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

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
• Daenerys’ Telegraphed Death
• Jon Snow’s Life Sentence
• Trial by Combat Anyone?
• The Unsullied’s Missed “I’m Negan” Moment
• The Queen’s Funeral Cop-out
• Drogon Burning the Iron Throne
• Tyrion and Jon’s Meeting
• Happy Endings Wrapped in a Bow and Shoved
• The Bronn Fiasco and the Death of Game of Thrones

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 –

Daenerys’ Telegraphed Death

Daenerys’ death is telegraphed from a mile away during her fiery revenge in The Bells and in The Iron Throne. When it occurs in The Iron Throne, it is plain, emotionally-flat (no matter the facial acting on-screen), and lacks the pulchritude, staging, pain, dread, and inevitability of Khal Drogo and Daenerys’ wedding-night coitus in Winter Is Coming.

Daenerys’ death scene should be pivotal. It should be emotional and gut-wrenching. “Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains” should fight back against her attacker, should scream in rage and betrayal, with her guards and dragon rushing in. None of that happens. There is no betrayal in Daenerys’ eyes, no anger, no nothing as she expires. Daenerys dies in silence, without even a whimper. It is an ignominious end to the second-most-fascinating character in Game of Thrones behind Cersei. It is the death scene of a failure, a street urchin, a pick-pocket, someone that has never achieved greatness. This is not Queen Daenerys Targaryen‘s death. This is not how Dany will meet her end in the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, if she meets her end in the book series at all. This is a throw-away death, like that of Rickon, Osha, and Shaggydog before The Battle of the Bastards, done simply to get rid of Daenerys and end her storyline so people would stop wondering about her and what became of her, her army, and her faux vision for the world. So fans and people the world over would not be clamoring, petitioning, then demanding Season Nine of Game of Thrones. By killing Daenerys, Benioff and Weiss killed that thirst before it ever began.

The setup for Daenerys’ death made no sense from the outset. She is in an enemy city and ‘Red Keep’ filled with secret alcoves, passageways, and tunnels. How does she know that a Lannister soldier or Gold Cloak isn’t hiding in one of these hidden nooks, ready to spring out and kill her? The battle for King’s Landing has only been over for a few hours which makes being alone in the Throne Room beyond foolhardy. Drogon stationed at the Throne Room door as a makeshift guard dog is theatrical but not practical. Drogon is a wild animal. How can it tell a Lannister soldier from a Winterfell soldier from a Gold Cloak from a peasant?

Why aren’t The Unsullied or the Dothraki guarding the exterior of the Throne Room? Why aren’t they flanking Daenerys in the Throne Room, keeping her safe, just in case? Why doesn’t Daenerys have a least four of them around her like Cersei had Lannister guards around her in the Red Keep during times of peace in seasons past?

Because the writers want to kill Daenerys thus they strip her of her ‘armor.’ It’s transparent. Imagine the opposite scenario: Jon Snow (Kit Harington) somehow manages to kill Daenerys in front of The Unsullied and the Dothraki. They would have killed Jon Snow on the spot, instantly. Jon Snow would have died fighting in the very Throne Room his foster dad was captured in by the crown in Season One. It would have been circular. It would have been poetic. It would have been tragic. And it was never going to happen. The writers want Jon to live (for some undisclosed reason) so Queen Daenerys, an insurgent behind enemy lines, is completely alone in the enemy’s newly captured stronghold when an assassin enters the room.

Jon Snow’s Life Sentence

Jon Stark being given a life sentence at The Wall for murdering Queen Daenerys is a pointless punishment. There are no more White Walkers. The Wildlings are now the allies of The Night’s Watch (what’s left of it), The North, and the Six Kingdoms. There is a gargantuan, dragon-blown gap through The Wall which completely negates the function of The Wall i.e. a barrier between the North and the South of Westeros. What is the point of manning The Wall now that it serves no purpose?

What is the point of sending men there? Is The Wall now just a penal colony? If so, what type of punishment is it when the people sent there have no responsibilities anymore, there is nothing for them to protect, nothing for them to do, there are no guards, no warden, and they are free to roam around on horseback as they please? It’s a complete joke.

If Jon Snow is to be given a life sentence, if he is truly to be punished, why doesn’t Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) demand that Jon be imprisoned in a cell at Dragonstone, guarded by The Unsullied? The Wall is an abstraction to Grey Worm. He has never seen it. All he knows is that The Night’s Watch manned it previously and that it has been breached. How is sending Jon Snow back to The North with his friends and family and to an institution that is now defunct any type of punishment for killing the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms? Life imprisonment in Dragonstone makes much more sense from any angle. Grey Worm has seen the Dragonstone prison cells. He knows his men. He knows Jon will live no life of comfort behind Dragonstone’s walls.

