“Yeah, that’s you. That’s
what you’ve always been.”
The Hound says this when he knocks the helmet off his zombified
big brother, exposing just how ugly Qyburn’s treatment has made the mug underneath. But the much-hyped Cleganebowl is only a
minor sideshow in “The Bells”, which is all about exposing the brutal conquistador
underneath the shining liberator that was Danaerys Targaryen. And boy, does it ever commit to putting the
emphasis on Targaryen. This is a huge
turn, that will anger and alienate a significant portion of fans, but I am
quite pleased that while Game Of Thrones
may not be ending on its strongest seasons, it is going down swinging.
It turns out that I could not have been more wrong last week
when I smugly declared that the show would not have the gall to, in the cultural
climate of 2019, end with the Mother Of Dragons coming in second place to a male
rival. But they immediately and emphatically
shot right past second place and made her the villain of the final
chapter of the story. The actual villain! She didn’t just get
her hands dirty in a way that is questionably moral but also kind of awesome
and actually makes the audience like her more, like when she or Arya or Sansa have
previously indulged in some sadistic but generally-justified payback against some
of the show’s outright villains. No, on a show with plenty of space for
antiheroes, she has moved emphatically and unmistakably into the role of
antagonist for the final episode.
| With apologies to Ha...Horac...Howie Strainhan? |
It is, whether you find it believable or not, or offensive, or give credit/blame to the showrunners or George RR Martin himself, an undeniably bold turn to take this late in the game. There is essentially nothing else worth talking about in the episode, what with the bravura blend of large scale action filmmaking with intimate, character-based horror elements having become so expected over the last few years, if no less impressive. I want to get into what I think makes this so great, but first I want to figure out how I managed to get it so very, very wrong. Which is fantastic, by the way. I spend a lot of time in these recaps speculating about what is to come, but while I certainly feel a fleeting sense of satisfaction when I “called it!” correctly on a particular point, for the most part I'm more like Varys when facing execution, truly hoping that I am wrong. Predicting where the story will go is a more difficult and interesting exercise than with other shows because this one follows a narrative logic that is so different than most. Surprise has always been one of the series most potent weapons, but I had become convinced that age had dulled that edge, along with the mean streak that this twist also returns with a vengeance.
 |
| It's third most potent weapon being, of course, an almost fanatical devotion to the High Septon |
But why was Dany’s turn able to blindside me, when I am
clearly so very, very smart and handsome and definitely not afraid of puppets?
There’s been a prevailing notion, among online commenters at least, that
the show underwent a shift around the start of season 6, when it moved
completely beyond the published source material. The thought was (is) that the show started to
develop more blockbuster-y, LCD-pleasing sensibilities, streamlining and simplifying
things to a degree that negated the gritty complexity that made Martin’s books
stand out in the first place. And while
Martin’s prose is knotty both narratively and thematically, those are two
distinct things, that don’t necessarily have to follow from each other. It was easy to notice a shift as the show ruthlessly,
sometimes crudely, chopped down superfluous storylines and began to deliver a
steadier, larger-scale stream of crowd-pleasing spectacle once the S5 finale
moved definitively past where A Dance
With Dragons left the main storylines.
The opening episodes of the following season tossed off the violent
overthrows of the Martell, Greyjoy and Bolton monarchs in short order, en route
to a surprisingly happy conclusion where those Boltons were decisively vanquished,
along with the villainous Sparrows and slavers in Essos. As those victories coincided with women conspicuously
ascendant in all the remaining power structures, and the show gradually
backed off the explicit sex and nudity in response to steady online criticism, my impression of this “new era” was that Benioff and Weiss were
operating from a place that would rather eschew controversy than court it, especially
as it related to gender politics. And sought
to compensate for a dulled narrative edge by increasing the bloody
pageantry.
Which wasn’t all bad, as that pageantry got pretty bitchin' as we went from Hardhome to the Battle Of The Bastards to the Long Night, but S7 continued other questionable
trends, with the megabudget spectacle becoming even more intricate in the
presentation but seemingly-careless in the narrative foundations. It certainly seems, in light of the hard and
pitch-dark turn this episode took, that I was too quick to conflate at a
certain preference for visceral impact over airtight logistics in the action
scenes with a general “eagerness to please”. I thought that eagerness would translate to reluctance
to challenge viewers with difficult narrative turns. And there were also more general factors that
conspired to slow my uptake. There is
ample precedent for even notoriously hard-nosed series to go a bit mushy in the
home stretch when it comes to their central antiheroes. The finales of Breaking Bad, Mad Men and Sons Of Anarchy
were surprisingly generous to their frequently-monstrous protagonists, and
while I had dropped off the show a few years before, apparently Dexter reigns supreme in this regard. It
may be impossible for any show to ever match the utter gutlessness of LOST‘s desperate swerve into hokey
mysticism and naked sentimentality as a Hail Mary bid to divert attention
from its inability to pay off dozens of plot threads and mysteries it had
haphazardly spun out over the years, but Battlestar
Galactica’s conclusion followed some of that same general trajectory to a much less
extreme degree. GOT has a lot in common with those last two shows in particular, as
sprawling, adult-oriented but mythology-heavy fantasy serials, which seem like the
most difficult and complex type of ending to write. Those adults in the audience
will balk at resolutions that are overly neat or pat, but also the fantasy and
mystery elements demand direct and complete payoffs to justify viewer’s investment
and suspension of disbelief in all the weird shit.
