As the fantasy saga heads for the explosive finale it has promised, I’m hoping for a little more conversation and a little less action.
In “The Dragon and the Wolf,” the most recent season finale of “Game of Thrones,” a lot of people have a lot to talk about.
The warring factions of Westeros have convened a truce to discuss the frosty-cold undead army of the White Walkers approaching from the north. It reunites characters with deep history who have been separated for ages: Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) and the Hound (Rory McCann); the Hound and the Mountain (Hafthor Julius Bjornsson); Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Bronn (Jerome Flynn); Tyrion and Cersei (Lena Headey).
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Friendships are reaffirmed; old grievances are reopened; negotiations are broached. But then: silence. No one has anything left to say. They’re just waiting for the dragons to arrive.
They do arrive, of course: two of them, enormous and leathery, one bearing the Khaleesi, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), descend screeching and preening. It’s showtime!
The scene encapsulates what “Game of Thrones” has become, as it begins its last fire-belching spin around the HBO firmament Sunday: a dragon-delivery device, a collection of spectacular images, to which character, complexity and conversation have become secondary.
The series’s changes, in part, reflect the ambitions and limitations of today’s big-ticket TV. Rewatch the earliest episodes, from 2011, and they already seem to belong to another era.
It’s not simply that Arya (Maisie Williams) was more innocent then, Westeros more peaceful, Ned Stark’s head still attached to his body. (No spoiler alert! Honestly, you’ve had plenty of time.)
It’s how much of the series was simply people talking, how it was able to draw import from relatively small incidents. The second episode, “The Kingsroad,” for instance, focuses its main story line on nothing more high-stakes than the death of a child’s pet.
The Starks, journeying to the capital where Ned (Sean Bean) will serve King Robert (Mark Addy), have recently come into possession of a litter of orphan direwolves. Along the way, the crown prince, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), bullies Arya’s friend, the butcher boy’s son, holding him at sword point. Arya’s wolf, Nymeria, mauls Joffrey (no jury would convict her). After Arya scares Nymeria off, Ned is forced to execute Lady, the wolf belonging to his daughter Sansa (Sophie Turner), in her stead, to keep peace between the families.
That’s it. Roll credits. No magic, no dragonfire. But so much character and foreshadowing are concentrated in this high-fantasy “Old Yeller.
