The Morning After Thrones: Here’s To Better Things — #GOT S07E07

And just like that it happened. Game of Thrones finally spelled out its worst kept secret, the theory it had been teasing since season one: Jon Snow is not Ned Stark’s bastard. He is the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. He is the rightful heir of the Seven Kingdoms. If this reveal feels like something we’ve already seen, it’s because we have. This big reveal was literally the big reveal at the end of season six. The writers left a few things open to interpretation, but those were all answered on Sunday.

In a sense, that has always been the Game of Thrones M. O. It’s a show made for interpretation. Made so that every frame is analyzed and reanalyzed by redditors and BuzzFeed readers. This is not a value judgment. It is simply the nature of the show. There are still theories about what Ned Stark said seconds before the blade of Ilyn Payne’s sword hit the back of his neck. There have been over 60 hours of Game of Thrones since then, and yet people still try to read Sean Bean’s lips. This is just one of the joys of the show. It creates a vast world where almost everything has an answer.

Game of Thrones is the show for the ill-named “nerd culture” of our times. It is a technically astounding show that pulls off world-building as convincingly as Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. It subverts the tropes of its genre, but relies on them when convenient (and they have become more and more convenient as the show nears its final run). It’s a show for the technical, detail-oriented hive mind of the internet. Game of Thrones is the ultimate discussion machine. It’s designed with Reddit, water cooler conversations, Vulture, and even this blog in mind. It’s made to make us talk about it. And it pulls it off amazingly. It succeeds every time The Walking Dead fails. It dominates. It knows its power, and is not about to do much to change its position at the top of the entertainment food chain. It’s Cersei!

The season finale was a better episode than most this season. It’s a shame the season is over just when the action started to move the story forward. The episode was a bit top-heavy, with a 40-minute sequence in King’s Landing that felt at times too convoluted. However, Lena Heady is a force of nature, and her scenes in these first forty minutes are what will surely earn her next year’s Emmy. It was a technically astounding 80 minutes of television, and yet one that carried very few surprises. The twist with the Stark sisters was welcome, as was (for some) Jon and Dany’s boat sexy time. Yet, the fall of the Wall was predictable and, while visually astounding, a bit cold (YES I’M GOING WITH THIS WORD.) Of course, putting Tormund in the middle of the action made us care, and yet… We all know he’s alive. We know a show that puts so much attention to detail wouldn’t let Tormund die offscreen like that. We know they wouldn’t bring Beric Dondarrion back for one episode to kill him off in the next before swinging his awesome fire sword one last time.

And so, the second to last season of Game of Thrones ended. We will have to wait sometime between 16 and 24 months for the next one. But there’s room for hope. All the really big “mysteries” set up over the years have been resolved: The Wall has come down, we’ve seen the Ice Dragon, Gendry is no longer rowing, and Jon Snow is definitely Aegon Targaryen. What will the final six episodes bring? Hopefully new surprises. New twists that don’t rely on plots introduced years ago in. Character choices that are logical, but actually hard. Let’s toast to Jon and Dany dealing with the newly revealed line of succession. Let’s toast to Jaime ditching Cersei and to Cersei refusing to be played by her rivals (talk about a perfectly in-character yet unpredictable move by both!!!) Here’s to the last season of Game of Thrones. It’s gonna be a good one.

Other thoughts:

1. Could Littlefinger’s death be more gratifying? Predictable, but wow, I needed that.
2. Also gratifying was Theon re-establishing his manhood thanks to his “lack of manhood.” It’s one of those little Game of Thrones things that can be silly, but just works so well.
3. Lotta talk about cocks and the lack of them.
4. Bronn and Pod together again!!!!! Stoked.
5. I hope Jaime stops to see Bronn on his way North. I need my Lannister brothers and Bronn fighting side by side against the Army of the Dead.
6. Rhaegar Targaryen had a son with his first wife and called him Aegon. Then, he had a son with his second wife and named him… Aegon???Kinda shitty.
7. I love how Rhaegar is no longer a shitty dude and how the alleged cause of Robert’s Rebellion was a lie. It’s never about the righteous cause. It’s always about greed.
8. While you’re still here… If you care about television as a medium and an art form, please do yourself a favor and watch Twin Peaks. As the original run did in the 90s, the latest season of Twin Peaks is doing things that had never been seen before in television. It is the anti-Game of Thrones in terms of addressing mystery. It’s show built on something entirely different. Emotion? It’s cheesy to describe it like this, but it’s a fascinating, surreal, sometimes infuriating watch that challenges its watchers every step of the way. It’s not there to be decoded. It’s there to be experienced. The last episode (maybe ever?) will air on Sunday. While we wait to return to Westeros, I’d suggest taking a trip to Washington State. The trees up there. They’re really something.