Game of Thrones recap: Season eight finale

WARNING: Spoilers. With one shocking decision, the years-long fight for the Iron Throne is finally over. And the ending was truly unexpected.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a recap. That means we’ll be discussing all the juicy details from the Game of Thrones season eight finale.

If you haven’t seen the episode yet and don’t want to know what happens, leave now.

Yara Greyjoy says “you have been warned.”

MISSED THE OTHER GOT RECAPS? Check out episode one, episode two, episode three, episode four and episode five here

After eight years, 73 episodes, and a truly staggering amount of blood, boobs, twists and triumph — the game of thrones is finally over in Westeros.

Sure, it’s a devastating concept — but like Daenerys Targaryen’s sanity, all good things must come to an end.

And the ending provided an even bigger twist than Saturday night’s election (I guess Bran is ScoMo in this incredibly lazy analogy).

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Before we get into that, let’s rewind to how this final 80 minutes played out.

In episode five, the very, very controversial “The Bells”, we found out that Dany is, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary for many years, an Actual Psychopath.

After the deaths of Missandei and Ser Jorah Mormont, and her nephew Jon Snow’s decision to swipe left on her for good, Dany realised she had no options left but to raze King’s Landing to the ground.

When bae won’t return your spicy texts.

So after years of banging on about her “destiny to rule”, Dany finally got what she wanted: the Iron Throne. But it came at a price, i.e. the respect and love of her allies and some low-key collateral in the form of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

So the world has been reduced to a dumpster fire — both literally and figuratively — but Dany’s not done with the executions.

As Jon, Tyrion and Ser Davos Seaworth walk through the ashes which were once a city, they see Grey Worm and his henchmen about to execute Cersei’s former soldiers, who are chained and kneeling before them.

Jon’s had enough.

“How much more defeated do you need them to be?” he asks them angrily, trying to stop the killing.

But Grey Worm’s not having it.

They pull their spears on Jon Snow, which is pretty rude.

If only there was something else Jon could do, like — and I’m just spitballing here — claim the Iron Throne for himself.

Anyway.

An upset Tyrion goes on the hunt for his brother and sister, obviously holding out a smidgen of hope that they may have survived the carnage and gotten away.

Unfortunately, they are now pancakes.

They are quite dead.

Like with most dead people, Tyrion chooses to gloss over the bad bits of Cersei’s personality and cries over her body even though she very actively tried to end his life on several occasions.

RIP.

This new blow proves too much for Tyrion. He’s steaming mad and wants to speak to the manager.

Actual footage of Tyrion on his way to see Dany.

Dany shows up to speak to the Dothraki and Unsullied forces, who are celebrating their big win amid the ashes.

She’s had a pretty serious mental break in recent days, and now has the blood of countless innocents on her hands.

Any regrets? You decide:

#NoRegrets

She thanks her soldiers for their service and then harps on about “freeing the world” from “tyrants”.

The liberated ashes of the women and children dusting her feet are, I assume, very grateful.

Dany then announces she’s going to spread the joy to the rest of the world — including Winterfell — much to the horror of Jon and Tyrion.

The Queen turns her attention to Tyrion, who is not currently in the running for Employee of the Month.

“You freed your brother. You committed treason," she reminds him angrily.

He responds by pointing out that she “slaughtered a city” and then throws his Hand of the Queen badge at her feet.

It’s a wonderful piece of theatre but results in him getting arrested, so we’ll add that to the growing list of Tyrion’s stupid decisions.

Tyrion quits.

Speaking of stupid decisions, Jon’s looking increasingly devastated as he watches this all unfold.

He’s joined by Arya, who’s genuinely bummed that she didn’t get to add “killed Cersei” to her LinkedIn bio.

Arya tells Jon that Dany is “your queen” in exactly the same way Aussies say “your mate” i.e. with more shade than a forest.

“She’s everyone’s queen now,” he responds with exactly zero enthusiasm.

“Try telling that to Sansa,” Arya says, before warning him that Dany will absolutely murder him ASAP because of his Iron Throne claim so he should watch his back.

“I didn’t save the world from an eternal winter for this bulls**t.”

Jon pops down to the dungeon to catch up with Tyrion, who is all of us when he asks: “Did you bring any wine?”

