Game of Thrones Episode 8.05: “The Bells”
Jan. 10th, 2022 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chavalah posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scifi_rewatchI loved this episode. I hated this episode. For the past few years, I’ve been using the phrase that I saw Daenerys’s fate on the horizon, but we needed more time to get there.
I’ve written in earlier reviews about my desire for an elongated political plot that wasn’t in the cards. I wanted something for Dany that felt, more or less, like Cersei’s High Sparrow plotline from a few seasons back. Hell, I wanted something like that for Cersei, too, whose only real character development in season 8 was to sneer until she could sneer no more.
Instead, D&D brought down the hammer (and so much voiceover in the “previously on” section) about how Dany’s fate is tied into “flipping a coin” over Targaryen madness. It’s boring and it’s cheap! Maybe their only option if they have to tie up two epic storylines in six episodes of show. But the two mad queens deserved better.
All of that aside, the spectacle of what happened, GoT’s insistence on showing violence for what it is, vengeance for what it is, trauma for what it is…I’ll always respect that. And be wowed by all the production work, of course.
I guess what I really wanted or hoped for, when this season began, was for the White Walker attack to feel more or less like the attack in this episode. All this political grandstanding means nothing in the face of destruction. And there’s also something fairytalesque about some of these set pieces as well.
Other fans were upset that there was a lack of dedicated vengeance against Cersei in particular; I don’t have that problem. I’m a little more on the fence about Jon and Tyrion, specifically, and the lies they’re telling themselves. This episode is really misery porn for these two men, for more philosophical reasons than physical ones, really! Whether or not their drama rang true (but does ringing really count in this episode? :P /bad joke) I’ll parse below.
Summary:
DRAGONSTONE
Varys writes missives about Jon being the true heir to the Iron Throne. One of his little birds says “she,” aka Daenerys won’t eat. She’s also worried about being watched, but Varys pep talks her back on track. Uh oh…
Enough time has passed that Jon and the army have arrived! Varys attempts to win Jon over. Mr. Aegon ain’t Targaryen-crazy…he also still aint’ interested in ruling. Tyrion watches broodily from above. He goes to tell Dany about Varys and his betrayal, but she’s more interested in blaming Jon. She also points out that Tyrion told Varys before telling Dany he knew about throne claim. She’s also quite aware of what Sansa’s hope was for telling Tyrion in the first place. Not because she trusted her former husband, but because she wanted the news of Jon’s claim to spread. This does feel like something Tyrion should have intuited. And good grief, he is still even trying to protect Varys, claims everyone here wants a better world. But a gaunt and haggard Dany says “it doesn’t matter now.”
Varys continues writing his missives, then burns one as Grey Wind and the Unsullied come for him. He takes off his rings, too, ominously. Varys is led to the nighttime beach, where Dany, Jon and Tyrion wait. Tyrion admits to turning him in. Varys says he hopes he “deserves this,” that he’s wrong about Dany, before wishing Tyrion a final goodbye.
Dany sentences Varys to die as Drogon appears out of the dark behind her! With one “Dracarys,” Varys is burned to ash. Tyrion and Jon look sad and conflicted. Grey Worm is stoic. Dany calls him to her later to give him Missandei’s sole possession—her slave collar. He burns it—a last show that Missandei was a free woman, perhaps. Dany then rakes Jon over the coals a bit for telling Sansa, which led to everything that followed. She points out that Sansa (and everyone) now knows what will happen when someone tries to use Jon’s claim against her; she can only rule with fear in Westeros. Jon says he still loves her, and attempts to give into her sexual advances. But it’s still too squicky. Or maybe Jon, after her recent actions, doesn’t love her as much as he thinks he does? Either way, Dany chooses fear.
In the Throne Room, Tyrion makes the case that the King’s Landing citizens are like the slaves of Meereen, and not her enemy. But Dany has reframed the narrative of sacking King’s Landing. It is “mercy” to free future generations from being ruled by a tyrant. The mass deaths of this generation might not figure in her fight for the greater good. She tells Grey Worm to ready the Unsullied to attack the city. Tyrion makes one final plea, saying that if the bells are rung, the people have abandoned Cersei and she’s surrendering. Call off the attack if so! Dany merely tells Grey Worm to wait for her signal.
