He dies not because he picked the wrong queen to back, but because the game is rigged, its outcome predetermined by its very nature. The great black dragon emerging from the shadows behind Daenerys. His death at the hands of one of the contenders for the crown he helped raise up is a quiet, miserable thing. Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 2 Recap: “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”Īs the eunuch spymaster Varys, actor Conleth Hill has given a performance by turns effete and earthy, unctuous and blunt, complex and devastatingly simple.Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3 Recap: “The Long Night”.Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4 Recap: “The Last of the Starks”.
In one scene Arya tries and fails to stop a little girl from running out into the street to die with her mortally wounded mother in a cataract of dragon fire. In a modern media landscape where most blockbuster film portrays the destruction of entire cities without so much as a single civilian paying for it, “The Bells” has eyes for little else. Director Miguel Sapochnik of “Hardhome” and “The Long Night” fame lingers longer on children screaming for their parents and charred bodies curled together in the falling ash than he does on thunderous charges or fated duels. “The Bells” is the most upsetting fantasy battle ever filmed, a street-level scramble through the burning wreckage of King’s Landing with more time for the pain and panic of Westeros’s common people than any episode before it. Steel, like words, can never be taken back. “Thank you.” If only that had been enough to pry Ned Stark’s youngest daughter out of war’s red grasp. “Sandor,” she calls after him as he marches toward his doom. It might be the calmest we’ve ever seen Sandor “The Hound” Clegane, and his protege Arya hears what he’s telling her even through the haze of her own need for revenge. His expression, forever twisted by the melted-wax burn scars that cover half his face, is tender, almost fatherly. “Do you want to be like me?” asks a man who will be dead in minutes, burned alive in his brother’s arms.