Game of Thrones Watch: 8.6 "The Iron Throne"

Hooray for 300 posts!
 
Read the previous entry in the series here.

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8.6 “The Iron Throne”

Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

Directed by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

This episode could have been two episodes. It probably should have been two episodes, because the sudden and dramatic tone-shift halfway through was jarring. Also, I would have liked a bit more time between “Dany’s dead” and “welp, let’s find a new ruler.” That whole thing needed some time to breathe.

So let’s look at this in its halves because the first half was as infuriating as all the Dany stuff has been this season and the second half had its issues but at least resonated emotionally.

The Daenerys storyline feels like the writers set a trap for us and for the character. (Either that, or they believed their own hype right up until they decided to do Mad Queen Dany.) From the beginning, we’ve been supposed to cheer for Dany. She was the good guy. She was overthrowing slavers. She was liberating people—for real, not whatever “liberation” she was talking about in her rousing speech to the Dothraki and Unsullied. The narrative told us these were good things, that she was overthrowing bad, entrenched systems that needed to be overthrown.

For the most part, the narrative was right. Slavery is bad and should be ended. If a society can’t survive without slavery, it shouldn’t survive.

This speech by Tyrion, casting Dany's killings of the slavers of Slaver's Bay as foreshadowing, feels like D&D wants us to view those actions as evil. Speaking as the descendant of actual, real world enslaved people? Nah.

And... this is why #NoConfederate, ever. #GameOfThrones

— Ebony Elizabeth (@Ebonyteach) May 20, 2019

The narrative even asked us to cheer when Dany did things that are now used to show her burgeoning madness—crucifying the Great Masters. Feeding one to her dragons. Burning the Dothraki khals. She was constantly and consistently rewarded for these actions, sometimes in disturbing ways (the entire Dothraki nation falling to their knees and then unquestioningly following her everywhere, anyone?). The writers spent six seasons showing us that Dany was the good guy, if occasionally a little overzealous.

And then we get Tyrion explaining how no, actually, killing a bunch of slavers was somehow her “first they came for the socialists” moment. Which is insulting to the audience, insulting to the character, and insulting to survivors of the Holocaust, because for those who only know “First They Came…” through memes, it’s a condemnation of all those who stood by and let the Nazis get to the point where they were slaughtering millions.

Ok, I lied. Fuck this. The point of the "first they came" speech regarding the Holocaust is that THEY WERE ALWAYS COMING TO KILL MILLIONS. Anything else was a guise. The Nazis did not undergo a tragic downfall like Daenerys. This is a truly evil comparison. #GameofThrones https://t.co/CLqGMaN8cK

— Emmett Booth 🌹 (@PoorQuentyn) May 20, 2019

Put that alongside the Nuremberg quality of Dany’s speech to her army (in a scary foreign language, no less), and the sudden Nazi imagery is just awful and offensive. Especially since the show also bolsters the “white supremacist” arguments of the people (like Cersei and the Tarlys) who were worried about the “foreign horde” coming in and destroying everything—because they did.

And then they essentially held the city hostage by refusing to obey the commands of the (very white except for that one Dornish guy—who even was that?) lords and ladies of Westeros.

So, yes. Trap. Because we were supposed to root for Dany. The writers set us up to believe she was doing the right thing. They hammered so hard how their show was so feminist because of all the powerful women doing badass things like ending slavery and feeding their enemies to dogs and wearing other people’s faces. Women On Top! as Entertainment Weekly put it. (Which has its own set of issues that I don't have room to get into here.)

And then they yank the rug out from under us, and instead of a woman winning Westeros and sitting on the Iron Throne—you know, a good one, not Cersei, who was also bad and evil, dontcha know—it turns out that she was evil all along. And the only logical conclusion is that she goes mad (whatever that even means) and burns a city to the ground and decides to set herself up as Queen of the World—which means she has to die, at the hand of the man she loves, no less, because that’s what women get in these stories.

So Drogon destroys the Iron Throne in a fit of grief? Or something? I mean, destroying it is obviously what needed to happen because it was clearly the One Ring and had to be thrown into the fires of Mordor, but (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) Drogon’s reasoning/motivation isn’t clear here. Carrying off Dany’s body makes some kind of sense, but since when does a dragon have the cognitive capacity to understand symbolism?

That’s where this episode should have ended. If they weren’t in such a damn hurry, it’s thematically and emotionally a great place for it to stop, and then move the second half to its own episode.

Can we feed the writers to a dragon???

— ZR/Zabé Ellor (@ZREllor) May 20, 2019

Because now we pick up all the pieces and figure out which white man gets to replace Daenerys. And I gotta tell you guys, I am not sold on Bran as king. Not only because, again, the narrative didn’t set it up so it made sense, but because of the reasoning we’re presented with and the way he’s treated and the optics of it.

So, first, Tyrion gets to be the one to propose making Bran king because of course he is. Tyrion can do no wrong. Even when Tyrion messes up, the narrative exonerates him because he was doing his best and just loved his family (unlike a certain dragon queen I could mention). So much of this would be so much more interesting if they’d kept even half of Tyrion’s characterization from the book (ex: see Jeff’s take on the utter failure to adapt Tyrion here.)

