Our watch is ended
‘Game of Thrones’ gave us the ending we deserve
“Game of Thrones” was never going to end happily.
If you thought a show that started with incestuous twins sending a little boy flying out a window in its premiere and killed its main hero in its first season would somehow wrap with rainbows for all, you weren’t paying attention.
After eight bloody seasons, “Game” delivered Sunday perhaps the best possible finale we could expect from a wildly uneven, divisive season. (And yet we watched: The finale, drawing over 19 million viewers, is the highest-rated program ever in HBO history.)
A better season would have given us more episodes to play out Daenerys’ (Emilia Clarke) swerve to the dark side. A better season might have flipped the major conflicts — dealing with Cersei (Lena Headey) first, then Daenerys, then the Night King, for maximum tension and payoffs.
But creator George R.R. Martin doesn’t do things simply, and in taking his story beyond his novels, executive producers, writers and directors David Benioff and Dan Weiss proved they could walk a hard road as well.
Jon (Kit Harington) ended as he began, exiled to a distant land, still considered a bastard, now for killing the realm’s queen.
Ramin Djawadi’s score was stunning throughout, and the night’s MVP.
Of course the Iron Throne had to be destroyed, and who better than Dani’s “child” Drogon to make a right-on-the-flaming-nose statement about how the chase for power corrupts absolutely?
A “storyteller” ended up the true victor here, but Tyrion’s (Peter Dinklage) speech that no one had a better story than Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) is ridiculous, considering that seated right next to Bran was Arya (Maisie Williams) — the woman who became a master assassin capable of shape-shifting, the one who avenged her brother’s and mother’s deaths by wiping out House Frey and, oh yeah, killed the Night King, saving all of humanity.
Did anyone else think it odd that Arya’s supernatural powers played absolutely no role in the final season? It’s as if everyone in the show was too busy to remember.
But forget the prequels, HBO. Commission a spinoff with Arya exploring the uncharted lands with her trusty Needle.
Sam (John Bradley) brought the idea of democracy and a plastic water bottle to the Dragon pit council meeting. He was mocked for the first, and the second, yet another gaffe spotted by eagle-eyed viewers, will no doubt be erased, too late, by HBO’s CGI-tech wizards.
Whatever its flaws — and it had plenty before this season — everyone involved with “Game of Thrones” should be commended for keeping our attention all these years. We’re drowning in peak television, with over 500 scripted shows this year alone. “Game” rose to the top with a rich mythology, a superb ensemble cast and unparalleled spectacle. It is now the benchmark other shows will strive for. That’s a good thing.
Sunday’s finale could have been much worse.
It could have ended with the Stark siblings ordering onion rings from Hot Pie, the screen abruptly cutting to black and a Journey song playing us out into the night.
The North remembers.