Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks”

After “The Long Night,” a lot of critics complained that the stakes of the battle seemed artificial, and the battle itself anti-climactic, partly because no major and/or beloved characters died. I disagreed, and instead found “The Long Night” quite stirring, but the first scene of “The Last of the Starks” made me question my contentment with the outcome of last week’s episode. Jon gives what is meant to be a powerful speech honoring those who died, but all I could think about was how much more powerful it would be if he were eulogizing Tyrion, Brienne, or Jaime, or if not them, then perhaps even more minor characters, like Sam, Gendry, or Tormund. Perhaps it might have been more powerful had Missandei been lighting Grey Worm’s pyre, or vice versa. As it is, however, I found the funeral scene underwhelming because we weren’t terribly attached to most of these characters.

On the other hand, the hypothetical deaths of more (or more important) characters in “The Long Night” needs to be weighed against the dramatic potential these characters represent for the three remaining episodes. Certainly, this funeral (and perhaps “The Long Night”) would have landed harder and been more dramatically satisfying had more significant characters died, but it might have impoverished the drama in the rest of “The Last of the Starks” and the two episodes after it. For instance, I think most viewers would rather see Clegane Bowl 2019 than to have had the Hound perish in the “The Long Night.” Ultimately, it depends on how Game of Thrones capitalizes on the preservation of its precious, surviving characters: if they’re put to good use in the remaining episodes, then their surviving “The Long Night” is probably worth it in the long run, but if their survival doesn’t yield dramatic dividends, then it likely would have been better to kill them off, both to benefit “The Long Night,” and to benefit this funeral.

As far as Sam, Gilly, and Gendry, are concerned, it seems like all three could have perished in “The Long Night” without sacrificing much in terms of dramatic payoff. Sam and Gilly bid Jon a lovely goodbye before Jon rides south to help Daenerys fight Cersei, and while I could be wrong, it certainly seems like this is the last we’ll see of these characters on the series. However, weighed against the potential of Jon’s voice catching as he bids Sam farewell on a funeral pyre, or the potential pathos of watching Sam lighting Gilly’s pyre, it’s clear we’ve been dealt a lesser dramatic hand, at least for these characters.

Gendry, for his part, gets a funny scene in the celebration banquet, where he leaves his seat in search of Arya, but before he can leave the great hall Daenerys makes him the rightful Baratheon heir and lord of Storm’s End (the Baratheon ancestral seat, which we’ve never seen depicted in the series). However, his survival seems extraneous as well; he asks Arya to marry him, but she refuses. Their scene seems designed to remind us that Arya’s destiny was never to be a lady of a Great House, but we hardly need to be reminded of this, especially considering that her later scene with the Hound implicitly refers to an old checklist of hers that still has a few names left on it (for those keeping score, these names include Cersei, the Mountain, and Ned’s executioner, Ilyn Payne. The Hound was also once on that list, but it’s clear she erased it long ago). Once again, assuming this is Gendry’s last scene on the show, the funeral would have benefited from Arya lighting Gendry’s pyre.

And what of Brienne and Jaime? Does their survival of “The Long Night” bear dramatic fruit? I’d say so, as it leads to their sleeping together, which in turn leads to some moments of self-awareness, and later the confrontation of harsh truths. Brienne has loved Jaime for a long time, but Jaime has only recently seemed to realize that he has feelings for Brienne (perhaps as recently as “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”). Does he love her? Perhaps, in his own way.

However, the real dramatic payoff of their survival is the scene where Jaime leaves Brienne to return to King’s Landing. Brienne begs Jaime not to go, appealing to his good nature, but Jaime tries to convince Brienne that he’s more like Cersei than she realizes. He might do so to make his leaving easier on both of them, but it’s also partly true that he's not the uniformly good man Brienne believes him to be. Yes, he’s changed, but he's still haunted by his past and by Cersei, and he can't sever ties with either of them as easily as his hand was severed from his wrist.

I wasn’t entirely clear about which side Jaime intends to fight for. On the one hand, perhaps his telling Brienne about his laundry list of hateful deeds is his way of explaining why he needs to fight for Cersei. They’re still family, despite Cersei's wretchedness. He loves Brienne, but a part of him (the hateful part) still loves Cersei too.

