GoT 8.5 personal thoughts

[alley_skywalker]

Yea this episode was pretty messy in a lot of ways – I thought that people were exaggerating because their ship got screwed or their fave turned out to not be a hero. I’ve actually been fine with the way most of the other stuff payed out. The Dorne plot was probably the closest that got to this level of “ok this was not very well thought through” in my personal opinion. I really think that most of the problems were caused by the feeling that everything was rushed and without proper payoff or setup. A lot of the same end results would have been fine and felt organic if they were developed over a larger number of episodes. Either this season would have needed to be extra long or we’d need a slightly shorter season 8 and then another short season 9. I don’t think it even needed to be multiple seasons but just some more breathing room for all the characters.

 

 Things that could have been fine but suffered a lot from the pacing:

• Tyrion’s faith in Daenerys seems woefully misplaced because she snaps the way she does. But this is probably the “victim of rushed season” that faired the best because it makes some sense in the context – Tyrion knows Dany is dangerous but he didn’t think she’d snap this way. The audience wasn’t expecting her to, after all.
• I feel kinda vindicated re: never really liking Daenerys and I don’t think it was unforeseeable for her to burn King’s Landing. She’s been building up to that for a long time now. But I did find it a little jarring that she did it after the city basically surrendered. I thought she’d do it in the process of taking the city, i.e. yea we’re using fantasy nukes but it’s meant to achieve a goal not just taking out pent up frustration on surrendered soldiers and civilians. Again, this could have been perfectly fine if it was given a little extra time to develop. If she had done this with almost no allies, if everyone – Jon, Tyrion, etc – had turned against her completely. Here, she’s still got Jon’s loyalty if not his sexytimes, and Tyrion is, despite everything, still on her side, and she’s got the unsullied and the Northern armies at her back. I don’t think she’s isolated enough to justify quite this level of crazy. But, as a concept, I don’t think it’s bad writing or somehow unforeseen that Daenerys would lose it in some way. *shrug*
• The problem with the iron fleet isn’t that it burned – it’s not illogical that that’s what would happen to a bunch of wooden ships with a fire-breathing dragon around. But it’s kind of a bummer that it was set up as this big thing and then went down so quickly. There wasn’t much payoff.
• Jaime and Cersei’s death scene – whatever else is to be said about it – also did not feel dramatic enough and given enough oomph, I felt like, given the stature of the characters and their storyline. Theon’s and Sandor’s had more payoff, given the weight of the characters, etc. Nick and Lena were great in it, but, again, I think it suffered from the overly-crunched pacing. Jaime deserved something more drawn out and dramatic for his death scene – but he’s my fave so I am somewhat biased. But it’s just jarring how anticlimactic if felt for me – me, the person who swore that whichever ASOIAF book had Jaime’s death scene in it would go flying across the room once I read that he died. Maybe it’s because I had been so emotionally prepared for Jaime to die – more than Theon – that I feel deeply sad but not as IN TEARS emotionally about it.
• A more minor and personal complaint – I wish the show hadn’t forgotten about Yara :(

 

Positive things:

• Tyrion and Jaime’s goodbye scene was AMAZING. Dear God do I hope that something like that happens in the books (if we ever get them lol) even despite everything happened with them there (and didn’t on the show).
• Arya choosing to turn away from revenge and trying to live and, implicitly, later finding something other than revenge to live for, was actually very heartwarming as a character beat for her. In a way, she gains some of her humanity back like this.
• I didn’t really care about Clegainbowl but I think it was a proper ending to Sandor’s arch in a lot of ways. And the shot of him going down with Gregor into that fiery put was very poetic and fitting.

Jaime and Jaime/Cersei specifically:

• You would think that as a Jaime/Cersei shipper I’d be happy at least in principle. But I actually never thought they’d have a happily ever after – that’s not really what I wanted for them because to me their story was always one of tragedy. My ideal ending would have been (better lit, for one lol) Jaime killing Cersei and then either killing himself or succumbing to wounds he received previously as he holds her in his arms. If Jaime had to die it made sense for him to die with Cersei and I did say before that she is his The One. But like more that their fates were inextricable in a lot of ways, not that he would strive for a HEA with her past a certain point.
• I don’t think the way it was played erased Jaime’s arch necessarily, though? Shipping aside, I don’t think Jaime’s arch was about “getting away from Cersei.” Getting away from Cersei was more of a byproduct. The arch was more about priorities. He got stripped of a lot of his arrogance, he tried to pull Cersei back from the edge and make better choices himself, and the culmination was at the end of last season where he left her to go and fight for all of humanity. Jaime says as much at the start of this season – he chose to come North because the fight for Winterfell went beyond family and romantic love and such. It was about saving the world. In season 1 Cersei was the entire world for Jaime more or less. But she’s not anymore.
• So, to some extent the logic is at least kinda justified – especially if the Jaime-Tyrion convo was tweaked just a little. Like, Jaime going back to convince Cersei to either run away and leave everything, to not cause mass destruction and maybe save herself too in the end does make some sense. He gets to both save hundreds of people (potentially) and also his sister, because, at the end of the day, whatever else she is, she’s also family. Give her a chance at life but far away and without power to really hurt anyone. Or, if he fails, to die with her – maybe because of guilt, maybe because he feels like he’s linked to her by fate. It wouldn’t be a reach to think that Jaime could get overwhelmed by feeling displaced, feeling like he can’t really go back after everything. And, again, that fated pull between the two.
• But I don’t think the writing really got that logic across (maybe it didn’t mean to?). Especially when Jaime starts telling Tyrion how Cersei might win. Because this seems like he wants to be with her even if she is ruling over total destruction, which at this pint IS jarring for his character arch. Disregarding that one moment, I think the rest of it could have been played reasonably, but suffered, like a lot of other things, from bad pacing.
• On second thought, I think Jaime could be bluffing Tyrion in that scene to an extent. Tyrion is all like “why are you walking into suicide” and Jaime is like “don’t worry, bro, maybe she’ll win and I won’t have to due.” And then when he’s telling Tyrion why Cersei won’t give up and he says “it’s not impossible that she’ll win” he doesn’t look hopeful. He actually looks kind of pained. It’s more like this is part of this argument to Tyrion as to why Cersei won’t change course – she has reasons to believe she could still win. (I don’t take his comment about not caring about the civilians of King’s Landing at face value because this wasn’t even true as of S1. Otherwise, Jaime wouldn’t have become the Kingslayer.) But the writing is definitely confusing.
• (This ending for Jaime makes me wonder whether Jaime/Brienne is a thing that happens in the books or if last ep was just fanservice. (Which is a shitty thing to do to the shippers at the end of the day.) This is why I was always so against that ship happening (plus the lack of chemistry, tbh). I always thought that Jaime and Cersei would die together in one way or another – as much as I loathed the thought of Jaime’s death – and in that context it seemed weird to make J/B a romantic thing. Mind, I don’t think Jaime slept with her to play with her feelings or anything. But having them get romantic is jarring with how Jaime tends to do romantic relationships. He had never been with anyone but Cersei until then. Sex isn’t just an activity to him, it’s extremely meaningful. So, I wonder if GRRM would go there.)

 I do still like the show? I just wish they hadn’t rushed everything so much at the end because it certainly does take away a lot from the emotional impact.