Those bastards finally killed Jonny the Boy Scout…
But have they? Sure, in the real world being stabbed so many times would almost always be the end of you, but reality doesn’t have zombies, dragons, or, above all, Red Priestesses. Since we don’t know what the hell is going to be in the novels and since they have already strayed far from them any way, it’s all up in the air. Jon may be brought back to life, or he may not even be dead and may make a full recovery. I certainly hope he isn’t gone for good. He is far from my favorite character – that’s Tyrion – but he is one of the few decent people to have made it this far and if he is truly dead we are left with a show full of pretty much just a bunch of assholes. And is Stannis dead? We don’t know. We see Brienne about to strike but we never see the blow land. Hopefully she gets knocked out from behind by Ramsay’s men and Stannis ends up being skinned alive by the Boltons. That would serve him right.
Which brings me to the whole “Let’s incinerate the little girl” thing. What the fuck was that? Sure, it was shocking, but it was totally out of character. All along it is made totally clear that Stannis loves that kid — as opposed to his wife Selyse, who is rather indifferent to her. Suddenly, to provide a cheap surprise, everything is flipped around and Stannis is willing to kill her in a horrible way while his wife can’t live without her? Rubbish. It’s like Batman suddenly beating up Robin during a fight with the Joker. Sure, it would be surprising, but it would go so much against character that it would be a gross insult to the intelligence of the fans. It was pleasing to see Stannis immediately punished by the desertion of half his army, though. Very satisfying moment. I mean, how big a scumbag are you when even the mercenaries think you’ve gone too far?!?! As for using the death of kids for entertainment, it is tasteless and unnecessary. If you ask me, the whole thing should have happened off-screen and the disgust shown by his men during the burning should have been indicated in some other way.
Then there’s the poisoning of Myrcella. That kiss — sooo predictable. Come on, someone who has a knowledge of poison decides to kiss a kid she hates on the mouth and nobody goes “Oi! You aren’t wearing poison lipstick, are ya?” Please. It occurs to me that this is yet another “maybe death” as we don’t know if the poor kid buys the farm or not – it is not impossible that the little Sand Snake who fancies Bronn slipped him some antidote. One can only hope – too many kids dying in this thing this season. And that bit in which Myrcella tells Jamie she is happy that he is her father, very nicely done. Could have been a maudlin, manipulative slab of over-ripe cheese, but instead it was just a nice, tender moment.
There’s also something going on with the younger Stark girl, but I lost interest in her as soon as she arrived at Braavos. It was nice to see Ser Meryn finally get it in the neck – and the eyes. Too few dirtbags die in this show. There’s also that thing with Theon and Sansa, but i’ve lost interest in them as well, so who cares? Not me. Don’t let my personal inclination to ferret out the problems fool you, though, this was an excellent finale full of shocks and cliffhangers and the only thing I truly disliked about it was that it will take almost another year to find out what’s really going on. And also that it lasted only one hour – just imagine how many more people they could have killed in two hours!