| Seriously, the finale of LOST is just the worst. |
So anyway, I guess I was mentally preparing for GOT to come in for a landing that was incongruously soft compared
to the turbulent ride that the audience and characters had previously taken. And on top of that general sense, there was another
reason to doubt it would really follow through with the teases of Dany going
full Mad Queen, that was more specific to the show itself and its handling
of drama, rather than presentation of action sequences. The ends of both S6 and
S7 featured some contrived, none-too-convincing tension around the Good Guys potentially
turning on each other (Jon and Sansa regarding the Battle Of The Bastards, Arya
and Sansa regarding Littlefinger’s machinations), that quickly and painlessly dissipated
when it was time for the rousing conclusion. Combined with all the rest, this made me quite
sure that whatever friction they tried to gin up between our nice pretty princess
and our nice pretty prince with all this mishegoss about competing claims to
the throne, it would all be swept aside for a similarly rousing conclusion to
the entire series. Not without some
losses and graphic bloodshed for flavor, but in the end the bad
guys would all be cast down and the surviving good guys, if sporting some
gnarlier scars than your typical triumphant group of fantasy heroes, would be in
power and guiding the realm toward better days.
But of course, I was wrong.
They were actually serious this time, and while I don’t think it makes
the artificial conflict among the Stark kids better or more convincing in
retrospect, it did manage to leverage
those earlier shortcomings to make this twist land harder. So perhaps some mixed kudos are in order for
making that particular glass of lemonade.
But this twist does retroactively
improve so much about prior scenes and
seasons, things that I had figured as shortcuts or contrivances that just had
to be shrugged off to keep the story moving.
But in order to get to that, you do have to buy that this is a turn that Dany might take on a fundamental character level. I do, obviously. The strain on her has grown rapidly over the last few episodes, as the ineffectiveness and outright betrayals
of her advisors, the lack of gratitude or fealty from the Northerners, the consistently
lucky shots from her opponents, and sudden loss of her entire inner circle have
turned her victories to ash in her mouth.
Her glorious savior credentials should be the strongest they’ve ever
been, but she is feeling the sands shifting beneath her feet as the populace
heap credit on Jon Snow, even before they learn that he actually falls ahead of
her in the line of succession.
Is it rushed? Absolutely,
but I also think that the rapid succession in which these personal blows have landed
on her actually make her hard turn more believable. If you don’t buy it, I doubt what I have
to say can “fix” it for you, because like a lot debates about believability in
fiction, a lot hinges on how much you want
to buy in. This turn of events is much
more exciting than what I was expecting to happen, and this is the most interested I have been in Dany as a character since at least the first season, so I'm game for it. If you were fully on board with the character
throughout, then it must play to practically the opposite effect, and you have
none of the incentive to meet the show halfway.
But if you can roll with it, this culmination of Dany’s
entire arc clarifies and reframes so much of what has frustrated me about the
last couple seasons, and beyond. Among
these matters:
- Tyrion’s attempts to prevent Dany from doing exactly this once she arrived in Westeros initially felt like the show straining to raise a moral objection to delay the obvious tactical decision that the plot needed to be put on hold, and make it seem like he had something to do while the war with the dead played out. Now that we have seen in such close up, protracted detail exactly how horrific the “easy” way looks, his insistence on taking the path of greater resistance feels more significant, and justified.
- Where the show had always seemed blind to the implications of Dany’s use of a horde of enthusiastic rapists and pillagers to “liberate” downtrodden peasants that had not actually requested such help, those implications suddenly became queasily real when they started pouring into a city dense with defenseless innocents.
- The Unsullied had long seemed to be a convenient out for how she could seize her throne while sidestepping the brutal realities of conquering that the show’s realpolitik approach had established. But it turns out that when Jorah once urged her to use them because “they do not rape, they do not put cities to the sword unless they are ordered to do so,” it was the final bit that was important. Their android nature ultimately does not serve to make us feel better about Dany’s ascent to power, but worse, because we know it is only Dany’s decision driving them to slaughter the defenseless citizenry.
