The Game of Thrones Comes to an End

I had two simultaneous feelings about the finale of Game of Thrones.

As an episode, aside from a couple logical leaps and one or two lines that seemed to say "eh, I know you'll have questions about this, but don't think about it too much," I thought the state of the world as things ended pretty much worked, given what had come before it.

But it's that "what came before it" that makes me feel a little less comfortable giving the series the golden seal I wanted to.

Obviously, we're going into spoiler territory. Pretty soon, GoT will be seen in its totality, as a fixed thing (which it already is, of course.)

But we're still well within the statute of limitations. So here comes the spoiler break.


Last week's episode, and the series' penultimate, was shocking. We saw Daenerys, buoyed by her messianic narrative, kill thousands of innocent people.

In retrospect, there's something cleverly subversive here. All along, Dany's story has been a mix of fist-pumping glory undercut by problematic aspects. Her "liberation" of the Unsullied really just saw them bind themselves to a new master. Her liberation of Mereen felt a whole lot like colonizing - especially when we had one of the seasons end with Dany, a white woman, lifted above a crowd of people of color.

Indeed, the very problematic aspects of Dany's stories now prove (mostly) intentional. We liked her, especially given that she was a woman striving against a patriarchal system and because she had survived abuse and other terrible things. But the adversity she faced fed her messiah complex.

Was her turn from "problematic hero" to "mad villain" too abrupt? Absolutely. Her motivation in burning King's Landing was far too ambiguous and demanded far too much of the audience to retroactively assign a motivation that made sense.

But it was a place that the story could build to, and one that I actually believe it was building towards now that I see it. It's just a question of execution.

And it's heartbreaking, because we've spent the last eight seasons seeing the better side of her - the one that was guided by a moral core and did, truly, want to see a better world arise. When Jon confronts her in the ruins of the red keep, with the Iron Throne standing among the ashes, she makes it clear that her sense of good and evil is based on a sense that she cannot be wrong - and if she is the arbiter of good and evil, then no act she does can be evil, even if it means the wholesale slaughter of innocent people.

Which, again, I think makes sense in the grand scheme of things but doesn't necessarily have the details to back it up.

Jon's sense of morality is based less on destiny than it is on basic human decency. And when he goes up to the Red Keep as the Unsullied execute Lannister prisoners, he's heartbroken to see Daenerys unrepentant, and knows what he has to do.

Jon kisses her and then stabs her in the heart.

There's no flaming sword here, no prophecy of Azor Ahai revealed in a sudden moment of miracle. But something else happens. Drogon flies up, and when he sees Daenerys dead on the ground, it looks as if he's about to kill Jon. But instead, he turns his fire on the Iron Throne itself, melting it into slag.

For the record, this was an image I've wanted to see since about season one. The Iron Throne had to be destroyed by the end of the series. I had just hoped Dany would be the one to do it.

Drogon takes Dany's body and flies off, never to be heard from again (which was the source of one of those cringe-worthy "don't worry about it" lines.)

I'll admit that maybe this requires too much work on the part of the audience to find motivations, but I think that Drogon is smarter than we give him credit for, and he understood that it wasn't Jon who really doomed Dany - it was the power that the throne represented. Not granted, if he could have such nuanced thoughts then, why the hell was he cool with killing all those people last episode - I mean, Dany didn't kill them herself - she used Drogon to do it.

So it doesn't quite work, which is a shame because I love that image.

From this point, however, we're wrapping things up.

For the most part, I liked the facts of the ending, even if there was a bit of a rush to get through things. We see things from Tyrion's perspective, as comes to the Dragonpit not to the scene of his own grisly execution (for freeing Jaime) and instead finds a council of the various leaders of Westeros.

The various forces of the Seven Kingdoms have surrounded King's Landing and are threatening the Unsullied - who are kind of leaderless apart form Grey Worm. It's here where some semblance of sanity prevails and they decide that someone has to be named King or Queen so that they can figure out what to do with Jon. Apparently his claim to the now-non-existent throne doesn't count for much among the Unsullied, who are pretty damned pissed that he, you know, killed their savior-queen.

But while Edmure Tully makes a lame and downright comical attempt to put forth himself as a candidate for King (only for Sansa, being awesome, to shut him down) and then Samwell Tarly suggests in a beautifully optimistic and naive way that they could institute a democracy (only for everyone - including people we like, like Sansa - to laugh the idea off.) Tyrion, instead, suggests that Bran fill the role. Tyrion argues that the best way to get people behind a leader is through the narrative. Bran has gone through his whole transformation, and furthermore, doesn't particularly want the power he'll get. He'll be dispassionate and doesn't have any earthly desires, so maybe he'll actually be able to rule in a just and fair way.

Bran agrees - having, of course, known that that was why he had gone there in the first place. Furthermore, they establish that the monarchy will no longer be hereditary - that each king or queen (probably king - things aren't totally fixed yet) will be chosen by the council. It's certainly not going to make things perfect, but might mean we don't get Joffreys.

Basically, it's a step toward something more like a Republic, and while there's always a chance for backsliding or, you know, civil wars in that kind of system, it does seem like a step forward that might lead toward the kind of democratic republic system that - while certainly flawed - has made our world a much less violent place than it had been (even with two world wars, the 20th century was far less violent than previous centuries.)

Sansa, however, notes that the North is done kneeling to kings in the south - even if that king is a Stark. So she proclaims the North independent, and Bran accepts this with no real objections.

Arya chooses not to head home, though. She instead chooses - just as my sister predicted, which is pretty freaking awesome because it did not seem like an obvious choice - to explore, sailing west of Westeros to seek out new lands.

Jon, meanwhile, officially has to take the black for killing Daenerys - the only deal the Unsullied could accept that wasn't killing him. But Jon asks a very intelligent question: does the Night's Watch even exist anymore? The answer, it turns out, is not at all. With the dead no longer a threat and the Wildlings at peace with the North, there's no need for the Night's Watch. So when Jon arrives at Castle Black, he finds Tormund there, with a whole group of Free Folk ready to take Jon into the "True North," where we can hope he'll have the life he might have had with Ygritte. (Fitting, isn't it, that Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie are actually married.)

And that's where the series ends, actually in the same woods where those Night's Watch rangers were slain by White Walkers in the premiere.

There's hope for the future, even if we're left feeling raw and wounded by what has happened in the interim.

It's almost two, so I'm pretty tired to go full-on critique and analysis mode. Overall, I think that the kind of "facts" of the ending to the series feel about right. I've spent the last week reckoning with Daenerys' plot, and I think that will continue. But given that was where her character went, I think this episode ties things up correctly, if, largely due to the rushed nature of the last two seasons, a bit sloppy.

A lot of shows with disappointing finales have left the whole series feeling a bit tainted. I don't know if I'd say that this one ranks among those. There's a lot of vitriol going on these days. I think that when you have a show or any kind of franchise people feel this passionate about, it can never live up to expectations.

I think shortening the seasons for 7 and 8 was not the right call, and might have solved some of the problems we've had. Would it solve all of them? Certainly not. Again, when expectations are perfection, we can't get it because there is no such thing as artistic perfection.

Was Game of Thrones a good show overall? I think that there's no denying that. It'll be weird not to have any more of it to look forward to.