Game Of Thrones goes into tonight’s final episode preparing for another battle, perhaps its biggest yet: fighting for its reputation, for its life in a way.
Having to overcome a feeling the series is not so much ending but dying, suffering the type of slow and painful exit of so many people in it.
Season Eight has been a mess in other words. That seems undeniable.
Final: Game Of Thrones goes into tonight’s final episode preparing for another battle, perhaps its biggest yet: fighting for its reputation, for its life in a way
GoT’s two core virtues – characterisation and plot – have, like Brandon Stark in the very first show, gone out the window.
Somehow, after years full of many clever, multi-dimensional, episodes, the denouement is in danger of being the one thing Game Of Thrones should never be: predictable.
Back on April 14th, when this series started, few of us envisaged we’d be approaching the finale without Cersei or The Night King there to make things interesting. Without a real baddie.
Recent weeks of simplistic or nonsensical storylines have left it with an uncharacteristically limited showdown – Daenerys or Jon – and surely only one outcome.
Story: GoT’s two core virtues – characterisation and plot – have, like Brandon Stark in the very first show, gone out the window
Let’s face it they’re not going to fly off into the sunset together, even though the show spent several series teasing viewers with that prospect and that’s what they wanted and she still does – despite discovering she’s his Auntie.
There’s been speculation about suicide but after years of fighting for the throne it’s hard to believe she’d do that with only one rival left.
She seemed fairly focused last week, when the carnage and destruction that she unleashed demonstrated she hadn’t really needed three beasts possessing Drogon’s firepower.
It’s hard to see how anyone can stop her/them, unless Bran can do something extraordinary. (Become The Three-Eyed Dragon for example.)
Well at least in theory.
In fact, along with all the panting eulogies about Jon’s leadership qualities, Khaleesi’s display (and what it represented) is the thing that means it would be a minor miracle if she emerges as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.
Not least because to achieve that, she and her last remaining dragon would have to dispense not just with the hero but with three other popular characters – his lovely ‘siblings’ from the Stark family: Arya, Sansa, and Bran.
Surprise: Few of us envisaged we’d be approaching the finale without Cersei or The Night King there to make things interesting
After her display of blood lust, along with all the panting eulogies about his leadership qualities, it would be a minor miracle if Dany emerges as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.
Not least because to achieve that, she and her last remaining dragon would have to dispense not just with the hero but with three other popular characters – his lovely ‘siblings’ from the Stark family: Arya, Sansa, and the Three Eyed Raven.
Admittedly, our former heroine’s transition from self-styled Breaker Of Chains and feminist role model to genocidal maniac/war criminal was…awkward. Not to mention grim.
On the other hand most of the people that she massacred in King’s Landing were just extras.
Jon of course was horrified. In fact, despite everyone from Tyrion and Varys to Tormund and Samwell salivating about him being ‘a true warrior’ and the only moral candidate as prospective ruler, Jon has done little to justify such hyperbole.
In the battle for King’s Landing, he spent most of the time staggering around looking stunned and at Winterfell his main contribution was to fall off his dragon, leaving Arya to destroy The Night King.
Ending: Recent weeks of simplistic or nonsensical storylines have left it with an uncharacteristically limited showdown – Daenerys or Jon – and surely only one outcome
His bleating speeches have become increasingly clichéd, saccharine, and hollow, while his endless protests about acceding to The Iron Throne (‘I don’t want it’) illustrate how wet he really is.
Game Of Thrones is a show about power and has always rewarded, almost endorsed, the callous brutality of those who seize or seek it: Tywin, Cersei, and Joffrey, et cetera, plus basically the heads of every family.
So, as they sit down to take in tonight’s finale and take sides, anyone regarding his/herself as a serious GoT fan surely has to be rooting for Daenerys to crush Jon and anyone else in her way.
Shock: After her display of blood lust, along with all the panting eulogies about his leadership qualities, it would be a minor miracle if Dany emerges as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms