Well...

Spoiler

1. Varys: Hello, random spy. Report.

Random Spy: Well, everyone thinks you're dumb for thinking Dany's mad or disqualified to rule without coming up with a better reason than she doesn't have a cock, believe Jon should rule because he's allegedly charismatic, a "good" military leader and soldier, and has a reluctance to be king, all of which were the exact same qualities King Robert had before he turned out to be a terrible king, and now you're writing letters to the rest of Westeros about Jon's parentage, even though you have literally no evidence and as Master of Whispers you aren't exactly the most trusted or popular figure around. Oh, and it's kind of weird the first spy you've used in ages was some random servant girl in the kitchens that doesn't even give you any particular good information.

2. Varys: You know, when a Targaryen is born the gods flip a coin to decide if it'll have greatness or madness.

Jon: That's a dumb saying. Most of the "great" kings had a lot of madness in them, including Aegon the Conquerer and his mad idea to unite seven distinct kingdoms into a single Westeros. And plenty of Targaryens were neither great nor mad, just perfectly ordinary people not much different from the rest of us.

Varys: Never mind that, I think you should be king and not Dany. Dany's totally mad, you know.

Jon: Is she though? Everyone keeps saying she is or will be, but she hasn't actually done anything remotely mad save burn those two schmucks who kind of deserved it. Even the books built up that possibility for some time, here it just pops out of nowhere.

3. Dany: Varys, you're about to be executed for being completely useless. And working against me, apparently. Any last words?

Varys: Honestly, I probably should have died in the crypts in Winterfell, if not earlier.

4. Tyrion: Dany, I know you're mad at Cersei, but please don't attack the city with your dragon.

Dany: Back in season 3 you literally wanted to kill everyone in King's Landing for turning on you. Why are you trying so hard to keep them alive now? And since everyone in the city is only there out of fear, wouldn't they be more terrified of a freaking dragon than her, causing them to finally turn on the woman who managed to destroy the Great Sept and killed a lot of important people without consequence? In fact, why am I listening to you, literally all your advice turned out to be completely useless and very wrong. And throw in your brother trying to rejoin Cersei, I honestly can't tell how you lasted this long as my advisor?

Tyrion: Same reason Cersei lasted as long as she did, D&D love me too much. But can you at least act peacefully if the city surrenders. You'll know it when the bell rings, remember that.

r/Freefolk: Oh no.

5. Sandor: Random guard, let us through. Arya Stark and I are going to kill Cersei and Franken-Gregor respectively.

Random guard: Do you have any proof of that? How do I know you aren't just random people trying to seek refuge in the city or even join her forces? I'm going to alert the captain and keep you captive, as we already did with Jaime Lannister.

Sandor: Or, and here's an idea, we just ride past you and you don't actually do a thing to stop us.

Random guard: Wow, we suck at our job!

6. Tyrion: Jaime, I've come to set you free. Go to King's Landing and get Cersei out of the city. Why I care about her at this point is beyond me and the writers.

Jaime: But I'm in the middle of Dany's camp, how am I going to get out of here?

Tyrion: Something about Davos smuggling you out, probably. Oh, and to make the city surrender remember to ring the bells.

r/Freefolk: They aren't.

7. Euron: Men, there's the dragon. Last episode we managed to kill one with precise hits when it was far away from us. This one is a bigger target and is much closer to us, so taking it down with our Uber-Ballista should be a piece of cake.

Dany: Or, I can just burn your entire fleet and destroy every single Uber-Ballista without any of them so much as scratching Drogon.

Uber-Ballista: We were only ever as good as we needed to be!

8. Ser Harry Strickland: Alright, the Golden Company forces are all out guarding the gates. We may not have elephants or any of our important backstory, but at least now we can have a cool fight with Dany's forces.

*Drogon destroys the entire Golden Company with fire and falling masonry*

Ser Harry Strickland: Seven hells, we were useless. You could have literally written us out of this season and it wouldn't have changed a damn thing.

9. Euron: How did I get beaten so easily? I was crushing fools left and right in three separate battles, now my forces go down just like that?

Jaime: It's how most bad guys work on this show. They're virtually invincible until the precise moment they are completely crushed.

Euron: Well, I fucked the queen!

Jaime: And you're a mockery of your character in the Books! Instead of a terrifying madman eager to burn the world to become a god, you're a lame Captain Jack Sparrow knock-off.

Euron: At least I'm good for a laugh every now and then, which is more than you can say for most of the still-living characters at this point.

