S8E5 The Bells

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…