TV Review: GAME OF THRONES: Season 8, Episode 6: The Iron Throne & Series Post Mortem Analysis [HBO]

Rollo Tomasi June 9, 2019Last Updated: September 7, 2019

Table of Contents

Game of Thrones The Iron Throne Review and Series Post Mortem Analysis

HBO‘s Game of Thrones: Season 8, Episode 6: The Iron Throne is the unenthused end to a rushed, erratic, idiotic, and narratively-hamstrung final season for one of the best television series to ever grace the small screen airways.

The sections of this review and analysis:

Overview, Tyrion, and the Necessary Bond Villain

The Iron Throne has big production value, which is evident on-screen, yet is devoid of any emotional depth, well-written character arcs, or even the reality that has been previously established in the TV series. The only character exempted from this fate, at least in part, is Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage). When he improbably finds the bodies of Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Jamie ‘The Kingslayer’ Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a baffling moment since the entire chamber they are found in was shown collapsing in on itself in The Bells, Tyrion’s emotional breakdown is heartfelt. In the end, Tyrion still cares for Cersei, even-though she has hated and despised him all of his life. In that moment, all that matters is that Tyrion’s hateful sister, beloved brother, and unborn nephew (or niece) are dead.

Tyrion’s subsequent rejection of Queen Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and his position as Hand of the Queen is typical of Tyrion and his mortality. Up to this point, Tyrion has not been serving a good, honest, brave, and inspiring Queen. In actuality, he has been serving a volatile, self-diluted, unrepentant, latent megalomaniac in sheep’s clothing, beguiling all those that meet her with stories of how she is going to “break the wheel” of repression, destruction, and self-aggrandizing monarchs.

Or at least that is what writers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss want Season Eight Game of Thrones viewers to think.

The problem with the aforementioned Daenerys Targaryen revelation and her brand new ambition to subjugate the world (like a recycled James Bond villain) is that absolutely no groundwork for that revelation and ambition is present in the previous seasons of Game of Thrones. Daenerys never once said she wanted to free the world from the “wheel” after being seated on the Iron Throne. Benioff and Weiss quickly made Daenerys Targaryen into The Mad Queen in Season Eight, a world conquering supervillain, so that Jon Snow would have a reason to kill her and end her storyline. That is the only viable explanation for her speech atop the smoldering ruins of King’s Landing in this episode.

– Review Aside Begins –

Benioff and Weiss wanted to be done with Game of Thrones with Season Seven. HBO and George R. R. Martin knew there was material enough for Game of Thrones to go on to at least Season Ten or Thirteen. Season Eight was the compromise between the disparate desires. This deleterious accommodation showed its malshaped head throughout Season Six and Season Seven, culminated in Season Eight, and ran itself into the ground in The Iron Throne.

The speed up to close-out all of Game of Thrones lingering storylines began in Season 6 with the one episode reintroduction and throw-away deaths of Rickon Stark, Osha, and Shaggydog (whom was already dead). Where they had been and what they had been doing was never even mentioned. The writers couldn’t be bothered with that exposition because they wanted to be done with Game of Thrones. They wanted Rickon, Osha, and Shaggydog gone along with any lingering questions about their whereabouts and what they were doing. The same is true of Lord Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish. Littlefinger’s death in Season Seven of Game of Thrones, what led up to it, made absolutely no sense, and when that death occurred, it was also the death of: palace intrigue, clever repartee, and rewarding subterranean plotlines within Game of Thrones. These elements were the show’s back-bone during its first three seasons.

– Review Aside Ends –