Conversely, Grey Worm has no idea what awaits Jon at The Wall and the lords and ladies of Westeros are strangers to Grey Worm. Why does he trust them to keep their word about Jon? When Grey Worm leaves the Seven Kingdoms, the lords and ladies of Westeros could easily reverse the life sentence or secretly transport Jon to a grand and lush retirement somewhere extremely comfortable. The only way Grey Worm could be sure the life sentence was carried out would be to stay in Westeros to make sure that it was. Grey Worm trusted Jon and the nobles once and Grey Worm’s queen died because of it. Why in the world would he trust them again, especially with something so critical?

Trial by Combat Anyone?

If Grey Worm is determined to leave Westeros yet see justice done before he goes, Grey Worm should have suggested Trial by Combat (imagine the sublime spectacle of such a fight e.g. Ubbe and Frodo’s fight in Vikings). Trial by Combat is the obvious choice to satisfy Grey Worm’s anger (as he did in The Bells) and the lords and ladies of Westeros. It is extremely dubious that Grey Worm doesn’t make this suggestion during the gathering or that Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) does not suggest it. Why sit there as your brother is given a life sentence when through one fight, he could be freed? This clear option is never mentioned by anyone at the gathering in The Iron Throne. Why? Benioff and Weiss want Jon Snow to live (it is all about protecting this one character, something George R.R. Martin never does with his characters in A Song of Ice and Fire). Benioff and Weiss know that Grey Worm, like the rest of The Unsullied, has extensive military training and was trained starting at a far younger age and under far worse conditions than Jon Snow. That, coupled with the fact that Grey Worm may be as good with a spear as The Red Viper, means that the fight between Jon Snow and Grey Worm would be at the very least even, if not more favorable toward Grey Worm.

These facts are why Jon never fights for his life against Grey Worm in Trial by Combat in The Iron Throne and why the obvious (i.e. Trial by Combat) isn’t even broached in this lackluster episode.

The Unsullied’s Missed “I’m Negan” Moment

The Unsullied leaving King’s Landing, the city Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Queen Daenerys died to conquer, for some land they have never seen is one of the most inexplicable decisions in the Game of Thrones TV series. The Unsullied need to be led and need a purpose. Protecting Daenerys’ legacy is that purpose. Daenerys spells out her vision and specific targets to her soldiers before she is murdered. Just because Daenerys is dead doesn’t mean The Unsullied can’t carry out that vision and attack those targets. A soldier’s duty doesn’t die with their commander. An example of this is Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Gerold Hightower standing guard outside the Tower of Joy in Oathbreaker after Rhaegar Targaryen had been killed and Robert Baratheon had won the Rebellion. Even though they were aware of those two facts, Ser Dayne and Ser Hightower still followed Rhaegar’s order to not let anyone pass into the Tower. That is unflinching loyalty. That is the type of ingrained loyalty The Unsullied possess. It was drilled into each and everyone one of them.

The reason why The Unsullied and the Dothraki, led by their new leader Grey Worm, did not carry out Queen Daenerys’ mission and execute her vision is because David Benioff and D. B. Weiss wanted to end Game of Thrones with Season Eight. If The Unsullied and the Dothraki indicated that they were going to carry out Queen Daenerys’ world-wide wheel breaking-mission, Game of Thrones‘ fans and HBO would have been clamoring for Season Nine. Benioff and Weiss didn’t want that. They also did not want anyone else taking over their creation for a hypothetical Season Nine.

Benioff and Weiss needed Jon Snow’s victory over Queen Daenerys’ Bond villain plan to be complete. If Jon killed Daenerys and then The Unsullied went and did exactly what she would have done, The Unsullied’s own “I’m Negan” moment, Jon’s selfless act in the Throne Room would have been empty. He would have killed the person he ‘loved’ for nothing. Benioff and Weiss don’t want that. They want Jon Snow’s sacrifice to be for something, to be furtive, so they strip The Unsullied of their zealous nature and their Good Masters-instilled loyalty to received and implied orders.

A fantastic, apocalyptic, fiery ending (or beginning) to The Unsullied’s storyline is completely whipped away, replaced with Daenerys’ army loaded onto ships, bound for a pathetic, ordinary, peaceful existence “over the rainbow.” Terrible choice, terrible writing, and a boring end to one of best soldier story-lines created for television. Missandei wanted dracarys, Queen Daenerys granted that request, and Benioff and Weiss (through Grey Worm) snuff it out.

