People can be heroic; wars are terrible slaughter
SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU KNOW THE DRILL BY NOW!
Unsurprisingly, there are few fans for this week’s Game of Thrones episode. Let’s pick a few things apart before we get to the main question.
The episode starts with Varys making his case to Jon Snow, and, like Ned Stark before him, Jon stays completely honorable and lots of people die anyway. This is however a good passing of the torch to Tyrion, who turned Varys in, but in doing so starts to see that Varys’ loyalty to the people’s wellbeing may have been right all along.
Jon and Daenerys attack the city; as we’ve all seen, Danny decides that some punishment in is order and decides to level the entire city with Drogon after King’s Landing has surrendered. In one fell swoop (pun very much intended), the Dragon Queen has probably equaled the kill count of every other battle in the Game of Thrones series – and most of the dead would be civilians.
Jamie and Cersei die, crushed under the rubble of the destroyed Red Keep. Cleganebowl finally happened, but it was a one-sided affair that ended with the Hound taking the Mountain off the edge of the castle tower so they would at least die together. Jon had trouble reigning in his men, who promptly started killing (and even raping) everything that moves.
From a story point of view, this was the least satisfying episode I’ve seen, and sits in stark contrast to the beautiful tensions and struggles of the battle with the Night King.
Part of this is because the characters weren’t entirely in character; Tyrion was panicking and making terrible decisions on the fly. Varys played his hand immediately and stupidly. The Northmen, noted for their prickly honor, started killing women and children. Cleganebowl was just flailing and then a death, and Cersei’s reign ended in a brief scene of her being crushed in a forgotten cellar rather than a true confrontation. Danny, while we’ve witnessed her decline, really had no reason to go beserk on the town she was trying to save and the castle she was trying to win (is there even an Iron Throne anymore?)
The characters didn’t really reveal anything about themselves, or even act in a true character-driven plot. They were just struggling to make it to the end of the episode.
But looking deeper, my wife has pointed to me that this was the point of the episode. War – the type of urban war where civilians are involved and it’s impossible to tell what’s going on – is a meaningless waste of life, where villains and heroes die anonymously. That was the point of Arya’s presence in this episode. To show what a horrible, horrible crime it is to commit this type of war.
My Grandad spent six years fighting in WWII, even staying behind in war zones after the war was ended to help secure things and deal with the aftermath. He came home, worked on his farm, opened a small mechanic shop and barely mentioned the war until the day he died. The one time he really did speak to me about it, he simply said “It was like living in Hell.”
So, where to from here? My previous prediction still stands. Jon and Tyrion are going to have to take on Daenerys as the final villain of the Game of Thrones series. Knowing George R R Martin’s grim sense of humor, it’s entirely possible they both die.
We’ll follow this up next week when we find out.
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