As Tyrion shuffles off, Dany tells him her men have captured Jaime! Which means that Tyrion’s claim that the Kingslayer has abandoned Cersei is not true. She gives Tyrion an ultimatum—“the next time you fail me will be the last time you fail me.” Gulp.
KING’S LANDING
Small folk continue to enter the city. Jon and Tyrion meet Davos and the army by the shore. Though Dany wants to attack asap, Jon gives the okay to wait for the rear guard to arrive by daybreak. When he leaves, Tyrion asks Davos for a smuggling favor… Elsewhere, Arya and the Hound run into Stark men, and Arya states her purpose as “I’m going to kill Queen Cersei.” The Hound points out this could end the possibility of a siege! As the man they’re talking to stumbles through a response, the two of them ride on.
Tyrion also stumbles—through Valyrian as he tries to get an Unsullied guard to let him see Jaime. They decide to defer to the Hand of the Queen. Tyrion frees his brother and sends him on the mission to convince Cersei to surrender, in order to save the innocent. As extra incentive, Tyrion brings up Jamie's unborn child. The brothers argue over who will win this siege. Tyrion’s final plea is to give Jaime an escape option with Cersei—ah, so that’s why he needed Davos! Also, Jaime must know to get the bells rung asap so that the worst of the siege can be allayed. Jaime is worried that Dany will kill Tyrion for this. Tyrion hopes Dany might show mercy…er, real mercy. Either way, he’d rather be killed himself than stand by while the people of King’s Landing die. The brothers share an emotional goodbye.
The next morning, a bell is in frame! So is the Iron Fleet with their scorpions. Plus the scorpions on the shore. Drogon has a lot of threats surrounding him…oh, this time he’s able to take them all out. Alrighty then! I jumped a bit in the action to get to that scene, but I had to roll my eyes a bit. Moving back to the timeline!
Arya and the Hound are revenge-walking the streets of the city as the small folk barricade themselves inside their homes. Jaime, cloaked, moves past the Golden Company who are marching outside the gates. They face off against the Unsullied, remaining Dothraki and the northmen. Tyrion, above, tells Jon to call off his men if the bells ring in surrender. Cersei and her men watch from a window. She looks quietly smug. The Hound, Arya, and some but not all of the small folk around them make it into the Red Keep before the guards barricade the door. Jamie is stuck on the outside! He tries to get Lannister attention with his golden hand. That failing, he looks for another way in as the small folk around him grow desperate for safety.
Euron looks towards clear skies…not safe ones, though, cos there’s Drogon. Bye bye, Iron Fleet! Ships go up in flames, scorpions be damned. Euron ultimately drops into the water as his vessel is destroyed.
The stand off on the other side of King’s Landing looks much quieter! For now…once Drogon is done destroying the Iron Fleet, he flies over to blast open the gates onto the Golden Company! Dany’s armies rush forward as the Golden Company burns. Grey Worm gets to kill the captain. The Dothraki ride through the fiery streets, taking down Lannister soldiers. Drogon burns through swaths of fighting men, mostly outside the city. Cersei sees some destruction and a small dragon from her window. Tyrion moves through scores of dead and dying outside the rubbly gates.
Qyburn arrives with the news that all the scorpions were destroyed. Also, the Iron Fleet is burning and the gates to the city are breached. This Hand of the Queen sounds a little freaked out, in fact, as Cersei runs out of talking points. She remains stubborn for now, even as Drogon breathes more lines of fire in the city and in her sight. The Red Keep has never fallen. Okay then!
Stony-faced Grey Worm, Jon and Davos and their men come in through a blazing hole in the wall, striking down Lannister soldiers as they go. Further in the city, Dany and Cersei’s armies come to a stand off, looking at each other warily. Tyrion has his eyes on the bells like a lifeline. Jamie has made it into the grounds around the Red Keep, walking through as Cersei keeps her watch. Peasants outside run from the sight of Drogon, who lands on a squat tower. He roars, and the Lannisters put down their swords in surrender. Guess they don’t want the city to burn even more. (It’s not too bad so far…)
Dany watches from above, her eyes on the Red Keep. Cersei’s eyes are, of course, on the dragon. If anything, Dany looks more emotional, though Cersei has often been reserved in that way. We don’t see her surrender, but the bells do ring. Jon sighs in relief, and Cersei closes her eyes. Tyrion looks hopefully up at Dany, astride Drogon. But despite the bells, despite the burning fleet in sight, she gets more and more upset. She flies towards the Red Keep, the dragon’s shadow on the rooftops. And they start burning, innocents caught in the wake. Tyrion is gobsmacked.