He did not.

But Jon has a chance to redeem himself by throwing Tyrion, who is on death row, a bone when he asks him hopefully if there’s life after death.

“Not that I’ve seen,” Jon replies.

Tyrion’s reaction:

Even though Dany’s now competing with the likes of Ramsey Bolton to become the least popular person on this show, Jon still attempts to defend her.

“She’s not her father, no more than you’re Tywin Lannister,” he tells Tyrion.

Tyrion asks him if, when presented with the option of accepting surrender or murdering everyone, he would have gone “full Dany”.

Despite the fact he’s literally been trying to justify the massacre for this entire scene, Jon then tells Tyrion that he “can’t justify what happened". He tries to reassure him that “the war is over now”, sounding just as weakly optimistic as all of us did last week when we tried to convince ourselves that Jaime may have survived that roof collapse.

“Is it?” Tyrion asks Jon pointedly. “When you heard her talking to her soldiers, did she sound like someone who was done fighting? She liberated the people of Slaver’s Bay. She liberated the people of King’s Landing. And she’ll go on liberating until she rules them all.”

DEATH OF THE MAD QUEEN

Meanwhile, Dany is finally eyeing off the Iron Throne that she’s worked so hard to win.

It’s about the only thing left standing in a room full of debris and ash, but she’s pumped all the same.

Me when the food arrives:

Jon walks past Drogon and edges into the hall to have a little chat to Dany.

She shares a sweet memory about how she couldn’t count when she was a kid or something, and Jon follows up with a cute story of his own about the current state of King’s Landing.

“Have you been down there? Have you seen them? Little children, burned?”

In a ballsy move, Dany tries to blame Cersei for the carnage.

Nice try, Dany.

Jon then tries to put in a good word for his pal Tyrion, but Dany’s pretty set on having him executed.

He gives her another opportunity to be merciful, but all this talk of death seems to have turned her on and she goes in for a pash.

“You are my queen — now and always,” Jon tells her, before plunging a knife into her chest as they make out furiously.

Jon seems to be really enjoying it.

So that’s it. Dany’s dead. The reign of mad tyrants is over.

RIP Dany.

One person who is particularly salty at this turn of events is Drogon.

In a truly heartwrenching moment, Dany’s longtime sidekick tries to wake her up by gently nudging her and howling.

He then does everyone in Westeros a personal favour and burns the Iron Throne to the ground, before grabbing her body in his talons and flying off into the distance.

One way to solve the issue of who parks their tush on the Iron Throne.

THE NEW KING

Even though his jailer is dead, Tyrion’s still languishing in a cell.

Grey Worm comes to get him and take him to a meeting of some sort, and at first it looks like we’re in for a good time because the whole gang’s back together.

Brienne, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Davos, Yara Greyjoy, Samwell — what a thrill!

But our hopes of a happy reunion quickly turn to ash, which incidentally, blends in well with their surroundings.

This is not fun.

Turns out plenty of people — largely Yara and Grey Worm — aren’t happy that Jon has executed the queen they’ve wasted a lot of time following.

And they want justice.

Davos is keen to keep the peace and offers Grey Worm a nice investment property in The Reach to try and extinguish the fiery hatred within him that’s calling for Jon’s head on a platter.

But he’s not interested.

There’s also the small matter of what’s going to happen to Tyrion, who is technically still a prisoner on the very legit charge of treason — but with Dany dead, everyone’s kind of wondering who’s running this s**tshow.

“We don’t have a king or queen,” Grey Worm points out.

“You’re the most powerful people in Westeros — choose one,” Tyrion replies.

It’s kind of amazing that an eight-year multi-fronted war for the kingdom has come to this: a bunch of bored people sitting around and asking each other, “I dunno eh, do you want it?”

Edmure Tully believes that now’s the time to Steven Bradbury his way to power, but is given a hard pass by Sansa.

“Hello yes, I would like to be king, plz.”

Sam suggests a democratic vote and they all laugh at him. What’s next, a minimum wage?

Somehow, Tyrion — despite proving again and again that he is incapable of good judgment — is asked to just pick someone so they can all go to lunch.

He spots Bran first so throws up his name.

