who-wronged-you-and-every-nobel-in-the-city-in-a-coordinated-terrorist-attack-cold-blooded. And that’s what it takes to succeed in Westeros. You have to be willing to do absolutely anything for power, and with one green explosion, Cersei reasserted herself as the woman who will set you on fire and calmly sip wine as she watches you burn if it meant her breakfast would arrive 15 minutes earlier every morning. That’s the type of ruthless that being in power in Kings Landing requires of you. And you know who realized that? Tommen. Tommen looked that that explosion and thought to himself “This is the world I live in. This is the shitty, fucked-up world I am in charge of this, and THAT is what I have to be willing to do in order to rule it. I need to be hard and strong enough to pull off a move like THAT.” And Tommen, ever the sweet boy who likes cats like some type of dork, realized that wasn’t and never would be him, and took the only way out he saw. Out of a window, thus fulfilling the prophecy that all three of Cersei’s children would die.
But Cersei didn’t seem overly bothered by it, and I think part of that is she had already resigned herself to her fate. I think she knew that she had lost Tommen a long time ago, and whatever made him a Lannister had already been stolen by the Tyrells and Sparrows. This is an enormous jump for her, cause the only thing that ever anchored her to being anything resembling a compassionate human being with real feelings was her children, and now she doesn’t even have that. And that’s exactly what was running through Jaime’s mind as he watched her sit on that Iron Throne she has desperately craved her entire life. Jaime never has had any illusions about his sister, but I think this is the first time he has fully understood what a monster she is. I’m sure by seeing the smoldering section of the city also reminded him of the last person who sat in that chair to use Wildfire and what he had to do about that. I always thought about Cersei or Jaime that one is eventually going to kill the other, and last night solidified that belief. It’s a fatal attraction, and Jaime knows the thing he loves most in the world might burn that entire world to the ground if it suits her. If he lets her do it is the thing I’m the most excited for going forward in the show.
And that’s it. The last way-too-long recap of the season. Thank you to anyone who actually ready this entire monstrosity, and who read the recaps all season long. Writing these recaps and doing the Thrones podcasts was by far and away my favorite thing I have ever done during my time at Barstool, and I can honestly say staying up till 2 a.m. or waking up at 6:45 before work so I can write them for you guys was 100% worth it. I love Game of Thrones and it means a lot to me, so to hear from a lot of you that these write-ups because an essential part of your experience watching show was one of the more rewarding feelings I’ve ever had. But before I go, just three quick things.
Buy shirts. They’re flying off the shelves. They’re all fire, the must have summer items. They come in tees, tanks, and ladies. If you wear them out, it’s an instant conversation starter, and they’re mad comfortable to wear inside. I highly recommend them, especially the King of the North one.
Follow me on Twitter. @CharlieWisco. There’s no real reason for you to do it but I thought I’d plug it anyway.
Listen to the last Thrones podcast with myself, Clem, and Trent. Sorry for all of you who tried to listen live last night and it didn’t work, we crashed ZCast servers from all the traffic which sucks but also felt pretty unreal to do, not going to lie.
Links to all of that at the bottom. Until next season, Valar Morguhlis.
