Knee-jerk reaction to “The Winds of Winter:” five best and worst moments
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.