On the other hand, he might intend to fight for Daenerys, given the way he left King’s Landing, and given Cersei hiring Bronn to murder him. If he intends to fight for Daenerys, then his telling Brienne his laundry list of heinous acts is his way of explaining why he needs to try to kill Cersei: he hates her for giving him a reason to do all of these things, blaming both her and himself (the cousin he mentions is Alton, whom Jaime strangled as a distraction to escape his Stark imprisonment in season two). Under this reasoning, the only way for him to expunge his own hatefulness is to kill Cersei or die trying. Either way, it’s a magnificent scene, and a heartbreaking one for Brienne, who is left sobbing as Jaime rides off. Her love for him is not enough to redeem him.

“The Last of the Starks” also seems to mark the end of Tormund’s run on the series; he bids Jon another tender, heartfelt farewell along with Sam and Gilly. However, Tormund’s survival is a slightly more complicated case than the previous characters. As the last remaining wildling of note, his goodbye tells us what becomes of the other wildlings Jon helped save (they will return north of the wall). While this information could have been conveyed secondhand in the strategy session scene between Jon, Dany, and Sansa, Tormund’s survival also serves another purpose in the banquet scene (other than the fine comedy of his crying on the Hound’s shoulder after Brienne rejects his advances again): his toast of Jon helps make Daenerys realize that she’ll always be something of an outsider to the people of Westeros.

In singing Jon’s praises, Tormund tells everyone that Jon’s resilience and willingness to ride a dragon makes him fit to be a king. Tormund is teasing Jon here -- as a wildling, he follows no king (excluding Mance Rayder) -- but Daenerys lacks the contexts to understand this. When she observes Tormund’s praise for Jon, all she sees is someone drawn to Jon’s leadership rather than hers, much like how most Westerosi are more drawn to one of their own than to her, raised as she was in foreign lands across the Narrow Sea. Thus Tormund’s survival serves a useful dramatic purpose: it makes explicit the difficulty Daenerys has in getting the Seven Kingdoms to welcome her rule – a point of contention at the center of much of the conflict in “The Last of the Starks” (and it even does so ironically, since Dany actually reveals her outsider status through her inability to understand the full context of Tormund’s praise for Jon).

It’s an episode full of moments of self-awareness and harsh truths for just about every major character. In addition to Brienne and Jaime, the harsh truth Dany and Jon must confront is Jon’s claim to the Iron throne, which the two discuss later that night. Dany begs Jon not to tell his sisters (really, his cousins) about his true parentage. Despite how much Jon might not want to be king, Dany rightly knows that the truth will create conflict, regardless of his willingness to follow Dany as his queen and his disinterest in being king.

But Jon simply can’t help himself. Always one to equate honor with truth (and to prioritize them above practicality or common sense), Jon defies Dany’s wishes when the perfect opportunity arises. Harsh truths for Jon always end up being harsh truths for everyone. Still, I enjoyed the scene between the surviving Starks in the godswood. It’s the exact sort of scene I wanted to see near the end of last season between Arya, Bran, and Sansa when the three were plotting against Littlefinger. Characters that trust one another -- especially family members who have been through experiences as difficult as these four -- would try to talk out their problems and be honest about how they’re feeling. It’s nice to see this implicit Stark trust return, even if I rolled my eyes at Jon once again being Jon.

Naturally, the truth does not sit well with Sansa, who was already so fiercely resistant to Dany’s plans for war with Cersei in the previous scene that I thought Bran had already told her about Jon. We might question why Sansa is so resistant to the thought of Dany ruling the Seven Kingdoms -- after all, Daenerys has demonstrated nothing but kindness and good leadership since arriving in Winterfell -- but I think it works in the context of Sansa’s experiences, which have shaped her into who she is (her moment of self-awareness is when she tells the Hound as much during the banquet).* She’s simply tired and wary of southern rulers ruining her life. Plus, stubbornness is Stark family trait. In any case, now that Sansa knows the truth, despite swearing secrecy to Jon, she can’t help but spread the knowledge: in an effort to win over Tyrion and stoke the embers of his insecurity about Daenerys’s fitness for rule, she spills the beans to him, and he in turn confides in Varys.