Grey Worm gets the message. He throws a spear at an unarmed Lannister soldier, and Dany’s army springs into action. Now it’s Jon’s turn to look grieved. He tries to keep the northmen back, earning a glare from Grey Worm. After a little while, it’s too late to stop the resumed hostilities anyway, and Jon must protect himself from the Lannisters. The violence is gory and the music thrumming in its cruelty.
We see lots of shots of Drogon burning from high up, and terrified people dying in flame. Cersei almost has an emotion on her face by this point! :P Davos pivots to helping small folk towards what safety they can reach. The extras really bring their A game to this episode, including a young girl who is panting in fear behind a wall as adults are slaughtered behind her. The stony look on her face speaks to a continued cycle of vengeance, trauma and violence. So much for breaking the wheel.
Jon is still stupefied as he and his army slow-mo through the city. One thing he definitely sees is Lannister soldiers helping the innocent. Which side is he on? He pulls one of his own men off of a woman, but the soldier doesn’t yield and Jon has to kill him. He tells the woman to hide.
Jamie is down by the shore, where Davos has stored a boat. None other than Euron comes out of the water towards him. He decides his best course of action is to challenge the Kingslayer to a duel. Cersei is running out of time, as bits of the Red Keep are literally falling around her! Quite the backdrop to the cock fighting contest on the shore. They go back and forth a bit, and then Jaime wins. Whatevs. Perhaps significantly, he is also considerably wounded. Cersei continues her line about the Red Keep being the safest place in the city, and Qyburn’s is having a freak out about her denial. The Unsullied are inside the gate! Cersei sobs, and finally follows Qyburn and the Mountain to safety. Outside, the city is more fire than landscape anymore, and the remaining wildfire stores go off.
Arya and the Hound walk through the map room, with the ceiling falling around them. The Hound gives the wolf girl a talking to: Cersei’s dead anyway, and Arya will die, too, if she stays here. Or, if she goes further into vengeance, she will turn into him—basically a walking sore with no future. It’s time for Arya to choose life. The two of them part ways, after Arya calls him by name and thanks him.
Cersei and her men walk through the crumbling staircases. As they right themselves from falling debris, the Hound kills all the Kingsguard. Apparently the Mountain’s anger the Hound is stronger than his Frankenstein’s monster commands, and he kills Qyburn when the man tries to stop him from abandoning Cersei. The former queen makes an awkward exit. :P The brothers fight to the death on an apocalyptic set with Drogon occasionally flying in the foreground. Neither survives, bodies falling into the fiery abyss below, and beyond being an amazing spectacle, I respect the metaphor about the nature of revenge.
Jamie finds Cersei in the map room, and the twins have a wibbly moment. Feelings are on the table, now that the end has come. Arya, now in touch with her emotions again, comes across the terrified, burned and dying small folk of King’s Landing. Her life is often in danger as well, as rocks continue to fall. We continue to see shots of fiery Drogon above. A woman who Arya passed in the street much earlier helps her up from the ground. But the two are pulled apart by the crowds. Jon finally orders his men to fall back; well, the rocks might kill them all anyway.
Arya is bloody, unconscious and ashy. She wakes and stumbles to her feet, and runs from a tumbling tower. Inside a building, she finds some survivors, including the woman from before, and tells them they have to leave. She leads the woman and her child out, but they’re separated by soldiers, horses and fire.
Jamie and Cersei have made it to the cellar with the dragon skulls, but the rocks continue to fall. Most futilely, there’s a pile of rubble blocking their escape route. The Light of the Seven plays as Cersei sobs over the inevitable. They look in each other’s eyes and declare nothing matters but themselves. They die as they had lived.
Arya gets the last shot. She’s in quite the different stupor than she started the episode in! She sees that the woman and her child have been burned to ash. There is one white horse, though covered in blood, in the rubble. Arya mounts and gets the fuck out of this hellscape.
