Off Topic: Game of Thrones does its best Dexter impression, upsets its entire fan base with its penultimate episode

Man, I don’t even know, y’all. Despite last week’s episode being panned by pretty much everyone, I found it enjoyable enough in its semi-return to political machinations. But this week’s episode? I don’t really have any way of defending it.

Spoilers follow.

These posts are largely intended to serve as recaps (rather than reviews), but it’s going to be hard not to sound like a review, simply because of how strongly I feel about the events that need recapping. The episode started off with quite a bit of foreboding — Dany was looking a lot like her brother as Tyrion approached her, she burned Varys for his betrayal, and she seemed incredibly spurned when Jon — who, again, is her nephew — had a hard time returning her kiss.

But I had hope that it was all going to be a misdirect.

And for a moment, it seemed like it might be. It seemed like maybe Arya would kill Cersei. Or — though, less likely — maybe Jaime would run away with her. Maybe we’d see The Hound finally kill his brother and emerge victorious. Maybe Dany would take over King’s Landing as peacefully as possible and the final episode would deal with how to rule alongside Jon Snow. Maybe a million other possibilities that had potential based on previous setup could have played out.

But they didn’t.

The bells rang, King’s Landing surrendered, and Dany… burned everyone alive anyway. On top of that, her forces saw her striking as a cue that it became a “moral free-for-all” and then decide to start pillaging — and because this is Game of Thrones, we have that fact driven home by an attempted rape that gets stopped by Jon. So now not only is Dany killing everyone and destroying everything, her troops have collectively decided they can do whatever they want.

In what felt like 80% of the episode, Dany is flying around, destroying the city — all because, according to David Benioff and DB Weiss, she saw the Red Keep and “in that moment” decided to make it personal. As soon as she started burning the city, the show reached a point of no return. Yes, a few very key moments occurred after — Jaime and Euron, The Hound and The Mountain — but by and large, the episode had made its point right then and there. Dany was going to go the way of the worst Targaryens. She was not going to be redeemed. She would not rule peacefully with Jon or anyone in the North.

Honestly, I don’t really know what to say anymore. Dany deserved better. This episode is likely going to go down in the show’s history as one of the worst, most nonsensical episodes. Sure, some people may have liked it, and yes, the story technically can be argued as following somewhat of a path outlined ahead of time. But it could’ve followed any number of paths laid out ahead of time that weren’t this one.

It would have been better off for it.

Misc. notes

• k
• Seriously. Just k.
• Okay fine. This episode also brought us Cleganebowl which… was kind of cool, given the background, but still disappointing overall.
• Euron fights Jaime. Jaime wins, then goes off to die anyway.
• Dead (from this episode): Jaime, Cersei, The Hound, The Mountain, Qyburn, Euron, Varys, basically all of King’s Landing
• Still alive (from this episode): Dany, Drogon, Jon, Arya, Tyrion, Grey Worm (presumably), lots of nameless Unsullied and Dothraki
• One episode left.