Then, his reasoning is that people love a good story, and who has a better story than Bran? May I propose just about everyone in this series? Reminder: Bran was Sir Not Appearing in This Picture in season five, and nobody seemed to care.

Then there’s the whole issue of calling him Bran the Broken, as if his disability is all there is to him. There are so many other monikers they could have used, and I cringed so hard every time they used this one.

Finally, let me point out that they overthrew a fiery, emotional, passionate woman (read: “crazy, irrational, uncontrollable, unpredictable”) for a cold, emotionless, all-seeing, all-knowing man, and if that doesn’t say just everything, I don’t know what does.

Are you excited for God Emperor of Westeros?

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) May 20, 2019

Then the writers (and actors and Ramin Djawadi, gods bless all of them) went straight for the Feels with the end game for each character. Brienne finishes Jaime’s story in the White Book. Sansa becomes Queen in the North. Arya hares off into uncharted territory. Grey Worm sets off for Naath. And Jon joins the Night’s Watch again (why do we even still have that?) and sets off to resettle the Free Folk north of the Wall.

I would like to point out that the two characters in this show who murdered their girlfriends are shown as justified in doing so and end up right back where they started—Tyrion as Hand of the King and Jon in the Night’s Watch. Other than their own feelings, there are no real, serious consequences for these actions.

This show, you guys. It has been one hell of a ride, and the last half of that ride was on fire and not in a good way. After the first four-ish seasons, it utterly failed as an adaptation, and then the last three utterly failed as any kind of good or compelling story. If this ending is where Martin’s going to end up (I have some Doubts and also some Questions), he’s got his work cut out for him getting us there (which is probably why The Winds of Winter is taking so long).

I, for one, am perfectly happy to put this entire show behind me, wrap up the few obligations I still have left now that it’s over, and go read/watch something actually good.

And now our watch is ended.

Deaths:

Daenerys Targaryen

Game of Thrones Watch: 8.5 "The Bells"

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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“The Bells”

Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik

We’re almost done, you guys. It’s almost over.

This episode had one huge glaring flaw, but overall, it might have been the best episode in the season. The cinematography was gorgeous. The cello work in the score? Brilliant. The acting had me right on the edge of sympathetic tears for the first 15-20 minutes. The tension while everyone’s waiting for the bells to ring—magnificent. The juxtaposition of Arya escaping and Sandor fighting Gregor—amazing. The production crew at all levels deserves every Emmy they’re likely to win this year.

They even gave us some believable character moments. Leaving entirely aside that I don’t think “Cleganebowl” will happen in the books (Sandor’s a much different character there), it makes perfect sense for this Sandor. This Sandor is vengeance personified and knows it, and knows that it’s terrible, and saves Arya from the same fate. He can’t turn back—but Arya can, and does. It was nice to see her humanized a bit.

I initially considered Jaime’s bit in this episode a flaw because it continued the changes Benioff & Weiss have made from the books, changes that I think are detrimental to Jaime’s overall character. However, taken in isolation from the books, it demonstrates a consistency that not a lot of characters in this show have. Would I rather see character development and Jaime stay with Brienne and decide he wants to be a better person than Cersei? Sure. Does it make sense that he doesn’t? Yes. If this is the Jaime they wanted to give us, at least he was an internally consistent Jaime who recognized his own flaws and followed them to their logical conclusion—like Sandor did.

The huge, glaring flaw? One guess.

The showrunners have no idea how to write women, or to write about women. They never have. I’ve said this over and over in this series. Added to this particular weakness is their push to get to the end as fast as possible, which has led to sloppy writing that relies heavily on harmful tropes, especially when it comes to women and people of color.

For Daenerys in particular, there’s an implication that women can’t be trusted with power because they’re too emotional. The narrative wants us to be afraid of her because she keeps burning people alive and not listening to her advisors. But this is the same narrative that had her doing similar things for years and wanted us to view her as a badass. The sloppy writing comes in with the sudden turn in season seven toward the narrative favoring Jon to be king and needing to get Dany out of the way. But when you’ve already set her up to be the rightful queen of Westeros, who’s been working toward that goal and helping people and learning to rule for six years, how do you suddenly change the audience’s sympathies?

By making her “crazy,” of course. Irrational. Emotional. Too unstable to rule. Can’t be trusted with her finger on the nuclear button because PMS or some shit. Not only is this a terrible approach to writing a woman (women, really, because they did the same basic thing to Cersei, minus the dragons), but it’s a horrific way of approaching and writing about mental illness.

The Daenerys they’ve constructed on the show isn’t a sociopath or a psychopath or whatever it is they want us to think she is because of some “gods flip a coin” stuff. Right up until she nukes King’s Landing, all of her feelings are absolutely valid. She listened to her advisors and didn’t immediately take King’s Landing upon arriving in Westeros, and it cost her her fleet and ultimately a dragon (the stupid trip beyond the wall wouldn’t have been necessary if she’d already taken the throne by then). Now her advisors are turning on her. The one person she thought she could trust refused to do the one thing she asked of him, giving said advisors ammunition to turn on her. She lost her best friend. If anything, she’s depressed, and she has every right to be.