Thoughts:
Will try and streamline a little since I have already rambled a fair bit above! I’m going to start with the things I liked least and end with the things I liked most.
I hated the whole scorpion lack of consistency shit. Last episode Drogon couldn’t destroy one, even right after Rhaegal died, and now he destroys all of them? Ugh. It also means that despite all of the build up from the last few episodes, in fact Cersei never stood a chance and Dany could always beat the shit out of her. Kind of anticlimactic, considering.
On a similar note—why the hell didn’t Euron die in the fleet attack? Or last episode? Or—hell, before he was cast on this show? :P Why did we have to waste time on that cockfight between him and Jaime? I don’t care nearly enough about that character to get engrossed in his petty dick waving. GOOD RIDDANCE.
I’ll also repeat my whinge about Cersei having no character development or interesting arc this season, wah. Moving on.
Somewhere between “hate” and “on the fence…” I’ve talked so much about Dany’s storyline that I want to give an alternate opinion. Sean T. Collins is one of my top GoT reviewers,, and this is his fave episode of the series. (Granted, I think he became more rigid in his apologetics for D&D as the rest of the fandom went batshit in the other direction.) But the things he loved about this episode were the ways it explored the themes of power, violence and vengeance. I also loved these themes. The two of us very much have the same worldview in this respect, and that worldview is all over this episode. He talked about how Dany grabbed the ring of power, to hearken back to Lord of the Rings. Powerful stuff for a woman on top of a nuclear weapon.
But all these years later, I still don’t think D&D did it well enough. I think there was a better way, a more authentic way, to parse Dany’s megalomania gone wild. As much as I appreciate Dany’s low state of mind, I can’t quite square her butchering a city of innocents. Especially when, as was stated ad nauseum, the ringing of the bells meant that Cersei surrendered.
Maybe Meereen was supposed to teach Dany that she was a conqueror, not a ruler. But that wasn’t her consistent mindset in Westeros, so I won’t give it a pass. I’m also salty that she apparently needed Jorah to be a good person. It’s the mirror image of many a male antihero, I guess.
Moving into “fence” territory…Dany’s craziness also took Tyrion and Jon down with her. I guess I have mixed feelings. I can probably give Jon more of a pass. He’s loyal to a fault, and Dany’s worst behavior came in the midst of a battle. It’s not like he had a lot of time to reflect on what was going on here. Tyrion…I’m stuck between admiring his desire to see the best in everyone, and angry over how said desire stripped him of all his good sense this season. Ultimately, I think the scales tip a little towards “character assassination,” as Miles McNutt, another GoT reviewer, made popular. At least he gave it his all with the bells thing, and trying to set his siblings free.
Varys also went down a little easy, because he was too honest with Tyrion. But meh. He had a limited timetable as it was. I also appreciated that he attempted to poison Dany through one of his little birds. Our spymaster is leaving the world, but with no rug unturned!
I think “Cleganebowl” was more or less what those fans wanted. It was certainly epic. Tinged with the type of magic that feels more appropriate to a White Walker storyline—but eh, dragons are magic, too. (As are Mary Shelley-esque experiments, I suppose.) :P The big thing that always left me disinterested in the story was how the Mountain was never a three dimensional character, so zzzz. I mostly appreciated the Hound for being Arya’s image. And, bless his heart, he finally set her on the right path this episode. He saved her life from a never-ending list of vengeance. Sure, maybe she survived a fair bit too much as the city was burning around her (and what the hell was with that white horse? Sounds like a metaphor from Paradise Lost bubbled up from the depths of Drogon’s attack. I suppose it makes enough sense. King’s Landing, by the end of this episode, was certainly hell.)
So yeah—what I loved was Arya becoming a human again. Jon doing his best to remain human. Even Grey Worm turning fanatical, because it makes sense for his character. I also liked Jaime and Cersei’s demise. I didn’t need to see Cersei meet her “just deserts.” I kind of liked that Jaime and Cersei got to die as humans—flawed humans, but humans all the same. “Human” is very much my word for a character who exists beyond vengeance, I guess.
