Game of Thrones series finale
May. 20th, 2019 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I think to a certain extent, there's nothing the show could do to satisfy people who've been waiting more than twenty years for the book series to be finished or even people who've been watching the show for ten. I think it was always going to be anticlimactic to a certain extent because of the time frame.
I said in my review of the last episode that I'm upset about the decision to go with Mad Dany as endgame; I just think the execution is rushed. That being said, I accepted that premise for my viewing of the finale, and for the most part was not disappointed in what I saw. I wasn't super stoked or psyched and didn't have a big attack of the feels like I did for Endgame, but I was mostly satisfied which is pretty much what I was going for at this point.
I will also say that over the course of the ten years of the show, I've seen a lot of criticisms about the acting thrown about, but I gotta admit, I don't see it. I think all the actors are really great, and they all really brought it in this final episode.
Tyrion is amazing in this episode. He is so guilty. He blames himself for all the destruction he sees; he blames himself for Varys's death. He blames himself for Cersei and Jaime's deaths. (In an aside, I interpreted his guilt and grief at their deaths as an oblique way of coming at the valonquar prophecy; I know it's not even in the show, but for fic writing purposes, Tyrion could fulfill that role even if only in his own head since Dany is clearly to blame for all the deaths).
I love that Tyrion's bravery has been a consistent theme in the last few seasons. When he rejects Dany publicly, there's a moment where I see in her face that she knows what she's done is unforgivable and then I can see her recognize what an affront to her power his rejection is and that hurt sneer comes over her face.
Tyrion providing the meta commentary is nice: everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer. I'm glad the show gives a least a nod to her descent happening so rapidly.
I also love that Tyrion won't let Jon take sole responsibility for her assassination (what WE did).
I'm not bothered by Tyrion admitting that he was in love with Dany, too. That seems obvious to me in the show, and I don't think he loved her in any sort of truly romantic way but more as a symbol and an ideal kind of way.
I love Bran naming him Hand. Tyrion will finally be in a position of power with full endorsement by people who genuinely trust him. I think he's going to excel.
Dany is amazing in this episode. Once I just accept that Dany is mad (and I don't think mad in the traditional sense is really even applicable here, more power-hungry and delusional), I enjoy the hell out of the way that Emilia plays her. Her speech to the Unsullied and Dothraki shows exactly the kind of tyrant she intends to be (and all will love me and despair, yes?). She is incredibly frightening in that scene; she is unable to see the irony in what she's saying. Every word is a threat, every place she intends to liberate a site of future carnage. Wow. Also that outfit is on point OMG. Her rationalization to Jon also underscores that she just intends to burn anyone who disagrees with her ever.
The scene with her in the throne room is one of the best in the whole show IMHO. She's completely destroyed the room; it's open to the sky. The throne is the only object left intact. She should be able to look around and see that she's cut off her nose to spite her own face here in destroying the kingdom she's supposedly there to liberate. But all she can see is that throne, and when she reaches out to touch, she has such a look on her face--like maybe it's all been worth it, like maybe she can be happy, and there's also a glee and a wistfulness there. It's a really complicated look. I like it.
Very happy the Iron Throne is melted down. I really wanted that to happen.
Jon's arc is pretty satisfying for me, too. He is Ned Stark's son through and through. He wants to keep his promise to Dany even when doing so makes no sense because his honor is all he's had his whole life. He tries to justify what she did to King's Landing even though the expression on his face reveals he knows that slaughter can't be justified, ever.
I love that he gets sent to the Wall where it all started for him (and I love that Tyrion intimates that they'll see each other again). I love that Ghost and Tormund are waiting, and I love that rather than taking the black, Jon sets out into the North with the Wildlings where nobody bends the knee and nobody gives a shit who his daddy was or wasn't. That is a pretty sweet ending for him.
I'm not upset that Bran is king, mostly just confused. LOL I never saw him as an actual contender, mostly because I expected him to be too busy melding into a tree somewhere. It's useful that he can't be lied to; much less palace intrigue. I wonder if he'll have a longer life span since he's the Three Eyed Raven or if he'll be king for a few decades and then bugger off somewhere to become one with the tree. He clearly doesn't know everything because he doesn't know where the dragon is (and I want to read something sinister into that although it's probably just supposed to indicate that no one knows where Drogo is and maybe they should find him before kiddos start going missing, but then I have a hard time not reading something sinister into Bran's, "Why do you think I came all this way?").
Sansa is Queen in the North! Fuck yes! I am all in on this episode for that alone to be honest. :)
I really liked Brienne writing Jaime's entry in the book; those last words were very poignant and apt, and I love that she's the Captain of the Kingsguard with Podrick as a Kingsguard as well!
Everyone I really wanted to live except Jaime lived! Sam gets to be Grand Maester! Bronn is alive and cockroaching it up at Highgarden!
I enjoyed the bits of humor (Tyrion asking Jon if he brought wine, Sam trying to introduce democracy, Edmure attempting to throw his hat in the ring, the book A Song of Ice and Fire in which Tyrion plays no part LOL).
