Game of Thrones Ending

[erikdk321]

Needless to say, spoilers abound.

My first thoughts having just finished:

Considering the absolute travesty that has been season 8, I think the finale decent, although I would've preferred something a darker/bitter sweet. It's clear that George RR Martin has been at least somewhat involved here.
Out of all the terrible candidates I think Bran made some sense, although it feels a little weird. I guess we can thank our lucky stars D&D didn't go for Jon, Sansa or Arya.

Unsurprisingly, there was lots of weird fan service and nonsense, like
- Gendry having a voice in who becomes king.
- The dragon destroying the Iron Throne. This made sense thematically, but how does it have any idea what it means?
- Teleportation, which for once I can forgive.
- Kings Landing being rebuilt so fast.
- Bron getting a seat at the Council. He's clearly a traitor and doesn't he have a kingdom to run?

What are your thoughts?

[Gilberreke]

I really loved the final season. I'm unsure why some people dislike it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sure, it wasn't the best season, but that nighttime battle episode was one of my favorite episodes, the mad queen ending kinda cool and this final episode was pretty well done.

No complaints here.

[erikdk321]

The season was entertaining as hell; the soundtrack and spectacle better than ever.

The writing, however, went down the shitter and the character development of Danny and others was really rushed.

[Gilberreke]

The writing, however, went down the shitter and the character development of Danny and others was really rushed.

I disagree, but hey, if we're both entertained, it's fine :)

[FlowerChild]

I think it all felt really rushed, but still enjoyed the season overall. Some of my observations:

-The rushing is a bit more painful considering they spent the first two episodes/hours on family reunions which did very little to advance the plot (Arya's areolas notwithstanding). After those first two, I thought the last season was going to seriously suck, and it was only with the third that I was brought back on board.

-The whole slave girl getting beheaded and thrown off the wall thing made very little sense to me. Yes, the emotional weight was there for the dragon team, but I have no idea why Cersi and gang would place any particular value on what I think would appear to be just some random woman they picked out of the water. I couldn't come up with any memory of a scene in previous episodes which might explain how they would know she had any particular importance, particularly not sufficient importance to warrant such a dramatic spectacle.

-The whole thing with Arya (and her areolas) sailing off screamed "we're making a spin-off series!" in a horribly contrived manner. That bit was just plain old shitty writing, and while relatively minor was all the more painful given it was inserted into the final moments of the series.

-I think John being exiled for being the hero was very Game of Thrones and was an appropriately bitter sweet ending, so I can't say I'm entirely unhappy (beheading him ala Ned might have been better though). Just wish they hadn't diluted it with the Arya nonsense.

-In episode 5, I really loved how the hound and the mountain essentially had been telling their own story the entire time while everything else only served as backdrop for it. I thought that was a particularly cool piece of writing.

[jorgebonafe]

When Arya sailed off, the only thing I could think of was "this is literally the end of The Lord of The Rings".

Despite all the hate this season got, I was really enjoying it until episode 5, apart from the surprise dragon kill. That made no sense at all...

But the thing that killed it for me was how Daenerys turned. And I don't buy the whole argument that "she did this, and that, and killed those people before, it was all there". For her to all of a sudden start burning innocent people on the streets when the battle was over... just wtf... I was not against the whole idea of she becoming the mad queen, but the way they did that was absolutely terrible. They really needed to take their time with this, two episodes was not nearly enough to set up that up. She was like a different character.

Overall, my thoughts on the last episode were "this episode would have been pretty good if episode 5 wasn't so complete garbage... now I just feel nothing". Honestly I just wanted to get it over with.

[FlowerChild]

But the thing that killed it for me was how Daenerys turned. And I don't buy the whole argument that "she did this, and that, and killed those people before, it was all there".

I dunno man, I bought it. The Targaryians are severely inbred and prone to insanity, she just lost her two closest friends in the previous 2 episodes, her lover just betrayed her by revealing a secret she begged and ordered him not to reveal, and in so doing made it very clear that she'd have to keep fighting a civil war way past taking the throne likely having to wipe out his family in the process, and finally her two closest advisors both betrayed her, one to an extent that more or less forced her to execute him. And for the cherry on the cake the man she's in love with is suddenly physically repulsed by her out of nowhere.

Her whole history is essentially one trauma after another, and then she received a whole series of them in a row, culminating in a surrender that would have likely resulted in her worst enemies living to plot against her. Her totally destabilizing made perfect sense to me. Yeah, it would have been cool if they prolonged that a bit, but a severe mental break seemed to fit the events very well IMO. I think it also may have also intentionally been referencing Heroshima which gives it a certain amount of real-world credibility.

I actually loved episode 5. The closest I've ever seen to something akin to a war crime in a fantasy setting.

[jorgebonafe]

Yeah, I get your point, but... Let's say if she got super paranoid and started killing her own people, that would make sense in this situation. But her whole character was build around destroying the masters and slavers, and saving the people from tyrants. Every decision and every person she killed was always following this principle, with the exception with the people that betrayed her on ocasion... So for her to start killing women and children on the streets, I just can't see that, that's should go against everything she stood for. I might even understand if, let's say, she decided to spare the city and then some random ballista still shot her and nearly killed her... I think that would be motivation enough for her to go full berserk at that point... But not because she got... what, triggered by bells or whatever?

I loved everything else about it, the acting was great, and visually it was really, really impressive. I still can get past her motivations though...

[FlowerChild]

I still can get past her motivations though...

I think I edited my post to include it after you had already started writing your response, but the more I think about it, I think the parallels to Hiroshima are really worth considering here.

I think she may have been exhibiting some of the same kind of thinking in that "these people must be made an example of to expedite a war we're already winning". One of my favorite lines of the entire series was with her pulling such logical gymnastics towards the end with something along the lines of "but we are killing them so that people in the future will no longer have to ever again live under a tyrant". There was also that whole bit about her talking about ruling through love or fear, and settling on fear after John spurns her advances that reminded me a lot of Machiavelli.

I dunno man, while I think there are few fictional parallels, I think there may actually be a number of real world ones where people start believing their own publicity and follow that belief right off the deep end.

[FlowerChild]

what, triggered by bells or whatever?

On this point, I don't think she was triggered by the bells. I think she knew the bells meant surrender, and she had already fully committed to killing the entire city to act as an example to any that might defy her.

I don't think she got pissed off at the bells and it inspired her to kill everyone. I think she got pissed off at the bells and the surrender it represented as it interfered with her already existing desire to wipe the city out, and she knew that the surrender would make that action look worse.

Yeah, I get your point, but... Let's say if she got super paranoid and started killing her own people, that would make sense in this situation. But her whole character was build around destroying the masters and slavers, and saving the people from tyrants. Every decision and every person she killed was always following this principle, with the exception with the people that betrayed her on ocasion... So for her to start killing women and children on the streets, I just can't see that, that's should go against everything she stood for.

Are you sure on that point? My interpretation of her character was that what she always wanted was to reclaim her family's throne, and that the various freeings of slaves and such along the way were more of a happy coincidence that furthered that ambition.

I could be wrong, but I don't think her conquests started with the intent of freeing anyone. That just happened to be a parallel goal that evolved along the way. I think it was when she didn't have the money to purchase unsullied for her army, so got them to revolt against their master's instead, no?

[jorgebonafe]

Hum... Real world parallels never crossed my mind, tbh. I'm afraid history is not my strong suit , so I don't think I'm quite well prepared to judge the character arcs of the people who decided to bomb Hiroshima. Maybe they were badly written too :)

Jokes aside, remembering the writers' justification for her dragon dying was that Daenerys just happen to forget the Iron Fleet, basically her largest enemy, existed, I think you're giving them way too much credit by thinking of Machiavelli with these plot lines.

The whole "ruling by fear" idea does make sense, but killing a whole city feels an "end of rope" kind of thinking to me, and episodes 4 or 5 didn't do a great job convincing me she was at that point.

I think it would be great to see this done properly. They could take some notes from the Shining, Kubriks version... If they took a little more time to develop that I'd be much happier.

