The Long Night felt like the climactic episode that all of Game of Thrones had been building to in its 8 seasons. Was it flawed, with a number of questionable decisions on the parts of the writers and staging? Certainly. Was it also big, epic, and thrilling? Also certainly. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the next three episodes were basically just denouement for the series.
Indeed, when you consider the proportion of time a feature film has to dedicate to its post-climax runtime, compared to what we usually expect from epic TV shows - in which one generally expects the series climax to happen in its finale, and then have to pay everything off in a much shorter span of time before you even consider the proportions of total story to time wrapping things up, it actually would make a lot of sense for shows to get their biggest climax out of the way a few episodes early.
In Breaking Bad, for example, I think you could make a solid argument that its ante-penultimate (that's third-last) episode Ozymandias is really the series climax. But it's still in the show's true finale that we get the final burst of action and resolution.
Tonight's episode, The Last of the Starks, feints at being pure denouement. Indeed, I had initially gotten the sense that they might have decided to kind of sandwich the Long Night between two much quieter episodes.
It doesn't really go that way.
Let's discuss after the break.
The episode begins with the funeral service for everyone who died in the battle. Jorah, Edd, Lyanna, and Theon are given special attention as their funeral pyres are lit. Then, we get a celebratory feast.
A few things happen.
First off, Daenerys, whose own forces were devastated in the battle (while it seemed that basically all of her Dothraki and Unsullied other than Grey Worm had died, we hear that it was closer to half - still really bad,) sees that Jon has the loyalty and love of many, and given that she knows that Jon has a rival (and better, by male primogeniture, and actually any kind of primogeniture given that he's her older brother's son, though the gender aspect is certainly not a minor one) claim to the Iron Throne, she worries that everything she's fought for is just going to be pulled out from under her, and not really without reason.
Jamie and Brienne wind up sleeping together - it's Brienne's first time and Jamie's first time with someone who isn't his own sister. Yet if Brienne represented Jamie's chance at redemption - which to be fair I tended to see more as a platonic relationship thing, but I can also understand taking it in this direction - ultimately we find Jamie deciding later in the episode that he needs to be there when the fight comes to Cersei - oddly, the show seems almost as if it is implying that there is some ambiguity in his motives, but I have to, have to believe that he's going there to kill her, abandoning Brienne.
Daenerys tries to convince Jon not to tell anyone about his true ancestry, begging him to swear Sam and Bran to secrecy. But somewhat prompted by Bran in a family meeting at the Godswood (hey sis, remember when you saved the world like, right here?) Jon tells him to reveal the truth.
This rumor spreads like wildfire. Sansa tells Tyrion, who tells Varys, and basically one can assume that soon everyone will know.
We bid a few characters some fond farewells. It seems as if Sam, Gilly, and Tormund (and Ghost) are able to safely leave the series without dying.
Gendry is legitimized by Daenerys and made Lord of Storm's End, and, drunk, he goes and proposes to Arya, who gives him the "oh, buddy" rejection, echoing words she told her father - that she's not a lady. Ultimately, she and the Hound, both considering themselves to have unfinished business, start heading south.
And Bronn shows up for a scene in which he threatens the Lannister brothers with a crossbow, securing a promise from Tyrion to make him Lord of Highgarden if they win the war.
So that's all the kind of character-focused stuff. Jon rides south with his forces as Daenerys rides Drogon with the fleet below her on their way to King's Landing. Then, out of the fucking blue, Rhaegal is shot through with several ballista bolts, including a clearly fatal one through the neck. He falls into the water and Dany is forced to retreat as Euron's fleet begins to bombard Daenerys'. Tyrion is forced to jump ship, and they are forced to regroup on Dragonstone. The Ironborn take captives, including Missandei.
While Varys contemplates removing Dany and simply backing Jon, something Tyrion strongly objects to, Dany and her people go to the gates of King's Landing and demand Cersei's surrender. Dany knows that it's really just political theater - she knows King's Landing is going to be a bloodbath, but it's important for propaganda purposes that Cersei is the one whose decisions led to bloodshed. Tyrion makes his best effort to convince his sister to surrender, but instead she has the Mountain kill Missandei, and the last battle is at hand.
So it doesn't look like we're going to get a big subversion of expectations here. There will be a big fight for King's Landing, and the show is definitely showing itself willing to bring about more shocking deaths after the Long Night. Rhaegal's death came completely out of the blue, and naturally makes me wonder if dragons are going to be extinct again by the end of all of this.
There is something about these last couple episodes that doesn't sit very well with me. The Long Night was the culmination of a mythic struggle 8,000 years in the making. There's been plenty of talk of destiny and prophecy, but how much of that was really relevant. The Lord of Light brought Jon back to life. If he brought Beric back over and over so that he could save Arya at a crucial moment in that battle, then was Jon's purpose a similarly small-but-crucial moment? Was it that he was the one able to gather enough forces to win the battle?
Because in the battle itself, he didn't really accomplish a whole lot, ultimately ending it screaming a the undead Viserion in what looked like an attempt to face death with defiance.
The Iron Throne feels like a very petty prize when the fate of humanity was on the line. It would seem very strange indeed for all those prophecies to actually be about who becomes king or queen, and not, you know, facing this - as we've discussed - 8,000 year old supernatural threat.
If we were meant to discover that prophecy is bullshit and all this destiny stuff was a red herring, it seems like the show should have made a bigger point about it. Instead, our concern over prophecy and such seems to have withered away like Melisandre.
I'd also argue that Missandei's death was not terribly interesting, narratively. We already knew the fight was coming, and I don't really think we needed a "now it's personal" motivator. (And it's also not great to kill off your one woman of color in the cast...)
We have two episodes to go. Granted, they're likely long episodes. My guess would be that next episode we'll see the fight for King's Landing - maybe another large battle, though probably not as massive as the Long Night. Does Cersei blow up most of the city with Wildfire? That seems likely.
Do we lose more characters? Almost certainly. Does Jamie kill Cersei? Maybe. Does Arya kill Cersei? Also maybe, but I feel like she could retire from her badass ninja life as all-time champion after taking out the Night King. Does Jamie die? Probably. Does Cersei die? She better? Cleganebowl? I mean, it has to happen, right?
In my mind, I think that having either Jon or Dany die in that fight would make things too narratively simple. Having both of them die? Something of an anticlimax. It really seems like they're building to a question of which of them sits the throne, but I don't really know how I'd make a satisfying ending out of that.
Frankly, I still want the Iron Throne melted into slag by dragonfire at the end of this. Dany said she meant to break the wheel, after all.
I don't want to see Dany just turned into a Mad Queen. She's certainly not been perfect, but I don't think that having literally her entire arc over the course of the series subverted would be a good way to end her story. Basically, there needs to be a clever ending to all of this, and I'm not sure that we'll get one.
No comments:
Post a Comment