What the show is arguing, and has argued pretty much from the beginning, is that mental illness (of any kind) leads to violence. By default. Full stop. Everyone coded “crazy” (I apologize for the abelist language, but that’s entirely the approach the show is taking, especially since they never specify what kind of mental illness they mean) is violent. Aerys. Viserys. Joffrey. Euron. Ramsay. Cersei. And now Daenerys.

That final “snap” into “Mad Queen” even came out of literally nowhere and didn’t fit with anything they’ve given us about Dany up to this point. I’d have believed her destroying the Red Keep after the bells were rung. I don’t believe her just opening fire on the city like that. She’s angry, sure. She’s angry with Cersei for everything that’s happened since she got to Westeros—for losing Viserion, for Cersei not helping with the White Walkers, for Euron killing Rhaegal, for Cersei killing Missandei. So going after Cersei would have absolutely made sense. But even at her most conqueror-y, Dany never just burned down a city for no reason.

So why have her do it? My best guess—they wanted to have a reason for Jon to turn on her. He’s been unflinchingly loyal, absolute in his conviction that he does not want to be king, and they needed a reason for him to flinch.

I suppose we’ll see next week.

Deaths:

Varys

The Golden Company

Euron Greyjoy

Qyburn

Sandor Clegane

Gregor Clegane (for real this time)

Jaime Lannister

Cersei Lannister
Lots and lots of soldiers and King's Landing civilians

Game of Thrones Watch 8.4: "The Last of the Starks"

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series soon.

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8.4 “The Last of the Starks” 
Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss 
Directed by David Nutter

Ho boy. Okay.

Do the writers want us to be #TeamNobody? Because this is how you get Team Nobody.

 And I don’t mean that to be glib. Given the events of the last 5 or so minutes of the episode, I don’t think this is something to be glib about. I’m usually deeply sarcastic about this show (I don’t know if you’ve noticed), but this episode feels to me like it pushed one too many buttons one too many times and I just want to watch the whole thing burn.

Lots of little character moments happened, but two big ones stuck out at me, so let’s tackle those first.

The first is kind of a joint character thing: Jon vs. Daenerys. I’d have to go back through the archives to see when I started predicting that the showrunners would pit them against each other and that all of this “Dany burns everything/Dany can’t be controlled by her advisors” stuff was setup for “Jon is the one true king.” Since I don’t want to do that, though, I’ll leave it at called it. Not only is the writing on this show bad, it’s predictably bad.

This episode in particular hammers home the Dany=irrational, Jon=good narrative, but is ridiculously clumsy about it. For one thing, all the things Dany’s angry about, she has every right to be angry about. But women aren’t allowed to be angry, right? Women angry equals overly emotional, irrational, crazy, you know, all the stereotypes. (This is very similar to how they treated Cersei a few years ago before she went full Evil Queen; they wanted us to think she was paranoid while everyone around her actually was dropping dead.) So Dany’s male advisors decide that she can’t be trusted to rule well, so they’re planning to overthrow her before she even gets started and replace her with Jon, who does not want to be king. Did we forget what happened the last time we had a king who didn’t want to be king? We had Robert Baratheon, who bankrupted the crown, left a bastard in every port, failed to keep the alliance with the Lannisters together, and moped about Lyanna for decades.

(Quick side note: Robert’s Rebellion was a justified war. It wasn’t started because of Lyanna, and it wasn’t “built on a lie,” and the writers can go jump off a cliff for that whole in-universe backseat rebelling.)

So, in order to keep that problem from even coming up, Dany asks Jon for one thing. To not tell anyone about his heritage. Jon can’t manage that, not even to prove to his queen and the woman he loves (and, incidentally, his aunt) that he backs her claim to the throne. Jon’s parentage is what’s going to bring this whole thing down—without that knowledge, Tyrion and Varys probably wouldn’t even be considering having Dany assassinated to replace her with Jon.

source

Meanwhile, Jon’s been super busy denying being a Stark, like he’s forgotten that his mother still was one. He literally says out loud “I was never a Stark” before having Bran tell Sansa and Arya about his parentage. Since when does one’s father wipe out the heritage one gets from one’s mother? Having a Targaryen father and a (utterly ridiculous) Targaryen name does not make him 100%, no taksie-backsies, Targaryen. Not only that, but if Theon can be considered an honorary Stark—as Sansa leaving him her pin would seem to indicate—then surely Jon being raised by a Stark in a Stark household and literally having a Stark mother would make him a Stark. Blood isn’t everything, and Jon has no Targaryen influence at all.

And then he sends Ghost north, which I think is equal parts “he’s not a Stark anymore” and “we don’t have the budget for more direwolves.” (Maybe it’s “we’re about to get Nymeria back and we can only afford one direwolf” but I’m not holding my breath.)

In short, if we were going to end up with Jon on the throne, I’d much rather it be because Dany sacrificed herself and her dragons to save the world from Winter rather than whatever this all is. (I know what it is. It’s misogyny disguised as “strong female characters” and has been from the jump.)

Then there’s the other big incident in this episode.

Missandei.

