After every episode of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, staff members at The Ringer will gather at the nearest weirwood to discuss the most interesting moments, developments, and theories. Without further ado, here’s the exit survey for the fifth episode, “The Bells.”
1. What is your tweet-length review of Season 8, Episode 5?
Ben Lindbergh: Oh, so now the scorpions take time to reload.
Sean Yoo: I’ll let the great Rob Thomas and Santana review the episode for me …
Man, it’s a hot one
Like seven inches from the midday sun
Well, I hear you whispering in the words, to melt everyone
But you stay so cool
Katie Baker: How is there only one episode left :(
Daniel Chin: I was just as stressed throughout this episode as I was during “The Long Night” and extremely thankful that I could actually see everything that was happening this time.
Tyler Tynes: Fuck them rocks.
Shaker Samman: Can someone make me a video where Miley Cyrus is riding Drogon and we see him destroying the Red Keep just as Miley belts “I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BAAAAAALL.”
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Alyssa Bereznak: At least Drogon didn’t get hurt?
2. What was the best moment of the episode?
Bereznak: This is probably a sign that Game of Thrones has made me blood-lusty, but Qyburn’s highly unceremonious death-by-head-injury was extremely funny.
Baker: A two-headed moment: the sudden deaths of both Harry Strickland and Qyburn. It wasn’t even that either of them seemed particularly untouchable; it was just that I figured they might at least eat up some screen time before dying. Nope. Shoulda danced with the pachyderms that brung ya, Harry boy! Qyburn’s demise, in particular, was so, so satisfying, and somehow managed to really emphasize how much he always looked like a man shuffling down a hospital hallway in an open-backed hospital gown.
Lindbergh: Tyrion’s emotional (and physical) farewells with Varys and Jaime, the latter of which produced a truly touching bro hug. Side note: Congrats to Tyrion on becoming the head of House Lannister. Tywin would die if he hadn’t already.
Surrey: Tyrion and Jaime’s final conversation was really moving. Even if it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know—Tyrion loves his brother for being the only Lannister to treat him with dignity—it’s never a bad idea to throw Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in a room together.
Assuming this is also the last we see of Jaime and Cersei (unless the Red Keep was made of styrofoam), Lena Headey has put in the work with every smirk and gallon of Dornish red chugged. Thrones has enough Emmys, but she’s way overdue for one.
Tynes: Twofold: Varys’ asking Jon to do a treason and then leaving his door unlocked and dying just to be right. I like that energy. Second, the Cleganebowl was entertaining. My son died for revenge. Again: energy.
Chin: The circumstances of the situation didn’t make much sense to me, but Jaime and Tyrion’s final scene together hit me the hardest. I’m not thrilled about how their character arcs have been concluding this season, but the brothers’ emotional goodbye served as a reminder of the incredible performances Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau have been putting on for years.
Samman: When Qyburn tried to get the Mountain to ignore the Hound and Ser Gregor smushed his skull to bits.
Yoo: GET HYPE, WE FINALLY GOT THE CLEGANEBOWL!!! [Airhorn x5.] As a book reader and frequent lurker on r/asoiaf, I can’t believe this moment, which had turned into a cultlike joke on Reddit, actually happened. And it was more than I ever could have hoped for. The moment had beautiful apocalyptic visuals, heavy memeable moments, and an overtly poetic end. RIP, Sandor.
3. What was the most frustrating part of the episode?
Surrey: So the Master of Whisperers, who’s survived the Mad King and other horrible monarchs without his deceit ever being caught, decides to tell Jon and Tyrion he wants to commit treason while sending out a few emails from his desk? Varys deserved better (writing of his character)!
Lindbergh: D&D’s trying to cram character development into the “previously on”—with a sound collage of people talking about Targaryens overlaid on the footage of Dany watching Missandei’s death—because they ran out of time to convey her inner turmoil in a more organic way.
Samman: Daenerys’s Mad Queen turn. The show has been dropping bread crumbs about Dany potentially turning like this for years and hasn’t exactly been subtle over the past few weeks. But the truncated nature of the final season made Evil Dany feel unearned, and for a show that’s made its name on nuances, that’s unacceptable.
Bereznak: Was Cersei’s secret weapon actually just … willful ignorance? I really want to know what she was planning to do with those elephants. Either way, Tywin would’ve been very disappointed.
Tynes: The whole episode? All of it? I mean, it’s difficult to say given all of it was stuuuuuuupid. Ya know, up front: Killing another Big Bad effortlessly reminds me that this show doesn’t love me. Them dying via pebbles is some dumb shit. Tyrion remains a fool. Jon remains the dumbest man alive. Dany realized her goal to be tyrant for one episode. All the prophecies are dead. This is why we never should’ve let white men be in charge of this show.
