The Game of Thrones Fantasy League

Game of Thrones – 8.06 – The Iron Throne Nine years ago another commercially successful, highly discursive, supernatural show closed out its last episode with a final scene that mirrored its opening scene. This was the series finale of Lost. George RR Martin famously announced that the Lost finale was like a turd on his doorstep and I imagine this is how a lot of people are feeling about the Thrones finale right now! The final episode of Lost was divisive, but I believe that the honest intention of the Lindelof and Cuse was to keep the discourse around the show ongoing, long after Lost had finished. Conversely, I really don’t think the current conversation about the Thrones finale was what the Benioff and Weiss were going for! Lost took time in its last season to honour each of their characters by devoting at least one episode to their point of view, resolving several character arcs. Admittedly, Thrones does not have the same format but this lack of focus on character,...

Game of Thrones – 8.05 – The Bells Maybe Missandei should have picked something else for her last words! This episode didn’t deliver the symphony I was hoping would rival Light of the Seven and The Night King but I mustn’t be greedy, the music over the end credits was great. We got a number of siblings dying in each other’s arms: Jaime and Cersei’s end was fitting, though it would have been nice for Cersei to see that even after everything, Tyrion had a plan to save her (you’re welcome). Cersei had led the negotiations with cruelty and that’s what she received back. If not for last episode’s parlay, everything would have played out as it would up to the ringing of the bells, all the destruction after that was payback for Missandei. I can see Daenerys justifying it to herself: yeah these people are innocent, so was my handmaiden. She sends one of yours to the morgue, you reduce their city to rubble: that’s the Chicago way and that’s how you get the Throne! The opti...

Game of Thrones – 8.04 – The Last of the Starks Despite a hefty amount of incident during this episode, this episode gained barely a fifth of the points earned last week. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise; now wights and white walkers are off the table and three of the four magic characters are now dead, this might be a consistent trend for the rest of the series. It’s great to have Cersei back after an unprecedented two episode absence. Lena Headey manages to do so much despite roughly four lines of dialogue this episode. It’s also nice that Varys actually did things in this episode! Daenerys should definitely employ his skills more as she really needs a good Master of Whispers right now. Cersei is the only person left on Arya’s list (other than Ilyn Payne who got phased out of the show). Arya is already the show MVP for killing The Night King, it will be nuts if she’s the one who also takes down Cersei. Arya was present at Ned’s beheading and saw that Cersei di...