So much went wrong here. From the obvious setup with her and Grey Worm being too cute and wholesome for this show to the chains to her last words to the beheading, it was all bad. But since I’m a white woman and not a critical race theorist, let me lead this bit off with some words from actual women of color:

Based on my mentions, it seems some people still aren’t getting where I’m coming from, so let me clearer:

The problem isn’t a female POC character dying in a book/film, the problem is when the ONLY female POC character dies in order to “inspire” a white character.

— Ayana Gray (@AyanaGray) May 6, 2019

My issue isn't that Missandei's death happened. I never expected her & Grey Worm to make it to that beach. My issue is that her death is the one way she said she didn't want to die. She died in chains with no way to defend herself. Lyanna slays a giant. Missandei should have too.

— ❄Mikki Kendall❄ (@Karnythia) May 6, 2019

You know what would fix or at least alleviate problems like this? Having more women of color on the show. When there’s only one, the way she’s treated becomes the way the show treats all women of color, full stop. And Missandei died in the way she most feared—in chains—in order to a) show that Cersei (despite Tyrion’s words) absolutely is a monster (which we knew); and b) motivate Dany to burn everything to the ground. A woman of color is killed off to inspire a white woman have her Feelings and that’s pretty much the definition of fridging.

Unfortunately, the first half of the episode was mostly pretty good before the proverbial shit hit the fan. The funeral was touching, Jon’s speech was actually pretty inspiring, and it gave the characters a chance to react to the battle and having survived it. Being not entirely immune to fan service (do they make a vaccine for that?), I squealed over Brienne and Jaime. (And then I got super annoyed that she was reduced to standing in the snow in a housecoat begging him not to leave and crying over him because seriously.)

Even Arya and Gendry’s thing actually makes thematic sense. Of course she would refuse him and instead ride off with Sandor to probably go murder Cersei. That’s the character they’ve built up since season one. That’s the kind of thing I expect from Arya, not whatever last week was about. (Shock value. It was about shock value.)

But even this opening party scene isn’t without its deeply problematic elements, and as usual, they have to do with Sansa.

Here’s the dialogue:

SANDOR: None of it would have happened if you’d left King’s Landing with me. No Littlefinger. No Ramsay. None of it.
SANSA: Without Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest, I would have stayed that little bird all my life.

The implications here are deeply troubling. First, that all the trauma she went through was somehow good and necessary for her character development, which is, of course, horseshit. Second, that she wasn’t already starting to grow up and understand the world before “Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest”; you know, after Ned’s death and Joffrey’s abuse and being forcibly married to Tyrion and everything that happened in seasons 1-4.

Third, it sounds very much like the writers are arguing that taking Sansa in the direction they did, far far away from her story in the books, somehow made her a better character. Granted that we don’t know the culmination of Sansa’s story in the books yet, but I highly doubt that she’s somehow worse than this ice queen David & Dan have given us.

Only two more episodes to go. Let’s see how big of a conflagration we get in next week’s episode and how Dany’s demonized for it.

Deaths:
Rhaegal
Missandei

Game of Thrones Watch 8.3: "The Long Night"

Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here. 

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8.3 “The Long Night” 
Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss 
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik 

Okay, well. Here we are on the other side of the great big battle against the Big Bad, and we all survived. Well, most of us survived.

This episode was visually and emotionally stunning. Once again, Ramin Djawadi does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to making the story compelling. And once again, the thematic unity of the series is all over the place.

The placement of this battle at all is kind of iffy to me, anyway. One of the underlying themes of the books is that the battle for the Iron Throne is a distraction, that politics and petty infighting are keeping everyone from realizing the true threat. “Who will sit the Iron Throne” isn’t the point of the series. Sure, somebody will at the end, but the point is pulling together to defend all of humanity from this huge, unstoppable threat, and the people who can’t or won’t do that die. So I’m not sure how I feel about having this battle first, before taking down Cersei, who’s actively working against unity. It seems to me that her demise should be a direct result of refusing to help, by having to face her choices and dying because of the White Walkers, not in an otherwise perfectly mundane battle for the throne.

Also, none of the choices she made affected this battle in any way. A few thousand more men wouldn’t have helped. Ships wouldn’t have helped. So “all” she did was break her promise, not cost the north this battle. Everyone will go south to fight her because she’s a tyrant and a terrible queen, but not because she actually crippled the armies of the north.

 99% of the episode is fighting, and I’m not a tactician, so I won’t attempt to pick apart the battle itself. (We’ll leave that to Jeff “BryndenBFish.”)(Click through for thread.)

I woke up feeling much more mixed about this episode than I was feeling last night. Last week, I woke up with a smile stretching my perfect cheek muscles, satisfied with last night’s meal, excited to talk about it all day.

Today? pic.twitter.com/PEKB5roWs1

— BryndenBFish (@BryndenBFish) April 29, 2019

Instead, let me focus on a few specific scenes or incidents, in more-or-less chronological order.

I was actually really glad to see Melisandre again; I love her character in the books and I wish the show had treated her better. I also like that she seems to have found her inner strength again and that she’s not attached to a man in order to have it. (The Arya thing is an entirely different matter and we’ll get to that closer to the end.) Instead of guiding some dude toward his destiny, she’s here on her own behalf to assist the armies of the living against the army of the dead. And her thing with the Dothraki arahks just looks cool. Of course, it’s also necessary, because it doesn’t look like the arahks are made of obsidian, which means they’re just regular steel. Why did nobody say anything about sending the Dothraki in to fight the dead with just regular steel?