The Queen’s Funeral Cop-out

Drogon flies away with the corpse of Daenerys in The Iron Throne because Benioff and Weiss did not want to have a grand and elaborate funeral for the Queen of the Seven Kingdom. They wanted to be done with her, her legacy, and any thought of her, as they did with this TV series.

Drogon Burning the Iron Throne

When Drogon targets and burns the Iron Throne, an inanimate object, instead of the killer of its human mother, the protectionism of Jon Snow is on full display and Game of Thrones descends further into narrative lunacy. The Iron Throne is a piece of furniture in the room. Why does Drogon burn it? Drogon doesn’t even know what the Iron Throne is. The burning of the Iron Throne is symbolic, the viewer gets that, but what is painfully obvious is that said burning doesn’t make any sense.

Tyrion and Jon’s Meeting

Why is Jon allowed to meet with Tyrion with no supervision? Why would Daenerys let her former Hand, whose siblings she just murdered, speak alone to the sole person alive with a stronger claim on the Iron Throne than her? These points, coupled with Tyrion’s recent betrayal, make it hard to fathom why Daenerys would let such a meeting take place. Why doesn’t she keep them separated? Why doesn’t she have them eavesdropped on? That is what Lord Varys or Littlefinger would have done. It’s like Daenerys is naive again (circa Season One), has never been betrayed in the past, and has learned nothing from her previous experiences. Daenerys, unlike Bill Compton when he was anointed Vampire King of Louisiana in True Blood, isn’t shrewd or suspicious in this critical moment at the dawn of her reign. Instead, Daenerys is oblivious. This clear and negligent lack of forethought, apprehension, and duplicity, however, are not her fault. It’s the fault of Game of Thrones‘ writers. It’s intentional. They need Daenerys nearly brain-dead in The Iron Throne so they can easily kill her. That is how the meeting between Jon and Tyrion is allowed to take place i.e. let them conspire, let them kill her, and let them get her off the Cyvasse board so we can have our happy ending.

Happy Endings Wrapped in a Bow and Shoved

Brandon Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) being named King of the Six Kingdoms is a bland ending to his storyline. Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) being named Queen of the North is a bland ending to her storyline. Arya Stark going off west of Westeros is a bland ending to her storyline. Ser Brienne of Trath (Gwendoline Christie) and Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman) being named to the King’s Guard is the epitome of vanilla.

These are all feeble, ordinary, and uneventful happy endings and story-line tie-offs wrapped up in a gaudy red bow, effortlessly shoved in the revolted viewer’s direction. I am not saying that some of the aforementioned characters shouldn’t have pleasant resolutions to their story-lines but the conclusions for the aforementioned story-lines are tepid and the antithesis of well-thought-out character arcs.

The Bronn Fiasco and the Death of Game of Thrones

Bronn (Jerome Flynn) being given the entire kingdom of High Garden and being made Master of Coin is the nail in the coffin of the reality formerly set forth in Game of Thrones. A knight who can’t read, write, or multiply is not only put in charge of one of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros but is also in charge of the royal treasury? This one scene ruins the realism and legacy of Game of Thrones. It turns a serious drama into a cartoon. Bronn doesn’t know any mathematics yet he is now the chief financial adviser of the king? It’s like the viewer is watching a jest that turns into a nightmare because everything that the viewer is seeing is real. The conversation in the Small Council about reopening whore houses after just fighting the army of the dead and ninety percent of King’s Landing being burned is real.

This is how David Benioff and D. B. Weiss choose to end Game of Thrones, a seminal drama-adventure TV series. Instead of a finely executed and satisfying ending like Breaking Bad‘s final episode, where everything led up to the events in that episode, all plot holes and flashbacks finally making sense, and everything tied off perfectly on an emotional and narrative high-note, Game of Thrones‘ finale is dyspeptic. It’s anticlimactic in almost every way with its writers picking the dullest way to end each story-line. The viewer is bored watching The Iron Throne because they eventually don’t care what is happening or to whom. For a TV series that started out so profoundly and has been so impactful to the television ecosphere, Game of Thrones goes out like a lack-luster movie-of-the-week with careless plot-lines and vapid characters.

If Benioff and Weiss wanted to end Game of Thrones and its story-lines with finality, they picked absolutely the most abysmal way to go about it. Their mission, however, is a success. They have ended Game of Thrones. They have ensured there will be no Season Nine. They have also ensured something else. Game of Thrones fans will never look upon Benioff and Weiss’ Game of Thrones TV series in the same favorable way again because now they know where everything will end – in ashes.

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