And finally, the spectacle. I loved the spectacle. For the production value and for what it says about the nature of violence and vengeance. I loved seeing Drogon as a winged demon from the sky, Dany as little more than a spec astride him. Her power trip doesn’t get to be the center of this story. The people on the ground do.
I’ve written in earlier reviews about my desire for an elongated political plot that wasn’t in the cards. I wanted something for Dany that felt, more or less, like Cersei’s High Sparrow plotline from a few seasons back. Hell, I wanted something like that for Cersei, too, whose only real character development in season 8 was to sneer until she could sneer no more.
Instead, D&D brought down the hammer (and so much voiceover in the “previously on” section) about how Dany’s fate is tied into “flipping a coin” over Targaryen madness. It’s boring and it’s cheap! Maybe their only option if they have to tie up two epic storylines in six episodes of show. But the two mad queens deserved better.
All of that aside, the spectacle of what happened, GoT’s insistence on showing violence for what it is, vengeance for what it is, trauma for what it is…I’ll always respect that. And be wowed by all the production work, of course.
I guess what I really wanted or hoped for, when this season began, was for the White Walker attack to feel more or less like the attack in this episode. All this political grandstanding means nothing in the face of destruction. And there’s also something fairytalesque about some of these set pieces as well.
Other fans were upset that there was a lack of dedicated vengeance against Cersei in particular; I don’t have that problem. I’m a little more on the fence about Jon and Tyrion, specifically, and the lies they’re telling themselves. This episode is really misery porn for these two men, for more philosophical reasons than physical ones, really! Whether or not their drama rang true (but does ringing really count in this episode? :P /bad joke) I’ll parse below.
Summary:
DRAGONSTONE
Varys writes missives about Jon being the true heir to the Iron Throne. One of his little birds says “she,” aka Daenerys won’t eat. She’s also worried about being watched, but Varys pep talks her back on track. Uh oh…
Enough time has passed that Jon and the army have arrived! Varys attempts to win Jon over. Mr. Aegon ain’t Targaryen-crazy…he also still aint’ interested in ruling. Tyrion watches broodily from above. He goes to tell Dany about Varys and his betrayal, but she’s more interested in blaming Jon. She also points out that Tyrion told Varys before telling Dany he knew about throne claim. She’s also quite aware of what Sansa’s hope was for telling Tyrion in the first place. Not because she trusted her former husband, but because she wanted the news of Jon’s claim to spread. This does feel like something Tyrion should have intuited. And good grief, he is still even trying to protect Varys, claims everyone here wants a better world. But a gaunt and haggard Dany says “it doesn’t matter now.”
Varys continues writing his missives, then burns one as Grey Wind and the Unsullied come for him. He takes off his rings, too, ominously. Varys is led to the nighttime beach, where Dany, Jon and Tyrion wait. Tyrion admits to turning him in. Varys says he hopes he “deserves this,” that he’s wrong about Dany, before wishing Tyrion a final goodbye.
Dany sentences Varys to die as Drogon appears out of the dark behind her! With one “Dracarys,” Varys is burned to ash. Tyrion and Jon look sad and conflicted. Grey Worm is stoic. Dany calls him to her later to give him Missandei’s sole possession—her slave collar. He burns it—a last show that Missandei was a free woman, perhaps. Dany then rakes Jon over the coals a bit for telling Sansa, which led to everything that followed. She points out that Sansa (and everyone) now knows what will happen when someone tries to use Jon’s claim against her; she can only rule with fear in Westeros. Jon says he still loves her, and attempts to give into her sexual advances. But it’s still too squicky. Or maybe Jon, after her recent actions, doesn’t love her as much as he thinks he does? Either way, Dany chooses fear.
In the Throne Room, Tyrion makes the case that the King’s Landing citizens are like the slaves of Meereen, and not her enemy. But Dany has reframed the narrative of sacking King’s Landing. It is “mercy” to free future generations from being ruled by a tyrant. The mass deaths of this generation might not figure in her fight for the greater good. She tells Grey Worm to ready the Unsullied to attack the city. Tyrion makes one final plea, saying that if the bells are rung, the people have abandoned Cersei and she’s surrendering. Call off the attack if so! Dany merely tells Grey Worm to wait for her signal.