Baker: A Jaime-Euron showdown on paper ought to be a delight, which is why I felt so annoyed by some of the circumstances behind the actual event. Euron is a maritime hero, so, OK, I’m willing to buy that he really could stay alive amid all that dragonfire and destruction, somehow; it’s no sillier than Arya doing the same. But come on, give us something other than Euron being all “come here often?” as he just so happens to emerge from the sea at the right time and place. I did enjoy the actual combat.
Chin: While it seemed inevitable that Maggy’s prophecy would come true and Cersei would die before season’s end, I couldn’t help but be disappointed in the way she went out. Most of the season she was perched in the Red Keep looking down upon King’s Landing from her balcony, and this episode wasn’t much different—the only thing missing was a glass of wine in her hand. It was a shame to see one of the show’s most cunning villains go down so quietly without one last trick up her sleeve.
Yoo: Episode 1: “Hey so this is Harry Strickland and the Golden Company, they’re like the best sellswords in the land.”
Episode 5:
4. So, uh … the Mad Queen has arrived. (Not a question, but talk about it.)
Lindbergh: Maybe it’s true that we all turn into our parents. I don’t mind Dany breaking bad instead of breaking the wheel, but I do object to how quickly it happened. Sure, there were warning signs, but extraordinary heel turns require extraordinary storytelling, and Dany’s moral reversal wasn’t quite convincing. Losing a trio of trusted companions (Jorah, Missandei, Rhaegal), her claim to the throne, and sex with her hot nephew had to be hard, but a more gradual descent into toxic Targaryen behavior would have made more sense than the sudden, seemingly self-defeating decision to roast countless civilians after the battle was won. Dany knows as well as anyone how costly slaughtering civilians can be, and it should have taken more to make her repeat past atrocities.
Baker: Tough luck for all the people who named their babies Khaleesi. Honestly [lowers voice to a whisper], it was about time?! … I know, I know, the actual execution of Dany’s heel turn was weird and flawed, in the same way everything has been weird and flawed in this truncated season. That said, I was pretty happy to see her finally just go for it? Way too many conversations were turning back into “so many innocent children could die!” Either make me care about literally any of these children, or move forward! If I wanted to see Jack Bauer hissing “We’re running out of TIME” I would have subscribed to Netflix in the mid-aughts.
Bereznak: The last few seasons’ Mad Queen foreshadowing was about as subtle as a horse tranquilizer. Dany has become far more dracarys-happy on the battlefield, and her executions far more personal (RIP, Varys; RIP, all of Sam’s family). But just in case we weren’t paying attention to all of those allusions to her heritage, the showrunners made sure to turn her into a full-on hermit in the days leading up to the battle. There she was, sleeplessly pacing around her Dragonstone lair, fondling Missandei’s old collar, and completely ignoring what is usually a very effective skincare routine. Of course she was going to make a bad decision.
But considering all she’s gone through, Dany’s sudden insanity still feels out of character. She has faced far greater threats to her life and power than Cersei’s weak army and has always handled those situations pretty rationally. Her attack on King’s Landing went almost completely unchallenged. There were no major losses to set her off in that moment, no fallen dragons to send her into a rage, and yet she decided to BBQ the innocent citizens in the Red Keep anyway. I instinctively knew that this was where the show was headed. I just wish it didn’t feel so rushed.
Surrey: I genuinely don’t know why a lot of people are so upset about this. The writing for the past couple of seasons has been awful, but it’s been established from the first season—and in the books—that Dany has a misguided savior complex. She’s fueled by vengeance, and wants to enact it the Targaryen way: with fire and blood. She’s also burned several people alive and crucified the Meereenese masters. This has been coming, and it’s supposed to bum you out!
Tynes: Can’t wait until she and those second-hand Hot Topic fits leave my life forever. She’s mad because don’t nobody love her because she ran around the world being a savior nobody asked her to be and then got triggered because she saw a building? I’m supposed to be sad she lost her claim to the throne to a dude in a topknot with wet dog hair? She shoulda been the one to die under them damn rocks.
Samman: Was there ever a less surprising twist? She didn’t want to be the queen of the ashes, she said. So of course, now she is. She ignored the Great Plot Device Bells and continued her slaughter of innocents. Now we wait patiently for Jon or Arya or maybe even Hot Pie to kill her and bring the story to a close. At least Drogon had fun.
