Game of Thrones - 'The Dragon and the Wolf'

Apparently there are six thousand Dothraki in those trees back there.

Let's bring this on home.

Having bagged their wight, the newly unified Team Danaerys rock up to King's Landing for a meeting in the sombre atmosphere of the ruined Dragon Arena, where the Targareans' once-great beasts of mass destruction devolved into the draconic equivalent of scabby battery hens with atrophied wings and club feet(1). The Unsullied and the Dothraki rock up to look impressive, the former having apparently had shit all trouble crossing from Casterley Rock. There's some reunioning between Tyrion and Bronn and Podrick. Cersei sweeps in all imperious, gives Brienne the stink-eye when she catches her exchanging looks with Jaime, and even manages to maintain her sang froid when Dany rocks up with her dragons. Smasher tries to grandstand by demanding Theon surrender to him, but basically everyone including Cersei turns round and says 'shut the fuck up, Smasher; the grown-ups are talking.' The Hound eyeballs the Mountain and then kicks the wight out of its box towards the Lannister party, and if anything is scarier than a zombie getting all up in your face, it's the look on Qyburn's face as he examines its twitching, severed hand.

"Well, this looks nothing like anywhere people have tried to murder us
before."

Smasher Greyjoy asks if the dead can swim and, learning that they can't, drops the mic and heads back to his fleet. Cersei agrees to a ceasefire, but only if the King in the North agrees to remain neutral between Team Dany and Team Cersei. Being the master of intrigue and subtle diplomacy that he is, Jon announces his ironclad allegiance to Danaerys and the whole conference goes south in a real hurry. Tyrion takes a risk to try and talk Cersei back to the table and weathers both death threats and a belly-full of Cersei's self-righteous blame deflecting(2), but seemingly to good effect as she magnificently announces that she will send her troops north to fight the Army of the Dead, and they can get back to killing each other afterwards.

And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to Dragonstone you might be interested in buying.

If chaos is a ladder, you just landed on a snake.

In the north, Littlefinger creepily persuades Sansa that she must take action to eliminate the danger presented by Arya. Arya is summoned before the court, but Sansa pulls a bait and switch, putting Littlefinger on what I will, for the sake of argument, call trial. She accuses him of all manner of wrongdoing, and it's a fair cop from start to finish. He claims there's not proof of anything, but Bran presents Greensighted evidence of his betrayal of Ned Stark (inadmissable, but his face,) and Sansa quietly rescinds her evidence acquitting him of Lyssa Arran's death so that the knights of the Vale won't help him. Presumably if pressed she would have claimed 'I was a child, I was scared,' and laughed at him while everyone swooned at her awesome turn of strength. Then Arya cut his throat. It's a big hurrah moment, because it means all that petty sibling rivalry bullshit was a pose – Arya later admits to Sansa that despite all she's been through, she doesn't think she would have survived what Sansa did – and because the audience knows that it's a fair cop, but as trials go it's a bit... swift. Tyrion was less railroaded.

I actually think Theon winning a fight may be one of the signs of the coming
of the Long Night.

On Dragonstone, Team Dany prepare to move out, with Jorah raising the point that travelling through the North might be risky for Danaerys given that the North has a fine tradition of being flame-throwered by conquering Targareans. Jon suggests that travelling together would send a better message, and Dany agrees with him, since he's done such sterling PR work to date. Theon and Jon make their peace, with Jon declaring Theon to be a Greyjoy and a Stark, and then Theon rallies the Ironborn to go after Yara by weathering a beatdown and finally coming back strong when his opponent essentially wears himself out fruitlessly attempting to knee Theon in the balls. It's good to see an Ironborn rallying scene which doesn't end with the defiant one concussed and a smash-cut to everyone else being flayed.

Jaime starts making arrangements to move the Lannister armies north and Cersei cusses him out for a chump. He talks about his word and she counters with 'family' in a way that finally opens his eyes to the fact that Cersei has become a complete monomaniac who would let the entire world burn if she got to raise her last child atop the ash heap. She assures him that they're sorted, because as much as pretty much everyone on the world hates them, they still have Smasher, who has actually gone to fetch the Golden Company to fight for them, thanks to the Iron Bank's money. She has also clocked the meaning of Viserion's absence. Despite this, Jaime leaves, mirroring Tyrion in basically daring her to set the Mountain on her, and rides off alone, sans even the company of Bronn (whom everyone is now worried about, since Cersei certainly wouldn't hesitate to set the Mountain on him if he decides to leave.)

 

"Are you crazy? Is that your problem?"

Sam rocks up at Winterfell and pops in to see Bran. As often happens with Sam, his perpetual state of bafflement leaves him entirely unflapped by the revelation that Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven. Bran tells Sam that Jon is the son of Rhaegar Targarean and Lyanna Stark, and that being born in Dorn means he's a Sand not a Snow, but Sam gets to drop a truth bomb on Mr Sees Everything(3) by revealing that Rhaegar's marriage to Ellia Martell was annulled to allow him to be secretly wed to Lyanna, which means that OMG, Jon is Aegon Targarean, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. He is also, at that moment, up to his bobbing arse in his aunt, because that turns out to be a side benefit of travelling together, in deference to the lack of other sex scenes in Season 7, and in continuing defiance of a total lack of visible screen chemistry.

