Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 5 Review
This is an episode we're going to be discussing and processing for a long, long time. Certainly longer still than what's taken to write this review, but here we are with an catastrophe that I am fairly convinced is a bitterly truthful 1 for the series… just likewise an unearned one for the last season.
Much of the debate to come will exist nigh whether Daenerys Targaryen should've become the fabulous "Mad Queen," and if this is indeed the ending George R.R. Martin imagined for his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series when he revealed the characters' fates to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss some years back. While I'yard fairly certain the details are off, I tin't help simply recall what a certain bounder of Winterfell (no, non that i) one time said, "If yous wanted a happy ending, you oasis't been paying attention." In my mind, this is the most purely George R.R. Martin-esque episode of seasons 7 or eight. Just even equally I type that, I am going to grapple with whether the showrunners earned reaching the moment where Daenerys turned the city built past her ancestors to ash, and a hero'southward journey revealed itself to be a tragic villain's descent.
This journey into night begins bleakly with a foreshadowing of what is to come. Taken in a vacuum, the early moments of the episode play with actual proper political intrigue of the medieval variety. Lord Varys believes that his queen is a threat and is working to undermine her. We do not know if he actually is able to share any of his messages of doom and gloom that reveal Jon Snowfall is a Targaryen—I suspect he did—merely he's apparently resigned to the fact his fate is already sealed. He revealed also much of his plans concluding calendar week to Tyrion Lannister who remained a loyal Queen's Homo, fifty-fifty if his longtime friend had not. These machinations, not dissimilar a Cromwell currying favor from 1 queen to the next in a mercurial Tudor courtroom, get the last acts of a desperate human being. Varys hastening his expose rings true, as does Tyrion confessing the Spider's treacheries to the Mother of Dragons.
Honestly, we have known Daenerys is headed to the realm of infamy ever since Missandei howled "Dracarys" from the battlements of King's Landing last week, yet I suppose I remained as hopeful every bit Tyrion, the eternal romantic optimist. He might've feigned debauched detachment in the early seasons, but he is as well the man who fought to salvage King'southward Landing for a Male monarch and Queen Mother who wanted him expressionless. He also couldn't stop himself confronting his father after Jaime and Varys set him free from a black cell in season iv. That same hidden idealism is what causes him to now beguile ane-half of the men who saved his life on that terrible night, and Daenerys is well within her rights and prudency to execute the traitor. That said, the long drawn out close-up of Drogon'south kiss from Varys' perspective—as opposed to that of unnamed slavers given the aforementioned fiery fate in season 5—advise nosotros are now asked to consider more than Daenerys' vantage when a dragon roars.
It'south also a fitting end for Varys. How many kings or queens had he betrayed up to this point? Counting spouses, the number is erring toward the double digits. He might've been receptive to the Dragon Queen once upon a fourth dimension, simply even under an alleged altruistic sheen he remained equally fair weather as Littlefinger. How perfect that like Lord Baelish, his stop was on a veritable executioner'southward block.
In case there were whatever doubts though about the queen's mental health, Dany's concluding scene with Jon Snow before the slaughter that masqueraded as a battle confirms what we've always known: Jon Snow is never going to exist down to marry or even just fool around with his aunt. At this indicate, he's betrayed her to Sansa, and they both know it (which might be a danger for the Lady of Winterfell side by side week), only she is fix to forgive him as a lover if not a subject… and he still can't commit. If you needed one final confirmation that he is only a Targaryen in proper name, it is the fact he own't downward with the incest. Yet the scene ends with Daenerys saying, "Alright then, let it be fear."
As has been made abundantly clear in a very slap-and-dash manner throughout flavour 8, Daenerys has lost her bearing in Westeros simply as she's lost all of her friends. Every bit loathe as I am to reference a meme, ane making the net rounds in the last calendar week did a better job of illustrating Daenerys' isolation than much of season eight's writing. It was two images from flavour 3, ane of her inner-circle and one of her dragons. Faded in blackness and white were all those who are dead. Jorah, Missandei, Ser Barristan Selmy, Viserion, and Rhaegal are gone. Just Grayness Worm and Drogon remain, and neither are exactly happier than the Breaker of Chains.