As Tyrion shuffles off, Dany tells him her men have captured Jaime! Which means that Tyrion’s claim that the Kingslayer has abandoned Cersei is not true. She gives Tyrion an ultimatum—“the next time you fail me will be the last time you fail me.” Gulp.
KING’S LANDING
Small folk continue to enter the city. Jon and Tyrion meet Davos and the army by the shore. Though Dany wants to attack asap, Jon gives the okay to wait for the rear guard to arrive by daybreak. When he leaves, Tyrion asks Davos for a smuggling favor… Elsewhere, Arya and the Hound run into Stark men, and Arya states her purpose as “I’m going to kill Queen Cersei.” The Hound points out this could end the possibility of a siege! As the man they’re talking to stumbles through a response, the two of them ride on.
Tyrion also stumbles—through Valyrian as he tries to get an Unsullied guard to let him see Jaime. They decide to defer to the Hand of the Queen. Tyrion frees his brother and sends him on the mission to convince Cersei to surrender, in order to save the innocent. As extra incentive, Tyrion brings up Jamie's unborn child. The brothers argue over who will win this siege. Tyrion’s final plea is to give Jaime an escape option with Cersei—ah, so that’s why he needed Davos! Also, Jaime must know to get the bells rung asap so that the worst of the siege can be allayed. Jaime is worried that Dany will kill Tyrion for this. Tyrion hopes Dany might show mercy…er, real mercy. Either way, he’d rather be killed himself than stand by while the people of King’s Landing die. The brothers share an emotional goodbye.
The next morning, a bell is in frame! So is the Iron Fleet with their scorpions. Plus the scorpions on the shore. Drogon has a lot of threats surrounding him…oh, this time he’s able to take them all out. Alrighty then! I jumped a bit in the action to get to that scene, but I had to roll my eyes a bit. Moving back to the timeline!
Arya and the Hound are revenge-walking the streets of the city as the small folk barricade themselves inside their homes. Jaime, cloaked, moves past the Golden Company who are marching outside the gates. They face off against the Unsullied, remaining Dothraki and the northmen. Tyrion, above, tells Jon to call off his men if the bells ring in surrender. Cersei and her men watch from a window. She looks quietly smug. The Hound, Arya, and some but not all of the small folk around them make it into the Red Keep before the guards barricade the door. Jamie is stuck on the outside! He tries to get Lannister attention with his golden hand. That failing, he looks for another way in as the small folk around him grow desperate for safety.
Euron looks towards clear skies…not safe ones, though, cos there’s Drogon. Bye bye, Iron Fleet! Ships go up in flames, scorpions be damned. Euron ultimately drops into the water as his vessel is destroyed.
The stand off on the other side of King’s Landing looks much quieter! For now…once Drogon is done destroying the Iron Fleet, he flies over to blast open the gates onto the Golden Company! Dany’s armies rush forward as the Golden Company burns. Grey Worm gets to kill the captain. The Dothraki ride through the fiery streets, taking down Lannister soldiers. Drogon burns through swaths of fighting men, mostly outside the city. Cersei sees some destruction and a small dragon from her window. Tyrion moves through scores of dead and dying outside the rubbly gates.
Qyburn arrives with the news that all the scorpions were destroyed. Also, the Iron Fleet is burning and the gates to the city are breached. This Hand of the Queen sounds a little freaked out, in fact, as Cersei runs out of talking points. She remains stubborn for now, even as Drogon breathes more lines of fire in the city and in her sight. The Red Keep has never fallen. Okay then!
Stony-faced Grey Worm, Jon and Davos and their men come in through a blazing hole in the wall, striking down Lannister soldiers as they go. Further in the city, Dany and Cersei’s armies come to a stand off, looking at each other warily. Tyrion has his eyes on the bells like a lifeline. Jamie has made it into the grounds around the Red Keep, walking through as Cersei keeps her watch. Peasants outside run from the sight of Drogon, who lands on a squat tower. He roars, and the Lannisters put down their swords in surrender. Guess they don’t want the city to burn even more. (It’s not too bad so far…)
Dany watches from above, her eyes on the Red Keep. Cersei’s eyes are, of course, on the dragon. If anything, Dany looks more emotional, though Cersei has often been reserved in that way. We don’t see her surrender, but the bells do ring. Jon sighs in relief, and Cersei closes her eyes. Tyrion looks hopefully up at Dany, astride Drogon. But despite the bells, despite the burning fleet in sight, she gets more and more upset. She flies towards the Red Keep, the dragon’s shadow on the rooftops. And they start burning, innocents caught in the wake. Tyrion is gobsmacked.
