Game of Thrones ep 10
Aug. 15th, 2011 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightI wanted to use a different icon, but decided I shouldn't use a spoilery one outside the cut. Rewatched this ep today and loved it as much as the first time.
It's a brilliant finale, which manages to wrap up old storylines and introduce new ones, as well as pass the baton from one character to another, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Which is not to say there aren't a few moments of audience dislocation, as it were, as we adjust to a new world without Ned Stark. It's not easy, given that he was the main POV character - the one around whom all the other characters' stories revolved - but he's gone, though not forgotten because the effects of his death will be felt for a very long time.
Not least by his daughters, both of whom embark on their very different trials by fire - Arya on the perilous journey to the Wall, and Sansa in the snakepit of the court. As I mentioned before, this is the episode where Sansa shows the core of steel within the silken sheath. I don't know because I haven't read the books, but my impression is that she'll bend but never break. Joffrey had better watch out.
The girls' brothers, meanwhile, are undergoing their own trials. Robb, having stepped up to fill his father's shoes, now finds himself unable to step out of them. Once he accepts the acclamations of his bannermen as King of the North there's no going back. And on the Wall, Jon Snow does some more growing up, thanks to the loyalty of his friends. He accepts that Lord Mormont's war is as important as Robb's and pledges himself to the cause.
And back at Winterfell, Bran and Rickon are both having prophetic dreams about their father. Where that will lead I haven't the least idea. I just know that I love Osha and hope she sticks around. I also wonder if any of the young actors playing the children have done much growing up in the year since the first season was shot. That could be awkward, especially if it's Maisie Williams.
Starks aside, Tyrion Lannister finds that having his father decide he isn't a complete fool after all isn't necessarily a good thing (and there's a horrible lack of Bronn, which is a crime against television), and for three characters it's business as usual. These are Maester Pycelle, Baelish and Varys, all of whom shrug off the change of regime with ease and go on plotting as before. I actually enjoyed the final sexposition scene this time, because seeing Pycelle go from doddering old man to spry 70 year old and back in the space of a heartbeat was just so funny. And the Baelish/Varys scene was a tour de force.
I've left Dany till last, because her final scenes are some of the most harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, in the whole series. Uplifting in a scary way, that is, because though I love seeing Dany come into her own and no longer need to exercise power in a traditional feminine way by proxy through Khal Drogo and am not in the least a Dany/Drogo 'shipper, it sends a shiver down your spine to see how much Dany spoke the truth when she told Jorah that she did not have a gentle heart. If ever we thought she did, Mirri Maz Duur's dying screams chase that notion away for good. And when Dany walks into the fire, she doesn't believe for one minute that the fire will harm her, and it doesn't, she believes so strongly in her own destiny. The sight of her sitting naked amongst the charred remains of Khal Drogo's pyre (and of Drogo himself and of Mirri Maz Duur, not a single trace remains) with the dragon on her shoulder is as eerie as it is uplifting. It's no wonder that Jorah and the rest of Dany's khalasar fall to their knees at her feet. It's a bleak and beautiful moment, and, along with the sight of the Night's Watch riding through the tunnel at the base of the Wall, which echoes the prologue, a fitting end to a bleak and beautiful show.
:loves it to pieces:
It's a brilliant finale, which manages to wrap up old storylines and introduce new ones, as well as pass the baton from one character to another, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Which is not to say there aren't a few moments of audience dislocation, as it were, as we adjust to a new world without Ned Stark. It's not easy, given that he was the main POV character - the one around whom all the other characters' stories revolved - but he's gone, though not forgotten because the effects of his death will be felt for a very long time.
Not least by his daughters, both of whom embark on their very different trials by fire - Arya on the perilous journey to the Wall, and Sansa in the snakepit of the court. As I mentioned before, this is the episode where Sansa shows the core of steel within the silken sheath. I don't know because I haven't read the books, but my impression is that she'll bend but never break. Joffrey had better watch out.
The girls' brothers, meanwhile, are undergoing their own trials. Robb, having stepped up to fill his father's shoes, now finds himself unable to step out of them. Once he accepts the acclamations of his bannermen as King of the North there's no going back. And on the Wall, Jon Snow does some more growing up, thanks to the loyalty of his friends. He accepts that Lord Mormont's war is as important as Robb's and pledges himself to the cause.
And back at Winterfell, Bran and Rickon are both having prophetic dreams about their father. Where that will lead I haven't the least idea. I just know that I love Osha and hope she sticks around. I also wonder if any of the young actors playing the children have done much growing up in the year since the first season was shot. That could be awkward, especially if it's Maisie Williams.
Starks aside, Tyrion Lannister finds that having his father decide he isn't a complete fool after all isn't necessarily a good thing (and there's a horrible lack of Bronn, which is a crime against television), and for three characters it's business as usual. These are Maester Pycelle, Baelish and Varys, all of whom shrug off the change of regime with ease and go on plotting as before. I actually enjoyed the final sexposition scene this time, because seeing Pycelle go from doddering old man to spry 70 year old and back in the space of a heartbeat was just so funny. And the Baelish/Varys scene was a tour de force.
I've left Dany till last, because her final scenes are some of the most harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, in the whole series. Uplifting in a scary way, that is, because though I love seeing Dany come into her own and no longer need to exercise power in a traditional feminine way by proxy through Khal Drogo and am not in the least a Dany/Drogo 'shipper, it sends a shiver down your spine to see how much Dany spoke the truth when she told Jorah that she did not have a gentle heart. If ever we thought she did, Mirri Maz Duur's dying screams chase that notion away for good. And when Dany walks into the fire, she doesn't believe for one minute that the fire will harm her, and it doesn't, she believes so strongly in her own destiny. The sight of her sitting naked amongst the charred remains of Khal Drogo's pyre (and of Drogo himself and of Mirri Maz Duur, not a single trace remains) with the dragon on her shoulder is as eerie as it is uplifting. It's no wonder that Jorah and the rest of Dany's khalasar fall to their knees at her feet. It's a bleak and beautiful moment, and, along with the sight of the Night's Watch riding through the tunnel at the base of the Wall, which echoes the prologue, a fitting end to a bleak and beautiful show.
:loves it to pieces: