GAME OF THRONES: We’re Going to Need a Bigger Wall! (Season 7 Finale Recap)

(Cross posted at Agonybooth.com)

So, overall the Season 7 Finale episode was kind of an “L” in the Team Good Guys column. . . what with (1) the Night’s King and Viseri-Zombie completely demolishing The Wall, thereby allowing the Zombie Army to enter Westeros proper; and (2) Cersei RSVPing “Yes” on the E-vite for “Jon’s and Dany’s Team Breathing Party,” only to rudely back out at the last second.

“I’ll be washing my hair that day.”

But hey, it wasn’t all bad! Littlefinger died, so that was kind of awesome, right? The Stark sisters are back together again! Jamie and Theon both finally took their heads out of their respective asses. Jon’s finally been legitimized . . . at least by BranBot3000, if not, necessarily by Folks Who Matter yet. And the two most beautiful people on the show had two seconds of really hot sex . . . which, if you aren’t too picky about the whole “She’s His Aunt Thing,” was fairly pleasant to watch.

So, let’s erase that “L” for loss and call it a “T” for tie, yeah?

We’ve got tons to cover on this, the LONGEST EPISODE IN GAME OF THRONES HISTORY. So, let’s get started . . .

Much Ado About Cocks

The first sixteen minutes of the episode is literally just the entire cast walking in Kings Landing to the Big Meeting at the Coliseum Thingy. I’m fairly certain it took the characters longer to walk that half a mile distance than it took pretty much any one character to get anywhere else in Westeros all season.

Still walking . . .

But it’s all good, because this gave Bronn time to make a rather insightful comment about how every war ever fought by men revolves, in some way, around their dicks. (Side note: this is a rather peculiar comment to make on a show where a sizable portion of the characters are sans male anatomy: the Unsullied, Theon, Varys . . . not to mention all the ladies fighting for the Iron Throne.) Though the line, at first blush, seems like a throwaway one, it actually foreshadows a scene later in the episode. So, um, don’t forget about the cocks, OK?

Walking 2: Electric Boogaloo

In addition to all this penis talk, lots of other characters, who haven’t had a chance to hang out in a few seasons, get to meet up with one another, while on this Extremely Long Walk. Brienne and Hound have an awkward meet-again cute, in which Brienne apologizes for almost murdering Hound, while, at the same time being kind of surprised that she didn’t succeed in actually murdering him. The tension between the pair is quickly diffused however, as the two reminisce about how truly Bad Ass their mutual former charge Arya happens to be.

Walking: The Final Frontier

Pod and Tyrion also get to bro it out for the first time since they fought alongside one another at the Battle of Blackwater, until Bronn interrupts them to throw in a bon mot about Pod’s Magical Cock. (Quite a weiner fixation that Bronn has, doesn’t he?)

Also during the walk, Jamie and Brienne side eye one another. Theon and Euron side eye one another. Hound and The Mountain side eye one another (thus confirming that The Mountain actually HAS eyes underneath that Darth Vader helmet of his). It’s basically just sixteen minutes of walking and side-eyes.

The Unsullied physically arrive at the site first. Followed by the Dothraki Screamers, who, for me, are such a joy to watch, simply because they always seem to be having so much more fun than pretty much anybody else on the show.

Cersei arrives second to last, followed by Dany. The Mother of Dragons appears fashionably late and in style, as always, on the back of Drogon, with Rhagael bringing up the rear.

The party doesn’t start ‘til I fly in!

Cersei then proceeds to make a catty comment to Dany about how long everybody has been waiting for her, even though the two women arrived on the scene just about one minute apart from one another. (Clearly, the Lannister Queen is just salty because she wanted to be the one to arrive last.)

Dammit! Why do I have to be such a fast walker?

In Which The Hound Brings in His New Pet Zombie for Show and Tell

Once we’ve got basically the entire cast of the show on the scene, Euron annoys everybody by taking this opportunity to tell Theon: “I have your sister and youuuuuu don’t, Nah-nah, nah-nah, nah-nahhhhh” (Clearly, Euron is that coworker of yours who goes to the staff meeting without reading the agenda first, and then bores everyone by complaining for twenty minutes about how long the kitchen has been out of Hazelnut-flavored Keurig coffee pods.)

Once Euron finally shuts up, Jon can begin his Team Breathing pitch proper. He logically explains how Kings Landing has a million inhabitants, who are all in danger of basically becoming zombies, if Westeros doesn’t put aside their petty fights for the uncomfortable chair and kill the Night’s King ASAP.

Dany then pipes in to announce that she got her Team Breathing Club Membership card last week! It’s a super cool club! And those who join get a one-week episode hiatus from Uncomfortable Chair Fighting sometime during Season 8 of the show!

Cersei and Co. are not immediately sold on this idea, seeing as Cersei is DEFINITELY the kind of gal who won’t join any club that would have her as a member. So Team Breathing breaks out the big guns! In walks The Hound carrying a large wooden box.

Hound takes his sweet time opening this box, and displays an uncharacteristic amount of panache and flare while doing so . . . a magician prepping for a magic trick with the ugliest assistant EVER.

Eventually, he manages to get the box open, and out runsFido, everyone’s new favorite Pet Zombie, who charges at Cersei with more emotional heft than you’d expect from an undead-y. Cersei does seem to be moderately frightened by the thing, though she could just be backing away like that because zombies have notoriously stinky morning breath.

Jon then goes through the process of teaching everyone the do’s and don’ts of zombie murder. The Hound first chops poor Fido up into pieces, each of which continue to wiggle around of their own free will, post-dismemberment. It’s kind of like that donkey costume where one person is dressed up as the head and the other is the ass? (LESSON 1: Chopping up the zombie = bad. Got it.)

Then Jon picks up the dismembered hand and burns it successfully. (LESSON 2: Burning zombie = good!). And the Hound finishes off the rest of it using a dragon glass sword. (LESSON 3: Spearing zombie with Super Special Snowflake Plot Device Weapon = also good.)

Oddly enough, no one bothers to mention how killing the White Walkers can effectively eradicate all the zombies in a single blow. (LESSON 4: Killing One Single Scrawny White Walker Wearing a Funny Hat That Makes Him Easily Recognizable In a Crowd = best) Talk about burying the lead, Team Breathing!

“I’ll be here all week!”

 

Sassy Euron Greyjoy is slightly more on point with his next contribution to the meeting. “Can zombies swim?” He wonders (thereby providing me with a funny image in my head of a hoard of zombies all wearing matching floaties and attempting to doggie paddle en-mass to the Iron Islands).

As we learned last week during the Undead Ice Flow Fiasco, zombies definitely aren’t buoyant. Jon confirms this fact to Euron, who responds by dramatically exiting stage left. “Catch you land lubbing losers, later. I’m going back to my safe ugly island,” Cersei’s new Gay Best Friend says, more or less.

By the way, anyone interested in contributing to my GoFundMe campaign to Outfit the Entire Zombie Hoarde with Floaties and Life Jackets so they can kill Euron just let me know in the comments section . . .

A Truth and Two Lies

Cersei, in a surprising show of grace, instantly assents to the temporary Uncomfortable Chair fighting détente . . . but only if Jon Snow and the North collectively agree to play Switzerland, and not choose sides in the Heavy Weight Title Throne Match between Cersei and Dany.

This is the point in the episode where Jon “I Cannot Tell a Lie” Snow, rips off his shirt to reveal a bright pink “Team Dany” t-shirt. “Sorry, Cers,” he explains with a shrug. “The North is officially all in on the hot chick with the dragons. I changed my wallpaper on Facebook to Drogon’s face framed in a heart and everything. So, no Switzerland for us.”

“Well, I guess we are all becoming zombies next season then. No deal,” Cersei responds nonchalantly before storming back to her castle.

“WAY TO GO, JON SNOW,” grumbles everyone in the Coliseum Thingy, and all the viewers at home, simultaneously. (Jon has just basically become the guy at the World Cup who scores the winning goal . . . into his own team’s net.)

“I’m sorry, guys!” Jon insists. “But the Mother of Dragon’s is just sooo pretty. And the Team Switzerland t-shirt doesn’t bring out the color of my eyes nearly as well as the Team Dany one.”

Tyrion volunteers to approach Cersei with an appeal on behalf of Team Breathing. His first instinct is to ply his big sister with booze, seeing as raging alcoholism is the one thing these two siblings still have in common. When Cersei declines the wine, Tyrion immediately knows she’s pregnant.

So, perhaps is the pregnancy hormones that make the typically heartless Cersei get all misty eyed at the prospect of having the Mountain murder her little brother, despite the fact that she blames him for pretty much everything bad that has ever happened to the Lannisters since Tyrion murdered his pops on a toilet bowl. Tyrion miraculously ends up leaving the exchange still a member of Team Breathing, in both senses of the word.

Shortly thereafter, Cersei reenters the Coliseum and tells the gang she’s had a change of heart. She’s going to help with the zombie fighting, after all!