* Update: Kathryn VanArendonk wrote a scathing critique of the way "The Last of the Starks" treats its female characters, particularly Sansa, Missandei, and Brienne, pointing out the absurd sexism of making Sansa seem grateful to have been raped and beaten, reducing Brienne to woman weeping because a man is leaving her, and reducing Missandei's horrific fate to being a catalyst in Dany's story (especially galling since she was the last woman of color on the show). It's essential reading.

What follows are the most interesting pair of scenes in the episode, where Tyrion and Varys have a series of conversations that are nothing but self-awareness and harsh truths, giving voice to some of the same thoughts and concerns I’ve had since we learned of Jon's parentage. What is the right thing to want here? Should we want Dany to give up her claim? The throne is “rightfully” Jon’s, but he doesn’t want it, and it’s the only thing Dany’s really wanted since she claimed her own power after Drogo’s death. Is she supposed to just give all of that up just because of some cruel twist of fate? Who is she without her claim on the throne? Dany’s intentions are good, after all. She tries to be a just ruler, but as we’ve seen, she’s also imperious, as would be anyone who has had so many signs that point toward the Iron Throne as their destiny (a point underscored by Tyrion here).

Varys also gives voice to some legitimate problems with the idea of Jon and Dany marrying and ruling together: Targaryen traditions aside, it’s not common to marry one’s aunt in the north, and it’s not in Dany’s nature to share (let alone cede control of) her authority. Moreover, Dany’s force of personality is too much for Jon. Varys also makes a strong case for Jon as a ruler, much to Tyrion’s dismay. Tyrion just wants all of his friends to get along, but he spends much of this episode on the losing ends of arguments with all of his debate partners. Varys and Tyrion seem to end their second discussion having each made their decision about which ruler to back, sadly (and perhaps alarmingly) putting them at odds with one another.

Of course, first Daenerys must win her war against Cersei, or all of this fretting over who will rule Westeros is moot, a point Tyrion makes just before Euron exemplifies it by shooting Rhaegal out of the sky, decimating Dany’s fleet, and capturing Missandei, who Cersei will later execute. Indeed, the very fact that everyone seemed to be overlooking Cersei for much of this episode speaks to how much of a climax last week’s episode was. For us, the battle against Cersei seems like a foregone conclusion, but it isn’t for the remaining characters, who must still beat her, and she might take down a few of our favorite characters before all is said and done.

Here, then, we have reasons for why Missandei and Rhaegal survived “The Long Night.” While I don’t think anyone was clamoring for the death of another dragon, Rhaegal’s demise works not only as a shocking surprise, but it also makes us take Qyburn’s scorpion crossbows more seriously. In “The Spoils of War,” Drogon dispatched the scorpion he encountered relatively easily, but despite its ineffectiveness there, Cersei and Qyburn doubled down on them, mounting them to all of Euron’s ships and every turret lining King’s Landing’s walls. Thus not only will Rhaegal’s death raise the suspense if Dany flies Drogon into battle in the future, but it also further evens the odds between her and Cersei. It seems like Drogon has been neutralized as an offensive weapon, because now there’s no way for him to get close to King’s Landing or the Iron Fleet (just look at how far away Dany parked Drogon in the episode’s final scene).

As for Missandei, her execution might seem like unnecessary motivation for Daenerys, given that Dany already wanted to end Cersei’s rule. Sure, Missandei’s fate raises the stakes of Tyrion’s doomed, last-ditch negotiation effort, but one might argue that her (and Rhaegal’s) death only make Dany want to kill Cersei even more. As clichéd trailers for movie sequels go, “This time, it’s personal.” However, there’s more at stake here than Dany’s (and Grey Worm’s) desire to kill Cersei: it gives further cause to take seriously Varys’s concerns about Daenerys’s leadership.

