Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!!
BTW, this review is for season 8 episodes, so…Spoilers!! Also, NSFW!
Well, GoT is over and done with, and I personally am very satisfied with the ending. There are a ton of dissenting opinions over the last couple of seasons, the last few episodes especially, and while the show was definitely not without its flaws, it was still amazingly entertaining. It makes sense to me, if you were completely blindsided by Dany’s behaviour in the last episode (s8e5), then you wouldn’t agree with anything that happened after that. But as I explained in my review for that episode, her behaviour was somewhat predictable, Varys saw it, that’s why he tried to kill her, Tyrion saw it, that’s why the scene of him telling her about the bells was so dramatic. When left to her own ways of sorting things out, she always went too far, and when she showed restraint, it was only when her advisors begged her to.
So I’ll be honest, I didn’t technically watch this episode yet. I mean, I saw it, sort of. I was driving home from Hangout Fest in Gulf Shores, AL Sunday night, so I had a friend watching on my phone, describing the whole thing to me and I caught a few glimpses of much of it, so I could hear it, and see a good bit, and had the rest described. And I haven’t re-watched because I came back home with a raging sinus infection and I’ve been nearly constantly working or sleeping since then. I did thankfully get to see some of the awesome shots, like Dany with Drogon spreading his wings behind her, and Ghost being greeted by his old friend Jon Snow at the Wall. But there was a meme with Erin of the Eerie sitting at the summit at the end where they decide the new king, and I had no idea Erin had even been there.
So if you didn’t think that Dany would ever burn King’s Landing, then you understandably wouldn’t agree with the punishment she received for it, but if you get that this was coming for the past 8 years, then everything is justified. Tyrion knows he can’t kill her, so he makes a big show of removing his Hand pen designating him as her Hand of the Queen. So Jon Snow knows it’s up to him to kill his Queen. And then we get the MVP of GoT, Drogon, showing up and recognizing that it wasn’t Jon’s fault that he needed to kill her, but her zealous pursuit of the Iron Throne, so instead of burning Jon, he burned the chair. I thought that was so appropriate and awesome.
I thought Jon’s punishment was super appropriate too, Bran had to have known Jon probably wanted to return to North of the Wall to get away from the politics and memories of the south. Arya getting to take a Direwolf ship west of Westeros was pretty cool. Sansa becoming Queen of the North I had some slight issues with, she went through some terrible stuff and made great strides as a leader of Winterfell when Jon was away, and I guess she saw what Dany was, but I’m still not sure if she’s worthy of being Queen in the North just yet, but it’s also not too far fetched either. Sam as Bran’s Maester is also a great move, Brianne as head of the Kingsguard is also very appropriate, and we found out that Bron must have made all that money he was promised to be made the Master of Coin.
We will probably be arguing for years on the internet about GoT things, like why so much emphasis was placed on the Night King only for him and his whole army to be fairly quickly dispatched in two moves by Arya. What happened to Gilly and little Sam and “if it’s a boy” little Jon? Did they stay in Winterfell where we last saw them, or did they join Sam in King’s Landing? George R.R. Martin has been a staunch defender of the series’s ending, but has already said that when his final books in the Fire & Ice series come out, they will have a different ending.
I’m happy, I’m satisfied and I’ve been thoroughly entertained by this entire series. Thanks for going with me on this journey. Be sure to watch my blog for more great show reviews!!