Chin: Dany has definitely had it rough recently between the deaths of two of her closest friends and discovering that she’s been sleeping with her nephew, but it still felt out of character for the Breaker of Chains to unravel so suddenly. While I think I like her character’s pivot, it was frustrating to not have any sense of what she was thinking as we watched her do EXACTLY what she said she wasn’t going to do last season as she laid waste to a city and fulfilled her father’s wish to “burn them all.”
Yoo: Dany’s mind and, most importantly, heart were dealing with immense turmoil, but as my colleague Riley McAtee so aptly stated in this piece, I still felt somewhat cheated by the end result. Dany’s quest, her life’s motto, was to break the wheel by breaking chains in the process—she wanted to reverse her family’s history of mad behavior. Yet somehow she ended up doing the exact thing she didn’t want to do, which was to become the queen of ashes. Dany spent 7.5 seasons trying to be the good queen and instead gave us her best Thanos impression. She was … inevitable.
5. After months and months of losing (so that this battle would be “even”), how did it feel to watch Dany and her army decimate King’s Landing?
Yoo: Dany spent around 10 years amassing one of the largest armies ever with the sole purpose of taking back King’s Landing, which she ended up doing in about 20 minutes with one dragon. That’s the equivalent of spending half your life studying for a test that ends up being three true or false questions that you could’ve aced five years ago.
Bereznak: Slightly lackluster! Despite all the showrunners’ efforts to set the stakes for this battle, it was clear in the first few minutes that the Golden Company was done for. Maybe it’s because a good number of old buildings have recently burned down in real life, but I found myself especially sad for Westeros’s Historical Preservation Society.
Chin: It was stunning visually, and I liked the choice to show the destruction of King’s Landing from the perspective of the common people, and yet I wish we could’ve seen more than just that one moment when Dany decides to light up the city and kill thousands of innocents in the process. While frustrated with much of its execution, I did appreciate the fact that the show made me sympathize with Cersei in her final moments while completely flipping Dany’s character in the span of the same episode.
Samman: Like we should have gotten this over with a full season ago. What a waste of two dragons, and an entire story arc about the undead and their god-king.
Tynes: If Arya doesn’t sit on the throne after all of this I’m filing a complaint like that woman in the Apple Store who was Told By AppleCare.
Baker: At one point, the closed captioning said: “[DOTHRAKI ULULATING]” and I was like, great word! And then I was like, wait, how did any of the Dothraki survive Winterfell?!
Surrey: Well, it certainly helped that the ballistas, which so handily killed Rhaegal, couldn’t seem to come anywhere close to hitting Drogon despite frequently firing at a much closer distance. And, LOL, so much for the might of the Golden Company.
Lindbergh: Kind of inconsistent? We were told all along that dragons are devastating, but the show rarely showed it until Dany destroyed King’s Landing. I have no trouble believing that Drogon could devastate Cersei’s forces, but the contrast between the attacks on the Iron Fleet in back-to-back episodes made Euron’s easy victory in Episode 4 seem even more improbable. Oh, and way to go, Golden Company. Harry Strickland’s sellsword force fell apart faster than the Dothraki at the Battle of Winterfell. Dragonbinder could have come in handy here.
6. CLEGANEBOWWWWWWWWWWL. Did it live up to the hype?
Lindbergh: Drogon’s rampage made the duel seem somewhat inconsequential—clearly, both brothers were going to die—and helmetless Gregor reminded me of a big baby, which gave me the giggles. But I liked the line that followed the reveal of his horrid visage, which fit the theme of the episode—“Yeah, that’s you. That’s what you’ve always been”—and I liked the Hound’s hatred trumping his fear of fire. I also appreciated Gregor going full Frankenstein’s monster by killing his creator. Qyburn did his work well; even the Night King’s resurrected soldiers couldn’t keep coming after being stabbed in the skull.
Bereznak: It was exactly what I wanted, even if it was a little hokey. The backdrop of a crumbling stairway and a smoke-filled sky set a Mortal Kombat–worthy stage. Zombie Gregor played the hits and smashed (at least) one of his brother’s eyes in. And, in a way, Sandor eventually overcame his biggest fear (dying in a pit of fire) via the transformative powers of sibling hatred. A truly inspirational way to go.
Yoo: I know I already talked about it, but I loved the Cleganebowl so much I wanted to power rank the best moments:
- Sandor’s poetic kill of the Mountain
- Cersei’s awkward walk past the Cleganes
- The Mountain’s face reveal (and the Hound’s “that’s what you’ve always been” line)
- Sandor laughing after screaming “fucking dieeeee”
- Qyburn’s brisk death by shove
Chin: From zombie Mountain killing his creator to the Hound tackling his brother into an abyss of fire, Cleganebowl panned out about as well as I could’ve hoped, especially given the larger stakes surrounding it. Like much of the season, it felt like the showdown was happening purely for fan service, but I didn’t mind at all this time. It was a fitting conclusion for Sandor to finally get his revenge in the flames.
