review of game of thrones season 8 episode 1

Take Dany’s approach to her long coveted Iron Throne, in an eerily disintegrated hall, a sequence that refers back to a vision she had in Season 2. What about those rare occasions when love is the duty of death? Such rhetorical inversions seem trite, but on the screen they can pass for meaningful symmetry. “Sometimes duty is the death of love,” counters Tyrion. The dialogue, for a scene that proves so pivotal, is less than scintillating. Game of Thrones News, reviews, recaps and interviews Click to read

Wrestling with his conscience, Jon insists on loyalty. In his cell, during a needlessly drawn-out reckoning, Tyrion says much the same: you’re a marked man, Jon.

Is Jon, the frowning, useless conscience of the show, still willing to get behind the reign of the Mad Queen? “I know a killer when I see one,” counsels his assassin sister Arya, a trick made less impressive by having seen Dany kill everyone. “And you slaughtered a city,” he seethes back. Not Tyrion, though, who far too late throws down his Targaryen pendant together with his allegiance. Given that they have no qualms about executing prisoners of war, her ululating and spear thudding heavies all seem to agree. The look on Jon snow’s face and soon Tyrion’s is as if to say: “ what people?”īut why stop there? Anointing Grey Worm her Master of War, Dany suggests to her forces that they go liberate the rest of the world from their enslaved lives, from Winterfell to Dorne. Presiding over the detritus, Daenerys congratulates her unruly Dothraki cavalry and her forever ruly Unsullied infantry for having “freed the people of King’s Landing from a tyrant’s grip”. Walking through the rubble and ash – and now the falling snow – of King’s Landing, a stunned Tyrion eventually finds his siblings, Cersei and Jaime, crushed to death but still beautifully intact. It’s better to consider the final instalment of the series, its slowest and most sombre, as an epilogue rather than a climax, a coda to all the crescendos, and in many ways a pensive reflection on itself. If you tuned into the last ever episode of Game of Thrones expecting an unforgettable and universally satisfying series finale, you had come to the wrong place. Stop now if you haven’t watched the final instalment yet. This episode 6 review contains spoilers for season 8, episodes 1-6.

Review of game of thrones season 8 episode 1