This Old Neon Forum

The Shoemaker wrote: ↑20 May 2019 07:26 One thing I did enjoy, was

Spoiler

Drogon's reaction to Daenerys dying, followed by him taking her body away. Very sweet.

Kong Wen wrote: ↑20 May 2019 04:23 Not going into detail because I'm on my phone and don't want to bother with tags, but they did a phenomenal job of tying up plot threads for a show this large. They actually managed to give everyone a satisfying ending, and on a show this grim, that's not an easy feat.

I'll post more analysis on each character's ending tomorrow when I have my laptop with me.

Kong Wen wrote: ↑20 May 2019 15:40

Kong Wen wrote: ↑20 May 2019 04:23 Not going into detail because I'm on my phone and don't want to bother with tags, but they did a phenomenal job of tying up plot threads for a show this large. They actually managed to give everyone a satisfying ending, and on a show this grim, that's not an easy feat.

I'll post more analysis on each character's ending tomorrow when I have my laptop with me.

Spoiler

I agree with the above that Drogon's reaction was great. Toasting the throne instead of Jon showed that the dragons had some at least rudimentary understanding of what Dany was doing. Drogon was upset enough by it that he torched the symbol/institution rather than the dude he at least kind of respected. Flying off into the unknown is a good ending for him, because the only alternative was to kill him, and there was no real convincing way to do that (and it would have been a minor eco-tragedy to bring dragons back into the world only to see them go extinct again).

Tyrion was in full form in this episode. It's nice that he gets to be Hand and sit in his old chair again, this time without the crushing weight of Tywin, Joffrey, and Cersei breathing down his neck or the apparatus of Dany's wars to direct his energy toward power rather than governance. Slurm, the Song of Ice and Fire was written by some other Maester—Sam just mentioned that he helped with something minor.

Jon got the best possible ending he could have hoped for. He lived the majority of his life oppressed by a social construct (his being a bastard), and then the latter part of his life crushed by the responsibility of authority (lord commander, king in the north, "true heir") that he didn't want. Even if he "won the throne" there's no way he would have stayed—he would have rather fled north to be where he belongs. This way, he gets to live as a wildling among people who respect him for who he is, actually free. (Keeping him alive as a hostage shows that the Unsullied were smarter governors than Joffrey.)

Arya got the ending that everyone always knew she was going to get: wandering the world in search of adventure. Slurm, showing her finding something would have ruined the whole point of that ending. She's going off into the unknown. Her stories are future legends, not current ones.

Seeing Lord Commander Brienne finish Jaime's page in the Kingsguard records was a nice little conclusion for the off-screen Jaime, too.

I was also impressed that they brought back Edmure to make an ass of himself one last time!

Bran is a fine choice for a king, and a natural choice for Tyrion to make. This is actually a classic G.R.R. Martin conceit, and the natural foil to Dany's attempts to "break the wheel" via warfare and conquest and power. Much of Martin's work is anti-war, and resolving this catastrophic conflict by foregrounding a physically powerless storyteller, historian, collective cultural memory is Martin's commentary on what societies value—what they can value as an alternative to strength. Besides his symbolic value, he's not supposed to have personal interest in the office. He's not supposed to have an interest in ruling or "want" things or have a narrative trajectory towards the throne, because that's the kind of person Martin is trying to avoid promoting.

Pluvius wrote: ↑20 May 2019 20:44

Spoiler

The argument for Bran's apparent 180 is that he was lying the whole time and everything that happened this season was a gambit for him to gain the crown. Which would make sense if you gave D&D credit for that sort of writing--which, again, I don't. One imagines that this entire last season or two will work a lot better if GRRM ever writes it.

I think that within the context of the show, as opposed to whatever GRRM might write, Tyrion would've made a lot more sense as the choice for king. All of the same arguments for Bran being king and Tyrion being his Hand also apply to the reverse, with the additional bonuses of (a) Tyrion actually having had direct experience in ruling and accomplishments of note and (b) placating Yara's almost-out-of-nowhere objections by putting Cersei's next-of-kin on the throne. It also would've made more sense to ask Bran for his opinion on who the king should be than to ask Tyrion. But of course, this all would've taken away from the final outcome of "Starks win!" so it's no surprise that it didn't happen.