Yes it did, and without a moment to spare. Right from the start, it looked like things were going to be a little rocky this season. “Dragonstone” immediately saw evidence of truncated plots; Sam found record of the island’s dragonglass mines during syllabus week at the Citadel, and the Hound barely even needed a nudge before he saw a vision in the flames. “Stormborn” and “The Queen’s Justice” held together despite some hazy logic and character teleportation, mostly thanks to the meeting of Jon and Dany and Olenna’s thug-life exit. “The Spoils of War” was undoubtedly the high-water mark for the season, with a tender Stark reunion and jaw-dropping dragon attack, but after that the wheels came off completely and surprisingly quickly. “Eastwatch” and “Beyond the Wall” aren’t the worst episodes of Game of Thrones. And, much like Bran, we have the power of excellent hindsight, so we can see how some storylines had to be rushed through or constructed in a way that led to the neat and tidy payoffs of “The Dragon and the Wolf.” Still, it’s hard to look past the flaws, logical missteps, and frankly crucial misunderstandings of our characters by Benioff and Weiss. For one, there’s the Arya and Sansa conflict. Sure, it resolved in one of the best scenes of the season, but manufacturing that “sick gotcha moment” meant two episodes of having the Stark sisters behave so wildly out of character that they were hardly recognizable. We know Sansa is smart enough to not trust Littlefinger. We know Arya is more discerning and less likely to, you know, murder a family member (plus her accusations of Sansa helping the Lannisters were baseless—she saw Sansa weeping and screaming when Ned’s head was taken off in Season 1). Even though it’s clear now they were putting up an act… why? Why not just accuse Littlefinger straight up instead of ambushing him in the Great Hall? There’s an argument to be made that they needed to get him out in the open, and the raw shock of the accusations would be one of the only ways to get him to fess up. It may be padding, it may not be, but I ask you this: how often in six previous seasons did we find ourselves having to defend writing and story choices like this? And speaking of choices that need a lot of defending, the mission north of the Wall to capture a wight is so unreasonable that it’s hard to believe D&D were legitimately unable to think of another way to get everyone to King’s Landing. And it’s not even the mission itself, bizarre as it was, so much as the circumstances and character motivations surrounding it. Tyrion had some bad ideas this season (shouts to the Casterly Rock invasion), but suggesting a powerful ally lead a suicide mission is a far cry from the cleverness he’s shown in past years. And speaking of Jon, are you really telling me he wouldn’t stop by Winterfell on his way to almost certain doom? It was clearly a concession for time—and speaking of that, the timeline of “Beyond the Wall” was so outlandish and teleportation-ridden that Internet crusaders needed a combination of math, geography, and deductive reasoning to even begin justifying it. Yes we got an ice dragon out of it, but for the first time, Game of Thrones felt well and truly sloppy. It’s a good thing that “The Dragon and Wolf” was worth it all. Working backwards can lead to plenty of frustration along the way, but no show is better at reaching its final destination in style than this one. We finally got Jon, Dany, and Cersei in the same room, despite a tortured setup—and it was in the fabled Dragonpit, no less. Cersei and Tyrion came face to face, and it somehow went better than her meeting with Jaime, where for one collective second everyone believed he really might die. The surprise Littlefinger trial was some of the best justice porn this show has ever seen. Jon and Dany had their #boatsex, fulfilling a surprisingly well-done and chemistry-filled romantic arc. We saw Rhaegar Targaryen for the first time and learned the true extent of J(Aeg)on’s identity. And finally, the Night King rode in on zombie-Viserion and turned Eastwatch-by-the-Sea into Eastwatch-in-the-Sea. It was tense, it was emotional, and when it needed it most, the Thrones magic was there.
It’s hard to say more about what happened because, well, it’s what was supposed to happen. We’ve spent a lot of time in this world, dissecting the characters, prophecies, and larger stories that weave it all together, and there are some outcomes that have to happen for the story to make sense as a whole. Jon and Dany’s collision course, Jaime and Cersei’s schism, Littlefinger taken down with his own words, the Wall falling—these are logical steps and endpoints for the characters and their arcs, and it shows that D&D ultimately haven’t lost their grip on the story, clunky and backwards as the setup may have been. Pieces went in some unexpected and unreasonable places this season, but the chessboard is now appropriately set for a proper conclusion, and the momentum going into Season 8 is palatable. Let’s just hope there’s enough steam to take us to 2019, when the Great War finally begins.
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