So what did she purchase with their lives? A shattered army of followers and a continent filled with potential subjects who despise or fear her. Her isolation is total, and yet the episode can only make the case via Jon Snowfall's cold and wordless shoulder. Better utilize could utilise of the prove's time could've been spent with her mourning her Dothraki expressionless or visiting the faded faces of those who loved her on Essos and are now dying below Westeros' unforgiving wintry snow.
In the prelude to the state of war though, the episode sets upwardly one final fate. Tyrion is a dead man the moment he frees Jaime Lannister, and still I loved the scene. Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau accept wonderful chemistry and one of the highlights of season 8 has been reminding usa of that frequently-forgotten fact. It is easy to lose track of this due to the whiplash of them smiling and drinking last week, and Jaime now being a prisoner of war near an hour later in the narrative. Now Tyrion returns a favor to the Lannister brother who risked his own life to free him in season 4. The Imp'south betrayal was far less costly than Jaime's; as Tyrion back in the 24-hour interval, ever 1 to non let his notions of right and wrong pass, went to face his male parent and wound upwardly putting two bolts into him—and killing the adult female he loved every bit a macabre bonus.
Past contrast, a free Jaime proves ultimately ineffectual by the end of tonight'due south episode, but the fact remains Tyrion betrayed Dany after she warned him that he could never fail her again. He and then immediately permit the Kingslayer go in an implicit exam she prepare-up for him. Tyrion's fate is sealed even earlier nosotros know how the dust has settled across the ruined capital.
Which does of form, bring us to the large battle—and the last major battle of Game of Thrones . The knowledge that Miguel Sapochnik directed this 60 minutes always foreshadowed for the most acute fans that "The Bells" would be the true climax of the series, and I'm of two minds almost how its encarmine fate was smeared in the glow of dragonfire. Simply there is absolutely no uncertainty that information technology was a gorgeous work of direction. Set during the light of mean solar day, I doubt there volition be any complaints near the darkness of this episode, at to the lowest degree visually, and there is aught brusque of a mutual awe and horror at the sight of a fire-animate creature of myth flying higher up a urban center. Even before the fireworks brainstorm, the visual of Cersei watching this wraith of doom approach her is purely amazing. And when the actual dream viewers have had for years—Daenerys taking King'south Landing in fire and blood—comes to pass, it is told with visceral brutality that rightfully crushes all preconceived notions of justice and heroism.
The actual tactics of the early portion of the spectacle (earlier information technology becomes a massacre) is too more than rewarding and satisfying than either of the last ii week's episodes, but therein lies one of several bug with flavor viii. In just the episode before this, a handful of scorpions were plenty to kill Rhagael in an ambush that strained all credulity and common sense. Now this week, the same Daenerys who could non figure out how to strafe around the medieval sailboats with scorpions on simply one side of their bows is now comfortable plenty with her dragon riding to evade their spears with ease and slaughter both the Iron Fleet and all of the manned walls around King's Landing in quick succession.
In a nutshell, this cute sequence makes me dislike terminal week's episode even more than my initially mixed reaction, because this week really makes plausible sense. The departure, which fans volition either be able to reconcile for themselves—or not—is the difference between Benioff and Weiss' hackneyed plotting and George R.R. Martin'due south endgame.
Cersei Lannister is vain and foolish enough to call back she has a chance against a dragon. Ignoring how atrocious the writing was to kill Rhaegal so every bit to make it seem similar Cersei has a fighting chance, this is the delusions of a fool who believed she was every bit as cunning as her male parent when she became the starting time secular monarch in centuries to cede power to the church by arming an peculiarly fanatical wing of septons. She managed to pull a miraculous win out of the clutches of defeat past blowing upward the Great Sept of Baelor, but that human action of self-inflicted terrorism is the kind of Hail Mary laissez passer that doesn't matter in the face of an enemy with greater technological firepower. She'south Harren the Black, who was convinced his high walls and impenetrable fortress—Harrenhal—would protect him from Aegon the Conqueror'southward dragons. Aegon promised him if he did not surrender on that fateful twenty-four hours that all within would burn earlier dawn. Harren and his hall were roasted alive within their "safe" stones.