Everyone is ELATED, and RELIEVED, until Jamie learns later that his sister was LYING about her willingness to help . . . just like Euron was LYING about going back to the Iron Islands. Instead, Euron is going to the bank to withdraw some cash, so Cersei can conquer some more lands while Team Breathing are busy getting their asses handed to them by the Night’s King. “Obviously, my Gay Best Friend wouldn’t leave me without saying goodbye,” Cersei notes matter-of-factly. “Nobody walks away from me.”

For the first time in seven seasons of this show, Jamie is legitimately disgusted by his sister / lover’s behavior! Nonetheless, he doesn’t walk away from her (because, as she just said, nobody does that). Instead he RIDES away from her (presumably to Winterfell), just as snow begins to fall on his pretty little head. It appears winter has finally come to Kings Landing, after all . . .

Nobody is Getting Littlefingered Anymore!

Who gets to clean that up?

Meanwhile, over in Winterfell, Sansa has just learned via raven that Jon has started donning a Hot Pink Team Dany t-shirt, and will be wearing it proudly next season, when the ridiculously attractive pair ride together in a boat en route back to Jon’s birthplace. Sansa, understandably, is a bit miffed that she wasn’t consulted by her older brother about this decision. Littlefinger senses Sansa’s unhappiness and replies by saying, “Yeah, that sucks what Jon did. You should totally murder your sister.”

Wait . . . what? Talk about a total non-sequitur.

Littlefinger, reasoning that people are generally shitty, and, when given the opportunity will almost always make the shittiest choices for the shittiest possible reasons, subtly leads Sansa to the conclusion that Arya is trying to become Lady of Winterfell over Sansa, so Sansa should definitely kill her.

Two seconds later, Sansa has called for a trial in the Great Hall. Arya is led to the center of the room, where the defendant usually stands. The charges are murder and treason. But the defendant is not Arya. The defendant is . . . wait for it . . . LITTLEFINGER himself.

Apparently, Branbot3000 is useful for something other than napping by trees and creeping people out. He has provided Sansa with the entire Wiki page on all the truly awful things Littlefinger has done since Season 1, and there are a TON! To name a few, he (1) murdered that crazy Lady Lysa Arryn; (2) gave Lysa the poison to murder her husband, Jon Arryn, and blamed the Lannisters for it; and (3) got Ned Stark tried for treason and beheaded. (That last one’s a biggie for this particular audience!)

“Send pics, or it didn’t happen,” Littlefinger responds, more or less.

Haha, wrong thing to say, Littlefinger. BranBot3000 has pics of everything in the Game of Thrones DVR Box Set that exists in his mind. More than pics, he’s got GIFS, with words in them, from the scripts of every episode of this entire series!

BranBot3000 chooses this moment to describe all the words Littlefinger said as he was betraying Ned Stark. And everyone in the hall instantly believes Bran, because he’s too weird and creepy, and has too terrible social skills to be a good liar.

Sansa admits that she’s a slow learner. It took her seven seasons to learn that shitty people do shitty things for shitty reasons. But she learned it finally, thanks to Littlefinger himself.

At this point, Littlefinger has totally pooped his pants He’s on his knees begging for mercy. He’s crying. He’s got snot in his nose. It’s pathetic, and AWESOME to see. Even more awesome is when Arya slits his throat, causing him to choke on his own blood and bleed to death, while Sansa looks stoically on.

Bye-bye Bae!

Hey Littlefinger, it could have been worse. You could have died on a toilet or had your face turn the color of grape Powerade . . .

After the murder of Littlefinger, Arya and Sansa become besties again. Arya admits that Sansa is brave and strong for surviving the rape and mistreatment of a sizable portion of the male characters on the show, and somehow managing to become an excellent leader of her people, in spite of it all. Sansa admits that Arya is weird and kind of scary, but also tough and super cool. All of these things are true, by the way.

Now, if they could just track down Arya’s direwolf and bring her back into the fold, everything would be perfect.

Speaking of direwolves, anyone seen Ghost lately? Has he ghosted us? Was it something I typed?

Theon Greyjoy Finally Gets His Balls Back . . . Sort of.

A fairly cordial exchange between Jon and Theon occurs in this episode. During it, the former forgives the latter for being a total douchebag for pretty much three quarters of the series. Also, the two agree that Theon can be loyal to both of the families that raised him. He doesn’t have to choose! He can have his Greyjoy and eat his Stark too (which I guess makes him a Greystark . . .or Starkjoy?).

Inspired by this new bonhomie with the Almost-Annoyingly-Angelic Jon Snow (Game of Thrones’ clear frontrunner for Mr. Congeniality) Theon decides to commandeer what’s left of the Greyjoy army for a mission to rescue his sister Yara from the clutches of his Sassy Uncle.

