Spoilers Game of Thrones: The Final Season

I still haven't seen Six Feet Under (I know, I know...). The Shield's final season and finale are great within the context of the series, i.e. accepting that the situations and scenarios those characters experienced are ridiculous and aren't remotely within the confines of reality (although, to be fair, I guess the same is true for Breaking Bad).

I remembered another great example: Oz.

 

In addition to others listed, Parks & Rec, Newhart, for me Angel went out strong. And Scrubs if you count the actual series finale, and not Med School.

 

Babylon 5

 

I am very proud of myself. I am in 182 out of 20024 place on the Wiki of Thrones death pool ladder. I have a score of 185, the leader is at 220 so there is no chance of me catching up and winning a prize but I will content to end up in the top 1%.

 

Boooooo

Boooooo

 

They really love actually setting people on fire on this show because they broke last year's record with the most people set on fire in a single shot in television history. I just hope that the stuntmen get paid all of the money because that's some scary shit.

I was already very impressed with the incredible work Miguel Sapochnik and all of the cameramen, stuntmen, set and costume designers, special effects specialists, and everyone else did in this episode, but after watching this behind-the-scenes feature, it's all the more impressive.

 

Other people on the Internet are suggesting that Dany's actions in the episode were just an emotional outburst in response to her friend and dragon being killed.

This strikes me as another "You wouldn't think that if she were male" moment. No doubt she was emotional but it didn't strike me as her reason from doing it. If it were JUST emotion she would have made straight for the Red Keep to kill Cersei and been done.

It's the result of believing her own self serving moral logic. She is SURE she will never be able to take the people's love away from Jon. So she needed to do a landmark burning to demonstrate to anyone who doesn't bend the knee what she WILL do to them.

In a way Sandor rescued his brother. When Gregor saw Sandor, he stopped being a zombie slave and became The Mountain again. Sandor helped him die a free man.

 

Were you using the same criticism earlier in the show? The War of Five Kings basically amounted to Theon taking Winterfell, a couple of shots of Robb walking through fields filled with wounded, and the Battle of the Blackwater.

The war in Slaver's Bay was shorthanded with the attack on Mereen.

Almost all of the actual warring takes place off camera.

It's not much better in the books. We do get one small battle scene with Tyrion in the first book (in the show he's knocked unconscious five seconds in so they don't have to show it). But we actually spend much less time with Robb, since he's not a POV character. And Catelyn is obviously never near the actual battles.

The series as a whole has never been concerned with actually showing us strategies or much of the actual war. None of the novels' POV characters are directly involved in them. Even Jaime doesn't become a POV character until after Catelyn frees him from captivity. The only time they dwell on it is when it's plot relevant (Robb and the Freys) or when they have to justify Robb or Stannis not attacking King's Landing at any given point.

 

Sorry, but the showrunners disagree with you. David Weiss says that her decision wasn't planned and was entirely an emotional response.

Game of Thrones’ showrunners say Daenerys’ big decision was completely spontaneous

 

If that’s true it’s a far lamer reason, but we’ll see which conclusion the last ep supports.

If it were just an emotional outburst there’s no reason at all for her targeting the entire city.

 

I don't think we ever really do anything that drastic for a single reason. We have reasons lined up like dominoes, and then something comes along and triggers them.

If Dany was otherwise happy, healthy, and feeling secure about life and her goals, I don't think just seeing the Red Keep would have turned her into a mass murderer.

That doesn't mean B&B are wrong. I think people are taking that statement the wrong way. Dany was on the edge, but could have kept it together. Seeing the keep was the last straw.

 

I tend to see it for what it was or what it looked like on TV; she had a total emotional/moral breakdown. She lost two dragons. Her lifelong close advisor gone. Her best and closest friend beheaded in front of her. An advisor betrayed her. Her beloved is now rejecting her and her claim to the throne is probably gone once the secret is spread.

A lot of it because Cersei broke her word about helping them fight the wight walkers and the north doesn't seem to really accept her.

Plus when they rung the bells and she looked at the Red Keep, I got a "you want to get off that easy after killing my best friend?" disgusted type of look. It looked like a lot of this breakdown occurred before they attacked King's Landing.

She might have been doing a pyrrhic victory sort of thing, if she thinks she can't have throne herself. I think that might be a way too evil a thing for her to do, but she was shown deliberately blowing innocent people to bits.

It will be interesting to hear her explanation for it in the finale.

 

I have switched sides. Initially I was critical of the episode, but now I love it. It is spectacular and epic. I never had a problem with Jaime and Cersei part. As I mentioned before Jaime didn't do anything bad, he went back to save the woman he loved. His redemption is still valid. Initially I didn't care for what happened to Dany and Arya but upcon rewatch and reflection I am fine with it. Can't wait for the finale.

 

In fiction, the creators intentions run secondary to the lens through which one reads or watches the story. If something happens in the final episode--Dany is consumed by regret over the madness that took over at that moment, for example--then this becomes part of the story. If we are left with what we've seen without further onscreen evidence then it is left up to interpretation.