In a meta-sense, it’s probably because they intended Mel to come in and do her fire trick anyway. In-universe, it’s ridiculous and makes it look even more like the Dothraki were expendable cannon fodder.

Which brings me to the Dothraki charge.

This show has never treated the Dothraki well. They went from “barbarian” to “noble savage” (admittedly a problem they inherited from the books), back to “barbarian” before Dany “tamed” them and bound the entire Dothraki nation to her cause. The idea of the Dothraki as “other” has never been interrogated or problematized. Few of them have been named, and most of those died or fell off the radar before we ever got here. So now we have a nameless horde of racially-otherized people being sent in as the first wave and getting utterly massacred. It felt very much like the first death in a horror movie, the one that’s supposed to show how serious everything is. It didn’t even have a last-stand, grand epic sacrifice kind of feeling. It just felt wasteful.

It did, however, give Dany a reason to throw the whole plan out the window and just take the dragons and charge in. Now, I’m not saying I necessarily disagree with her, especially her observation that “the dead are already here,” but it feels like either they needed to get there sooner and just open with the dragons rather than throwing thousands of Dothraki at the dead to make more corpses, or Dany needed to be able to see the bigger picture and stand her ground with regard for waiting for the Night King.

And then the dead reach the main force, and we get some fabulous face acting from Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm). I am so glad he survives this battle, though, again, that “let’s run away” scene was too sweet for both of them to survive the whole series. (I will be incredibly glad if they do, but I’m not holding my breath.) And everything is chaos, with a few standout moments. Brienne going down under a bunch of wights and screaming reminded me of her scene in A Feast for Crows when she’s fighting Rorge and Biter. Grey Worm is a big damn hero pretty much throughout, but especially when he’s guarding the retreat.

 

I seem to remember Sansa being better at the waiting-in-the-dark thing back in season two. She was much more effective during “Blackwater” than she is here; except for not getting piss-drunk, she’s acting much more like Cersei did than being the encouraging, supportive princess she was then. Also, I really wish they’d stop trying to create a Sansa-Tyrion friendship. There’s so many problems with it (there were so many problems when they were doing it in season three), and it’s just more of their inability to admit that Tyrion is an asshole, not the hero of the piece.

And then we have the dead World War Z-ing over the walls, and the Stark dead rising in the crypts (which every single Game of Thrones watcher I follow on Twitter totally called). I don’t quite buy it? Mostly because the last person to be buried down there was Lyanna, roughly 20 years ago, and the books talk a lot about how only their bones were left to be interred (because they don’t have the tech to preserve the bodies for a trip from King’s Landing or the Tower of Joy to Winterfell), so honestly there shouldn’t be enough left of any of the Stark dead to actually make a walking corpse. But I’m just glad they didn’t surprise us with a Sean Bean cameo (I wouldn’t have put it past them to “forget” that Ned was reduced to bones to be sent north).

This is where we give props to Ramin Djawadi again for the soundtrack, and whoever the sound mixer is who handled the post-dragon fight scene, because the choice to dampen the battle noises and have the piano line over it was genius. I do think it went on maybe a bit too long? But it was really pretty anyway. Also, you can very much hear that Djawadi also does the Westworld soundtrack in “The Night King,” which is the piano piece here.


I do wonder what Jon thought he was going to accomplish by standing in the open and screaming at Viserion.

The last 20 minutes or so show what I mean about shaky thematic and narrative flow. Jorah dies protecting Dany, which is absolutely appropriate considering his entire story arc. There was no other way for him to go out (even if it did mean he had to retreat and abandon the Dothraki during their charge).

But. It makes no thematic sense that Arya’s the one to take out the Night King. There has been exactly one vague hint in that direction—Bran giving her the Valyrian steel dagger. Yes, I know they retconned Melisandre’s prophecy to fit this. No, it still doesn’t make sense. If Jon’s purpose isn’t to take down the Night King, why did he come back to life? Why didn’t dragon fire hurt the Night King? During the “Inside the Episode” follow-up, Weiss says that they knew for “about three years now” that Arya would be the one to kill the Night King, which would put that decision happening around 2016, probably when they were writing season seven. Which means that they had no way of seeding that in or making it work thematically before that. I think they decided on Arya because a) they wanted a Stark to do it; but b) they wanted to create a surprise for the audience. But that’s a failure of storytelling, and one that Game of Thrones is particularly prone to; they throw in twists and shocks for the sake of twists and shocks, not because they’ve managed to very carefully seed and hint and misdirect and then everything comes together and it’s obvious this is what was meant to happen all along.

(Also, their claim that this was a decision they made three years ago indicates that this isn't how the battle against the Others will go in the books. For one thing, there is no Night King in the books, and for another, if Arya was to be the one to strike the final blow against whatever needs killing, that would obviously be something Martin would have told them in that infamous hotel meeting.)