Earlier he doubted Dany because she was too willing to slaughter the people of King’s Landing in order to achieve her goals. She only relented because a negotiation provides better optics for her, and because it allows more time for Jon’s forces to arrive. Now, though, after Missandei’s execution, it certainly seems like Dany will stop at nothing to murder Cersei, no matter the cost in innocent lives, in turn perhaps giving viewers reason to doubt her fitness to rule as well (although to be fair, Jon also did something stupid at the start of the Battle of the Bastards when goaded into it by an Ramsay, but Jon’s reaction didn’t jeopardize the lives of everyone in Winterfell). Missandei’s last words are "dracarys" (Valyrian for dragon fire - it's what Dany tells Drogon every time he breathes fire). The look on Dany’s face as she leaves the negotiation seems to be responding in agreement: “Burn them all.”

And some characters certainly will burn before all is said and done, be it through backdoor dealings and betrayals, or through open warfare. It wouldn't be Game of Thrones if everything ended with sunshine and lollipops for all of our favorite characters. Nevertheless, I am a bit underwhelmed by this last minute play to make us doubt Dany along with Varys, Sansa, and others. We've simply been attached to her for too long, and her journey has been too archetypically heroic, for me to think she'll turn into Mad King 2.0 at this point. Dany has figured out solutions to plenty of other suboptimal scenarios much worse than her current one without resorting to tyranny, and unless the series pulls off another crazily unexpected surprise in its final two episodes, I see little reason to think the same won't happen here.

Other thoughts:

- More minor changes to the opening credits this time: the blue tiles representing the undead are no longer moving toward Winterfell, which is now surrounded by funeral pyres, and the great hall is in shambles. These minor changes are pretty insignificant, but by focusing only on two locations, the title sequence strongly indicates the reduced scope of the series in these last six episodes. Game of Thrones is simply not as sprawling as it once was. Although retrospectively, Dragonstone should have been included in the credits as well.

- The number of funeral pyres we see in the actual episode don’t seem to be nearly enough given for how many people died in the battle (like seemingly all of the Dothraki).

- Speaking of which, the strategy session answers my lingering questions over the strength of Jon and Dany’s remaining forces. Each of their armies lost about half their number, including, somehow, the Dothraki, even though they appear to be wiped out completely last week.

- Add Ghost to the list of creatures whose survival of "The Long Night” yields no great dramatic dividends. I’m happy he’s alive, but irritated that it’s simply so he can be sent off with Sam, Gilly, and Tormund into the “happily ever after” zone. Unless, of course, he comes back somehow. With this final image of all four of these characters, it's as if the series is saying goodbye to what was formerly Jon's corner of the series.

- Gotta love Tormund’s timing: as soon as Tyrion spies out Brienne’s virginity in their drinking game, Tormund saunters along to present Brienne with an opportunity to change it.

- I liked that Arya prefers the Hound for a traveling companion over other possible company. She’s used to his performative surliness after all of their previous traveling together. Perhaps they’ll team up to murder the Mountain. Either way, they seem to view their respective missions as suicidal.

- Cersei truly is an awful leader, as demonstrated here through letting people into the Red Keep on the pretense of protecting them from Daenerys, when really she’s simply using them as human shields. Reminds me of some other self-serving leaders in the real world who don’t give a damn about what’s best for anyone other than themselves.

- I admired some of the scene transitions in this episode. In addition to Euron’s attack coming on the tail of Tyrion musing Cersei might kill them all and solve their problems for them, Jaime concludes his speech to Brienne by telling her both he and Cersei are hateful, which is followed immediately by a scene demonstrating Cersei’s hatefulness, in which she turns what should be a negotiation into an execution.

- I loved the scene where Bronn extorts Jaime and Tyrion for higher pay than what Cersei offered him. Bronn, shrewd as ever, refuses to side against the team with the dragons, but he also can't turn down a big payday, no matter how fed up he might be with the Lannisters. Tyrion, once again, understands Bronn’s loyalty better than Jaime, offering him Highgarden in return for not killing them. Put a pin in this one for later – I look forward to seeing whatever is in store for Bronn.

- We all knew Tyrion’s attempts to appeal to Cersei’s better nature were doomed from the start. After all, he tried the same ploy at the end of the previous season, so why would it work now? It bought time, yes, but in the end it probably did more harm than good, given Dany’s determination at the end of the scene.