Okay, so I didn’t hate the ending.
Seems like everyone else did. Twitter is awash with disappointment and invective (even more than usual, and that’s sayin’ somethin’). I received an outraged “we wuz robbed!” phone call from my beloved offspring four minutes—four freakin’ minutes—before the ending, because I had paused the beginning so I could finish feeding my own good dogs because...priorities.
So, no, I didn’t hate it. The ending of “The Iron Throne” and the entire Game of Thrones series could best be summed up by Tyrion’s explanation to Jon Snow about his exile to the non-existent Night’s Watch: It was a compromise. No one is happy, so it must have been a good compromise.
Not so for reviewers, especially the ones who hated every single season when it first ran but then regarded it in retrospect with a sort of warm nostalgic glow. To read them this morning, Season 8 was the pits, and the ending: beyond the pits.
There was no way to end Game of Thrones that would end well. Fan fervor and the proliferation of Redditors and YouTube experts simply outran the limits of storytelling. It just wasn’t going to happen that people would be happy. It’s all fun and games while the plot line is expanding, the myths are building and the complications getting every more complicated, but try to draw all the strings together and feelings are going to be bruised.
That said, were there flaws? Yes. Plot holes you could drive a dragon through? Sure. Characters going entirely out of character (Grey Worm) to serve the needs of a creaky plot? You betcha. Everyone else is happily dissecting all the shortcomings of Game of Thrones, so I don’t need to.
Although I do think it’s funny that the critics who are so outraged about all the ways they’re disappointed are by and large the very ones who were attracted to the show and the books in the first place precisely because of all the postmodern ways they deconstructed traditional mythic trappings and tropes of heroic fantasy (and I’m not even looking at Vox or Reddit, nor should you unless you want to waste six hours and come away mean-spirited and headachy).
If you loved a fantasy show because it murdered all the fantasy conventions within a mile of its plot, you don’t get to whine when your favorite convention is murdered. By and large, the ending is the most trope-subversive episode of the series: Bran, who has done little but intone creepy non sequiturs since his return to Winterfell, takes the throne; Bronn is somehow Master of Coin, where in a traditional fantasy his faithless extortionist head would be hanging on what’s left of the palace gates; and the story ends with the boring business of bureaucrats rebuilding the city.
See, this is what happens when you come after tropes wholesale. The endless subversion of story elements in the service of “realism” leads you into philosophy, not story. And while it’s clever, it’s also just an intellectual exercise devoid of emotional resonance. And this has been one of my long-running criticisms of both the series and the books; the irony is so self-conscious that it’s almost self-serving.
Which is why the two non-ironic Lord of the Rings moments at the end fall flat. It’s too cute by half that, instead of Bilbo and Frodo’s book being bequeathed to Samwise who deserves it as the last of the Ringbearers, the book is name-checked and dropped into Tyrion’s lap, and Tyrion isn’t even mentioned in it. Funny, yes, but cruel. And unjust. How ironic. How undercut.
The other moment that’s forced is Tyrion’s extemporaneous speech about what binds people together: the power of stories. When Samwise does it, it’s meaningful. Sam is trying to hearten Frodo, to console him, and to communicate something really important.
When Tyrion does it, it’s a writer’s dodge, a way to shoehorn Bran into position to be king, because he has all the stories.
Game of Thrones built its reputation on subverting fantasy conventions, aka murdering its tropes. Which has been the source of my … complicated … feelings about it all along. I can’t shake the feeling that Martin was less expanding the boundaries of his story and more disemboweling his genre with more than a little grim glee.
That said, some of it has been glorious. There have been beautiful images, wonderful characters, and unforgettable scenes. I don’t think anyone could have stuck that landing in a way that everyone would like. At least some sector of the audience was going to howl.
Back to the “The Iron Throne,” the finale. There were things I really liked.
First of all, this shot:
We can argue over whether Daenerys’ character arc from Braveheart to William Calley was a sudden turn in plot service or an evolution along a continuum — essentially whether she was always ruthless or she snapped when Missandei is killed, and whether Missandei’s death was necessary or just a plot contrivance designed to send both her and especially Grey Worm over the edge into war criminal territory in order to get Jon Snow out of King’s Landing — but there’s no doubt that’s a glorious visual. In one shot you see Daenerys’ power, her menace in her turn to brute force, and her embrace of darkness, even to appropriating Cersei’s signature black leather bodice. The effect is heightened by the Leni Riefenstahl-esque setting of the reverse shot. Everything about this scene emphasizes Daenerys’ irrevocable transformation. Tyrant of nations, Mother of Dragons, indeed.
Also good:
- The pacing. The measured weight of conversations. Nothing hurried about it. The slow deliberation of Tyrion’s long walk to the Red Keep and his slow uncovering of his brother and sister, his breaking down in tears — nicely filmed, emotionally resonant.
- Tyrion ending up as Hand of the King. Nice. Especially since Bran as king is a figurehead and utterly uninterested in ruling. Tyrion has always been the character who was best at determining how things work, how a ruler serves the people. From figuring out the sewage system at Casterley Rock to his moment of glory in the Battle of the Blackwater and the chants of “Half Man! Half Man!” — Tyrion has always been the one most suited to run the country. [Here’s my nit about Tyrion: his endless talk about his mistakes. He made one big one, and that was ratting out Varys (and yes, that was a dumb and pointless death). Otherwise, he failed to restrain Daenerys...but so did everyone else. Not that he wasn’t stupid on occasion, but...so was literally every other character. In fact, Tyrion screwed up much less than many others.]
- Sansa as Queen of the North. Although my personal preference was to see Tyrion named king and Sansa as queen, this works too. And she deserves it: no one else figured out how to feed armies or when to send in reinforcements, or how to turn your ex into a Milk Bone.
- The parallel movements of the Stark children as masters of their future: Bran in King’s Landing, Arya headed for points west, Sansa in Winterfell, Jon leaving Castle Black for the wilds beyond the Wall. Nicely done. And since the Stark family anchored the narrative, ending with them is appropriate.
- Jon Snow in the North. Despite all the Twitter predictions this week that Jon Snow would end up on the Iron Throne, I held out hope that wouldn’t happen. He’s too much like Ned Stark. This is a case where the fantasy trope of the noble savage being too good, too honorable, too — well, noble — to survive in the corrupt and scheming city was not subverted. And since the new king is omniscient, no one is going to be able to bullshit him, as they would have too easily with Jon Snow. No, Jon and Ghost are reunited and heading north with the Free Folk. Jon tells Tormund that Ghost belongs in the North; he does, too.
- In general, “The Iron Throne” is a companion piece to “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” episode 2 of this season, which was a lovely set piece that showed all our favorite characters at their very best as they prepared to die. In “The Iron Throne,” we see them preparing to live.
It was a fun ride. Sometimes infuriating, sometimes heartbreaking, occasionally astonishing, and always fun. I will miss you, Game of Thrones.