Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!! Spoilers!!
BTW, this review is for season 8 episodes, so…Spoilers!! Also, NSFW!
For those of you still with me, thanks for hanging in there. I’m gonna ride or die with GoT and that’s just the way it is.
So Dany finally flipped her sh!t and went all Dracarys on King’s Landing, which I’d like to point out, last week, after Missandei used her last words to tell Dany to burn it all, we cheered her on.
Viewers seem to forget, she risked everything to come across the narrow sea, to pledge her army to help defeat the Night King, lost one of her 3 dragon/children and lost a large majority of one of her forces, the Dothraki, lost her loyalist adviser and bodyguard, Jorah Mormont. All that, just to the Night King and his army. Then lost her boyfriend because he can’t be intimate with her because he now knows who he is, losses another dragon/child to Euron, losses her next closest adviser by violent beheading, then Dany is then forced to kill Varys because he betrayed her and then tried to poison her. She also finds out, she had to do this because Jon told who he was despite her pleas for him not too, and that information was then spread by her Hand of the Queen, Tyrion. This pushes the very few people she has left on her side a little further away. And we’re warned of the teetering sanity of the Targaryens over and over, and how terrible things become when they find themselves alone.
So I’m far from surprised at Dany’s behavior. Yes, I wish we still had the protector of the innocent, but that’s no longer who she is. When she was surrounded by her advisers, who loved her, she listened to them and showed restraint. And even during that time, she showed us time and time again, without their advice, she would have gone much further and been much more tyrannical. Like when her advisors weren’t with her in Quarth, she justifiably put to death everyone who was involved in taking her dragons in the House of the Undying. Then in Vaes Dothrak, she murdered every one of her captors, all the Dothraki Kahls. She may have touted herself as a protector of the innocent and the great Mhysa, but when left to her own devices, she showed her Targaryen roots constantly. And without her trusted people around her, all she’s got is Drogon, her ever-failing Hand of the Queen, and her just as pissed off bodyguard, Grey Worm.
One thing that everyone was positive about, Clegane Bowl did not disappoint. Seeing Arya and the Hound, together for so long, having grown on each other in many ways, he made one last move to protect her and sent her out of the city. I nearly teared up when she called him Sandor too. It was satisfying death for Qyburn, having made the Zombie Mountain in the first place, having his head caved in on a rock and then his lifeless body gets Kobe’d across the screen. And then Cersei slinking past the Hound to get away was one of my favorite things ever. That fight was one of the best of the show, two huge dudes with tons of history fighting in a collapsing spiral stair tower, and the most fitting ending, Sandor tackling his brother and they both fall into the fire. That was just epic.
Jamie and Euron’s fight in the cave was pretty cool. Jamie found Cersei and that’s when we see the second big blunder of GoT season 8. When Jamie and Cersei embrace, it appears Jamie has regrown his right hand after his fight with Euron. Jamie and Cersei then go down to the tunnels where they discover their escape route is blocked. I will agree with some of the complaints about Cersei’s death, it was too good for her to be able to die in the arms of someone she loves. I don’t know how it would have been possible, but to be able to see Cersei’s face when she heard about Jamie and Brianne would have been great.
Arya trying to get out of the city was edge-of-your-seat type stuff. There’s only one episode left, and while I would have been pissed if something had happened to her, main characters are dropping like flies these episodes and her job as Night King-Slayer is complete. And what’s up with the horse? One of my favorite memes had Jaqen H’ghar’s head placed over the horse’s, kind of saved by the god of death?
There are points that may have made Dany’s slip out of sanity a little more understandable. Maybe Rhaegar getting killed by Qyburn after the bells had rang, maybe Missandei’s death having been closer to the battle. I don’t need for those things to have happened to make her snapping make sense to me, this was coming, this had been brewing for years.
I don’t know what happens from here, Arya kills Dany, Jon kills Dany, Drogon kills everybody, Daario Naharas crosses the narrow sea and wrecks shop on all of Westeros and they return to rule Essos, Arya’s horse turns into Syrio Forel (Jaqen had been him the whole time) and he and Arya defeat any remaining enemies and Arya is the new Queen… I have no idea what will happen next. The episode 6 trailer isn’t very revealing, and only a few seconds, all we know for sure is Dany will try to become Queen of the ashes. What I do know, I’ve enjoyed this journey so far, and will be there for the end too.