WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD
Sunday’s Game of Thrones season finale dropped a huge bomb on die hard GoT fans.
Wired gave us a very detailed recap of the episode and season, but here’s the basics.
Drogon wouldn’t take Daenerys back to Mereen because he was too lazy and she got ambushed but a whole khalasar of Dothraki. Jorah and Daario have quested off to find her, while Tyrion and Grey Worm run the city.
Stannis attempts to raid Winterfell after his wife commits suicide, half his army deserts with all the horses and Melisandre runs away. The Boltons destroy his whole army, Brienne kills him, getting her revenge for Renly, and Sansa escapes with Theon.
Jaime leaves for King’s Landing with Myrcella and her betrothed, but she is poisoned by Elliara and presumably dies after she confesses to him that she knows and is glad he’s her father.
Cersei confesses her sins, but not all of them, and returns to the Red Keep after a long, humiliating, nude walk of shame. She is greeted by Qyburn, who introduces her to her new, giant kingsguard (who I think is the Mountain, but Frankenstein style).
Arya gets her revenge on Meryn Trant after disguising herself as a prostitute, declaring she is Arya Stark. This angers Jaqen for her holding onto her past and straying from the planned path to becoming a Faceless Man. He kills himself and Arya goes blind.
Most shockingly, and most upsettingly, the beloved Jon Snow is murdered by his Night’s Watch after sending Sam and Gilly to Oldtown so he can become a Maester. Olly comes in and tricks him to come out of his chambers, where there is a sign that says TRAITOR. In the style of Julius Caesar, he is stabbed by Ser Alliser, several other men and then finally Olly.
Jon Snow’s death sparked outrage among fans, who were already upset that nothing good was happening in the season. A review in the New York Times highlighted all our grievances perfectly.
“This HBO series, based on the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin, has been assailed most loudly this season by two groups: those who accuse it of a predilection for depicting violence against women, and those who think that it’s departing too drastically from the letter and spirit of Mr. Martin’s original story.”
“But the wholly unexpected killing of one of the show’s principal characters, the idealistic Jon Snow (Kit Harington), by his own men served no discernible purpose other than to pump up emotions, furnish a suitably grim ending for the season and create space for other characters (Samwell Tarly? A reanimated, presumably changed version of Jon Snow?) to be developed to stretch out the fictional time frame.”
“And ‘Game of Thrones’ has been defined by that stretching — a lot happened in Season 5, but when you look at the overall framework, nearly all the characters are where they were when the season began. The usurping Boltons are still in Winterfell; Sansa is still on the run; Arya is still hiding in Braavos; the dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen and the sly dwarf, Tyrion, are still marooned in Essos; the Lannisters still occupy the castle in King’s Landing. This can be blamed on the show’s semidependent relationship with Mr. Martin’s novels, but viewers (like me) who haven’t read the books don’t care about that. The question is how much longer we’ll care at all.”