Jaime: Yeah, about that. *Kills Euron*

Euron: At least I stabbed you twice, and both of them seemed pretty severe.

Jaime: Just a flesh wound. And it'll actually play no part in my death.

10. Tyrion: Well, the soldiers are all surrendering and the bells are ringing. All Dany has to do is fly to the Red Keep and get Cersei to come. We've got this in the bag.

r/Freefolk: Mayhaps those leaks were just rumors after all.

Dany: *Burns the entire city. Just burns it all. And she barely touches the one area where her enemy is actually located.

r/Freefolk: Her character was my friend. A character I had known for years and decades. She had a character arc of her own that inspired women. D&D! Show creators should know better. NNNNNOOOOO!!!! There is no curse in Dothraki, Valyrian, or the Common Tongue for this treachery!

11. Jon: Well, Dany's needlessly lost it. But at least the soldiers all surrendered.

Grey Worm: Except I'm still kind of mad as Missendei's death. So instead of rushing to King's Landing to attack the woman responsible, I'm going to take it out on this random soldier and kill a bunch of people who had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

12. Sandor: Arya, you should get out of here. Cersei's going to die anyway, and if you stay here you're going to die.

Arya: But I have to fulfill that "green eyes" thing from Melisandre's warning. And what better way to end an assassin's character arc by having her die while killing her final target?

Sandor: Arya, you've already killed one central bad guy this season, two would be too much. Just go to the city and make the chaos and destruction uncomfortably similar to 9/11.

13. Sandor: Franken-Gregor, my name is Sandor Clegane, you killed our father and sister and burned my face, prepare to die.

Qyburn: Technically, he's already dead. And as per the unusually accurate leaks, Sandor will be so horrified at what his brother has become, he'll kill the weakened creature with disgust and pity.

Franken-Gregor: *Kills Qyburn* That's for suggesting the one wrong leak in this entire episode. I'm still doing Clegane-Bowl with Sandor, but fortunately it'll actually be pretty good. It even ends with the violent Sandor dying a violent death, killed by his lifelong obsession with killing me.

14. Arya: *Gets trampled, has buildings collapsed on her, barely escapes dragonfire, and is clearly bleeding in several places* *Walks around surprisingly alright*

Random Horse: How are you not dead, or at the very least not just barely standing.

Arya: Have you seen me in Season 6? I was repeatedly stabbed in the stomach, ran all across the city, picked up more than a few cuts and bruises along the way, and somehow still managed to kill the Waif without breaking a sweat. Compared to that, this was like a vacation.

 

God, is that what it was? Never occurred to me to think of Quaithe's foretelling.

So, Dany ends up as queen of Westeros? Since we're all into subverting expectations, and everyone expects Dany to die next episode...

 

Calling it now, Arya tries to shank Dany, Dany survives, hops on her dragon, and burninates all the things, then the credits roll as she surveys the burning wreckage of everything she, and everyone else, once loved with a smile on her face.

 

He set up the dinghy for Cersei and Jaime to escape in.

 

I never really got caught up in the hype of GoT, and never really disliked it either.

But man, am I glad I didn't get invested in it only to have this season slap me in the face like a particularly rancid hobo dick.

 

Arya is invincible. She's the writing team's designated favorite. There's no way they'll kill her.

 

Exactly why they would. What better way to subvert expectations?

 

Daenerys has gone mad. D&D are not going to give her any ending but death.

Spoiler: Leaks

Every single detail mentioned over at r/freefolk has been correct. Those who have not seen the leaks might as well go over there and be done with GoT.
This show has deteriorated so badly that there is nothing left to "spoil".

 

Cleganebowl was solid. That's a pretty narratively satisfying end for the Hound and the Mountain. Sandor just fucking laughing in disbelief as a knife through the eyes doesn't do it, then tackling them both through a wall, down six stories, and into fire is a pretty metal way to go.

The rest, I could take or leave. It all just feels... ephemeral. Barely there. 20,000 Golden Company troops. Was that couple hundred outside the gates supposed to be all of them? I can't even tell if the show wanted me to think that was it, or if they literally just forgot the numbers, or what. They've established no grounding, no foundations. Everything is fair game, so nothing is. Everything is as strong as the plot needs it to be, every character is as consistent as the plot needs them to be. It's all plot, no heart.

Season 8's already done a number on my investment in the characters, so I was able to pretty much just watch it for the spectacle. In that sense, it was pretty solid. That's about what it should feel like to have a (ASOIAF-style) dragon attack a big city.

