***SPOILER WARNING***
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
It's amazing how rapidly Game of Thrones has transitioned into the art of unmet expectations. "Subverting expectations" is plainly a synonym for disappointment. If the lackluster conclusion of this series accomplishes nothing else, I hope it finally exposes subverting expectations to be the specious crutch of bad writers, and the poor excuse for such from consumers with no standards, it has become.
This episode suffered the same rampant narrative inconsistency as the last two episodes; e.g., villains being crack shots when the writers want a dragon killed, for example, and then never being able to hit anything again. The very same ballistas that were used with stunning precision and efficiency to kill Rhaegal in Episode 4, are now useless against dragons. You know, cause reasons. Drogon, unlike his siblings, has a de facto immunity to projectile weaponry; dodging them like a Jedi deflects blaster fire; evading them like Benioff and Weiss evade narratively consistent scripts. As though Thanos had snapped his fingers, Qyburn informs Cersei that the Scorpions in and around King's Landing have "all been destroyed," without ever posing any tangible threat to Drogon or Daenerys Targaryen (Mother of Plot Holes) whatsoever. The very weapons from which Dany had to flee in the last episode, she obliterates with impunity in this one, despite the fact she's facing many more of them than in the previous episode. The Scorpion ballistas, along with the men manning them, are suddenly impotent in Episode 5. So, in the span of a few episodes dragons have ostensibly gone from unstoppable super weapons, to highly vulnerable and providing little if any strategic advantage, to unstoppable super weapons again. Their disposition being determined by whatever the writers need at the time. In one episode the writers need a dragon to die, so the Scorpions (much like the Night King's first spear) basically become sniper rifles firing homing rounds, and then once the writers no longer need a dragon to die they suddenly become hopelessly inaccurate. They may was well have been made of papier mache.
It needs to be observed that this completely negates the narrative significance and purpose of the preceding battle with the Night King. The whole reason things occurred in the order they did, was so the Night King would cull Dany's forces, in order to preclude a one sided battle in which Dany easily trounced Cersei. Which is precisely what happened anyway when Dany practically single-handedly defeated Cersei's army. So the battle against the Night King now served no purpose. The outcome was the same.
Varys was obviously going to die after the last episode. Dany told him she'd burn him if he ever betrayed her long ago, and he made it clear to her long ago that he would betray her, if he ever thought she went off the rails. It's also obvious Dany is going to pit Jon against his own family (Sansa). If I had to guess either Tyrion (mourning Jaime), or Jon (to protect his family) will kill her in the series finale, to prevent Winterfell from suffering the same fate as King's Landing. Dany's decision to commit genocide was disappointing also. Not so much that it happened, that was always the obvious outcome, but rather what induced it. Dany basically committed genocide at King's Landing, becoming no better than Cersei and her father in the process, because Jon refused to have sex with her. Sure, that's a bit hyperbolic (it's a little bit more complicated than that), but not much.
Given the magnitude of the destruction occuring, I couldn't tell if I was watching a city being attacked by a dragon, or San Andreas featuring Dwayne Johnson. Dragon fire in GoT seems to behave more like a tsunami than actual fire, producing not only conflagration but acting as a bulldozer in addition. When a dragon breathes fire on a wall, it's more like a bomb detonating, than a flamethrower. Thus, when Arya was running through the city streets, I got the impression King's Landing was the epicenter of a 20.0 quake on the Richter Scale as opposed to a dragon attack. Normally, I'd be more forgiving of such things, but the show has pretty much exhausted my magnanimity with the extent of its transgressions against the viewer's intellect and expectations.
Like when they flagrantly and lazily retconned a prophecy by Melisandre, foretelling Arya's training by the faceless men, to justify their decision to have her kill the Night King. The writers clearly perused past episodes after the decision was made to have Arya kill the Night King, looking for something they could cite as a narrative basis and explanation for that travesty, and found what they were seeking in Melisandre's incredibly ambiguous prediction (which was accurate whether Arya killed the NK or not). "We can just say the 'blue eyes' were the Night King's derp derp derp," is probably the gist of how that discussion transpired.
Or when they blatantly ripped off Vikings (aired December 26, 2018) in the battle against the Night King (aired April 28, 2019), and had the audacity to do a worse job than Vikings did in many respects.
Sure, it's not exactly the same, but the visual similarities of the cavalry charging in as catapult fire rains down like falling comets is rather conspicuous. Though in Vikings the trench fire preceded the charge and it was all on a smaller scale. Perhaps the biggest difference is that in Vikings the charge, the trench fire, etc., serve a logical strategic purpose. The catapults, for example, are behind the troops and cavalry employing them as opposed to in front of them. The cavalry isn't squandered in some asinine suicide charge into an enemy they can't even see. The trench fire trammels the enemy army, limiting its ability to flee or circumvent the charge, instead of being a redundant barrier that obstructs your own retreat. The fire trench in GoT literally does the exact opposite of the one seen in Vikings, and ends up working against the side that used it, just as much if not more than it does the Night King's army.
The Hound's death was neat, I suppose, though "Clegane Bowl" was never really something I wanted to see that much. I can't say it moved me. It was cool and all but it ultimately felt like just another instance of spectacle over substance. And thus the only man left in the show not enthralled to a woman met his end. I also feel compelled to state, there was perhaps no one I wanted to see die a horrible and painful death more than Cersei Lannister, but I was once again robbed of satisfaction. Her and Jaime (the virgin slayer), arguably two of the worst people in the show, die together in a rather mundane manner and cast in an almost sympathetic light. Trapped in the royal cellar, the exits of which have all caved in because as mentioned earlier dragon fire is basically an earthquake in addition to fire, the roof comes down upon them as they embrace. Once again I was left feeling unfulfilled by a show that now seems to take that as a challenge. Jaime went from a-hole, to hero, to a-hole again. Cersei dies a death far too kind given all she's done.
Game of Thrones: Where the heroes die monstrous deaths, and the monsters die like heroes.
An exorbitant amount of time in this episode is spent on Arya, who for the better part of (what seemed like) 10 minutes runs around King's Landing, after she decides not to do the one thing for which she went there in the first place. (Although I was actually relieved by this. If she played a part in killing another major villain I'd have lost it.) Meanwhile the Prince that was Pointless, or Jon Snow, once again does nothing of substance for the entire episode. Bran, having apparently outlived his pertinence and usefulness to anything, sits alone by the weirwood in Winterfell being a living magic eight ball, and for the lucky few, occasionally predicting winning lottery numbers.
All I can say at this point, is with one episode left, how can this possibly be salvaged? The ending thus far is just plain awful. And I'm saying that as a Mass Effect 3 survivor.
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