Game of Thrones final season
Since just about everyone else seems to have had their say about this final season, I thought I'd give my thoughts. Why not?
I understand that people found the last season lacking because they didn't get their perfect ending (whatever that might have been).
But, while people might not have got their wish list in GoT, at least all the characters were consistent with earlier seasons.
Jon who was absolutely consistent in insisting he never wanted to be king - even of the North - (and who would have been totally miserable deciding whether ships or brothels were more important) was happiest when he was with the night watch so him winding up back with the night watch (and with Ghost) was the perfect ending for his character.
Arya said way back (S1?) that she wanted to travel, Arya gets to travel (with the "needle" Jon gave her right back when she was just a sweet little girl who desperately didn't want to grow up into a "lady").
Sansa wanted an independent north, and had the courage to state that at a critical time, which got her crowned as Queen of the North.
Tyrion who'd been on his own journey (and had in the end made peace with the dichotomy he'd always experienced in his love/ hate relationship with his siblings) came to recognize his own strengths and is now doing what he does best - speaking truth to power.
Brienne is now not only a Knight (something which had aways seemed totally out of her reach), but is Lord Commander of the Kings Guard (Lady Commander?).
Bran who knows better than anyone how illusory power is, and how it can twist people is now the most powerful man in the kingdoms.
The consistency is absolute.
More importantly, there is consistency in how the endings worked themselves out for each character. The characters who survived and thrived are those who went through terrible experiences, made mistakes, sometimes fell well short of the ideal, but who learned from those experiences and, critically, in the end remained true to themselves.
Seen in that light the ending for all characters made perfect sense.
And if I read one more "feminist" piece of nonsense about how the strong female characters got wiped out I will simply scream. Both Sansa and Arya survived - and, do you know what? both Sansa and Arya are much stronger than Cersei and Daenerys ever were. Cersei was so weak she couldn't afford to allow herself to feel any love or even empathy for anyone who was not her own flesh and blood, and Dany primarily gained power due to her dragons and totally lost any vestige of humanity when she torched Kings Landing as the bells rang out. Both were mesmerizing characters, but their cruelty, their lack of humanity, meant that neither of them deserved to end seated in the Iron Throne.
Both Sansa and Arya went through hell, but they came out of it with their humanity triumphant, their values intact.
I know many wanted Arya to kill Cersei. But the Hound's words of wisdom turned her away from an act that would have ultimately destroyed her. Killing the Night King was one thing, he was an imminent threat to all living things. But Cersei was already defeated, killing her would have been purely an act of vengeance, and, for Ned Stark's daughter, unconscionable.
I know many wanted Sansa to take the crown. But why? Sansa, like Jon, is of the North. She would never have been happy in Kings Landing. Having her end as Queen of an independent North Kingdom is an absolutely fitting ending for Sansa.
Brienne also had an absolutely fitting ending. Yes, Jaime betrayed her, but he also knighted her and in doing that he acknowledged that he saw who she truly was. And in her final scene, where she could have written a history for Jaime that would have excoriated him, her own inner grace and chivalry came to the fore and she wrote his truth in the most beautiful and charitable way imaginable. Brienne absolutely triumphed and what a sweet ending to have her Commander of the King's Guard, something that would have seemed beyond her reach right up until the point where Jaime gave her the thing she wanted most in the world when he knighted her.
How are these endings not perfectly "feminist" in their outcomes? Cersei was always evil and Dany was always going to go too far. That was predictable from the time she said back in S3(?) "I will take what is mine with fire and blood". So to imply that they should have retained power just because they were "strong women" is to say that different rules should apply for female characters. Which, IMO, is the opposite of feminism.
I admit that I was in some ways lucky with GoT. Ned Stark was the only character in whom I was ever really emotionally invested, so after his early death, I didn't have any over-riding feelings for any of the characters, let alone where they should end up at the end of the season.
So the only things that would have disturbed me at the end would have been the survival of either Cersei or Dany, since I would have seen them always as a threat to any hope of a period of peace.
In some ways it would have been good if Dany had fallen in the Great Battle, but they needed her dragons to defeat Cersei, so that couldn't happen. The only other option would have been for Jon to take to the air on the surviving dragons, and that would have been a bitter betrayal of his character, forcing him to torch living creatures.
Once Dany did survive the great battle, it was necessary for her to die somehow. I guess she could have been shot down by an archer while she hovered over the city, but ... killing her was Jon's great act of sacrifice - literally killing what he loved so that the world could be free of her tyranny. That he could do that was absolutely consistent with the values he learned from Ned. Remember the scene in the very first episode where Ned kills the deserter and explains to Bran that he did it because if a man is prepared to order an execution he should be prepared to do it himself.
That's what I mean about consistency.
That's why I really loved the final episode. I felt that ... as someone once explained to me about spiritual development ... the key characters, the "good guys" if you like, came full circle, but at a higher point on the spiral.