“I know you don’t want it. I know you don’t care about power. But I ask you now, if we choose you, will you wear the crown? Will you lead the Seven Kingdoms to the best of your ability from this day to the last day?” Tyrion asks him.

“Why do you think I came all this way?” Bran replies matter-of-factly.

Everyone votes in favour of Bran’s promotion, and then they just have to decide which cool nickname to give their new boss.

… They settle on “Bran the Broken”, so yeah, I guess we'll workshop that one a bit more later.

Tyrion is then hired as Hand of the King, proving once again that there’s no limit to how many chances people will give him to dole out bad advice.

THE NIGHT’S WATCH

In an incredible twist of irony, Jon Snow is sent back to exactly where he came from before all this Dany mess began: the Night’s Watch.

Given that the Night King and White Walkers are dead, it’s kind of like being named a weekend Hallway Monitor, but it’s better than the beheading that Grey Worm was keen on.

Jon is still looking particularly tortured about his decision to kill his lover/aunty, but Tyrion assures him that he’s the Clyde to Jon’s Bonnie.

“Was it right? What I did?” Jon asks him.

“What we did,” Tyrion replies.

“You ready, B?”

THE FAREWELL

Down at the dock, it’s time for everyone to choof off on their next adventures.

In particular, the Starks need to say goodbye to Jon as he — once again — leaves them to join the Night’s Watch and take the black.

Sansa apologises for inadvertently ending his sex life forever, but after being shot with an arrow by one girlfriend and tricked into collaborating in a massacre with another, Jon’s decided to just focus on his career for a bit anyway.

The parting of ways.

He then tells Arya that she’s welcome to come visit at Castle Black, and Arya’s a bit awkward because as far as destinations go, it’s a bit crap.

To dodge the invitation, she makes a snap decision to go “west of Westeros” and entirely off the grid.

“That’s where all the maps stop. That’s where I’m going,” she says.

Bran and Jon share a quick goodbye, with Bran offering up all the emotion and warmth we’ve come to expect of him this season.

Cool, cool.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

Inside the Red Keep, Brienne has pulled out a huge scrapbook with Jaime Lannister’s name in it and I think we all know what’s happening here:

Put it in the Book, sweetie.

“He is a fugly s**t.”

Except when she starts scribbling, we see that she’s a much less petty person than I am, and is in fact writing some nice words about her ex-boyfriend.

How ‘bout that?

THE FIRST MEETING

Back inside the Red Keep, we find out the King’s inner circle is now comprised of Samwell, Davos, Bronn and Brienne.

Samwell brings along a scrapbook and plonks it down in front of Tyrion, excitedly revealing its name: A Song of Ice and Fire.

As any Game of Thrones fan worth their salt knows — that is the name of George R.R. Martin’s original book series.

Anyway, once Tyrion figures out it’s essentially a Westerosi recap of all the dramas surrounding the Iron Throne, he does what any of us would do and asks them to skip to the bits about him.

“I suppose I come into some heavy criticism,” he says, trying to sound casual.

Samwell then has the awkward job of telling Tyrion that he’s not even mentioned, which — to be fair — does appear to be an aggressive oversight.

The royal advisers get into some heavy discussions about plans for the city and the upshot is that they’re going to rebuild ships and brothels first.

GHOST AND JON

Jon may have acted as though he’s bummed about having to serve a life term up North, but once he arrives, we see he’s actually joining his pal Tormund Giantsbane and a bunch of wildlings and it’s just like when you’re grounded but you tell your mum you need to do a “group project” with your BFF and then the two of you just watch movies in your room.

Most importantly, Tormund’s brought Jon’s pet direwolf Ghost with him, and it’s the reunion we all deserved.

The only GoT couple that matters.

So that’s it, GoT fans. We’ve done it.

Sansa has taken her rightful place as Queen of the North:

Queen Sansa.

Arya has gone all Christopher Columbus:

Arya’s on an adventure of some description.

Bran has managed to pull off the most impressive and unexpected power-grab of all time:

He played a very long game.

Jon’s heading North with all his wildling friends, happy in the knowledge that there’s a zero per cent chance of running into ol’ Nighty:

Jon and Tormund are livin’ large.

And the Iron Throne?

The end of the Iron Throne.

It’s gone.

Thanks for playing.