If only Cersei had honored her promise, if only Jon Snow had hidden the fact that he'd bent the knee to Dany. You really could tell that story in a satisfying way in six episodes. Gather everyone, all the characters, all the armies, and have them fight a series of pitched battles against the army of the dead, constantly retreating, re-losing Winterfell, moving further south every episode. Everything interspersed with political drama and tension - Cersei, Dany, and Jon having to work reluctantly together, and all the other characters' various grievances and differences boiling over, sometimes tragically, when they could least afford to, sometimes letting their better angels win and heroically standing together. Characters in this show are at their best, at their most engaged, when they hate each other but are semi-united over a common foe. Think Tyrion and Cersei before Blackwater, then how that dynamic shifts as they have to give ground against Tywin becoming Hand after the battle. That, but everyone, over six episodes, lots of death, lots of retreat, lots of desperate last stands, lots of glory, and then a final battle.

Shame.

 

At least we still have the books (assuming Martin ever finishes them).

 

That's not going to happen.

 

Episode was a visual and musical spectacle, so that's good.

Everything else was meh - Mad Queen Danaerys could have been a good plotline, had they laid down proper groundwork for it rather than have it come out of nowhere. Yes, she's burnt people in the past... but always her enemies/oppressors, not the common people. Killing off the elite of a society you plan to control is completely different to unnecessarily killing a million people after she had already won, apparently just for fun.

If she had finally stopped holding back, embraced "fire and blood" and the city had burnt down as a result of the actions necessary to take it, that would have been one thing. Medieval realism, character being badass. Fine.

But burning the city to the ground after she had taken it? The city which was supposed to be her capital? That's a level of madness that was just not properly foreshadowed in her character arc (and no, the ham-fisted characterisation in Season 8 doesn't count - too little too late).

I'm not even sure what we're supposed to believe her motivations are. When the bells start ringing and the camera focuses on her face as she loses it, I have no idea what she's supposed to be thinking. She's a black box. That's not a criticism of Emilia Clarke - she did a good job of portraying a character getting very angry/distressed. I'm just not sure what it is we're supposed to think is making her so angry, given that she just won.

 

What she'd done to it already before the surrender was already more then enough to cause plenty of devastation. Medieval cities were tinderboxes that burned down all the time without being buzzed multiple times by an apocalyptic dragon, or all the wildfire caches left in the city. I doubt Westeros has any firefighting more advanced than a bucket brigade, and even organizing that would be hard in the immediate aftermath of a surrender.

Even if Dany hadn't suddenly gone full Aerys, most of King's Landing probably would've burned down.

 

Arya killing Dany seems a given... but for the rest... Eh. On the one hand, Jon has shown he is dumb enough to stay loyal to someone undeserving (poor Ned's death didn't even serve as a lesson) and therefore COULD behead Arya for treason...
On the other hand... It's Arya. His little sister. Also a hero. And if she kills Dany, she would have been a hero twice. So, politically, he shouldn't do that. But then he's not exactly savvy in that area.
Arya might die but it won't be at Jon's hand. In fact Jon will probably die too because he's way too passive for it to go any other way. Likely by Grey Worm as no one else is loyal enough to Dany to do it.

Bigger question is what will happen to Drogon ? Won't he go berserk if Dany is killed before him ? So unless she sends him away the way Jon sent Ghost away, who will put him down ?
Edit : is it too much to hope Bran will finally be useful and maybe warg into Drogon ?

 

My super-pessimistic prediction:
Dany dies. Jon decides to give up the throne to go live in the North with the Wildlings, and abolishes the monarchy to create a modern 21st century democracy. Why? Because that's the most pants-on-head stupid ending I could see a really bad writer coming up with.

 

There was word they were filming a bunch of different plot points to throw leakers off right? Maybe what they did was film them all, then rolled the dice on what scenes were actually put into the end product.

So theoretically, there is film out there that isn't pants on head retarded.

 

This episode is a perfect encapsulation of what this season probably feels like to the writers at this point. "Well, we're knee deep in shit already and pretty much everyone hates our guts so let's burn this mother fucker to the ground!" - D&D probably.


Also, calling it now y'all. Jon kills Danny for the good of the kingdom and fucks off to the far North, Gendry assumes the throne and is a half decent king unlike his dad, and Tyrion drowns his misery in alcohol and dies with a whores mouth around his cock.