And Now My Watch Is Ended

The night is dark and full of spoilers. If you haven't watched all of Game of Thrones up until the season finale, I'd recommend you catch up before reading further. Most of the plots this season advanced fairly quickly and at this point, there isn't much that book readers know that show-watchers do not. Also details here and there have been changed from the books that have rendered previous story arcs or whole characters either moot or nonexistent. George R.R. Martin (the author of the series A Song of Ice and Fire on which the show is based) spoke about this a while ago, in which he said changes to the script, no matter how minor, would probably have a butterfly effect that would carry on further down the story line and possibly result in larger changes. So in reference to that, this post will be focused primarily on the show but with some minor book information here and there to give a better background or justification that wasn't quite there before.

I will say though that despite the changes, show-runners Benioff and Weiss have done a fairly good job of adapting the canon to the TV script considering the large amount of characters and story they have to cover. Themes of isolation, religion and trust were prevalent throughout the season and aside from some grievances that I will adresss later in the post this was one of the better seasons of Game of Thrones and it also hosts Hardhome, which is now my favorite episode of the show. Also I will note that at this point in the show, book readers and show watchers are finally at the same point overlooking the abyss of what's to come. So here's what we learned from Season 5 of Game of Thrones. Valar morghulis.

House Lannister - Hear Me Roar!

The first scene of this season featured the very first flashback on Game of Thrones in which we saw a young Cersei having our future told to her by a witch named Maggy the Frog. Young Cersei asks three questions about her future and gets three answers in the form of prophecies. She starts off the first  two questions by asking if she will marry the prince that she is already promised to (Rhaegar Targaryen), to which Maggy replies that she will never marry the prince, but she "will wed the king (Robert Baratheon)" which led Cersei to ask if they would have children. Maggy tells her that she will have three (Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen) and the King would get his Antonio Cromartie/Dwight Howard on and have about twenty bastards. Aaaand also that her children would die before her (one of whom is already dead). The most important part of the prophecy that has shown in Cersei's story this year however, occurs when Cersei asks if she will be queen and good old Maggs says "Aye, queen you shall be... until there comes another younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear". *insert fire emojis.

Fast forward to where Cersei now. Lena Headey did a wonderful job in giving her character something to do in King's Landing, where there honestly wasn't much for her to do (at least overtly) except drink wine and give people stink eyes. The similarities between her and Mallory Archer/Lucille Bluth were uncanny to say the least but this was arguably Cersei's biggest season. The prophecies wore on her as we could see from her facial reactions to certain news or her worry that her daughter was "being held hostage" in Dorne. So we get a Cersei that's working to keep what's left of her family safe, but who is ultimately alone without any allies. Jaime left. Her father and oldest son are dead. Uncle Kev doesn't trust her. There's no Mountain or Hound. All she has is Qyburn and Tommen who was to busy playing with his and Margaery's cats.* Her machinations have backfired in her face, arming a religious faction who turned on her due to her sins and have had her dragged through the street stripped bare to face the . The fall from grace has been hard on Cersei but we're lead to believe The Mountain is back and is going to make everything better cause it can't get any worse right? *Martin eye-roll*

Tyrion finally got to meet the Mother of Dragons and finally has a purpose again that's been missing since he was Hand of the King in Season 2. He has the talent for this sort of politics. His father knew it. He knows it. Out of all three children, Tyrion is the one that inherited Tywin Lannister's greatest asset. His mind. And he's traveled all the way from King's Landing as a fugitive and thrown in his lot with Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the Firs... blah blah blah. The main thing that I can get from this pairing is that he can finally convince her to leave Mereen and head for Westeros because let's face it; this place is the pits.* But Dany has to come back first. There wasn't really anything new this season however, from Tyrion that we haven't seen before. We know he has an uncanny ability to talk his way out of near-death experiences and he got the chance to exhibit that several times this season. Now we get to see next season how he plans to govern Mereen through this time of hostility (which probably means we're never going to leave Mereen are we?) At least Varys is back, which means we get more to watch more of the dynamic between Tyrion and Varys which is probably the best pair-up that the show has when it comes to witty banter. But for book readers and for show watchers I'm sure, Tyrion saying "I am the gift" when he finally met Dany was one of the biggest and brightest moments the show has had to offer since... Since.... Well yeah so it's the first big, happy moment ever on the show. Celebrate it. I'm sure there'll be many more to come.

House Targaryen - Fire and Blood

Dany in Mereen is starting to remind me of the Hershel's farm in The Walking Dead. Why are we still here? It's no shock that this is the slowest story arc of all the others, even though Dany is one of our character favorites. The whole story in Mereen just feels like quicksand. Yes the politics of the fighting pits and the slave masters can be interesting and yes, we all see the similarities between the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but sometimes we just want to see a story move forward. I want to see the dragons fly high over Westeros and burn the armies of their mother's enemies into ashes. Instead we wonder along with Dany and everyone else why she's still there.