.
I understand that people found the last season lacking because they didn't get their perfect ending (whatever that might have been).
But, while people might not have got their wish list in GoT, at least all the characters were consistent with earlier seasons.
Jon who was absolutely consistent in insisting he never wanted to be king - even of the North - (and who would have been totally miserable deciding whether ships or brothels were more important) was happiest when he was with the night watch so him winding up back with the night watch (and with Ghost) was the perfect ending for his character.
Arya said way back (S1?) that she wanted to travel, Arya gets to travel (with the "needle" Jon gave her right back when she was just a sweet little girl who desperately didn't want to grow up into a "lady").
Sansa wanted an independent north, and had the courage to state that at a critical time, which got her crowned as Queen of the North.
Tyrion who'd been on his own journey (and had in the end made peace with the dichotomy he'd always experienced in his love/ hate relationship with his siblings) came to recognize his own strengths and is now doing what he does best - speaking truth to power.
Brienne is now not only a Knight (something which had aways seemed totally out of her reach), but is Lord Commander of the Kings Guard (Lady Commander?).
Bran who knows better than anyone how illusory power is, and how it can twist people is now the most powerful man in the kingdoms.
The consistency is absolute.
More importantly, there is consistency in how the endings worked themselves out for each character. The characters who survived and thrived are those who went through terrible experiences, made mistakes, sometimes fell well short of the ideal, but who learned from those experiences and, critically, in the end remained true to themselves.
Seen in that light the ending for all characters made perfect sense.
And if I read one more "feminist" piece of nonsense about how the strong female characters got wiped out I will simply scream. Both Sansa and Arya survived - and, do you know what? both Sansa and Arya are much stronger than Cersei and Daenerys ever were. Cersei was so weak she couldn't afford to allow herself to feel any love or even empathy for anyone who was not her own flesh and blood, and Dany primarily gained power due to her dragons and totally lost any vestige of humanity when she torched Kings Landing as the bells rang out. Both were mesmerizing characters, but their cruelty, their lack of humanity, meant that neither of them deserved to end seated in the Iron Throne.
Both Sansa and Arya went through hell, but they came out of it with their humanity triumphant, their values intact.
I know many wanted Arya to kill Cersei. But the Hound's words of wisdom turned her away from an act that would have ultimately destroyed her. Killing the Night King was one thing, he was an imminent threat to all living things. But Cersei was already defeated, killing her would have been purely an act of vengeance, and, for Ned Stark's daughter, unconscionable.
I know many wanted Sansa to take the crown. But why? Sansa, like Jon, is of the North. She would never have been happy in Kings Landing. Having her end as Queen of an independent North Kingdom is an absolutely fitting ending for Sansa.
Brienne also had an absolutely fitting ending. Yes, Jaime betrayed her, but he also knighted her and in doing that he acknowledged that he saw who she truly was. And in her final scene, where she could have written a history for Jaime that would have excoriated him, her own inner grace and chivalry came to the fore and she wrote his truth in the most beautiful and charitable way imaginable. Brienne absolutely triumphed and what a sweet ending to have her Commander of the King's Guard, something that would have seemed beyond her reach right up until the point where Jaime gave her the thing she wanted most in the world when he knighted her.
How are these endings not perfectly "feminist" in their outcomes? Cersei was always evil and Dany was always going to go too far. That was predictable from the time she said back in S3(?) "I will take what is mine with fire and blood". So to imply that they should have retained power just because they were "strong women" is to say that different rules should apply for female characters. Which, IMO, is the opposite of feminism.
I admit that I was in some ways lucky with GoT. Ned Stark was the only character in whom I was ever really emotionally invested, so after his early death, I didn't have any over-riding feelings for any of the characters, let alone where they should end up at the end of the season.
So the only things that would have disturbed me at the end would have been the survival of either Cersei or Dany, since I would have seen them always as a threat to any hope of a period of peace.
In some ways it would have been good if Dany had fallen in the Great Battle, but they needed her dragons to defeat Cersei, so that couldn't happen. The only other option would have been for Jon to take to the air on the surviving dragons, and that would have been a bitter betrayal of his character, forcing him to torch living creatures.
Once Dany did survive the great battle, it was necessary for her to die somehow. I guess she could have been shot down by an archer while she hovered over the city, but ... killing her was Jon's great act of sacrifice - literally killing what he loved so that the world could be free of her tyranny. That he could do that was absolutely consistent with the values he learned from Ned. Remember the scene in the very first episode where Ned kills the deserter and explains to Bran that he did it because if a man is prepared to order an execution he should be prepared to do it himself.
That's what I mean about consistency.
That's why I really loved the final episode. I felt that ... as someone once explained to me about spiritual development ... the key characters, the "good guys" if you like, came full circle, but at a higher point on the spiral.
.