Or for a gruesome, existent world case, the Empire of Nippon did not give up to the United states of america in 1945 after Hiroshima vanished in a nightmare plume. So the U.S. did the aforementioned thing to Nagasaki. Cersei was conceited enough in her ain god complex to non see the writing on the wall that Tyrion so plainly laid out for Jaime in one of the night's best scenes, "The city will fall tomorrow."
And then it did. The scorpions more than believably roughshod beneath Drogon's wrath than whatsoever last week was, and Rex's Landing's defenses went the manner of all who dared stand against Aegon the Conquistador, exist information technology in the field or backside their walls. And it is a briefly dizzy moment when the Golden Company, led by Harry Strickland, yet pretend like they're kind of a big deal due to one perfunctory introduction scene in the season eight premiere. Their faux-flexing was deliciously wiped out when Drogon blew upwards the gate they were prepared to defend, and bankrupt their lines even before Jon Snow and Grey Worm had to give a single command to take the city. Gray Worm's vengeful murder of Strickland was only the tip of the iceberg.
So it is that this battle went the way all those with dragons do, and expectations were thwarted. Cersei, who was anticipating a contentious grudge match to the end, is the victim of our schadenfreude as Qyburn reports that the scorpions have fallen and the Iron Fleet burns. She then expects her army to fight to the final man, but instead they run into the dragon overhead and the Unsullied in their face, and they throw down their swords. Fifty-fifty Tyrion's best laid plans of Jaime somehow saving Cersei proves irrelevant. Storybook logic is once again subverted, and Jaime helplessly wanderes the long way around the Carmine Keep, unable to get to his sister until long after give up turns out to be irrelevant.
And thus we come to it. Daenerys' conclusion to make good on her father's dying wish: burn them all.
If I am existence honest, I conceptually believe this is a not bad ending to the series. But every bit with all grisly things, the devil is in the details. She sits there on the back of Drogon, having won her battle while barely breaking a sweat. Against all odds, the bells of surrender ring, and Tyrion for one very brief moment felt justified in all of his bad decisions of cautioning Dany not to take Rex's Landing when she first arrived. Merely the Dragon Queen came to Westeros a would-be liberator and has become zip more than another self-aggrandizing conqueror. And Cersei poisoned the well of her existence annihilation else but that. Afterwards killing most of Dany's allies who at least welcomed the Dragon Queen every bit a monarch if not a savior, Cersei then personally taunted the Khaleesi by executing Missandei in front of her, implicitly taunting her cocky-righteousness. Cersei visibly mocked the "Breaker of Bondage" by murdering Dany's BFF while in bondage. The question, thus, is whether that's enough to be the harbinger that broke the camel's dorsum?
Daenerys has e'er been potentially headed down this dark road. Benioff and Weiss remind viewers equally such past returning to one of George R.R. Martin'southward nearly oftentimes-quoted lines about her family at the offset of "The Bells:" every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin. Readers, more and then than viewers, were always asked to evaluate and second guess Dany's actions. In the early seasons specially, she showed a sadistic streak, taking pleasance in the agonizing execution of her blood brother and the giddiness of telling anyone who would listen to her in Qarth that "when my dragons are grown nosotros volition burn cities to the ground… I will accept what is mine in fire and blood, I volition have it." Jorah Mormont attempted to temper these notions whenever she spoke of burning the Starks and Lannisters together, or when he suggested at that place are evil people on all sides of every state of war e'er fought. She then did more than or less burn Astapor, slavers though they may exist, to the ground in flavor 3.
All of these warning signs have ever been there. The question though is that equally Dany earned wisdom past taking other slaver cities with a minimal body count, what could drive her to be every bit as ruthless as Aegon Targaryen was when he spared no one who didn't curve the knee while forging the Seven Kingdoms? And therein lies the trouble for me. This is a fittingly bleak finish to the "game of thrones." Daenerys' entitlement can be bent until it's as every bit destructive as Cersei's vanity or Joffrey's cruelty, or Robert'south barbarity. They're all different shades of selfishness and self-justification for their deportment, and Dany is every bit a spinner of "THE WHEEL" every bit her ancestors were when they earned their Business firm words of "Burn down and Blood."