- It makes a variety of other smaller moments in her earlier adventures into actual foreshadowing, and more significant steps toward this tragic outcome than the wheel-spinning diversions I had initially saw them as. I thought of her long-dead brother Viserys way more than I expected to in the 8th season of a show where he only lasted 6 episodes total. I was struck first by his voice-over appearing in the Previously On, and then that Dany actually looked a little like him when in the wan, frizzy-haired state she appears when Tyrion informs her of Varys’s treachery. I had always loved Viserys’s abrupt demise as the first major surprise the series was able to pull off on me once I (thought I) had my bearings. But there is an additional, cruel poetry to how she is driven to such rash, self-destructive choices by Jon accidentally usurping the allegiance of her would-be subjects just as her brother was by her accidentally usurping his position among the Dothraki. When she concludes “fear it is, then” after Jon refuses continued canoodling, it functions as a response to the question Viserys once posed as to “who can rule without wealth, or fear, or love?” Only when he asked, he did not have dragons to help with the fear part.
- Speaking of dragons, another scene that takes on additional layers is when Tyrion went down into the crypts to free Viserion and Rhaegal in Dany’s absence. At the time, it meant little to me, other than a way for the effects team to show off a little in an otherwise slow batch of episodes. But in hindsight there is more portentous weight on seeing him slowly and carefully unshackle the dragons, knowing how heavily being the man who unleashed The Dragon on Westeros will weigh on his future. And when he tells Varys afterward to stop him next time he has an idea like that…well, as we saw this episode, by the time the Spider tried, it was too little too late.
- Dany’s inner circle going largely untouched through all the sturm and drang of the last two or three seasons seemed like a missed opportunity to goose the stakes of a plotline that always felt turgid with the weight of destiny and its attendant plot armor. But losing two dragons, Jorah, and Missandei in such rapid succession plays into her anger, desperation and above all paranoia that fuel her sense that a brutal show of force is the only hope of instilling enough fear to rule a populace she can already feel gravitating to dreamy, cuddly Jon Snow.
- In turn, Jon’s secret ancestry once seemed like a twist that had to be followed through because it had been too deeply seeded in the days before the internet came along and spoiled for anyone who would care a decade early. It was the hoariest of fantasy tropes, the Chosen One with the secret birthright that would allow him to be king once the Dark Lord was overthrown, and I had just kind of assumed that the series had brutally subverted enough others that it had earned the right to play that one relatively straight. But now it has became clear that of course that twist is really more about Dany than Jon; it’s her fundamental sense of identity that is shattered by it, after all. For him, it’s just one more burden, a gift horse whose mouth he doesn’t even need to glance at to know he’d rather pass. For her, it is the football she has been running at her entire miserable life being cruelly snatched away at the last possible second. She did not come this far, through so much fire and blood, to meekly abdicate to some local dimbulb just because he has a penis and softer, more luxuriant curls than she does.
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| In hindsight, his ancestry should have been given away by his access to the lost recipe for Valyrian Conditioner |
The single biggest improvement, though, is how much further Dany’s
heel turn goes toward justifying dispatching the White Walkers with half the season
to go. I thought that was a mistake, based on the assumption that the bifurcation was a simple offshoot of
simply having too many outstanding plot threads that couldn’t be finally tied
off with the apocalyptic threat still looming.
But while Cersei is still possibly my favorite character, she is too
much of a known entity to hold up as a proper End Boss all on her own. Going
from averting the apocalypse to clashing with Cersei and her meager conventional
armies is a definite shift to a lower gear, and with Dany it probably would be too
if it were extended to a full season’s length – it’s why I can’t agree
with the calls that the turn was too rushed, even if I recognize it as a sticking
point for many, and not necessarily an unfair one. But with Dany, at least it is a new gear. Having a novel issue to grapple with in these
waning hours helps them feel less like a series of extended afterthoughts, and
thankfully spares us the ongoing pretense of having to treat Big Crossbows as a
dire threat after our heroes have defeated Death Itself. But it also takes what looked like a mopping up of loose ends, and shifts it
into a powerful and pessimistic thematic statement, that saving the world did not transform the world. People are
still people, laughably quick to forget the greatest collective achievements of
humanity in pursuit of whatever personal wants they might have the next the day. Wars may be fleetingly glorious, but mostly
they are just terrible. Power corrupts,
always, and as Douglas Adams taught me long ago, those that want it most tend to be the last
people who should have it.
Okay, that's a lot of verbiage on a single topic. What else did I forget?
- Right, if I do have a disappointment with how this all played out, it’s that Cersei did not get any bigger moments or speeches. In general, it is an effective choice to play her downfall like Stannis’s, where it is surprising strictly because of how straightforward it all goes down once Dany decides to stop being polite and start getting real. But Lena Headey was really underserved this season, as much as she and Coster-Waldau typically nailed their final scene together. That scene also felt at once too neat and not quite neat enough. Reuniting with Jaime on the great map of Westeros and dying as her ambitions literally crumble on top of their heads is poetic enough, but it feels like a missed opportunity not to force him to mercy-kill her.
