Mitchell Toy recap: Game of Thrones season 8, episode 5
Like Chapel St on St Patrick’s Day, things got very messy in King’s Landing this week. After a penultimate episode of fiery chaos, these are the questions that next week’s series finale has to answer.
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*SPOILERS AHEAD*
Last week left us with Dany’s armies massing on the desert outskirts of King’s Landing, presumably the Docklands side.
With one dragon left and Missandei to avenge, this episode is set to give the local Le Pine franchise the most work they’ve had since the Red Wedding.
THE GoT EP WHERE NOTHING HAPPENED
GoT S8 E1: LIKE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS AT BULLER
BLOODBATH AT WINTERFELL FOR GoT FAITHFUL
VARYS VAPOURISED
When Varys confronts Jon Snow about his claim to the throne, and offers his support, Jon brushes him to the junk folder like a Nigerian scam email.
Dany is in a state of depression after the death of her friend Missandei.
She has not emerged for days from her chamber, which might as well be littered with empty UberEATS bags, tissues and Meg Ryan DVDs.
When Tyrion goes to tell her Varys’ intentions with Jon, she assumes someone has betrayed her.
But it’s not just Varys. Jon has betrayed her too. And Sansa. And Tyrion. And the postman.
Resembling her father, the Mad King, Dany shows no mercy and sentences Varys to death, having Greyworm arrest him and take him down to the water’s edge for a dragon flaming.
Tyrion admits it was he who yapped. Varys takes that well and says goodbye.
The Master of Whispers, whose scheming since the start of the series has epitomised the bitchy, stabby nature of politics in Westeros and indeed the real world, faces his fiery fate with a simple wish: that the right ruler sits on the Iron Throne.
AIR SUPERIORITY
Euron’s dragon-slaying navy winds up for battle and the soldiers of King’s Landing prepare for close combat.
Arya and the Hound make it through the gates to the Red Keep as the battle nears, but lots of desperate people miss out, including Jaime, who slinks away in a side street.
The action kicks off as the final surviving dragon, who has clearly been reviewing the tape from last week, blazes Euron’s Iron Fleet before the scorpion crossbows can do their worst.
As the armies of the north face a smug-looking Lannister commander at the gates, the dragon, which should have been factored better into defence of the city, arrives at the Lannister men’s backs, blasts down the gates and invites the Dothraki horsemen and unsullied infantry to start a free-for-all penetration of the city.
Not since Berlin in 1945 has the mood of a town been so grim.
As Tyrion predicted, the bells are tolled once it’s apparent the dragon has them beat.
The Lannister men, rather than perpetuate a gritty street battle for a queen who, really, they don’t particularly like, lay down their swords in front of Jon Snow.
But Dany, whose BFF was made headless by these bastard Lannisters, knows how to make a bad situation worse with just a little bit of effort.
She steers her dragon towards Cersei in the Red Keep and ignites the streets of the capital with indiscriminate fury, torching soldiers and civilians alike and provoking enemy soldiers to reclaim their weapons and fight to the death.
Jon Snow is horrified as the city becomes a charnel house of terror and mayhem with Greyworm, mourning his beloved Missandei, leading the vengeful charge.
The armies of the north become much like the army of the dead they just defeated.
ROUND FOR ROUND WITH THE HOUND
The Hound, whose brother the Mountain caused his facial disfigurement and who was left for dead by Arya Stark, has lived his whole life for revenge.
Now he tells Arya, while standing on Cersei’s giant Risk boardgame, that dying for revenge is not as good for living for love and forgiveness.
That helps Arya, but the Hound still sets himself on a course to die for revenge by shirt-fronting his zombie brother in a crumbling stairwell.
Guards are deflected, Cersei’s Hand has his head cracked and the queen herself knows when to make herself scarce, going it alone down to the dragon skull showroom.
What follows is a dance of mutual destruction between the two brothers; the Mountain’s helmet is knocked off to reveal the full extent of his full-body tinea, the Hound impales the Mountain with a sword but discovers it’s something other than organs that’s keeping him alive.
The Mountain tries his signature trick, an old-fashioned head crushing while gouging the eyes, and the Hound stabs the zombie like a pin cushion to no avail.
There’s only one to do if you’re fighting your undead arch rival brother in a crumbling city: charge him through the wall and fall together to a fiery death.
The sad tale of the Hound, the Eeyore of Westeros, is complete, but not before Arya has learned a valuable lesson.
She acts immediately to save as many people as she can from the hell of King’s Landing’s burning streets, but fails.
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
After Euron’s navy crumples like a cheap suit after its second dry-cleaning, he fortuitously washes up on the beach where Jaime is sneaking under the Red Keep to go and rescue his evil sister, on instructions from his brother Tyrion.
Jaime had been captured by the northern armies trying to re-enter King’s Landing, but Tyrion let him go, risking Dany’s wrath.
If you’re a hothead, it’s common to want to punch a bloke like Euron for sleeping with your sister, but it’s not so common to do so because you’re also sleeping with his sister.
Like Chapel St on St Patrick’s Day, a messy brawl ensues and Euron stabs Jaime twice in the torso — an apparently mortal blow.
At least, that’s what Euron thinks, as he utters “I’m the man who killed Jaime Lannister” with his final breaths as Jaime kills him too and stumbles off into the bowels of the city.
As Dany clocks up a few more charges to be heard later at a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, the once-grand Red Keep is making the Notre Dame rebuilding works look cheap.
Jaime finds Cersei on the Risk board and they make a run for the dinghy by the sea so they can start a new life on the coast where there’ll be employment for retired tyrants within the catchment area of a good public school for the incest kid.
But the path is blocked by fallen bricks. Jaime and Cersei have their final embrace, after a long and controversial romance that, since S1 E1, has been nothing but bloody trouble.
Nothing else matters, certainly not all of those pesky civilians getting fried by the dozen on the streets above, as the whole structure collapses and the Lannister siblings are entombed with the unborn child for whom they would do anything.
Daenerys Targaryen is in the box seat to rule a city she’s just destroyed, and the series finale is left to answer a few questions.
Will Jon challenge Dany for the throne?
To whom was Varys writing the letter about Jon’s parentage at the start of the episode, and was it actually burned?
How will Dany react when she finds out Tyrion betrayed her by freeing Jaime?
Is she just as mad as her dad?
Did the Iron Throne itself actually make it through all that carnage?
I suppose we’ll know next week.
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