Game of Thrones S8.06 — The end.
Spoilers below for Game of Thrones S8.06 — The Iron Throne
Honestly, that was super disappointing. I can’t even bother to fully recap the episode because it was at least 30 minutes of Tyrion, Jon, and Davos walking through rubble and another 30 minutes of Tyrion looking sad/crying/making speeches.
After Tyrion confirms that Jaime and Cersei have died in the most anticlimactic way, he cries and then follows the sound of cheers to where Daenerys is holding a very angry rally of Dothraki who are still thriving even though they literally said they had all been wiped out in episode 3.
She is yelling in High Valyrian, I assume, which I guess now Tyrion and Jon can both understand. Riling the Dothraki up, she talks about continuing their “liberation” through the rest of the 7 Kingdoms and back in Essos as well. Liberation of who? The people are all dead.
Tyrion’s seen enough of this fairly Nazi-like demonstration and throws his hand pin down. Given how much he coveted that, he meant business. Also given how crazy Daenerys now is, we knew he’d be in trouble. He’s taken prisoner quickly and shut up in what looks like a wine cellar, but all the wine is gone. Ironic. Jon visits him and Tyrion makes a couple speeches to him, in the end convincing him he needs to kill Daenerys to save the realm.
So…he does. It was pretty easy actually. She didn’t even get to sit on the Iron Throne. Bet she wished she got one little sit in there. Jon becomes the new Queenslayer, Drogon melts the Iron Throne (I called that!), and takes off with her body. Meanwhile, Jon is taken prisoner, as well.
Based on the beards and the blue sky, a lot of time has passed, though Tyrion makes mention of it only being a couple of weeks. The lords and ladies of Westeros are gathered in the old dragon pit. It’s a real who’s who of surviving characters — Arya, Bran, Sansa, Brienne, Sam, Davos, an old Tulley, Robert Arryn of Moon Door fame, the new Prince of Dorne who literally had one line, and a couple others who I was too tired to recognize.
The goal is for them to figure out what to do about the Unsullied who are calling for Tyrion and Jon’s deaths. Grey Worm arrives with Tyrion and the group decides they need a new king. Sam tries to bring up the idea of a democracy, but everyone laughs. Instead, Tyrion makes another impassioned speech for…Bran?
On one side, I get it. He has no emotions, no biases, can’t have children, and literally does not care about anything. But, if you’re just going to have a robot be the king, why not just remove the king all together and have everyone rule their own homes separately? Why do they need some lords and ladies to rule over all of the rest of the people from 1 central location?
Also, come on Tyrion, now was your chance to get Sansa on the throne. She deserves it more than anyone! The only consolation is that she requested the North remain independent and Bran, because he literally does not have the capacity to care, agrees. He is now the Ruler of the 6 Kingdoms.
Tyrion is forced to be his hand and his counsel becomes Bronn, back from wherever, Davos, Sam as Grand Maester, Brienne and Pod as Kings’ Guard. Sam brings Tyrion “A Song of Ice and Fire” which is the history of Westeros since Robert’s death (aka the books/shows) but for some reason they don’t include Tyrion in it, which seemed like an unnecessary slight.
And what happens to Jon? Grey Worm allows him to take the Black. So, Jon ends up exactly where he started. In his classic sullen fashion, he’s not too pleased. We do get a smile when he reunites with Ghost (finally) and when he goes North of the Wall again. Before he goes, we learn that Arya is sailing for “west of Westeros” and we get another “you were exactly where you needed to be” from Bran. We fucking get it!
That’s basically it. Honestly, I’m more than disappointed. This whole season was a rushed mess and they made so many anticlimactic moments and easy deaths because they just didn’t know what to do with themselves. They ruined whole character arcs and returned people back to square one, negating all development (I’m looking at Jaime, Arya, and Jon specifically here).
Maybe making the show end so poorly was a ploy to get more people to buy the books. I was always going to read them since I read all the others, but I’m thinking more people will be into it just so they don’t end with a sour taste in their mouths.
Thank you for following along the past few seasons with me as I recapped what was at one point my favorite show and has now ended as a hollowed out version. It was fun while it lasted!
Originally published at http://lizziekreitman.wordpress.com on May 20, 2019.