- Speaking of great performances, Tyrion’s last moments with both Jaime and Varys are powerfully played all around. I don’t know why, but taking off his rings when he hears the soldiers coming is an oddly affecting grace note for Conleth Hill.
- Even if it had no bearing on the plot, I like the attention to detail represented by showing green bursts of flame pop up around the city as Drogon’s firebombing sets off hidden caches of wildfire that have long been established are hidden around the city.
- God, Euron sucks right to the end. Cersei needed a heavy that could go out and get shit done, but the performance was just so out of sync with the rest of the show, and his apparating out of nowhere one final time to challenge Jaime to fight for…reasons…was the one flat out bad part of the episode. I’m not opposed to the idea of Jaime being the one to off him, I guess, but he had already stolen a kingdom, bedded a queen and is the only man living to kill a dragon. So the achievement he is most proud of when he is dying is…sort of beating up a famous cripple?
- Speaking of pointless fights that could have been lifted out with no real effect on the story, Cleganebowl looked appropriately rad, but I wish it had tied into something, anything else going on in a way that would feel less arbitrary. Qyburn’s death was great, but it seemed kind of out of nowhere that the Mountain suddenly hated the Hound so much that he would drop everything to kill him as the world fell down around him. The Hound’s hatred for his brother has been established enough, but I never got a sense that it was all that reciprocal. The two have been face to face before without going immediately berserker on each other, so I’m not sure why now was so much different.
- It’s a cool ass moment, but I just have so many questions about the FrankenMountain’s anatomy after a knife through the skull fails to drop him. Like, I get that his innards have been messed with in such a way that he can’t really bleed to death from wounds to his limbs or torso, but he still has memories and cognition and such…is the brain no longer the source for those higher functions? Did Qyburn install some sort of cluster in his knees that is regulating motor functionality?
- It’s a nice touch that the battle starts off from the POV of the defenders, not our “heroes”. Dany herself is hardly seen, and after her heel turn not at all, becoming a vengeful deity raining fire from the heavens.
- The “Previously On” segment really was well done, with the VO montage providing us the most succinct refresher possible on the push-pull of Dany’s arc between benevolent messiah and vengeful tyrant.
Season Morghulis: Ned Umber, Edd Tollett, Lyanna Mormont, Berric Dondarrion,
Alys Karstark, Theon Greyjoy, Jorah Mormont, Melisandre, (Viserion), (The Night
King), Rhaegal, Missandei, Varys, Harry Strickland, Euron Greyjoy, Qyburn,
Sandor “the Hound” Clegane, Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane, Jaime Lannister,
Cersei Lannister
Prophesies: This week really laid my soothsaying to waste (see above), with only the graciousness of Ser Gregor Clegane giving me any hits at all.
Jon – Becomes king, dies defeating Night
King, leaving Dany pregnant
Dany – Refuses
to step down for Jon, thinks better of it after losing more dragons and
advisors in the battle at Winterfell, but winds up back on the throne after he
dies heroically, with a proper incestuous Targaryen heir on the way.
Bran – Dies/leaves human body warging into Drogon
as a sacrifice play allowing the living to escape Winterfell.
Sansa/Tyrion – Renew their marriage to rule
the North and Westerlands.
Arya – Provides assist to take out Mountain in
Cleganebowl. Hooks up with Gendry but refuses to be tied down as his wife, last seen hitting the road
for more merry adventures, but with an ominous note that a Faceless man is
trailing her.
Gendry – High
Lord of the Stormlands.
Sam – High Lord of The Reach.
Gilly – Lady Of the Reach.
Jaime – Appointed/Sentenced to reconstitute the
Night’s Watch as new Lord Commander.
Brienne – Commander of the Queensguard.
Davos – Small Council, Master Of Ships.
Missandei – Small Council.
Jorah – killed by Walkers.
Tormund – Ruler of new Wildling nation in the Gift.
Yara – Ruler
Of Iron Islands.
Theon – dies heroically.
Euron – dismembered by Mountain.
The Hound/Mountain – killed
together in Cleganebowl.
Drogon/Rhaegal – die in battles with Night King.
Grey Worm – killed by Walkers.
Varys – killed in Cersei’s trap.
Melisandre – killed by Varys.
Robin Arryn – killed in Cersei’s trap.
Yohn Royce – Lord of the Vale.
Berric Dondarrion – killed by Walkers.
Edd – killed by Walkers.
Qyburn – killed
by Mountain.
Bronn – refuses
to kill Jaime/Tyrion, gets a castle.
Lyanna Mormont – Rules Bear Island.
Podrick – killed by Walkers.
Ghost - killed
by Walkers
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