Game of Thrones season 7 finale: How much Wall could an ice dragon melt?
Game of Thrones has suffered from its share of problems this season, including the rather convoluted Jon-lead Campaign in the North (which I whined about extensively) and uneven pacing, but the writers seemed to have heard our collective sighs of annoyance and Stannis-like teeth gnashing.
They decided to deliver a cracker of a finale, though true to form, it wasn’t without its instances of teleportation and head-scratching rather than mind-blowing twists, but I will forgive them all this because by the time they come back with Season 8, we’ll have forgotten the bad stuff and just be salivating at the prospect of seeing Winter in its full glory.
Because, Winter has come. Nothing underlines it like snow in King’s Landing, which settled softly on Jaime as he drew on his gloves and prepared to ride off to what will undoubtedly by a tragic end.
But let’s back up, and go over what happened in “The Dragon and the Wolf.” In 70 minutes, the show took us to The Wall and back, from long-awaited vengeance to long-awaited (by some) sex, from betrayals to reunions and resurgence of hope and then the dashing of it with the efficacy of the Night’s King calmly dragon-torching The Wall at Eastwatch. Yes, you read that correctly: the Army of the Dead, which has been stacking up some serious wins courtesy their mysterious, single-minded leader, did what we’d been warned they would do for all of seven years: they marched into Westeros.
Other things that happened: the conference in the King’s Landing dragon pit, where Cersei pretended to be moved by Tyrion enough to pledge her forces to the Great War, Jon publicly declaring loyalty to Dany and cementing it (privately, though espied by Tyrion) by sleeping with her, Sansa and Arya revealing their true game and banding together to bring down Littlefinger (who gasped to death on the floor of the Great Hall of Winterfell), Theon finding strength and sailing off to rescue his sister, and another brother-sister pair, Jaime and Cersei, finally finding a bridge they could not cross together, with Jaime turning his back on his murderous twin and riding north “for honour.”
And lest we forget, Bran finally stopped being cryptic and told Sam a great, big truth: Jon Snow is not Snow at all. His name is Aegon Targaryen, and he is the true heir to the Iron Throne.
No wonder they needed 70 minutes for this episode.
Through all this drama, and high fantasy hijinks, there was one line from the episode that stuck with me, and that I thought brought it all together. ‘It’s all just about cocks,’ Jaime says in the opening scene, as he stands with Bronn and looks out at the Unsullied on the field. The line is uttered in response to Bronn’s assertion that the only thing a soldier, any soldier, will fight for is sex and the prospect, or the memory, of what comes from it: family.
We’ve seen this already in Cersei, how she turns her back on everything good and decent in an effort first to protect her children, and then herself. We’ve seen it in Arya, who will go to incredible lengths to avenge herself on those who wrong her family. And we’ve seen it in Daenerys, who holds her dragons as close to her as human children, all the more desperately because she believes she will never have any of her own.
Most beautifully, we saw it in the Starks in this episode, the family with whom we started the show, and the family with whom, I have a feeling, we will end it. Sansa and Arya were working together all along, it seems, to unseat Littlefinger, the man who started their family down the dark path that’s led them to where they are today. The snow has been falling for a while, and the white winds are blowing, but the wolves are lone no longer. Instead, they are safely huddled together, those of them that are left, in Winterfell, ready to face whatever comes.
The Lannisters, our second principal family, have always seemed incredibly complicated, especially in comparison to the Starks. The season finale did not let up on that. So much for any newfound joy Jaime might have felt when hearing he has a child on the way; the episode ended with him making a break with Cersei, and given that there’s only a few hours left in the world of Westeros, there’s a good chance this is a final goodbye. Jaime’s departure has long been built up.
We’ve seen him increasingly uncomfortable in Cersei’s court, staying faithful only because he has some vestige of honour or faith in her, this woman he’s built his life around. At the end of the “Dragon and the Wolf” though, it’s no longer "just about cocks" for Jaime; there are bigger things, he realises, than his family, especially when that family makes it clear it doesn’t see him as indispensable.
Theon, long a downtrodden and weak character, finally finds in his “cockleseness” a source of strength. A fight to the death on the beach turns around in his favour when his opponent, flummoxed by his inability to feel pain when kneed in the genitals, is finally beaten down, his head smashed in with a rock. Theon thus gains the appreciation of his fellow Ironborn, and with their help, he sets sail to rescue their “queen”, his kidnapped sister Yara. Of course, this also comes after Theon’s part-forgiveness at the hands of Jon, who gives him the validation Theon has always wanted, by telling him he is both a Greyjoy, and, most importantly, a Stark as well. Theon thus finds the strength to fight on, animated by the memory of his foster father, Ned, and the need to be there for his blood sister, Yara.
But for Jon and Daenerys, this episode really was all about cocks. Before his demise, Baelish plants a thought in Sansa’s mind: the Dragon Queen is very beautiful. “What does that have to do with anything?” is Sansa’s laconic response, and while it is absolutely true to form for a woman to exasperatedly wonder at this, Daenerys’s beauty and youth is as much a factor in Jon’s swearing to her as her idealism and power.
While their romance lacks the chemistry and fun that characterised his doomed love for Ygritte, there is no denying that Jon and Dany’s union has been a long time coming, with the showrunners practically shoving it down our throats. Now it’s here, and we are presented with a curious juxtaposition: scenes of Jon and Dany making love in her cabin onboard a ship, intercut with Bran’s voice as he tells Sam the "truth" about Jon, that he is Rhaegar’s son and hence, Dany’s nephew.
Also odd and strangely unsettling in this scene is the visuals of Tyrion, standing outside the cabin, having just watched Jon go inside. The episode finally allowed Tyrion to shine, a welcome change after his run this season. Tyrion always does best when confronted with his family, and Peter Dinklage’s scene with Lena Headey, where he tells her, finally, to give the order to kill him, only to watch her waver for some inexplicable reason, is one of the best he has delivered, in this or any other season.
Tyrion has cut off from his family, or been cast out so many times that it is impossible to count (he himself wryly reminds Jaime that Cersei has tried to kill him at least two times that he knows of); his watching as the very queen he has pledged himself to bonds with another is strangely touching.
Tyrion’s aloneness is underscored in this final scene, and while Dany’s union with Jon is something he obviously encourages (he is her only advisor to have brought up the question of succession with her, as well as vouched for Jon before he even arrived), it also underlines how isolated he is, no longer a Lannister, but also, no longer the queen’s first point of advice.
Dany has not listened to Tyrion for some time now, having grown tired of his “clever plans.” With winter on the horizon, it’s unclear how much she will listen to him now, or even what his path is, going forward.
To sum up, actually, it’s unclear what anyone’s path is. Winter has come and the Night’s King is here, the dead have begun their onslaught on the unsuspecting residents of Westeros. Who will survive the battle going forward? There are so many lone wolves still out there; in another year, perhaps, we’ll see how many of them can huddle together and stave off the cold winds. For now, we can’t see anything; there’s too much ice and snow in the air.