Grey Worm gets the message. He throws a spear at an unarmed Lannister soldier, and Dany’s army springs into action. Now it’s Jon’s turn to look grieved. He tries to keep the northmen back, earning a glare from Grey Worm. After a little while, it’s too late to stop the resumed hostilities anyway, and Jon must protect himself from the Lannisters. The violence is gory and the music thrumming in its cruelty.
We see lots of shots of Drogon burning from high up, and terrified people dying in flame. Cersei almost has an emotion on her face by this point! :P Davos pivots to helping small folk towards what safety they can reach. The extras really bring their A game to this episode, including a young girl who is panting in fear behind a wall as adults are slaughtered behind her. The stony look on her face speaks to a continued cycle of vengeance, trauma and violence. So much for breaking the wheel.
Jon is still stupefied as he and his army slow-mo through the city. One thing he definitely sees is Lannister soldiers helping the innocent. Which side is he on? He pulls one of his own men off of a woman, but the soldier doesn’t yield and Jon has to kill him. He tells the woman to hide.
Jamie is down by the shore, where Davos has stored a boat. None other than Euron comes out of the water towards him. He decides his best course of action is to challenge the Kingslayer to a duel. Cersei is running out of time, as bits of the Red Keep are literally falling around her! Quite the backdrop to the cock fighting contest on the shore. They go back and forth a bit, and then Jaime wins. Whatevs. Perhaps significantly, he is also considerably wounded. Cersei continues her line about the Red Keep being the safest place in the city, and Qyburn’s is having a freak out about her denial. The Unsullied are inside the gate! Cersei sobs, and finally follows Qyburn and the Mountain to safety. Outside, the city is more fire than landscape anymore, and the remaining wildfire stores go off.
Arya and the Hound walk through the map room, with the ceiling falling around them. The Hound gives the wolf girl a talking to: Cersei’s dead anyway, and Arya will die, too, if she stays here. Or, if she goes further into vengeance, she will turn into him—basically a walking sore with no future. It’s time for Arya to choose life. The two of them part ways, after Arya calls him by name and thanks him.
Cersei and her men walk through the crumbling staircases. As they right themselves from falling debris, the Hound kills all the Kingsguard. Apparently the Mountain’s anger the Hound is stronger than his Frankenstein’s monster commands, and he kills Qyburn when the man tries to stop him from abandoning Cersei. The former queen makes an awkward exit. :P The brothers fight to the death on an apocalyptic set with Drogon occasionally flying in the foreground. Neither survives, bodies falling into the fiery abyss below, and beyond being an amazing spectacle, I respect the metaphor about the nature of revenge.
Jamie finds Cersei in the map room, and the twins have a wibbly moment. Feelings are on the table, now that the end has come. Arya, now in touch with her emotions again, comes across the terrified, burned and dying small folk of King’s Landing. Her life is often in danger as well, as rocks continue to fall. We continue to see shots of fiery Drogon above. A woman who Arya passed in the street much earlier helps her up from the ground. But the two are pulled apart by the crowds. Jon finally orders his men to fall back; well, the rocks might kill them all anyway.
Arya is bloody, unconscious and ashy. She wakes and stumbles to her feet, and runs from a tumbling tower. Inside a building, she finds some survivors, including the woman from before, and tells them they have to leave. She leads the woman and her child out, but they’re separated by soldiers, horses and fire.
Jamie and Cersei have made it to the cellar with the dragon skulls, but the rocks continue to fall. Most futilely, there’s a pile of rubble blocking their escape route. The Light of the Seven plays as Cersei sobs over the inevitable. They look in each other’s eyes and declare nothing matters but themselves. They die as they had lived.
Arya gets the last shot. She’s in quite the different stupor than she started the episode in! She sees that the woman and her child have been burned to ash. There is one white horse, though covered in blood, in the rubble. Arya mounts and gets the fuck out of this hellscape.
Thoughts:
Will try and streamline a little since I have already rambled a fair bit above! I’m going to start with the things I liked least and end with the things I liked most.