Don't get me wrong; aesthetically I thought the scene was really cool, and I like that Arya got to be this level of badass. Her character arc and training storyline even make sense for it, taken in isolation. But she’s not in isolation; she’s part of a larger story, and that story didn’t effectively seed or foreshadow or prophesy (retconning notwithstanding) that Arya would be the one to effectively save the world. For such a buildup to taking out the White Walkers once and for all, I feel like the story needed to be there, and it wasn't. I'll probably take a lot of crap for this; I see lots of people online already who love this scene and are calling people who didn't sexist. But I stand by my opinion: cool does not outweigh a thematic through line.

Then we’re back on thematic unity with Melisandre dying now that she’s completed her life’s work. What she said about Beric—that the Lord of Light brought him back for a purpose and that purpose was fulfilled—holds true for her, as well. (And draws attention to the fact that it doesn’t seem to hold true for Jon.) Mel has lived for a very long time, she’s made some mistakes, she’s backed the wrong horse over and over, but she was instrumental in helping to defeat the Long Night, and now her watch has ended.

Next week: the war for the Iron Throne begins.

Deaths:
The Dothraki
Edd
Lyanna Mormont
Beric Dondarrion
Theon Greyjoy
Jorah Mormont
The Night King
All the White Walkers
Viserion (again)
Melisandre
Scores and scores of extras

Game of Thrones Watch 8.2: "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"

Read the previous entry in the series here.
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8.02 “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”

Written by Bryan Cogman

Directed by David Nutter

I solemnly swear that, unlike Cogman and Nutter, I will not suddenly stop this discussion right as it gets to the good/important part.

This episode is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s nice that they slow down a bit, and do it in a way that doesn’t feel like wheel-spinning (see the first third of “The Dragon and the Wolf”). It gives us a chance to spend time with the dozens of characters we now have all in the same place and for a few reunions. On the other hand, there’s a lot going on here that is seriously problematic, even verging into the disturbing.

Because I love Brienne so much, despite the Really Bad Choices I feel the show made in adapting her character, let’s start with the titular scene. While waiting for the dead to descend on them and their doomed last stand to begin, Brienne, Tormund, Davos, Pod, Jaime, and Tyrion are sitting around having a drink. Tyrion refers to Brienne as “ser,” then corrects himself, which offends Tormund, who still thinks Brienne hung the moon. He doesn’t understand why women “can’t” be knights, and says “fuck tradition.” Jaime points out that any knight can make another knight, and proceeds to knight Brienne in a scene that’s beautifully acted and got me choked up in ways I didn’t know Game of Thrones could still do.

Do I wish Jaime had thought of it first? Sure. Do I still kind of get squicked by the way Tormund drools all over a clearly disinterested and even uncomfortable Brienne? Absolutely. Have I been waiting for Jaime to knight Brienne since he started his redemption arc? Hell yes. Also, calling her the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a nice Easter egg for book readers, since her lineage includes Ser Duncan the Tall, and the Dunk and Egg collection is titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Not all the conversations go this well. Both major conversations Daenerys is involved in—once with Sansa and once with Jon—go from bad to worse to over before they can really dig into the problem they’re trying to hash out. We almost get Dany and Sansa making up and being friends, but of course we can’t have it because they’re women with a man in common. Sansa rightly wants to know what Dany intends to do with/for/about the North if they survive this battle, but just before they actually get to discuss that—beyond the clear you are part of my kingdom and I have dragons face that Dany’s giving her—they’re interrupted by Theon. I hope that Theon’s “I want to fight for Winterfell and the North” speech does something to Dany’s thought process re: what they’re all fighting for, but I’m not holding my breath.

The other major conversation is Jon telling Dany about his parentage. I’m really glad they just got right to it instead of letting this secret hang over them for episodes and episodes (creating tension through characters keeping secrets they don’t need to be keeping is one of my least favorite storytelling tools; I’m looking at you, Supernatural). However, there’s a few continuity issues in that I don’t remember Dany ever really having any conversations regarding Rhaegar being a rapist? Barristan told her about Rhaegar going amongst the smallfolk and busking on street corners, but his relationship with Lyanna didn’t ever come up that I’m aware of. And I highly doubt that Targaryens-first Viserys would ever have called Rhaegar a rapist. In the books, every story Dany hears about him is positive, and she identifies with him more than her father. So her assertion that Rhaeger kidnapped and raped Lyanna—without something like “the way your people tell it”—is weird and off.

(Dr. Kavita Finn has a much longer take on the way this episode is divorced from the entire history of Westeros here.)

But, again, Dany comes to the conclusion that Jon could challenge her for the Iron Throne. At least she verbalizes that it’s because he’s male and not just because he’s Rhaegar’s son. But before they can talk that out, the horn blows three times and the White Walkers have arrived.

It’s interesting that Sansa mentions to Dany that men are easily manipulated by women when Dany’s constantly manipulated by the men around her. Case in point in this episode: she’s mad at Tyrion for not catching on to Cersei having lied to her—on top of the other mistakes in judgment he’s made. But then Jorah goes to bat for Tyrion because Seven forbid we ever think Tyrion is less than perfect, and Dany’s halfway to forgiving him before Sansa even has a chance to sing his praises (which is problematic all on its own).