I also can't give them much credit because of rumors I heard that HBO actually wanted this season and season 7 to have 10 episodes each, but the writers wanted to just be done with it to go work on Star Wars... I know this is not necessarily true, but I can't help of thinking it kinda makes sense, because before for the life of me I couldn't figure out why they would shorten the series at the end like that. It's not like GoT isn't making them a ton of money...

[jorgebonafe]

I could be wrong, but I don't think her conquests started with the intent of freeing anyone. That just happened to be a parallel goal that evolved along the way. I think it was when she didn't have the money to purchase unsullied for her army, so got them to revolt against there master's instead, no?

Well, I would just attribute that to her arc really, to her evolving from an inocent girl at the beggining that only cared about what was taken from her, to seing how people were oppressed and deciding to help them. Again, if that's the case the writers didn't show this to me. Even at the last episode she was talking about freing all the people from every city. I don't remember her motivation being only for the sake of being on the throne for a long time...

I don't think she got pissed off at the bells and it inspired her to kill everyone. I think she got pissed off at the bells and the surrender it represented as it interfered with her already existing desire to wipe the city out, and she knew that the surrender would make that action look worse.

If that's the case, that makes it even worse to me... that means she had plenty of time to think about and decide killing everyone was her only option. Didn't they had a strategic discution before the fight where they talked about Cersei using civilians as a shield, and that's the reason she might have to kill everyone? I may be remembering wrong, but I don't recall her just wanting to kill everyone back then, she just seemed to be resigned to do that if it meant she would lose the battle otherwise. So again, the moment they surrendered it made that point moot...

[FlowerChild]

Well, I would just attribute that to her arc really, to her evolving from an inocent girl at the beggining that only cared about what was taken from her, to seing how people were oppressed and deciding to help them.

But I mean, it could be just as easily attributed to enlightened self-interest maybe with a touch of psychopathy. I mean, an evil person who refuses to do good even if it benefits them, isn't evil, just stupid :)

[Again, if that's the case the writers didn't show this to me.

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the twist ending though? One fairly consistent theme I noticed with GoT, right from the start with the execution of Ned, is that very good or very evil characters don't last very long in that world. Only the ones that are willing to walk the line between the two are. Going to extremes in either direction seems to get you killed, and have unintended consequences.

To me, Dany's fall fits that theme perfectly. She portrayed herself as way too good, and eventually when she revealed her true motivations as rather evil (or at least entirely self-centered), it got her killed by one of the people closest to her.

Same reason I liked Jon being exiled: doing the right thing only serves to destroy him.

Even at the last episode she was talking about freing all the people from every city.

I mean, yes and no. She pulled that whole thing I described above with "we must kill everyone here so that people of the future will be free of tyrants". In that last major speech she gave, the "freedom" she was talking about had eerie undertones of "we'll free them from their lives" to me.

One key moment that you might want to go back to is when Tyrion is begging her to stop the attack if the bells are rung indicating surrender. Not sure if you noticed, but she very intentionally avoids ever answering him.

[jorgebonafe]

I'm trying to think of her character as being evil, or as you put it, entirely self-centered. I may have to think about this.

Maybe in this scenario she so completely deluded herself into thinking she was doing everything she did for the good of the people she actually came to believed it, even though it was a lie. But as of right now, it still feels like it all comes back to the writing. It is possible that I'm just really blind, but I got zero indication that was the case. I'm not talking about mustache twirling bullshit, but there are subttle ways to convey that kind of state of mind for a character. I have no reason to believe from watching the previous seasons that she was either secretly evil, secretly selfish or deluded. Maybe I'm thinking too highly of my own observational skills, but I'd like to think I would have picked up on that if it was there.

[jorgebonafe]

In case you post again, sorry if I don't reply tonight. It's pretty late and I have work early tomorrow. But can I say I rarely have such discussions on literary topics like this, and as it happens I'm actually finding it quite entertaining :)

[FlowerChild]

Maybe in this scenario she so completely deluded herself into thinking she was doing everything she did for the good of the people she actually came to believed it, even though it was a lie. But as of right now, it still feels like it all comes back to the writing. It is possible that I'm just really blind, but I got zero indication that was the case. I'm not talking about mustache twirling bullshit, but there are subttle ways to convey that kind of state of mind for a character. I have no reason to believe from watching the previous seasons that she was either secretly evil, secretly selfish or deluded. Maybe I'm thinking too highly of my own observational skills, but I'd like to think I would have picked up on that if it was there.