One of these random, no-name, Ironborn thinks this is a bad idea, and, therefore, proceeds to beat the crap out of Theon. But then No-Name Ironborn makes the mistake of repeatedly kneeing Theon in the crotch. While this would be excruciatingly painful for most men, for Theon it feels just like a light playful tickle. In fact, Theon is so energized by this light tickle that he regains his wind during the crotch kicking totally takes down No-Name Ironborn. This impresses the rest of the extras in this scene so much that they immediately agree to help Theon save Yara.

Help is on the way!

So, I guess that the moral of this story is that Bronn is right. Cocks and balls make the world go round . . . or, at least, the world of Westeros.

Speaking of male sex parts . . .

All in the Family

Back on the boat en route to Winterfell, Jon visits Dany’s room and the two instantly proceed to make sweet, sweet love to one another, while Tyrion creepily listens at the door to their sex sounds, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

Sounds like doggy style . . . wolfy style?

Perhaps, the dwarf was just about to knock on the door to remind the pair to wrap up their sexy times quickly. Slow and steady will not win this sex race, Jon. After all, if prior travels on this season are any indication, the boat should reach Winterfell in about 2.8 minutes. Nonetheless these will undoubtedly be the best 2.8 minutes of the Mother of Dragons’ life . . .

While, Dany and Jon are going at it, we cut to a scene between BranBot3000 and Sam Tarly, where the two piece together what most of us fans have known for a while now: namely, that Dany is actually Jon’s aunt (thereby making their sex incestual, but not quite as incestual as Cersei’s and Jaime’s, so . . . um . . . hooray for less-bad incest?).

To summarize: Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark were lovers back in the day, who legitimized their soon-to-be born lovechild through a secret marriage, and ultimately named that child Aegon Targaryen (They chose this name, despite the fact that Rhaegar already had another child named Aegon Targaryen with another woman, because giving your babies original names is super overrated?)

The second Aegon Targaryen was ultimately taken to Winterfell and cared for by Ned Stark, who raised the child as his bastard, in order to keep the child’s identity as true heir to the Iron Throne a secret from those who would want him dead. This mysterious child ultimately grew up to be . . .you guessed it . . . Jon Snow . . . the same hot guy whose bare ass we are currently ogling, as it bounces up and down on top of the Mother of Dragons for another 2 minutes and 36 seconds.

This also means that Robert’s Rebellion, which purportedly occurred because a Targaryen kidnapped and raped a Stark . . . the same fight that set this entire series into motion . . . was based on a lie.

In short, all this fighting for the uncomfortable chair has officially become pointless. Jon Snow . . . er . . . I mean . . . the second Aegon Targaryen . . . should be sitting on the Iron Throne right now (well, after he finishes having sex with his aunt, of course). Party’s over. Everyone else should go home.

Wake me up when I’m King of the World.

Can you imagine if this misunderstanding didn’t happen, and Robert’s Rebellion never occurred? There’d be no Game of Thrones! None at all! It would just be the Some Hot Guy with a Weird Name Sitting on an Uncomfortable Chair Show.

What the heck would I do with my Sunday nights? I’d have to take up knitting or something . . .

The Night King Begins His Renovation Project

Meanwhile, back at The Wall, Tormund is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (and his lady love Brienne isn’t there to cheer him up about it either). It all starts when an entire army of zombies set up camp on his lawn. (They are totally going to eat all his groceries, and make a big mess in his bathroom. You just know it.)

Then, to add insult to injury the Night King drops by unannounced on Viseri-Zombie, and burns down the ENTIRE WALL. As in . . . it’s gone . . . and the Season 8 opening credits for this show will now probably have to include Zombie-Infested Pile of Rubble as one of its locations on the 3-D Westeros map. (On a kind of related note: can the Night King talk? I’m just wondering how he was able to issue the Dracarys, fire-breathing command to Viseri-Zombie. Perhaps zombies get a sign language handbook in there Undead Army Orientation Package?)

Tormund ends the season, just running for his life like a bat out of hell, as the zombie army advances on Westeros completely unopposed. (I wonder if his home insurance policy covers zombie invasions and ice dragon destruction? If not, I’m thinking the inevitable replacement Wall he builds should probably be flame retardant, just a suggestion . . .)

Tormund . . . in much happier times.

Cheer up, Tormund. Help is on a boat engaging in mad passionate sex, just 2 minutes, 18 seconds and an entire season hiatus away? Surely, nothing else bad will happen to you between now and then . . .