On another topic, I agree with what many posters are saying. It is a shame that we didn't get two full seasons, or even three, following Season 6. The great thing about this series has always been the nuance and interpersonal drama that has unfolded. It took Rob multiple episodes and moving scenes to fall in love and get married back in the early seasons. Jon's journey from member of the Night Guard to Wildling supporter was told over three seasons.

We've been left with rushed romances (Dany and Jon), quick reunions (Arya and Sansa), and dropped characters (effectively Cersei). We can fill in the blanks on all these accounts, but it is a shame that the layers and subtext of the interpersonal dynamics has been muted in order to get the pieces in place to bring us to the ending.

No wonder it has taken Martin so long to figure things out when the books have more story lines that need to be fleshed out and even more characters that need to be moved around the board to push the story forward.

 

I just can't look at what Daenerys did in light of her conduct in the previous seven seasons and confidently claim it was just the logical conclusion of her self-righteousness, was a conscious decision and made complete internal logical sense to her. Yes, Daenerys has always been cruel and self-righteous and probably was a villain all along. But her cruelty up to The Bells has always been deliberate; retaliation against people she thought were guilty of crimes that deserved punishment. And you might argue she just concluded the same thing about King's Landing, but that doesn't take away the fact her mind literally snapped on screen into genocidal insanity and she started indiscriminately massacring people, something she's never ever done before. She was clearly in deep psychosis and the buildup for that was just never there in the series before this year.

People keep saying she's always had madness in her and keep pointing to the things she's done throughout the series to prove it... yes, they were cruel, petty, vindictive and self-righteous. But overall, they were the same kinds of acts that have gotten Tywin Lannister or Roose Bolton a reputation of ruthlessly pragmatic. But for Daenerys, doing the same things means it's Targ madness.

We're talking about the Tywin Lannister who not only sacked King's Landing and orchestrated the Red Wedding, but whose rule literally started with, as immortalized by The Rains of Castamere, massacring an entire bloodline to the last infant and burning down their castle to the ground, in retaliation for that family not swearing fealty to him, at a younger age than Daenerys is now. He had Tyrion's wife gang-raped to punish him for dishonoring House Lannister by marrying a commoner. But I've never seen people claiming these were signs of Tywin's insanity.

Sansa looked on dispassionately, completely detached as she released Ramsay's own hounds at him, and in The Last Stark, she actually sounded nostalgic about it when she recounted it to Sandor. For Sansa, it means "[her] skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel". She's become strong and it's a sign she'll be a good ruler. Daenerys looking on dispassionately and detached as Drogo murders Viserys means it's Targ madness.

 

What are you talking about "conclusion"? The writers themselves said that she didn't have it planned, so that means she didn't.

 

That's not quite what they're saying. They said that the series of events (losing advisors, betrayal, isolation, etc.) pushed her in that direction. So, when she was on the dragon and saw the Red Keep, she was already mostly there. Seeing the Red Keep was the final straw. So, it was "totally spontaneous" in that context given her existing mental state. If she was in a better mindset, it wouldn't have happened, which they also state.

 

It is a crazy double standard. Even Catelyn Stark slit an innocent girl's throat.

They showed over 25 straight minutes of her slaughtering people. Not even a battle, (that was over after about the first 9 minutes or so) It was just killing people and destroying everything.

There's supposed to be about a million people in King's Landing if I'm not mistaken. It was a straight massacre.


She's done some morally odd things like burning that witch for making Drogo a vegetable. It came off as odd because she did tell Danaerys that the Dothroki had raped her and burned her village down. And Drogo approved of it. So for her to burn her alive seemed out of place --she just told her what the Dothraki did to her village.

On the other hand the witch did say she intentionally did something to murder her baby before it was born. And Dany did try to save her and some of her people, even standing up to Drogo on their behalf. So you get more of this moral ambiguity.

It pretty obvious she had a breakdown, but at this point I don't know what she's thinking now.

 

I'm absolutely the same (I never had a problem with Jamie and Cersei either). But I've had a turnaround on Dany. I've re-watched the episode and read a lot of opinion pieces about the episode -- good and (mostly) bad.

I think what Dany did was shocking, devastating and chilling. The Doom of Dany was a force of nature that everyone on both sides were caught in the maelstrom of; it was horrific and utterly unforgivable. That being said... it works for me now. However, I still believe there's no getting around the fact her story did not benefit from the compressed nature of the last two seasons. It would still needed to have been shocking for full effect, but had they fleshed it out more we'd have had more to look back on to appreciate/understand how she hit this critical juncture.

At first I thought it would have made more sense if her other Dragon had survived to this episode and been mortally wounded at the end just before/as the bells rang, or at least *something* happening, that would spark her onslaught. But that's not the point. The decisive and very deliberate turn is all the more shocking because the battle was won easily, the city had surrendered - it was over. But in that moment, all the anger, hurt and fury was still pulsating through her. In spite of the victory she still felt the throne slipping away from her. I think she believed (rightly or wrongly) that in spite of Jon's protestations to "not wanting it", word would spread and he would eventually be thrust on to the throne. I think the Jon factor is one of a few dominoes that toppled over in that defining moment.

 

I think she planned this ever since Missandei died.
But I think she wanted King’s landing to stand their ground und not surrender.
She might not even have believed that could happen.
And when it did she realized she lost any semblance of justification and then decided to do it it anyway.