The Bells was certainly a spectacular episode, but it did
not fail to deliver its share of WTF moments. I get a bit (OK, a
metric booty ton) of cognitive dissonance when I think of what the
conversation between David Benioff and DB Weiss might have been
before committing to a script.
Benioff: So, DB, how should Qyburn go out?
Weiss: I was thinking that maybe The Mountain should throw him down some stairs after he says something that The Mountain doesn't like!
Benioff: FTW awesome!
Or
Weiss: So, Dave, how should Cersei go out?
Benioff: I was thinking that she should go out in the embrace of her reconciled brother-lover Jaime as the Red Keep collapses on them.
Weiss: FTW awesomer!
Really? Cersei Lannister — the heretofore ultimate
player in the Game of Thrones — just watches impotently
while Daenerys burns TF out of King's Landing, then goes and dies in
the embrace of her brother who she marked for assassination
by having the ceiling fall in on her? No tricks at all up her
sleeve? She's just going to sit by and watch Drogon destroy all of
the defenses of King's Landing, then set the whole city on fire with
a nuclear blast that sunders stone buildings like Robin Arryn's foot
kicking Sansa's snow castle and wait to get TF out of Dodge only
when Drogon starts to knock down the Red Keep? Only to die with the
Red Keep falling on her head while she holds the reconciled Jaime in
her arms? Cersei deserved better. She could have at least have been
forced to hold Jaime as he died in her arms and lose the
last thing she cared about before having the ceiling fall in.
Arya and The Hound
I had hoped that we'd see Arya and The Hound off on an adventure
and/or mission, and while that didn't happen on screen, they did
travel the thousand plus miles from Winterfell to King's Landing
together, presumably stopping off at The Crossroads for some stew
and ale and to catch up with Hot Pie. We got another twist in
Arya's bildungsroman development with Sandor warning her
off the path she's on, and her calling "Sandor… thank you" showed
that she may likely heed it. Does this mean Gendry is back in play?
Or, does Daenerys get on her list, which now looks like it has some
magical get someone else to do the dirty work sauce on
it? Arya will make it to the final episode, but I don't know if
she'll make it through the whole thing. Maybe she'll marry Gendry
for the good of the family and her cousin Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen?
Varys
It's not surprising that Varys died, but how he went was a little
confusing. Why did he burn the note letting people know that Jon
Snow is really Aegon Targaryen? How is that for the good of the
realm? It's possible he couldn't guess that Daenerys wasn't as
vengeful as she turned out to be, and simply miscalculated. He
surely knew she would kill him, so why did he stay to be killed? If
he couldn't serve Jon, he could no longer serve the realm? Seems
unlikely. Tired of the game? Perhaps. Touching scene between Varys
and Tyrion at the end was a nice way to say goodbye to a favorite
character.
Cleganebowl
While it
was easy
to predict that Cleganebowl would happen, it wasn't so
easy to say how it would go down. What they came up with was well
done, and while it would have been nice to see The Hound find some
way to win and survive, the outcome was ultimately satisfying.
Euron Greyjoy
Euron getting taken out by Jaime works, but the serendipity of the
encounter was weird and it relied on the suspension of disbelief
breaking idea that Westerosi can swim in boots, armor, with swords
and daggers strapped to them, etc. Still, it worked pretty well, if
you squint.
Arya in the mayhem
They devoted an enormous amount of time focused on Arya
suffering in the chaos of the destruction King's Landing, and on the
interaction between her and the mother who helped her up and saved
her from being trampled and her daughter. She won't take the
torching by Daenerys of the mother-daughter pair she tried to help
lightly, but I don't see how Arya can take out the Night
King and Daenerys — they won't steal that thunder from Jon
Snow. But Drogon, however…
Whither Drogon?
