It’s all over. The game has been played. On Sunday HBO aired The Iron Throne, the last ever episode of Game of Thrones.…
It’s all over. The game has been played. On Sunday HBO aired The Iron Throne, the last ever episode of Game of Thrones.
If you’ve seen it, you probably have strong feelings about it. It saw the death of Daenerys Targaryen and the ascent of Bran the Broken. It saw Sansa Stark become the Queen of the North and Tyrion Lannister the Hand of the new King. It saw Jon Snow pat Ghost.
Over a million people have signed a petition to have the last season be remade, although such petitions are all the rage these days, so it’s very much a «love it or hate it» affair. But with nearly 20 million viewers, it was among the biggest events in episodic TV history. Here are some of the details and callbacks to previous seasons you may have missed.
One of the two big moments of the episode was the death of Daenerys. Tyrion, imprisoned by Daenerys, convinces Jon that she’s officially mad, and that Jon and his sisters are sure to incur her wrath sooner rather than later. Jon confronts Daenerys and, gauging her to be insufficiently repentant about massacring an entire city, stabs her right in the heart.
This scene, apart from being one of the best in season 8 and arguably the whole show, featured many callbacks to moments in previous seasons.
Before Jon confronts her, we see Daenerys ascending the steps to the Iron Throne. She gazes upon it covetously and grasps a hilt of one of the many blades that comprise it. This is a direct throwback to the vision she sees in Qarth back in season 2. The vision, also referenced in The Bells, shows Daenerys wandering into a snow-blanketed, ransacked Red Keep. In it, she walks to the Throne and begins to reach for it, but at the last moment she shies away from touching it.
It of course turns out that the Red Keep wouldn’t be blanketed in snow, but rather ash. Daenerys did make her grasp for power, grabbing onto the Throne, so I guess the Targaryen coin had yet to land in her vision.
In her vision she’s distracted by the cries of a dragon. In episode 6, her attention goes to Jon Snow, who enters The Great Hall.
Daenerys is notably less crazed here than in The Bells, but she won’t free Tyrion and she said she had to kill all of those innocent civilians to prove Cersei wrong. Or… something. Jon sweet talks her, says she’s his queen forever, and then stabs her right in the heart.
The last Targaryen to rule, Aerys II, was famously stabbed in the same spot by Jaime Lannister during Robert’s Rebellion. There was similar treachery afoot there: Aerys’ Hand of the King was Tywin Lannister, who requested King’s Landing’s gates open so that his army could protect the crown. Aerys opened the gates but Tywin’s army turned on Aerys and sacked the city, similar to Daenerys razing the city even after the bells rang in surrender.
Aerys died in front of the Iron Throne when Kingsguard head Jaime Lannister, appalled by the Mad King’s demands that the whole city be engulfed in wildfire, impaled him from behind. Daenerys died when her most trusted ally, appalled by her engulfing the city in dragonfire, impaled her from the front. («Tell me,» Jaime Lannister asked Ned Stark in season 1, «if I had stabbed the Mad King in the belly instead of the back, would you admire me more?»)
Jaime told Brienne back in season 3 about how little he enjoyed killing the man he was sworn to protect. Jon was naturally even more conflicted about what he had to do. He cried as he lowered Daenery’s body to the floor. She is the second partner to die in his hands; Ygritte, his wildling lover, would also die while looking into the eyes of Jon Snow.
