In last night’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Bells,” the series’ longest-running villain, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), met her doom. After close to eight seasons of inflicting pain and terror on some of our favorite characters, was Cersei’s death satisfying for those of us rooting for her downfall? Let’s go to the tape!
First, let’s consider the manner of her death. In Jaime’s arms, huddled deep beneath the Red Keep, Cersei and her twin were crushed by falling debris provided courtesy of Daenerys Targaryen, who was rampaging through the city above. A lot of fans, including me, thought that Cersei would be killed by Jaime, but instead the twins appear to reconcile before the end.
There’s no evidence to suggest that Dany, or anyone else for that matter, knew that Cersei even perished, and now they may never, although they can make a pretty good educated guess. Characters like Sansa, for example, won’t get to know for sure that the woman who tormented her is dead. She won’t get that peace.
But about we audience members? From Ned Stark to Tyrion Lannister to the Tyrells, Cersei has inflicted pain and death on many beloved characters. There was some poetry in Cersei being destroyed by the Red Keep itself, a system of the kind of power she’d coveted all her life, and she was breaking down towards the end, but the anonymous nature of her death felt slightly lacking to me. Comforted by Jaime and crushed in an instant, we didn’t see her suffer as she should have for everything she’d done.
And it didn’t help that we haven’t seen much of Cersei this season to begin with, outside of two scenes in the premiere and another two in “The Last of the Starks.”
Of course, this is Game of Thrones, and as Ramsay Bolton once said, “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” Maybe I shouldn’t have expected to see Cersei go down in a manner that ticked off all of my boxes, that visited the pain on her that she had visited on others, but I certainly wanted it. I do love that irony of the Red Keep coming down on Cersei, and I did enjoyed Headey finally breaking her icy facade and showing some genuine emotion. But something still felt missing.
That’s just me, though. What does everyone else think of Cersei’s death? Did it leave you wanting more? Or was it everything you wanted?
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