The whole idea with Daenarys was that she was heading "home" building her strength along the way to "take what is hers with fire and blood". Albeit, this plot-line has actually moved by a lot faster than I expected to, cause book readers haven't even had the pleasure of Tyrion and Dany meeting each other yet. I expect the voices of Tyrion and possibly Jorah Mormont (Lord Friendzone) to lead her back on the right path but she has to deal with the huge Dothraki khalasar that has her surrounded first.

However, I hope Dany kept the receipt when she paid for the Unsullied army cause they suck. Bad. Also R.I.P Barristan the Bold. You didn't deserve that.

House Baratheon - Ours is the Fury

Stannis's tale this season has been one of slow redemption and ultimate failure. He believes himself the true heir to the Iron Throne. Out of all the challengers, dead or alive, he has had the strongest claim by being former King Robert's youngest brother. He would have also probably made the best king because he's all about justice and acting for the greater good of the realm. He was the only one that was wise enough to show up at The Wall when the wildlings were invading and that act saved the North.

This season, Benioff and Weiss ran an impressive PR campaign showing that Stannis had some humanity to him and that he was a character we could relate to. His love for his daughter was the anchor that tied Stannis to the audience and allowed us to feel for his position. But we should have seen, as Davos did, how all that PR work was going to go up in flames. In a few quick episodes, all of that changed. Stannis's large army was cut by half through desertion, his wife hanged herself and Melisandre abandoned him for reasons that we don't know yet (but I could speculate that there's a more pressing role that she has to play at The Wall). From the moment Stannis had his daughter burnt alive, it was clear that nothing good could come of it. The fire in his eyes grew dimmer in every episode that was spent trudging through the snow and with each setback that befell his army. For the record, I don't know Stannis's fate but I would find it hard to believe that he is dead. One could still argue though that he is because Brienne is just as uptight as Stannis is, and she swore to avenge Renly's death in Season 2 and this was the perfect opportunity. I mean, the name of her sword is Oathkeeper, come on. But if you want me to believe someone is dead on this show, I'd need their pulse checked first or to see them bleeding out before I believe anything.

House Martell - Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

I'm going to be very honest about how I feel about this whole arc and everything that occurred in Dorne. This whole arc was bad. Dany may be stuck in Mereen but at least that has some sort of purpose to it. Dorne was just bad. The acting was bad. The writing was bad. All season long I asked where they were going with it and the finale's answer to my question was very disappointing. And at the end of the day it had no purpose other than for Myrcella to tell Jaime that she knew he was her father.

The story of Doran Martell and Oberyn's daughters is one that's supposed to introduce a different dynamic in the books. For clarity, Dorne has a different set of customs on their side of the world, as women can rule as long as they have the just claim. In the eyes of the younger Martells, Myrcella is the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms by Dornish law and they want to put her in power as a guise to go to war against the Iron Throne. There was none of that in this plot arc - an arch that basically cut out one of the better feminist stories that the story had to offer - which basically turned out to be a revenge plot for Oberyn's death. The argument that this was just a way to introduce the characters doesn't sit well with me either because how many of you can tell me the names of the Sand Snakes or who is who?

House Stark - Winter is Coming

The story of Arya has also been one that has brought about some frustration from book readers and show watchers. Her story has moved so fast that the show-runners actually had to go back in the plot to stall her story arc. I'm fine with the changes, however, but it still makes you wonder what the House of Black and White and the god of many faces are about. At least we get to see that her training has finally yielded some results, although we don't know exactly how cause on the surface all she's been doing is walking through the canals yelling "oysters, clams and cockles!" which makes me wonder just how much food poisoning occurs in Bravos on a daily basis. That can't possibly be hygienic. Despite all that, Arya gets to cross a name of her list and we follow her into the next season just as blind as she is. Good riddance to Ser Meryn Trant of the Kingsguard, who the show went out of its way to make even more unlikable before Arya completed her revenge. You will not be missed. 

Back in Westeros though, the other Stark daughter is dealing with issues of her own. I have had issues with this plot because it asked for a huge amount of trust of the audience from the show-runners. We're supposed to trust that the background that has been portrayed for Littlefinger makes him one of the more competent and adept players on the show. To think that he would give Sansa over to the Boltons and not know what Ramsay had in store for her was a problem. Honestly, the way the show has dealt with rape has been problematic from the second episode.