Tynes: Probably the best part of the episode. The fire in the background, the Mountain’s never dying, the Hound’s losing an eye, and tackling him into dragonfire just because he couldn’t win? That’s that shit I do like.
Samman: Absolutely. At the Dragonpit summit, the Hound approaches his mangled brother and essentially tells him he’ll be the end of him. In the last episode, the Hound tells Arya he doesn’t plan on leaving King’s Landing. He was right! Both times! Hate kept the Hound going all these years. And on his way out, he managed to get himself a win.
Surrey: Yes. It was like a Star Wars duel on cocaine. And then they fell together into the depths of hell. That’s my kinda fan service!
7. Can you attempt to explain the Euron-Jaime fight?
Bereznak: No! I never got the impression Euron cared much about Cersei beyond getting her pregnant. (Or anything? It’s hard to take a man seriously with a V-neck that deep.) All he’s ever been in my eyes is a ruthless, self-interested pirate who had done some impressive royal ladder-climbing. And when he washed up on the beach, he clearly understood that he’d chosen the losing side. So why brag about sleeping with the Queen, then get into a brutal stabbing match with her brother? It all felt very “3 a.m. bar fight” to me. And Euron’s last words—“I killed Jaime Lannister”—were really stupid. Why would he care?
Lindbergh: Someone had to kill Euron, and Cersei’s spurned lifelong lover made as much sense as anyone. I just wish the setup for the fight between off-screen soccer-fan friends had been a little—OK, a lot—less contrived.
Samman: Toxic masculinity.
Tynes: How is Jaime even alive after that?
Surrey: Euron emerging from the ocean to be like, “I had sex with your sister, wanna fight?” is patently absurd, but also feels totally in character. He truly was the Fuccboi Who Was Promised.
Chin: Like most of Euron’s actions since he switched up his style and threw on some eyeliner, I really can’t explain what was going on with him in this episode. Somewhere in the multiverse that fight takes place on the set of Maury over who’s the father of Cersei’s unborn child.
Yoo: Unfortunately I cannot explain the fight but I’d love to try whatever drug that fight was taking.
Baker: No.
8. Do you consider the valonqar prophecy fulfilled?
Bereznak: Technically, Jaime did lead Cersei to a death-by-heavy-building-debris, so sure? But really, Jaime had nothing to do with the bad decisions Cersei made at the end. Sure, their final moments together were poetic. (What better place for two stubborn incestual Lannisters to have their final moments than in the ruins of the kingdom they inadvertently destroyed?) But when it came to rounding out the larger themes of the series, that scene was definitely lacking. I’m sensing a pattern.
Lindbergh: No, not really, even though Jaime did have his hands (both original and replacement) wrapped around Cersei when the Red Keep caved in. Maybe it’s not fair to fault D&D for not fulfilling a prophecy that their show never made, but even if Jaime, like Dany, was a prisoner to the past and incapable of forsaking his sister, it would have been more satisfying to see Cersei die by someone’s hands.
Surrey: I don’t think it matters, since the show explicitly removed that part of Cersei’s prophecy when it was depicted in Season 5. Prophecies are fickle and/or George R.R. Martin is cooking up something different if—big if—he ever gets around to finishing the books. It’s more telling that Cersei and Jaime spend their final moments in each other’s arms.
Tynes: If the prophecy isn’t: Why Did My Homies Get Jumped By Some Rocks In The End, then no. No it wasn’t.
Samman: Just before Jaime and Cersei died, my colleague Mallory Rubin frantically asked me and my fellow researchers to check whether the twins would die standing on the Fingers on Cersei’s enormous floor map, thinking that would be a sneaky and fun way to close the valonqar prophecy. That didn’t happen. As far as I’m concerned, that piece of Maggy the Frog’s fortune (which never actually appeared on the show!) remains unfulfilled. It’s up to George, now.
Chin: I don’t know if I’d say that the prophecy was all that accurate, but Maggy shot a pretty high percentage on everything else so I’ll cut her some slack on this one.
Yoo: If we’re being nerds about it, the Season 5 flashback of Maggy the Frog leaves out the actual valonqar portion of the prophecy. But for the sake of the exit survey, I do believe the prophecy was fulfilled. Jaime may not have put his hands around Cersei’s throat but he basically led her to a dead end which resulted in their deaths.
Baker: No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/5/13/18617597/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5-exit-survey
2019-05-13 14:00:09Z
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