Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4 recap: The Last of the Starks

Even the producers didn’t see this one coming in the latest episode of Game of Thrones | SPOILERS

A long winter, or a long black? The choices are endless at Winterfell.

Call it Stockholm syndrome, or early onset nostalgia on my behalf, but didn’t Game of Thrones move on rather quickly from the Night King?

After all, it was quite a lot of investment in an antagonist who never even confirmed his modus operandi, and who in the final battle didn’t even so much as swing a sword at our heroes. (I was secretly hoping for a battalion of Craster’s blue-eyed baby boys to appear at the crucial moment; but no dice.)

Not only did the Night King go down in screaming heap at the end of the last episode, but so too did many feverish fan theories which were built up around him, Bran Stark and Azor Ahai the so-called Prince who was Promised.

Don't mess with The Mother of Dragons until she's had her morning coffee.

I am not the only one having trouble getting over the exhausting events of last week. Eagle eyed viewers spotted a large takeaway coffee cup, perhaps from Starbucks, in front of Emilia Clarke during the feast scene in a rare blooper for the show. Cue fake outrage, followed by a thousand memes.

George RR Martin, who wrote the books on which the television series is based, has long said that people make the most interesting villains: “I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black.”

Daenerys (Emilia Clark) farewells Jorah (Iain Glen). Picture: Foxtel

Accordingly here, in the series’ antepenultimate episode, our attention is turned to the fragility of the Targaryen-Stark coalition (“We may have defeated them, but we still have us to contend with,” says Tyrion to Davos), and the imminent battle to take the Iron Throne from the most compromised human heart of all, Queen Cersei.

Gendry (Joe Dempsie) gets ready to be rejected by Arya (Maisie Williams). Picture: Foxtel

But this all happens against an outbreak of thwarted romance. Ayra knocks back the newly ennobled Gendry Baratheon, now Lord of Storm’s End. Tormund, having failed to read the room on every occasion, realises it’s never happening with Brienne, later departing Winterfell for the north in a huff.

Brienne has her first (ahem) romance with Jaime Lannister who succumbs to the inferior angels of his nature and rides posthaste back to Cersei.

Love is fleeting … Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) farewells Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie). Picture: Foxtel

Jon sends Ghost off to live at Castle Black without so much as a pat (…perhaps this doesn’t count). And the saddest separation is Grey Worm from Missandei in the episode’s final scene.

Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) and Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) dream of their future together … before all hell breaks loose. Picture: Foxtel

But the most consequential lovers’ tiff is between nephew and aunt, King in the North and putative Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Jon and Daenerys. She wants him to keep the truth of his parentage — and superior claim to the throne — a secret to preserve their relationship and her primacy within it. He wants to tell his erstwhile sisters (cousins, actually) the truth. Jon blabs, Sansa blabs to Tyrion, who blabs to Varys, and before we know it, people are choosing sides.

Jon (Kit Harington) and Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) get ready to break the big news to Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams). Picture: Foxtel

The key question is whether to attack King’s Landing with the full force of the remaining soldiers and sole dragon (another one bites the dust, thanks to Euron), knowing that there will be mass civilian casualties, or to do the humane thing and lay siege and starve Cersei out of the Red Keep.

Daenerys, heady with the imminent realisation of her destiny, and tired of conceding to her peacenik advisers, wants the former; Missandei’s dying injunction “Dracarys” seemingly seals the deal.

Yep. We’re scared too. Picture: Foxtel

Next week, audiences could be in for another decisive battle. And no less, Sandor Clegane rides south to deal with unfinished business, aka his brother Gregor, the Mountain, in what has been dubbed Cleganebowl by fans (in the style of Superbowl). Better yet, he rides with Arya, who has Cersei in her crosshairs.

An unlikely duo … Sandor Clegane (Rory McCann) and Arya Stark (Maisie Williams). Picture: Foxtel