Tyrion apparently spots Jon going into Dany's room and looks unhappy about it, I hope for sane political reasons, rather than because he's subscribed to Jorah's newsletter.

So, a couple of episodes after falling into a James Bond credit sequence, Jaime is heading for a crossroads rendezvous with Bruce Banner, Richard Kimble and the Littlest Hobo, Jon/Aegon inadvisably and somewhat unconvincingly boffs his aunt, Theon finally gets some iron in his spine, and the South is going to all kinds of shit. Anything else?

Right. That.

Season 8 is set to be where it all comes to an end, with the living versus the dead and the final resolution of the battle for the Iron Throne (which I actually hope to see melted to a puddle before the curtain falls.) Based on simple progression, I'm expecting every episode to be leaked before it is shot, and every major plot point to be a meme on Facebook well before the episode airs. Watching in the UK would have been frustrating enough even without the extra delay required by my life as a parent and partner to a shift-working midwife, because as soon as an episode finishes in the States the Facebook explodes with reviews, comments on reviews (which are much, much harder to spoilerproof,) links to YouTube videos discussing 'the six things everyone missed in that episode except me because I'm better than you'(4) or asking 'has Game of Thrones hinted at this thing that might be in its ending?' and memes depicting key plot points with a screen shot and a sassy commentary.

For 'The Dragon and the Wolf' I avoided most spoilers, but was aware going in that 1) Littlefinger was going to be killed, based in part on evidence from Bran's greensight, 2) Jaime was going to leave Cersei, and 3) the Wall was coming down.

 

"I'm sensing a subtle hint that there are still barriers to our rapprochement."

The problem, I suspect(5), is that Game of Thrones has gone from a geek property to the mainest of the mainstream. As a result, the original geeks who 'made' the show with their devotion and miniscule contribution to the viewing figures(6) are circling the wagons and feeling a desperate need to prove that they are more into the show, understand more about the show, and are all told just way, way more into it than any of these Johnny-come-latelys who only like it because it's popular.

Anyway, I suppose I ought to make my predictions for Season 8:

• Beric Dondarion and Tormund will have survived to at least get an onscreen death.
• Jon and Dany will have a huge bust-up when his heritage is revealed and she starts seeing him as a rival.
• Sansa will give Jon an earful for sleeping with Dany. Jon will look like a kicked puppy.
• Cersei's surprise forces will be intercepted by Theon, whom I suspect will give his life to save Yara.
• Jon will ride Rhaegal at some point, possibly in desperate, mortal combat against the Night King. I'm not convinced that Rhaegal will do well out of this.
• Alternatively, Jon will wrest control of Viserion, destroy the Night King and become a White Walker himself in the process.
• Bran will continue to be omniscient, and yet kind of useless.
• Cleganebowl was teased this episode, so it probably has to happen. Part of me hopes to see Sandor get a little religious, overcome his primal fears, and bring a flaming sword to that grudge match. I predict victory on points to the Hound and both end up dead.
• Cersei's pregnancy will turn out to be phantom and she will go completely off the rails.
• Qyburn will make something that murderously turns on him.
• After a series of battles which leaves almost everyone dead, Cersei will either be assassinated by Arya or mauled to death by Nymeria.
• Danaerys will take over what remains of the Seven Kingdoms, move her capital to Dragonstone and attempt to institute a more fair system of government.
• Dorn will either go independent or be colonised by the Dothraki, leading to a horrible apartheid system.
• Sansa will become the Queen in the North.
• Jon will become the immortal King in the Really North.
• Bronn will get his castle; he might even live to enjoy it.
• In ten years' time we'll get a follow-up series called The Westeros Wing, in which Tyrion walks and talks a lot while trying to wrangle the mad idea of Westerosi democracy, while dealing with sanctions against the Dothraki because of their systemic abuse of ethnic Dornish, and the complex arrangements needed to adequately climate control the Really Northern embassy.
• Either that or Direwolves will inherit Westeros.

Right or wrong, I'll see you all for Season 8 next year (or in 2019,) to find out.

(1) Wow; that's a miserable image to start out with.

(2) Seriously, the Dornish didn't murder Mircela because Tywin's death left you vulnerable, they did it because your family routinely employed an enforcer who was barely less than a monster before he was the undead and because your scheming has always been more vicious than well-thought-out. And because the Dorn plot went a bit cray-cray.

(3) A moment which would only be more satisfying if he'd given Gilly props for catching the annulment, but I guess she was just reading aloud to give the audience a head's up.

(4) Yes, I have issues with this style of analysis.

(5) Or a problem, perhaps.

(6) Or a subset of the larger body, at least.