‘Game of Thrones’ S8E6 ‘The Iron Throne’ (Analysis).

I am too upset and enraged to string a coherent sentence together. Last week, Jaime and Cersei Lannister departed for the Night Lands with a whimper as opposed to a roar. This week, Game of Thrones goes out with a fart instead of a whimper while its audience stands aghast at the bottom of an abyss, wondering what in fuck just happened.

Oh, it’s good for about ten minutes. For about ten minutes, you think ‘this isn’t so bad; maybe they’ve managed to salvage something after all’. Then Drogon is flying off into the sunset with Daenerys’ corpse and our shattered hopes, and it only goes downhill from there in this catastrophically bad season finale, The Iron Throne.

Best scene: Tyrion finds Jaime and Cersei’s bodies.

The gradual dawning of horror on Tyrion’s face as he walks through the charred ruins of King’s Landing is some of the finest acting the show has seen this season. Peter Dinklage is such a compelling actor that he commands our attention simply by walking around and observing, and telling us more about his character, through that silence, than a clever speech ever could. It’s only when he finds Jaime and Cersei’s bodies, however, that the full cost of his support for Daenerys comes crashing down on him: the ruin of his House, the destruction of his family, the final loss of every friend he ever had. It’s a horribly sad scene that boasts some stupendous acting from Peter Dinklage and will probably earn him his next Emmy.

Best scene: Honourable mentions.

Jon kills Daenerys.

There is something truly dreadful about Daenerys’ childlike glee as she tells Jon the story of how she imagined the Iron Throne as a child. She is positively bouncing on the balls of her feet. She radiates light and life and utter blindness, speaking quietly, composedly, reassuringly, with all the confidence of an individual who has no idea what she’s done. Excellent acting from Emilia Clarke, as usual, and a long-awaited opportunity for Jon to actually do something apart from look pretty. Kit Harington’s performance is perfectly pitched, with nothing in excess and nothing in moderation, so that when Daenerys breathes her last, we actually feel something for him apart from annoyance.

Jon visits Tyrion in prison.

When she murdered the slavers of Astapor, I’m sure no one but the slavers complained. After all, they were evil men. When she crucified hundreds of Meereenese nobles, who could argue? They were evil men. The Dothraki Khals she burned alive, they would have done worse to her. Everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer her for it, and she grows more powerful and more sure that she is good and right.

I have put this scene in this section because it comes the closest to rationally explaining why Daenerys decided to burn King’s Landing, something that the show stands in dire need of right now. It’s still not enough, and I don’t think it explains the destruction of Daenerys’ character arc. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that much of Daenerys’ strength and appeal comes from people cheering her on for murder. This scene would have worked beautifully had the Mad Queen story been better prepared and better presented. As it stands, however, there’s nothing but more great acting from Peter Dinklage and the sheer puerility of the rest of the episode that makes this interaction stand out from the general mess.

Just one thing: why does Tyrion say he loves Daenerys? When was this discussed? Was I looking the other way when it was?

Once these three scenes are done with, the whole episode descends into a series of badly-written, atrociously-paced shitstorms that not even the exemplary acting skills of Peter Dinklage can stop from seeming like some kind of stupidity competition.

Characters.

Grey Worm.

Well. Look who turned into a maniac overnight. Grey Worm’s antics in this episode (and in last week’s, come to that) are like Daenerys’ in a microcosm, and like Daenerys’, they make absolutely no sense. True, Grey Worm is a soldier and has limited experience in expressing himself non-violently, but to kill prisoners who have surrendered, and to obey his queen even when she’s acting like a lunatic? I can’t bring myself to believe that Grey Worm is following the old ‘I was just obeying orders’ chestnut. He’s doing this because he enjoys it, which is completely at odds with the rational, thinking individual that we have known for all these years.

Daenerys.

I’m a tad miffed that Daenerys does not seem to be remotely upset by what she has done. Doesn’t she even get one moment to reflect on her actions and see the misery that she has caused? In the words of George Smiley, ‘[she’s] a fanatic. And the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt.’ Seconds before burning King’s Landing, Daenerys suffered just such a moment of doubt. Where is that doubt now?

Jon.

If there was a Sexy Lamp Test for men, Jon probably wouldn’t pass it for most of this season, or indeed, for most of this episode. Apart from the obvious usefulness of his murder of Daenerys, and the rage he displays in her presence, he spends most of his screen time weeping and whining and generally irritating the life out of us. Ending up back in the North – where he will presumably have no one to irritate but wildlings – does not even constitute the ghost of a character arc. Like Jaime, he’s right back where he started, as though nothing at all has happened since Seasons 2 and 3.

Brienne.

I was so petrified that Brienne crying her eyes out about Jaime was the last thing we were going to see of her. Fortunately, the showrunners seem to have maintained at least one iota of sense in this regard by demonstrating that her life has continued richly. She is  shown as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, an active participant in government and quietly filling in Jaime’s pages in the White Book in a poignant, restrained tribute.

Sansa.

So Sansa gets the ending she has always wanted, in a way that she has only recently learned to want it: a queen with no master except herself. In so doing, she is one of the few leads to escape relatively unscathed from the great character arc decimation. Long may she reign.

Arya.

So Arya’s going to the West where the maps run out…why? She spent five seasons trying to get home, and now that she is home, she wants to leave again for no reason that has been made clear to us? Why does none of this make any sense?

The rest of my analysis will be in point form. I can’t even, anymore.

The Dragon Pit: gods, what a stupid scene.

Our first thought is ‘What the fuck? Why can we see the sun? How did everyone get here so fast?’, largely because we’re given zero indication beyond Tyrion’s barely-noticeable beard that time has passed at all. The WTFs get worse the further the scene progresses.

• The last time there was a meeting in the dragon pit, we got the impression that the various parties wanted to rip each other’s livers out. Here, we get the impression that they want to eat biscuits, drink chamomile, watch ping pong and titter without getting too much blood on their clothes.
• The Unsullied would never take Jon and Tyrion prisoner instead of murdering them. I don’t recall Daenerys rescinding her command that her enemies be slaughtered, and betraying and murdering the queen would certainly qualify Jon and Tyrion as enemies in the Unsullied’s eyes.
• Yara Greyjoy is far too sensible to blindly take Daenerys’ side after she burned down an entire fucking city.
• What’s up with Edmure Tully doing…whatever he was doing?
• The Lords of Westeros would never agree to let a crippled boy with no hope of producing an heir sit the Iron Throne. They’re too obsessed with honouring blood and strength for them to change their mind in five minutes for no reason that would make sense to any of them (i.e. peace). To them, Bran’s status as the Three-Eyed Raven would seem not only absurd, but unbelievable, so how could they hope to respect him as a king?
• The Lords of Westeros would never agree to the election of a king. Their minds are not made for ideas that terrible.
• The Lords of Westeros would not allow themselves to be dictated to by the Unsullied. I think they would have let Jon and Tyrion be killed rather than listen to foreigners.
• The Lords of Westeros are too arrogant to let Tyrion decide their future for them. All their passive, accepting nodding irritated me, and Tywin Lannister is turning in his grave.
• Sansa’s request for Northern independence is the kind of thing that ends in another war, not in a curt nod and a lot of smiling.

But just when we think it can’t get any worse, we get:

Small council meeting.

Oh, gods.

• What the fuck was all that nonsense with the chairs? When Tywin was still around, the original point of farting around with chairs was to gauge power dynamics by seeing who would choose to sit where. In this scene, Tyrion only seems to have an obsessive-compulsive concern with the chairs being in a straight line.
• The last king who spent this little time at small council meetings was Robert, and we all know how that one turned out.
• King Bran, I’m curious as to where the new Master of Whisperers and Master of War are going to come from, since everyone is frikkin’ dead and you’ve let all the strong leaders secede from your fucking kingdom.
• Giving Bronn Highgarden is a stupid idea. Making him Master of Coin is an atrocious one.
• Presenting Tyrion with a book called A Song of Ice and Fire is not clever or profound; it’s cringeworthy. Why exactly would anyone be in such a hurry to document this shitstorm (shitstorm meaning both recent Westerosi history and recent Game of Thrones history)? Then there’s the fact that no self-respecting historian would ignore Tyrion – unless, of course, his work was as badly-planned as this season was.
• Bran, and the rest of his council, do not seem overly concerned by the fact that there is a great hulking dragon out there somewhere that has shown every indication of being like the lion that tasted man. Shouldn’t finding Drogon be like…a priority?
• When the conversation turned to sanitation and brothels, I almost cried. Sanitation? Brothels? We’ve spent all these years and all this time waiting for a new era, and they talk about sanitation and brothels? WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKING DRAGON?

The Starks say goodbye.

A dull back and forth recitation of compliments that makes the Starks look like the most boring family in Westeros, this scene only serves to make me miss the fucked-up Lannister family dynamics even more. I have never seen a less emotional farewell in my life.

Arya: I’m not going back North.

Sansa: Where are you going?

WHERE ARE YOU GOING? That’s the best they could come up with?

Ten thousand endings, each one equally bad.

• Sansa’s dress is pretty. But won’t she have more important things to do, on returning to the North, than organising her own coronation as soon as possible? Also, isn’t she smart enough to realise that getting people to shout ‘the [insert title here] in the North’ usually guarantees a speedy death?
• Arya…on a ship for no reason? Looking sort of happy…why?
• I thought Tormund and the wildlings were waiting out the snows at Castle Black. It seems they were just waiting for Jon to lead them out into…some random trees?

Maybe it’s not such a bad ending  At least Jon fucking greeted Ghost this time.