Here are my highly subjective, personal thoughts and feelings, delivered lightning-quick, after viewing “The Winds of Winter,” tonight’s Game of Thrones season finale. I am blown away. This finale had me glued me to the screen: it was both wrenchingly intimate and sweepingly epic, both surprising and fulfilling, and it gave us all that Game of Thrones, at its very best, has to give. I offer five Valyrian Steel (Best) Moments (and I could pile on a lot more) and five Flea Bottom Brown (Worst) moments. I’ll hang around the comments section for a while so please feel free to chime in and discuss.
VALYRIAN STEEL (BEST) MOMENTS
VALYRIAN STEEL FIVE: Bring out your dead, King’s Landing. Bodies were dropping left, right and center, including Lancel, Maester Pycelle, the High Sparrow, Margaery, Loras, Tommen, Kevan Lannister and Mace Tyrell. It’s the biggest cleaning-out-the-house political purge ever witnessed on Game of Thrones. I had ideas about what might happen, but I wasn’t ready for all of it, and it was time for me to be caught off guard. Bravo.
VALYRIAN STEEL FOUR: Lyanna Mormont has balls of steel. A fan favorite since being introduced in “The Broken Man,” little Lyanna Mormont can sure command a room. Her loyalty by example helps make the bastard Jon Snow the new King in the North. Jon should wed her in about ten years. That would be some damned hearty Northern stock.
VALYRIAN STEEL THREE: You had me at ‘brilliant cinematic montage.’ What an opening! The characters dressing in silks and rags, braiding hair and lowering crowns. Septons sitting and knife-wielding little birds fluttering all under the eerie tolling of the bell. It set the stage in brilliant fashion. The music, driven by piano, violin, and organ, gave the proceedings leading up to the destruction of the Sept of Baelor a dark, operatic quality that was very captivating.
VALYRIAN STEEL TWO: All hail the Dark Queen. Cersei is a great villain now, with the wildfire massacre under her belt, and she’s wearing the black robes and silver lace/chains (similar in many ways to the costume of her late father) to prove it. Cersei’s ‘true’ confession to the chained Septa Unella as she wineboarded her was as honest a moment as we’re ever likely to get from her. In Godfather style, she ambushed and slaughtered all her opponents (melting many of them) but also lost Tommen—the only good thing about her—in the process. As always with Cersei, she loses every time she wins.
VALYRIAN STEEL ONE: R (Rheagar) + L (Lyanna) = J (Jon Snow) is true! It’s surely true! Bran showed us! We still haven’t heard all of the whispers between Ned and Lyanna (I couldn’t hear them, at least), but the quick cut juxtaposing the baby in the Tower of Joy with Jon Snow seems to leave little doubt as to his parentage, and it’s all just pure awesome. I sometimes harp about the predictability Game of Thrones, but jammed smack in the middle of this wild episode, the reveal was delivered perfectly, much to the cheering of the crowds.
FLEA BOTTOM BROWN (WORST) MOMENTS
FLEA BOTTOM BROWN FIVE: Varys has a doppelganger? Yes, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it really felt like Varys was in two places at once (Dorne and on Dany’s ship as it left Meereen) this week.
FLEA BOTTOM BROWN FOUR: Can little birds stab full-gown men to death? I suppose they can, trained to do such things by Maester Qyburn. It didn’t really bother me that much, but I’m scraping for brown this week, dear reader.
FLEA BOTTOM BROWN THREE: Melisandre kinda got off a bit easy. I loved the scene where Ser Davos, stampeding from one emotion to another to great effect, forces the apparently remorseful but defiant Melisandre to confess her part in the murder of Shireen in front of Jon. But Melisandre’s exile ended the sequence a little flat for me. Perhaps Jon knows he may need her in the future.
FLEA BOTTOM BROWN TWO: I don’t get the hold Littlefinger has on Sansa, even now, after he promised to do anything and everything she asks of him. That look they shared while the Northmen shouted their allegiance to Jon as the King in the North was unsettling. It’s making Sansa seem weak-hearted, and I don’t see her that way.
FLEA BOTTOM BROWN ONE: Bury my heart in dopey Dorne. Ah! Our brief visit with Lady Olenna and a surprise drop-in from Varys was a little better than I expected, but I wasn’t expecting much. Ellaria and her Sand Snakes are up to their usual slimy, one-note machinations, and still lessening all of the other characters who come into contact with them.
BONUS VALYRIAN STEEL MOMENT: the art of murder. Arya made only a short appearance this week, but the scene where she cuts Walder Frey’s throat—that look on her face in full-on-murder mode, a glimpse of her interior darkness—was unsettling. The girl is back, working hard on her list of names.
WRAP IT UP AND PUT A BLOODY BOW ON IT: This may go down as my all-time favorite Game of Thrones episode. I thought it was beautiful storytelling, brilliantly directed (love me some Sapochnik). I didn’t even get to tell you how much I loved the Daenerys-Tyrion tear-inducing ‘you are Hand of the Queen’ now moment. What did you think?