Easily the most problematic bit, the one that squicked me out the hardest, was Arya’s seduction (if you want to call it that) of Gendry. First of all, we again had to start with Gendry’s sexual assault being downplayed and even joked about. Then, it almost felt like a job interview on Arya’s part—how much experience do you have? Great, then you’re the man for the job. This is also the first time we’ve seen Arya show any sexual interest at all, other than the crush she had on Gendry way back when they were traveling the Riverlands. And even here, there doesn’t seem to be so much interest as checking something off her bucket list. The cold, stonehearted (ha) character Arya has turned into doesn’t have the same chemistry with Gendry that twelve- or thirteen-year-old Arya had.

Then there’s the nudity. And yes, I’m aware that Arya is eighteen—HBO made damn sure to let us know that she’s “legal,” in a move that’s squicky all on its own. I’m also aware that Maisie Williams is in  her early 20s. But something about this scene feels like “now she’s old enough for us to have her nude on screen” rather than an organic idea that came from the characters and their relationship. I think if they had to have this at all, it could have been written better (and directed better) to make it sweet rather than bucket-listy.

Here’s the small things I noticed or had questions about in passing but not enough Thoughts about to yammer on for several hundred words:

Dany says that she delayed her war for the Iron Throne for Jon. But what happened to defending her people? Not wanting to be queen of ashes? Becoming a queen by acting like one? I guess when you make a character so easily manipulated, it’s hard to remember why she does anything.

Is Davos crediting “the Battle of the Bastards” (again, I hate that they’re calling it that in-universe) as his first fight? Have they forgotten all about “Blackwater”? And Stannis breaking the siege on the Wall?

How are they making these obsidian weapons? We see them in the regular forge, but that’s not how you’d shape obsidian and I didn’t notice anyone doing any knapping.

Sam needed to remind us of his man-cred again. White Walker! Thenn! Protecting Gilly!

Gilly continues to be a delight and far too good for this show.

I’m not entirely on board with Sam handing Heartsbane over to Jorah. It thematically doesn’t make any sense to me.

Grey Worm is totally going to die. The “let’s run away together” scene is way too sweet and wholesome for this to end any other way.

I am Here For “Jenny’s Song.” It’s mournful and sweet and actually makes sense in context, unlike Ed Sheeran singing “Hands of Gold” or Shireen, sans Patchface, singing Patchface’s rhymes.

Next week: Waiting in the dark! Fighting in the dark! Everything is dark! What is happening?

Game of Thrones Watch: 8.1 "Winterfell"

The Tales after Tolkien Society is pleased to present the resumption of the flagship series!
Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here!

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8.1 “Winterfell”

Written by Dave Hill

Directed by David Nutter

Well. Here we are again. How have you all been? Nice break? Cool. Let’s get right to it.

So here we are at the beginning of the end. The battle for the Seven Kingdoms is approaching, the Night King is south of the Wall, Winter is here. And humanity is still fighting amongst itself.

As usual, the show has a lot going for it. The new opening sequence is breathtaking and absolutely gorgeous, and it sounds like they might have punched up the main theme just a bit. The cinematography, especially when Jon’s riding Rhaegal, is also amazing. Also, A+ jump scare there at the end. Great work on the director’s part.

Overall, compared to last season, this episode was pretty strong (which I’m aware isn’t saying a lot). It had a lot to do, and it managed to balance everything pretty well, though there were definitely some oddities with pacing and the order they decided to do some things in.

So, let’s dive into the things this episode set up or paid off or got done.

Daenerys and company have arrived in Winterfell, and everyone has to deal with the fact that Jon gave up being King in the North in order to secure her alliance. They also have to deal with the dragons (but not in a fun, Patricia C. Wrede kind of way). Also, since “and company” includes people like Sandor Clegane, Gendry, and Tyrion, there’s a lot of emotional backlog that has to be taken care of.

Daenerys’ arrival shows that the writers still don’t know how to handle communities of women—so they don’t. Arya and Sansa seem to be getting along better, but they don’t appear on screen together at all in this episode. Sansa and Lyanna immediately hate Daenerys—based on what, besides her being an outsider and interloper isn’t made clear, which is dumb because the Starks have a baked-in reason. Aerys Targaryen killed their grandfather and uncle, and they’ve been taught that Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped and raped their aunt. There’s all sorts of possible bad blood here that doesn’t involve fighting over the attention of a man (Jon). Sure, Bran knows that Rhaegar didn’t kidnap Lyanna, but he doesn’t seem to have told anyone but Sam (unless he did off-screen, like the entire plot against Petyr Baelish last season).

I’m not saying they don’t have reason to be upset with Jon. They do. As Lyanna pointed out, the North put him on a throne, and at the first chance, he abandoned it. I’ve maintained for years that the show version of Jon is not a good leader despite how often we’ve been told he is, and his discussion with Sansa re: “I never wanted to be king” reinforces that. He was given a responsibility, and he abrogated it. For a leader, one’s own wants and needs come second. The only leader on this show who seems to get that is Sansa; she recognizes that unity is necessary and turns down the not-so-subtle suggestion that she be made Queen in the North when Jon’s gone for an extended period. She might want to be queen, or would at least accept being queen, but she doesn’t take it because her wants don’t outweigh the necessity of keeping the North unified.