I don't think there was clear indication, but I also don't think there ever should have been.

You ever feel that kick in the gut when someone you love reveals themselves to be very different from the mental image you had of them, but in retrospect it all makes sense, even if you were entirely blind to it at the time?

To me, that's kinda what this all comes across as: Dany defies our illusions of who she is, but in retrospect, there's really nobody but ourselves to blame for having them in the first place. IMO, she didn't tell us who she was, but she didn't really tell us who she wasn't either. I think that in some ways, Jon is kind of our avatar in that discovery process, as he of course gets the full dose of that realization.

On the earlier point on Hiroshima (sorry, too many sub-topics to this), mainly what I was referring to there is that to my knowledge the public justification by the U.S. for dropping the first atomic weapon on a civilian target was that even though they were winning the war against Japan (and the Allies had already defeated Germany by that point), was that the war would drag on for months or years more incurring massive number of casualties in the process, so they essentially all but wiped out a city (and then a second one at Nagasaki) to motivate Japan into surrendering earlier than they might of otherwise.

Unofficially, it has always been strongly suspected, although I don't believe proven, that it was also intended to be a display of power towards the Soviet Union, as the cold war was already anticipated as coming, even though the U.S.S.R. was still officially allied with the U.S. during WWII. There's also some debate (again, not proven to my knowledge) as to whether the U.S. already knew that Japan was about to surrender after the first bomb when they decided to drop the second.

I think there are arguably a number of paralels there with what Dany did, to the point where I suspect that the writers probably intentionally drew them. The part about a show of power to the U.S.S.R. in particular seems to have a strong parallel to the upcoming war that Dany sees coming with the North.

[jorgebonafe]

I think thats where or opinions differ. If that was the case and she was evil from the start, to me there should have been some indication. That would be a reasonable explanation if that was the case, I just don't believe that was their intention. That could have very well been George's intention. But I think he may have just told them the ending and they either didn't care or weren't competent enough to get from point A to point B.

The possibility of she wanting to avoid future wars by making an example makes more sense to me than the idea she was evil to begin with, that's what I think their intention was. That dialogue about ruling by fear supports that, but even so I think that needed more development. I don't buy that she was ready for genocide at that point.

[FlowerChild]

I think thats where or opinions differ. If that was the case and she was evil from the start, to me there should have been some indication.

Yup, that's not something we agree on. I think there was some indication, like in the mass crucifixions she performed at one point, but I also don't think that it was really needed. I'm not sure I understand the idea that the audience should know something is going to happen before it does. To me, if she had given clear indication that she wasn't deeply motivated by self-interest, I might feel like it had been done poorly, but I don't think I ever saw such indication. Instead, she performed a bunch of actions that could either be viewed as altruistic or serving her self interest, with I believe the interpretation left entirely to the viewer as to which it was.

But like I said before I DID think the season felt rushed, so we're not in total disagreement on that point either :)

The possibility of she wanting to avoid future wars by making an example makes more sense to me than the idea she was evil to begin with, that's what I think their intention was. That dialogue about ruling by fear supports that, but even so I think that needed more development. I don't buy that she was ready for genocide at that point.

I don't think genocide is the right word there. Mass murder maybe, but there wasn't really a racial component to it.

I'm not sure "evil" is really the right word here either. Fanatical and self-obsessed maybe? I mean, it's all very grey, which Game of Thrones generally has been.

[jorgebonafe]

Ah, I didn't realize the term "genocide" necessarily implied a racial component was involved. Yeah, mass murder is fine.

I just used the word "evil" because I didn't want to repeat myself. I meant in the context we were talking about before, evil, selfish, deluded, etc...

Edit.
I just realized I said "mass murder is fine". Hope no one takes that out of context... The internet is dangerous nowadays.