King’s Landing is in cinders. Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, and Daenerys Targaryen survey their work, responding with shock, horror, and triumph as befits where each of them stands. Now the three of them, in their own way, must decide what the future looks like, and what part they might play in it. In its final hour, Game of Thrones wallows in the aftermath of its fullest and final culling of those who stood between “The Iron Throne” and its biggest contenders.
The prelude to the final battle simmers at Dragonstone. Daenerys Targaryen bears the weight of her grief, having lost everyone close to her and sensing betrayal in everyone left. She’s ready to take King’s Landing, to rule by fear where love falters, and to accomplish all of this by any means necessary. But before the march to war, Tyrion tries to quell his queen’s rage, hoping to allow her to enact her long-awaited conquest while urging her to let the innocent go free when the day is won.
The greatest sin of Mike Scully’s time in charge of The Simpsons — that period from season 9 to season 12 when the show fell from grace — isn’t what you might think. As I discussed on The Simpsons Show Podcast, it’s not the show’s humor, which became vastly more hit-or-miss in that four year stretch. It’s not the characters, who grew more and more flat and caricatured under Scully’s reign. It’s not the stories, which became ever more disjointed and rambling. And it’s not even the extra zaniness, which frayed whatever remained of the series’s thin tether to reality.
It’s the laziness, the sloppiness, the sense that the people making what had once been the greatest television show of all time had just kind of stopped caring.
The good guys (so far as there are any good guys in Game of Thrones) are licking their wounds and burying their dead after the Battle of Winterfell. But after a time to mourn, there’s also a time to celebrate, and to start thinking about what tomorrow looks like, now that there is a tomorrow to think about. The first half of “The Last of the Starks” builds that festive atmosphere, one that lets our heroes bask and joke and revel in the afterglow of their victory, before whatever comes next.
Stop and consider the magnitude of this achievement for a moment. Avengers: Endgame is not just a film. It is not just the “season finale” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the culmination of eleven years of multifaceted storytelling, somehow managing to balance dozens of characters, tie off story threads that have stretched and intersected over the past decade, and craft a final challenge worthy of being the capstone to this mega-franchise. That it happened at all, let alone that this saga ends on a note so poignant, funny, and exhilarating, is an absolute miracle — or at least, if you’ll pardon the expression, a marvel.
It’s the battle you’ve been waiting for over the past eight years. The White Walkers are bearing down on Winterfell; the coalition of the willing in Westeros has girded themselves for war, and a battle to end all battles is in the offing. Almost everyone we know and care about is hunkered down in the North, as the combat en masse begins and a murky, grueling, near-wordless siege of our heroes’ homeland begins.
It’s the night before the Battle of Winterfell, as the last few stragglers gather in the Starks’ castle before the White Walkers descend. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” picks up where the season premiere left off, offering plenty of long-awaited reunions, closing the loop on a few longstanding relationships, and giving the audience one last chance to simply hang out with these characters before the game-changing fireworks begin and the casualties start piling up.
Game of Thrones goes back to where it all began, mirroring the series’ first episode with a royal procession into the heart of Winterfell. With that reintroduction, the show is slowly but surely assembling almost all of its major characters in one place to prepare for battle against the White Walkers. But before that can happen, these strange bedfellows have to decide who to follow, who has the right to rule them (not to mention, the temperament), and who, if anyone, they’re willing to fight and die for.
Predictions are a fool’s game, particularly for a show as resolutely shocking and twist-heavy as Game of Thrones. But discussions of what a show ought to do, how it might pay tribute to everything it’s shown to the series’ devotees to the point of its final season, and reach a conclusion as earned as it is satisfying, is a separate matter. As the countdown to the show’s final season and its conclusion begins in earnest, both of which have been met with no shortage of speculation, the answer to that question becomes as clear as it is startling upon realization. The White Walkers should win.
There’s something about class conflicts that lend themselves well to comedy. The snobs vs. slobs dynamic has been a venerable strain of humor on the silver screen, especially in the eighties, and Trading Places aims to take advantage of that. It presents Dan Aykroyd as a snooty stuffed shirt named Louis Winthorpe and Eddie Murphy as a street-wise hustler named Billy Ray Valentine. As I discussed on the Serial Fanaticist Podcast, Having the otherwise disparate worlds of these two men collide is a sound, time-tested recipe to wring some laughs out of the contrast between the well-heeled and the worn-heeled.