I like this catastrophe. Merely in retrospect, flavour 8 has utterly failed at properly setting it up. Last week I worried that we needed ii episodes for the bridge between the Battle of Winterfell and the slaughter we simply witnessed, at present I suspect that would not have been plenty either. The early clues of Daenerys' mental instability in the first five seasons has gone largely ignored for the last three. Season 7 especially undercut the early queasy worry any forrad-thinking reader/viewer had during the early installments. Back in season 2, I was very concerned that the Dany nosotros rooted for to escape irritating wizards of Qarth would soon be burning Starks just equally readily equally she was blueish-lipped morons. The Red Proceed she saw in visions was one in total ruins—who could devastate it like that but dragons? Sure enough, the snow she saw falling was really ash she left in her wake.
Simply Season 7 had Tyrion convince her not to accept King's Landing by strength. Ever since then, the bear witness gear up for itself the obstacle of convincing us she'd change her mind… particularly after Cersei had already surrendered. The truth is that this is a terrific ending to the overarching series that has been undercut its immediate run-up, leading to a now anti-climactic execution. If I evaluate it as an ending to Dany'due south arc for the last 2 seasons (the years she's been in Westeros), information technology is unsatisfying. But equally a determination to a series virtually the danger of conventionalities in heroes, saviors, or other romantic fantasies, it is brutally constructive.
Daenerys condign her ancestors is a painfully apt outcome, and what that looks like is as as gruesome as the stories of Aegon the Conqueror. So she destroys Aegon's urban center by indulging in his taste for fire, and we are witness to more than 35 minutes of carnage as soldier, man, woman, and kid are obliterated to ash forth the streets and inside the Carmine Keep. It is telling that later on the moment Daenerys makes her choice, we no longer get a unmarried close-up of the Dragon Queen. She is but an imperious, godlike presence raining hellfire downwards on the streets beneath.
This cuts to the truthful core of what Game of Thrones has ever been about: the disillusionment of human's cruelty while in the pursuit of power. For 8 seasons and thousands of pages, nosotros followed a woman who seemed modeled later on Alexander but who in fact turned out to be a butcher. She will likely be remembered in history as Daenerys the Terrible. We know at that place is more to her than that, but the sweep of history reduces people to their best or worst days, and on her worst day she was a mass murderer. The victory and then many of us wanted—Daenerys taking over King'south Landing—becomes the worst horror in the series' run. As Bobby Baratheon warned, war isn't something pretty; it'due south a butchery, and when nosotros finally got what we wanted with Dany at final taking what she convinced us was her birthright, it is a moment of pure disgust. Divine correct leads to hellish delights.
Similarly, Gray Worm gets his vengeance on the ground. I was so happy for him when he burned Missandei's collar in Dany's fire. She gave it to him earlier the battle because information technology was the just real possession Missandei kept in the crossing of the Narrow Sea, but Greyness Worm throw throws it away, choosing not to remember her as a slave. He instead remembers her equally proud and tall, shouting "Dracarys" in the face of death. Ergo he makes good on that past slaughtering unarmed men with their backs turned in the city Missandei cursed.
Returning again to a mutual theme throughout the show—such as sellswords working for the Starks cutting off Jaime's mitt and trying to rape Brienne of Tarth, or the Lannister soliders who broke breadstuff with Arya existence good blokes—there are expert and bad people on every side of a state of war. And every bit is often the case when cities are taken by force following a successful siege, bloodlust gives away to needless bloodletting, looting, and sexual brutality. Grey Worm just has a taste for the blood part of the equation, but as he and Dany lead the sacking of a city, Jon Snow's own Northern men attempt to rape and pillage, as do the remaining Dothraki who view this as their earned spoils. Jon kills i of his own men for attempting a rape, but one imagines there are many more the King in the N wasn't present to forestall.