And finally, I love that split second shot of a blade of grass pushing through snow north of the wall. That is very nicely done.
The stuff I like less is mostly logistics plus a little bit of emotional disappointment. On the logistics front, I don't believe the Unsullied and Dothraki would just leave (although maybe the Dothraki would welcome the chance to get back to the grassy sea now that Dany is dead). I also don't believe Grey Worm would just take Jon hostage instead of killing him immediately. I do love that Davos offers them land in the Reach; Davos is just a good egg all around.
In terms of emotional disappointment, while I love the Stark montage at the end, and I am happy for each of them in their individual fates, I really don't like the implication that with the exception of Sansa and Bran, none of them are going to see each other again. That makes me really sad.
Questions:
1. Is it actually snowing in King's Landing, or is it ash? Or a mixture?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 07:46 pm (UTC)These last two eps struck me as being very like Infinity War in a way, down to the ash and general mutedness and lack of resolution. It's not so much that the heroes lost, the conventional idea of heroicism lost (I guess that's what they kept meaning by "subverting"). People were saying even if Dany had gone full Mad Queen and sat on the Iron Throne and burnt everything to a crisp, they'd've been okay with that, and I think that's because it's a grand romantic fatal vision. But instead: The guy who really doesn't want it is King (I was like "LOL someone read their Plato"), but even then it's not absolute monarchy; the Iron Throne was seen as the grand prize all along (I love your description of Dany seeing it) but it was literally obliterated as a result of the death of the person who 'won' it; the most powerful people were undone; the ones who survived and 'won' were the ones who learned to endure, like Sansa and Jon and Arya. (The writers almost visibly forcibly turned Arya away from the "I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE AND DIE" path in that scene with Sandor.) That last tracking shot of the three surviving Starks walking to their fates (which was really nice), separate but alive, reminded me a little bit of the beginning of Endgame, with everyone trying to pick up the pieces and move on. (I guess that makes Sansa like Natasha! Heh.)
tl;dr So keeping going with this dubious analysis, it seems pretty clear to me D&D were seeing Dany as Thanos -- a monstrous figure they wanted to make sympathetic, a character who thought they had the Right Reasons for doing good and wound up destroying everything instead and they couldn't even see it. (Except Dany was immediately punished and killed and Thanos got to retire. Except then Thor beheads him 3 weeks later in the next movie, so.) And from what I remember GRRM pretty much confirmed it with "this guy gets it" and that blogpost that kept emphasizing Dany in the books was bad at peace, at negotiating and compromise, she had the blood of dragons, she was the Mother of Dragons, &c &c. But in the show, "You're a dragon, be a dragon" got taken as empowerment. It was a "Puny god, fuck yeah!" moment.
But clearly in the books, if that guy did get it, Martin is trying to ~subvert the typical heroic arc. We start off with Dany as a complete victim, sold off and raped, literal chattel; she automatically has our sympathy and the readers cheer her on as she survives and advances, hatches her dragons, assumes more power, gets more and more powerful....and in the end in GRRM's plan, the audience is rooting for a conquering tyrant. In this vision, being a real ruling queen, like Sansa, is "planting trees" -- not sitting on the Iron Throne as a conqueror, like Cersei, or literally burning everything down in a vision of justice, like Dany. A big theme is both Cersei and Dany wanted everything on their own terms; the trio of surviving Starks know they can't get that and have to make good with what they have.
I think part of what's in the books that got lost by their aging everyone up (same thing as in the Harry Potter movies) is how YOUNG everyone is. Dany in the books apparently has the young ruler's conundrum -- are bad acts in the service of good ideas ever right? Can peace be forced and if not, when is cooperation just giving in? How far can idealism go? &c &c Even then I don't think we're supposed to condemn Dany, but see her as very tragic: killed by the man she loves who rejected her because of her desire for destruction, that same personified desire burning the great justifying prize of the series -- and then literally carrying her off (a nod to heroic/visionary deaths in mythology). (D&D did the same thing with Cersei, or tried to, having her die pregnant and vulnerable and wanting to live with her lover/twin but IIRC with the giant dragon skull literally blocking the way to escape. But most people just went "WTF.")
In an interview Clarke said she knew two years ago what was going to happen and she struggled with it -- the whole thing is very good https://ew.com/tv/2019/05/19/game-thrones-finale-interview-emilia-clarke/
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Date: 2019-05-21 11:59 am (UTC)I completely understand why they aged them up for the show for both Doylist and Watsonian reasons, but I think you're right. I think that making them older diminishes the sympathy we feel for them. Look at Robb; in the books he's just a kid which makes his victory so much more the wow and his defeat a result of his naivete and his desire to break away from his parents (I'm not listening to you, mom!). In the show, he just seems like an idiot. LOL
I agree that Dany is supposed to be tragic; I think we're supposed to feel sorry for her at the end, and I do. This is why I think the book would have sold this ending to me; reading her interior monologue, her frustration and confusion and her very real desire to be and do good juxtaposed with ever increasingly not okay behavior would give me the complex ending I want for the show.