The two episodes I hate the most involved the "rape" of Cersei (which they denied was rape but my eyes believed otherwise) and the rape of Sansa which was undeniably what it was. I reserved initial judgement when the episode came out because I wanted to see how it would play out at the end of the season. The issue with the two previous cases before Sansa (Cersei and Dany) was that the show seemed to be using these acts as a shock gimmick or a method of endearing us to a character. It also had a poor way of dealing with the aftermath of those because they were never referred to again or used in the development of said characters. I hoped this wouldn't be the case with Sansa, because it's not like we needed another reason to know that Ramsay was evil. After the season's finale, I'm still not convinced that Sansa needed to go to Winterfell, marry Ramsay and live in constant fear of sexual assualt, because these things never happened in Martin's books and yet we still arrive at the same conclusion in the show with Theon and Sansa jumping off the high walls of Winterfell into the snow below. There's a level of trust that's created and nurtured through a storyteller and their listeners. At times it feels as though Benioff and Weiss have abused that trust and expected too much from show-watchers and a lot more from fans of the books. This was one of those times in my opinion because the payout wasn't worth it.

The Wall

- I am the sword in the darkness; I am the watcher on The Wall

Finally we get to The Wall and the men of the Night's Watch. The last scene between Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly showed how hard it was for Game of Thrones this season to balance so many characters and plots effectively. If you stopped paying attention for a quick minute you'd have missed Sam's argument to Jon about needing to go to Oldtown to train to become a maester. I'd have expected for Oldtown to have been alluded to earlier at least so show-watchers have a better idea of what to expect for Sam the Slayer, but these are minor gripes. The scene still worked well and also was a way for Sam and Jon to say their final goodbyes to each other.

Jon (and Kit Harrington) is my pick for winner of the season. Lord Snow has come a long way from his conversation with Tyrion on top of The Wall in season 1 and the character's growth is also one that can be seen in Kit becoming a much better performer before our very eyes. Jon Snow had survived everything the show had thrown at him. White walkers, wigths, wildlings... Everything. So to have him go out like Omar did with Kenard in The Wire was kind of messed up and actually hurt. Jon has had the best moments in Season 5 hands down from winning the Night's Watch election, to being able to convince the wildling army to flee the north of The Wall to finding out Valyrian steel could defeat the walkers. We've watched his character grow from a brooding, sulking bastard to a man that could command a room and inspire hope and bravery in his men. He's more like Ned Stark than any of his other children were. Honest, just, courageous and dead. I'm sure many fans have heard of the "R+L=J" theory by now. I won't talk about it for the sake of spoilers, but this theory has been floating around with book readers for about four or five years now, to the point that some readers almost believed it to be canon. This theory makes the idea of Jon being dead ludicrous, but Benioff and Weiss in their interviews said "dead means dead". Show-watchers and book-readers are now left standing at the same precipice trying to reason out whether Jon is dead or not. I personally say no, cause of the timely appearance of a certain red witch who belongs to the same religious cult whose magic kept bring Lord Beric Dondarrion back to life. But who knows. I might not be able to see it because I want him to be alive so badly, but Kit has also said that he will not be on the show next season. I say it's smoke and mirrors but I may be wrong. At least we'll all get to find out next season finally. Show-watchers only have to wait a year. A year means nothing to me anymore thanks to George R.R. Martin.

Notes:

• Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.
• Damn you Olly. Damn you.
• Casting for next season has already begun and we should be expecting Euron Greyjoy and Sam's father Randyll Tarly. I'm excited to go back to the Iron Islands.
• Now would be the PERFECT time for Martin to announce a release date for The Winds of Winter.
• Another one of my favorite scenes was the verbal battle between Lady Olenna Tyrell (Queen of Thorns) and the High Sparrow. Game of Thrones' popularity allows them to cast the best actors the U.K. has to offer and it shows when we can get supporting characters perform scenes like this.
• The TV show's version of the Unsullied are the most over-hyped thing since Yeezus (fight me). This is supposed to be a fearless, damn near unstoppable army, but they keep getting cut down by the Sons of the Harpy so easily. I laughed so hard when Grey Worm said he would stay to keep the peace in Mereen while Jorah and Daario went off to look for Dany. Yeah cause you've been doing a great job of it so far.
• Say what you want about Cersei but she's as strong any other character the show has produced. I can't imagine what that walk felt like but she handled it like a champion.
• I'm really disappointed with how the show handled the adventures of Jaime and Bronn. I always look forward to such dynamics like Arya and the Hound or Tyrion and Varys, but the whole plot just made it look like filler.
• Other actor shout-outs this season goes to Stephen Dillane who plays Stannis and Liam Cunningham who played Davos. Their scenes with Shireen were filled with emotion and were at times heartbreaking.
• I'm starting to wonder if I missed how contagious greyscale was, cause Jorah's been walking around as "patient zero" for a while touching everyone and everything he can without a care in the world. He's a walking pandemic in the city of Mereen just waiting to happen.
• To the lost: Shireen Baratheon, Aegon Targaryen (Kill the boy, Jon Snow), Styr the Thenn, Wildling mother, Hizdahr and others that I didn't mention above. R.I.P.