At that place is a bitter irony that Dany's dragonfire is and so all-consuming that the pockets of remaining wildfire hidden throughout the urban center likewise go off, spreading their ain smaller insatiable green flames. These were the wildfire reserves that Dany's father, Aerys 2, wanted to ignite when his city was beingness pillaged and raped by Lannister men. He wanted to burn them all downward, and Jaime put a sword to his throat to end it. Now Jaime's human action of unrecognized heroism is muted 20-plus years afterward when Aerys II's daughter lights a fire so massive that the wildfire Aerys clung to seems miniscule past comparing.
Unfortunately, Jaime is off during this on his ain very unsatisfying arc's conclusion. Last week, I'd wrongly assumed he was planning to impale Cersei and was doing the generic fleck of bad writing where he lets Brienne downwards gently on his determination to practice so in order to foreclose her joining him. Equally information technology turns out, he really did run back to Cersei. This I struggle with being Martin'due south choice more then than I exercise Daenerys' bloodthirst. Would Jaime really throw abroad his entire character arc? If and so, like Dany's heel turn, it wasn't written in a satisfying way, peculiarly since terminal calendar week's episode (which more and more I'one thousand coming to disdain in retrospect) ready-up that collapse of character in a single, rushed, and poorly conceived scene.
Be that as it may, the irony is if I remove the failures of terminal week, I see the cleverness in his and Cersei's final fate. Not the Euron Greyjoy stuff, considering this fight sucked similar everything else involving Euron and should've never seen the light of day. Simply ignoring what is easily the worst scene of the dark where Kraken boy wasted valuable screen time dying when he should've just gone down with his ship—and disallowment the one hilarious moment of Cersei realizing that standing around for Clegane Bowl is a fool's errand and quietly escorting herself out the door—the Lannister twins' fate is well served by anti-climax. We all wanted to run across Jaime kill Cersei. Or Tyrion. Or Arya. Vii hells, just permit the dragon swallow her! Just when it feels like the earth is ending, it suddenly becomes pointless. Benioff and Weiss spell it out in a speech by the Hound, but it was already articulate when she saw Dany burning a path of burn down down her urban center's streets that Cersei is doomed. Suddenly it becomes irrelevant who kills her.
I know that many will take umbrage over the fact that Cersei's death was by design a disappointment, only to me information technology is i of the episode's strongest elements. Other than the Mountain and the Hound, which plays out like a Metal band's album cover, nothing in this series happens like information technology does in the storybooks. Neither Robb or Catelyn, or fifty-fifty Arya, avenge Ned Stark'south death. Joffrey is poisoned at his ain wedding by unknown forces and dies a pathetic kid in his grieving mother'due south arms. Arya and Jon likewise fail to avenge the Cerise Wedding by getting its main mastermind. Rather Tywin Lannister is murdered past his son while taking a crap on the privy, not even being allowed to pull his pants upward before the God of Decease collects its due.
I wanted Jaime to impale Cersei. Instead he attempts to salve her and winds up existence as feckless at that as he was at getting within the Red Keep in time. He and Cersei die like their oldest son, meek and distressing equally they hold each other in front of a deadend. Noticeably, he has his hands around her neck. Is this the prophecy Maggy the Frog foretold, which suggested Cersei would die with the "valanqor" killing her with his hands around her pharynx? Technically no since Maggy specifically said the niggling brother (and Jaime is younger than Cersei, if past a few minutes) would strangle her to decease. Just the valnaqor prophecy was never actually stated the show. The flashback to Maggy only predicted the death of her three children and a younger queen casting her down, all of which came true. It'south clear now that Benioff and Weiss left out that scrap of prophecy on purpose, but how this will differ then from Martin's ending, and how much this angers fans, will be discussed until the sun rises in the westward and sets in the east.
Even so, I appreciated Cersei and Jaime's meager death. While we got fan service with Littlefinger and Ramsay's demises, history is littered with its villains committing suicide in bunkers or dying of natural causes. Cersei and Jaime died, and with the world falling apart, does it really matter who gets the credit?