I mean, for goodness sake, people, winter is here. Bran, for all the issues I have with how his character is being handled, has it right. We don’t have time for any of this.

Now, do I expect that everyone is going to suddenly, miraculously, get along? No, of course not. In fact, there’s one example in this episode of why they can’t and shouldn’t—Daenerys and Sam meeting for the first time. To her credit, Daenerys is open about what happened with Sam’s family (though it’s interesting that nobody seems to wonder or care what happened to his mother and sister now that there’s no male heirs left to take on Horn Hill)—or, openish. She doesn’t, of course, tell him exactly how they died, only that she executed them. I wonder how much more upset he’ll be when (if) he finds out. Considering his immediate reaction is to go straight to Jon and tell him that a) he’s totally related to his new lover; b) she murdered his family; c) she didn’t even consider not being queen; and d) by the way, all of this makes Jon rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms (though that last bit’s kind of a leap and predicated entirely on him being male; technically, Daenerys is daughter of the old king and Jon is grandson, so she comes first).

Although the core point of the show isn’t—or shouldn’t be—who gets the Iron Throne at the end, but how are they going to defeat the White Walkers, if all of this is a setup for Jon to suddenly yoink the Iron Throne out from under Daenerys, who’s been working hard for it this whole time, and Jon barely showing an interest in being anything resembling a leader, I’m going to be pissed. Not that I think Daenerys will be a fantabulous queen, either (not the way Benioff & Weiss & company have written her, for sure), but it would just be typical that the person who’s fought for seven seasons to win the Iron Throne, who’s shown an interest in protecting the kingdom by fighting Winter (pouring one out for Stannis here), gets usurped by some guy who can’t even breathe with his mouth closed.

The Jon dragon-riding scene is beautiful as it stands, but it has some oddities with regard to placement in the episode. I mostly agree with Jeff “BryndenBFish” here (click through for thread):

Alright, so I've said good things about the episode (a pretty good episode all things considered!). Before heading to bed, let me briefly touch on the dragon-riding scene and why it left me a little flat.

— BryndenBFish (@BryndenBFish) April 15, 2019

I think, as Jeff says, the setup could definitely have been better. I do think, though, that if they’d gone that direction, it would have been a very different scene with regard to his relationship with Daenerys, and thus might not have happened at all. Jon’s shit at hiding his feelings, so there’s no way he wouldn’t have been awkward around her. That’s not to say that there isn’t a way to work it so that being able to ride Rhaegal wouldn’t have been proof for him, just that the way Benioff & Weiss et al. have constructed things, it would have been more difficult.

Also, can we appreciate that Jon rides the dragon named after his biological father?

JON SNOW IS RIDING HIS DAD

— Emmett Booth🌹 (@PoorQuentyn) April 15, 2019

Some smaller things to wrap up:

Oh, goody, we’re back to nudity as a backdrop and prostitutes being just so happy to do their jobs. Also, hi, Bronn.

I love how Emilia is allowed to do things with her face in this episode. She’s spent so much time being completely deadpan—first because Daenerys is suffering from trauma at the hands of Viserys and Illyrio, then because . . . I don’t know, conquerors don’t smile?—that it’s nice to see what looks like genuine joy and happiness on her face.

I also like Daenerys’ winter jacket better with the red undertones than with grey. I still don’t like the overall design, but this is better. And on the subject of costuming, I hate that Sansa’s still wearing that collar-and-chain looking thing.

Jon seems to have no understanding that other people have grown and changed and gone through The Shit. He talks to Arya as if she’s still the nine-year-old girl he left behind and gets confused/upset when she’s not that person anymore. He tries to joke with Sam about reading all the books in the Citadel when Sam’s clearly upset. His reaction to Bran is completely understandable, though, because Bran is—well, just wrong.

Speaking of Bran being wrong, I wondered as I watched this episode whether in the books, Bran is supposed to stay in the cave and talk to people through the weirwood trees, and that’s why he ends up kind of wooden here. (I’m not even sorry.)

"I am smiling."

Will someone THROW BRAN STARK OUT A WINDOW???

— ZR/Zabé Ellor (@ZREllor) April 15, 2019

I don’t even know what to do with Cersei’s bit of this episode. Fake!Euron continues to be ridiculous and campy rather than the horrifying force he is in the books. There’s a lot of sexual politics happening with Cersei promising sex, then refusing it, then giving in that I’ll need more time to unpack.

And, again, A+ jump scare with the kid at the end. I might have actually gone “gyaaaah!” out loud.

But can we just, for a second, examine the fact that the first line of the very last season of Game of Thrones, on a backdrop clearly meant to invoke episode one with the marching and the music and everything else, is Tyrion pointing out, again, that Varys is a eunuch. That’s just . . . such a way for them to begin the end. And Tyrion continues to be not just sarcastic, but mean throughout the whole episode, and if we’re still supposed to like him, I have Questions for the writers.

Next week: War! Trials! Politics! Tyrion staring over the walls of Winterfell!

All screenshots taken by me.