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:01 pm (UTC)"Bronn is alive and cockroaching it up at Highgarden!" LOL, I know it's so great. And I think he will make a rather good Master of Coin actually. And him and Davos sassing at each other, so great (seven give Brienne strength not to strangle them all).
"Davos is just a good egg all around." He so totally is, he is the only GoT/ASOIAF character that I like in any and all incarnations and at all times.
"Is it actually snowing in King's Landing, or is it ash? Or a mixture?" My instinct was that it was a mixture which would make the most poetic sense between Jon and Dany. (I was really thinking that Drogon was going to kill Jon, but him carrying her off so gently actually made me sad.)
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:23 pm (UTC)I found it, like a lot of the concluding eps, very implausible for the character but in line thematically -- IIRC we see him going to town so to speak at King's Landing but, like Arya, the narrative turns him away from revenge and conquest, towards freedom and a kind of exile. It makes sense when I sit back and analyse the story, but in the moment of first watching it my reaction was a whole lot of "WTF??" (Who knows, maybe they were going for the "WTF??" The showrunners clearly knew the internet would melt down.)
Dany being carried off by her dragon echoes so much mythology -- Medea disappearing in a chariot drawn by dragons, Elijah going to heaven in a chariot of fire, the heroes of Middle-Earth going into the West, the Valkyries bearing the slain heroes to Valhalla, Herakles rising to Olympos from his own funeral pyre, &c &c. It's a tragic heroic death -- she's clearly translated from the mortal plane. (I read a great fanfic idea where Drogon carries her off to a nest and her body is placed among the eggs, and she's reborn as an actual dragon.)
-- Hunh I also just realized that altho I was one of the people going "WTF?? Drogon why are you melting the CHAIR, not the guy who just killed your mommy," that's right in line with the apparent theme of the true heroes of the story turning away from revenge and death and literally leaving the focused seat of power. -- Altho it's entwined with the idea that the means of Dany's idealism totally destroys the ends she's holding as an ideal. The source of her power winds up destroying what she wanted to rule over (again, unfortunate gender stereotype WHOOPS).
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Date: 2019-05-21 09:42 pm (UTC)I also do like the idea of the source of her power destroying her power; it's so deeply tragic.
The more I think about her going tyrant, the more I like it; I just wish we'd gotten a pitch perfect execution of it.
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Date: 2019-05-22 09:02 pm (UTC)I'm very much of the opinion that Drogon somehow understood that the Iron Throne was the source of his mother's pain and ultimately the thing that had taken her from him. But I was still rather surprised when Jon did not meet his end by dragon right there.
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Date: 2019-05-23 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 09:40 pm (UTC)Of course it's a mixture. Duh. :)
I love Davos. Love him in the books and in the show. I sincerely hope that if GRRM ever does write the books he doesn't let Stannis burn Shireen. OMG, Davos's heart. :(
I agree with you re: Bronn. I think he'll actually be good in that position. Varys's shoes will be hard to fill, however.
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Date: 2019-05-22 08:40 pm (UTC)Ah, Varys. It was really such a shame, and he went with such quiet dignity. *sigh* Tyrion saying that his ashes would ceed to Varys' ashes that he had been right all along, caused me to make a strangled laugh/sob at the inappropriate aptness of it all.
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Date: 2019-05-23 12:37 am (UTC)Shireen is such a dear, dear person. I just cannot imagine her dying like that in the books; I can scarcely believe it happened in the show. I mean, Stannis is not without his problems but I never thought he'd do such a thing.
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Date: 2019-05-20 08:24 pm (UTC)But I think I will agree with you on pretty much everything. From what I've read. Also, I'm not going to continue with the books, because the last one had me feeling like Martin was just spinning his wheels.
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Date: 2019-05-21 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 10:34 pm (UTC)Yay, Sansa and Arya! I was pleased with their endings. I'm a bit more ambivalent on Brienne's -- one of the things she's struggled with throughout the series is her sexual needs. In the end she got *one* night with Jaime -- who did not deserve her -- and then to be part of the Kingsguard, where she never gets to explore that part of herself again. It's, um.
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Date: 2019-05-21 11:21 am (UTC)It's unclear to me if Bran knows everything that will happen or just what *has* happened. If he knows the future, then he just orchestrated his own ascent at the expense of thousands of people. If he only knows what *has* happened then he didn't know Dany would torch King's Landing. IDK It does come across as if he orchestrated the whole thing; it's the thousand yard stare. LOL
I wonder if celibacy will still be part of the Kingsguard; so much is changing in Westeros. It's not spelled out and so would be very easy to circumvent for fic purposes.
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Date: 2019-05-22 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-22 11:44 am (UTC)I do love that last, little expression on Jon's face as he's leaving the wall--not quite a smile but almost there.