Game of Thrones has finally come to an end

Welp, that’s it: I have just finished watching Game of Thrones’ season 7 finale, “The Dragon and the Wolf”, and I can pretty much say… That that’s it. Game of Thrones is done. I know, I know, there’s still a whole season left, and with winter finally completely here, one could argue Game of Thrones is only just beginning, but not me. I think it’s done. And hey, I’m not saying this because I believe I know what is going to happen next season; not at all. I’ve actually theorized many ways the show could end, but it wasn’t until tonight that I realized they were all wrong. And it’s not because I’ve stopped caring, either; this seventh season certainly hasn’t made me join the quitter’s club. No, it’s none of those things. I say Game of Thrones is done because, after tonight’s finale, I think it has fulfilled everything I have wanted it to be.
I first started watching this show back in 2012, a year after it premiered. I wasn’t familiar with Martin’s novels until after I started watching, either, but I wound up reading them a bit later as well. I was going through some anxiety issues at the time, and I remember binging Game of Thrones helped me ease my mind and the stress I was having, if only for a little bit; in retrospective, I see it as pretty much a light for me back then.
I got better over the years, though, but I didn’t stop watching. Why would I? The show was fantastic, literally and figuratively; I’d spend hours sharing theories with my friends, discussing the world, it’s characters, their past, their present and their future; I think it’s pretty amazing when a show manages to immerse you like that.
And it still does it! I speak as if it were all in my past, but it hardly is. That part of me hasn’t changed, which only makes me appreciate the show much more. But I think its caused in me something stronger: its made me really care about the people in it. At some point I stopped theorizing simply for the fun of it, and I sort of let myself get carried away by how the characters developed; I now believe that this is what I like the most about the show.
And it is also why I believe it feels, somehow, complete; I was a bit bummed about the penultimate episode, “Beyond the Wall” because, even though I liked it a lot, I think it culminated in what was a rushed season that sacrificed the pace that made Game of Thrones stand out, in exchange for a more “traditional” approach to the fantastic drama; I felt like the show rushed through some key moments it had been building up to, only to show the action-side of things. And I like the action, but I just felt that Game of Thrones grew to be much more than that, and I didn’t like feeling it go slowly into background.
So, when I found out about tonight’s episode running time, part of me thought “well, they’re probably going to do some big battle that involves the walkers getting past the wall, right? Last episode seemed like it built up to that.” And I was thrilled, but also kinda sad, I guess.
But the finale did not turn out to be what I was expecting, at all! Clocking at 80 minutes, The Dragon and the Wolf did what Game of Thrones does best: putting its characters first. At King’s Landing, every fighting side finally sat down and actually discussed the real threat (props to Jon for finally showing everyone; I guess his plan wasn’t so bad after all); and up North, the Starks showed they’re now, together, stronger than they ever were.
And this is what did it for me. Sansa accusing Littlefinger of, among other things, the murder of Jon Arryn. Jon Arryn! Everything that’s happened over the course of these seven years started with the death of that guy; every death, everything everyone has had to endure seems connected to it, and the Starks arguably felt it harder than most. And they were getting closure: Thanks to the help of Bran, Sansa passed the sentence, and Arya swinged the sword; and, in an even weirder way, they wound up honoring Ned’s words, not failing them: “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” meant, to me, that they are united enough to simply act as one.
Theon really did it, too: after a lifetime of struggling to figure out who he was supposed to be, and after years of suffering and making others around him suffer, he just said no more. Not only did he stop being Reek completely, but he seems to have stopped being the Theon we used to know, too; after a fight with one of his fellow ironborns, he washes his face at the shore and simply smiles, before sailing out to rescue his sister. Finally, he seems to no longer be lost.
The episode had other things, too, like both Tyrion and Jaime finally standing up to Cersei, or everything that happened to Jon; and it was all done thanks to dialogue — mostly.
The hardcore action was saved for the remaining minutes, and even though it was a joy to see, in the end, I wasn’t really hoping for it. Everything that I was hoping for, the episode delivered before the end: people. Damaged people just trying their best to keep on moving forward. That’s what I love about the show, more than any other thing. That’s the reason why I, regardless of what happens now, many of them have already won.