I hated the whole scorpion lack of consistency shit. Last episode Drogon couldn’t destroy one, even right after Rhaegal died, and now he destroys all of them? Ugh. It also means that despite all of the build up from the last few episodes, in fact Cersei never stood a chance and Dany could always beat the shit out of her. Kind of anticlimactic, considering.
On a similar note—why the hell didn’t Euron die in the fleet attack? Or last episode? Or—hell, before he was cast on this show? :P Why did we have to waste time on that cockfight between him and Jaime? I don’t care nearly enough about that character to get engrossed in his petty dick waving. GOOD RIDDANCE.
I’ll also repeat my whinge about Cersei having no character development or interesting arc this season, wah. Moving on.
Somewhere between “hate” and “on the fence…” I’ve talked so much about Dany’s storyline that I want to give an alternate opinion. Sean T. Collins is one of my top GoT reviewers,, and this is his fave episode of the series. (Granted, I think he became more rigid in his apologetics for D&D as the rest of the fandom went batshit in the other direction.) But the things he loved about this episode were the ways it explored the themes of power, violence and vengeance. I also loved these themes. The two of us very much have the same worldview in this respect, and that worldview is all over this episode. He talked about how Dany grabbed the ring of power, to hearken back to Lord of the Rings. Powerful stuff for a woman on top of a nuclear weapon.
But all these years later, I still don’t think D&D did it well enough. I think there was a better way, a more authentic way, to parse Dany’s megalomania gone wild. As much as I appreciate Dany’s low state of mind, I can’t quite square her butchering a city of innocents. Especially when, as was stated ad nauseum, the ringing of the bells meant that Cersei surrendered.
Maybe Meereen was supposed to teach Dany that she was a conqueror, not a ruler. But that wasn’t her consistent mindset in Westeros, so I won’t give it a pass. I’m also salty that she apparently needed Jorah to be a good person. It’s the mirror image of many a male antihero, I guess.
Moving into “fence” territory…Dany’s craziness also took Tyrion and Jon down with her. I guess I have mixed feelings. I can probably give Jon more of a pass. He’s loyal to a fault, and Dany’s worst behavior came in the midst of a battle. It’s not like he had a lot of time to reflect on what was going on here. Tyrion…I’m stuck between admiring his desire to see the best in everyone, and angry over how said desire stripped him of all his good sense this season. Ultimately, I think the scales tip a little towards “character assassination,” as Miles McNutt, another GoT reviewer, made popular. At least he gave it his all with the bells thing, and trying to set his siblings free.
Varys also went down a little easy, because he was too honest with Tyrion. But meh. He had a limited timetable as it was. I also appreciated that he attempted to poison Dany through one of his little birds. Our spymaster is leaving the world, but with no rug unturned!
I think “Cleganebowl” was more or less what those fans wanted. It was certainly epic. Tinged with the type of magic that feels more appropriate to a White Walker storyline—but eh, dragons are magic, too. (As are Mary Shelley-esque experiments, I suppose.) :P The big thing that always left me disinterested in the story was how the Mountain was never a three dimensional character, so zzzz. I mostly appreciated the Hound for being Arya’s image. And, bless his heart, he finally set her on the right path this episode. He saved her life from a never-ending list of vengeance. Sure, maybe she survived a fair bit too much as the city was burning around her (and what the hell was with that white horse? Sounds like a metaphor from Paradise Lost bubbled up from the depths of Drogon’s attack. I suppose it makes enough sense. King’s Landing, by the end of this episode, was certainly hell.)
So yeah—what I loved was Arya becoming a human again. Jon doing his best to remain human. Even Grey Worm turning fanatical, because it makes sense for his character. I also liked Jaime and Cersei’s demise. I didn’t need to see Cersei meet her “just deserts.” I kind of liked that Jaime and Cersei got to die as humans—flawed humans, but humans all the same. “Human” is very much my word for a character who exists beyond vengeance, I guess.
And finally, the spectacle. I loved the spectacle. For the production value and for what it says about the nature of violence and vengeance. I loved seeing Drogon as a winged demon from the sky, Dany as little more than a spec astride him. Her power trip doesn’t get to be the center of this story. The people on the ground do.