It's going to be pretty hard for the writers to pull a "ha-ha, just
kidding!" for Daenerys and I don't see how she can win. There are
two options as far as I can see: 1) she dies or 2) she goes back to
somewhere across the Narrow Sea, perhaps Meereen or Vaes Dothrak to
live with the Dosh Khaleen. The space among those options for
bringing a dragon with you, especially a fully-operational nuclear
hellfire breather like Drogon, is limited. It seems it would be a
stretch that Jon could just use his half-Targaryen charm to get
Drogon to follow him after his mother Daenerys dies or ships off
across the Narrow Sea. Him dying of heartbreak might be plausible if
he were up north in the middle of winter, since they've already
hinted that dragons don't do well in the cold.
What are we going to do with all these Dothraki?
It's one thing to have a bunch of Unsullied left over after
Daenerys's exit (although Grey Worm seems to have developed some
issues after the execution of Missandei), it's quite another to have
a bunch of Dothraki rampaging across Westeros. Although a good many
of them were lost to the Army of the Dead, there certainly were a
bunch of them rampaging through King's Landing in this episode —
enough to cause an intolerable amount of mayhem in Westeros
especially now that winter has come. Maybe Daenerys tells (or
someone otherwise convinces (um, Tyrion, lookin' at you, champ!))
Kovarro, who as far as I know is her only surviving bloodrider, to
take the khalasar back across the Narrow Sea to the Great Grass Sea
where they can go back to doing their Dothraki thing. They have a
lot of loose ends to wrap up — could they really just, meh, hope
that the audience doesn't notice a few thousand Dothraki Screamers
just don't show up in Episode 6? Speaking of which…
There are a lot of loose ends to tie up
To go full Strunk, let me a third time say, there are a lot of loose
ends to tie up. Although it's clearly impossible to attempt to
enumerate them all here (because there are so goddamned many), let's
go over a few that particularly come to mind.
Gendry Baratheon
Although there have been signs, the Daenerys Targaryen train really
started going off the rails after she gave Gendry the Baratheon
name. She did something noble and fair and probably stupid if Gendry
could put 2 and 2 together, and everybody paid attention to the
"former" King in the North Jon Snow. As Jonathan Abner Tobias
Pissoff might have observed (in the sight of the new
gods and the old), boy, did that peee-eee-eee-ees her off!
I don't think that they elevate Gendry just to propose to Arya just
to have her rebuff him. It would be an interesting full circle to
unite House Baratheon and House Stark per Robert's original
vision. Could go down two ways…
Ser Davos Seaworth
They can't be continuing to sling face time for Ser Davos only to
set up smuggling plots that failed because the contraband gets
crushed under keep that a dragon knocked down. Or, maybe they
can. It would seem, however, that his loyalty should lie with
Gendry…
Yara Greyjoy
With Euron dispatched, Yara would seem to be the pretty much
undisputed front-runner for the queen of the Iron Islands, but what
role does she have in the Game of Thrones endgame? No hint
given at this point.
King's Landing
Forget the endgame aspects of the story, what about the annihilation
of a city of a million or more by fire and sword and spear as winter
has come in Westeros? There's going to be a lot of clean up needed,
bodies burned, etc., and now we have the whole armies outside who
just helped a crazy woman on a giant black dragon kill women,
children, babies, old folks, kittens, gerbils, puppies, goldfish,
whateves, on the one side and all the people still left alive on the
other. It's obvious that they "surrender", but the aftermath has got
to be messy. It will be interesting to see how they wave this one away.
Casterly Rock and House Lannister
Tyrion is still alive, but it's an end what needs tying.
Bronn
Tyrion promised Bronn the Reach. Will he be in a position to pay his
debt? If not, what happens? Bronn is mercenary, but he's also reasonable.
Other characters lying about
- Ser Brienne of Tarth
- Samwell Tarley, Gilly, and little Sam
- Grey Worm
Endgame
And, with all of that, everything has to get wrapped up in 80
minutes? This is going to be something to see. A lot can happen if
Bran wargs into Drogon…