The Hound is right before committing to the nearly fan service-y moment in Game of Thrones history. With a dragon burning the Red Go on to the ground, our previous grievances of who gets to kill who seems awfully trivial. Mind you Sandor Clegane goes on to embrace his own nothingness, merely he knows doing so is a nihilistic selection. Given we've already seen one honey character give in to nihilism, it was nearly therapeutic that Arya Stark did non follow Sandor up those stairs. Although what was waiting up there was the most epic showdown match since the Red Viper fought the Mountain in another flake of thwarted expectation. Still, it's nice to know five years afterwards that Oberyn Martell definitely killed Ser Gregor Clegane in their duel, considering this Franken-monstrosity proves more unkillable than a zombie.
A sword through the guts won't do it, nor a slash beyond the throat. The Hound even manages to skewer Ser Gregor through the encarmine heart and across the encephalon, simply this magic-fueled zombie merely keeps on coming. The Hound and audiences alike at least have confirmation he'south the better fighter, but this is cold comfort when his Undead brother managed to gouge out i of his optics. But that's just dandy, since the Hound still had 1 practiced peeper to watch him and his brother autumn into the flames. To me this is a lot sillier than Jaime and Cersei'southward catastrophe. There is even something faintly reminiscent of Rocky III 's epilogue where Balboa and Apollo are preserved by posterity to ever be locked in their eternal duel. Only given how pessimistic this whole series is becoming, let's all take a moment and bask Clegane Bowl and that gratuitously metallic sendoff.
Take fan service where y'all can too, because the actual cease of the episode returns to despair. Arya, the master assassin, survives because of bullheaded luck and carefully calibrated plot armor (not that I'm complaining). She is our POV of a urban center on burn and of being on the receiving finish of indiscriminate firebombing. Information technology'south hellacious and drags u.s.a. into the muck of needless warfare meliorate than whatsoever image on the evidence salve perhaps the mountains of body Jon Snow climbed out of during the Battle of the Bastards.
Some will complain the misery of Arya being caked in the ashes of the dead is too vividly evocative of our own existent horrors, merely hasn't that always been the bespeak? History and lore, legend and fantasy, make clean up the fallout of war and the futility of mass death. If Daenerys improbably survives side by side calendar week's episode, she could build a new world in which she's written most equally a savior and conqueror… like her ancestor. On the footing though, information technology is the numbing horror we've seen in our own lifetimes and throughout millennia: humans killing humans because they think they are justified.
This in hindsight has always been George R.R. Martin'southward ending, admitting it isn't the one I hoped for. Yet I standby information technology was told in an exhilarating, exciting, and depressing hour-plus of television. The sense of sadness that Daenerys isn't who we thought she'd be, and our hope for a superhero leaving us blindsided by the fatiguing spectacle of habitual murder is the point of this climax.
… Merely I don't think season eight or even flavour 7 fully earned the right to go here. It is at present evidently to meet that the truth of Jon Snow's parentage is always intended to play a role in destroying Daenerys' sense of perspective, but the manner it was rushed into a scattering of late nighttime rendezvouses with Jon, and and so an awful boxing sequence last calendar week leading to the deaths of Rhaegal and Missandei, is mediocre storytelling.
This week is a good endgame that has more on its listen than pleasing fanboys, but the previous weeks let information technology downwards, leaving my disillusionment to be non but with Daenerys just with Benioff and Weiss being able to do justice to the breadth of this finale. We're at the gloomy mountaintop, merely we've sustained as well many injuries to fully enjoy information technology for what it is.
For at present, I'm going to err on the episode working in a vacuum and rate it equally positive if middling, but just as this week has come to make final calendar week's loathsome in hindsight, next week's final hour will provide the final details to actually evaluate this ending. I already know the hot takes are being written well-nigh "worse than Lost ," but with a petty distance, Dany'south series-long fall might overcome the failures of flavor 8. Or the finale will exit information technology buried in the ash and snowfall.
Come what may, the Dragon Queen'south reign is about to be very curt.
David Crow is the Pic Section Editor at Den of Geek. He's also a member of the Online Film Critics Guild. Read more of his work here. Yous can follow him on Twitter @DCrowsNest.
Source: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5-review-the-bells/
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