Let me rethink that.
Can someone explain to me what happened to Dany? How can she go from wanting to be the most righteous queen to a stone cold killer? No reason I can see, no previous explanation, just a mental breakdown. Or just bad writing?
And Jaime? He abandons Brienne and that's it. He forgot all about her? Nothing else matters?
And Varys? The plan that never was?
I'm a little disappointed, to say the least.
T
I won't re-hash all the lazy/rushed writing problems with season 7 and 8. Nearly every article I read on the show lately goes into it in far better depth than I can. And I agree with it all. It definitely (and sadly after all these hours of watching) feels like the show is sputtering to an end instead of building to a satisfying, climatic finish.
I do want to comment quick on the biggest criticism from the last episode -- Dany's too-sudden of a turn towards just straight up slaughtering innocents. I was pretty pissed after watching the episode. Sure it was satisfying finally seeing Drogon light some shit up. But there were just too many WTF moments. However, I'm glad I happened to read these two things. It doesn't explain the lazy/rushed writing, but it did help to put Dany's transformation into better context. Seriously, before reading these I was pretty pissed. Now I'm at least still excited to watch the finale.
1. I totally did not catch the exchange between Vary's and the girl at the beginning of the episode. In fact my wife and I were like WTF are they saying and we even skipped back to try to catch the dialog again. My wife's like huh? I'm like I don't know something about Dany not eating -- assuming she's upset about Missandei and Jon spilling the beans. Then Varys gets roasted for simply telling the truth about Jon's parentage. I didn't find out until yesterday what they actually said:
The beginning of Episode Five found Varys at Dragonstone writing a letter naming Jon as the true heir to the Iron Throne and consulting with one of his "little birds," an adorable kitchen girl named Martha.
“She won’t eat,” Martha told Varys.
"We’ll try again at supper,” he replied.
Martha let Varys know that she thought soldiers were watching her. “Of course they are,” he responded. "That's their job. What have I told you, Martha?”
"The bigger the risk, the bigger reward,” the girl replied.
Holy shit.
Varys was trying to poison Dany. And it was a straight up call back to season 1:
Did You Catch Varys Totally Trying To Poison Dany On GOT?Maybe you all are smarter than me and you caught it. But after talking to all my close friends and family who watch the show -- none of them did. Seems pretty damn important to get right if you are going to justify Dany's sudden turn to the dark side!!! Or at least comment on it in the after-the-show segment so people understand the importance of Vary's actions.
2. I'm glad I read the third part of this Atlantic article, the part by Spencer Kornhaber:
Game of Thrones Delivers Its Most Cataclysmic EpisodeHis reviews are always awesome as he spends lots of time digging through history to help understand parallel events on the show -- much like GRRM claims actual human history is far more gruesome and tragic than anything he could write (red wedding, trail by combat, etc...). Anyway, to paraphrase Kornhaber, if Jon's true parentage secret is out it will always be a threat to her rule. Unless she does something so powerful and terrible that no one would ever question her again. She doesn't WANT to destroy King's Landing, she's NOT simply a "crazy mad queen", she HAS to do it to put all future challenges to her throne to rest.
And the fact that Kornhaber doesn't mention Varys trying to poison Dany makes me think he didn't catch it either as it further supports her NEED to go big or go home. Sadly, we as viewers are left to try to piece all this together ourselves. Had they taken a few more episodes to show this build up and turn a bit more fully it would be vastly more satisfying.