And that, friends, is that. Game of Thrones is finished, and now it’s time for Samwell Tarly to present a bound copy of this liveblog to his superior and claim that it marks the definitive chronicling of these last five hours.
This was fun. People who stay up late are nice. Game of Thrones just about stuck the landing. All is well, and if I don’t go to sleep immediately I am absolutely going to murder someone. Bye!
And, finally, here’s Lucy Mangan’s take on the episode. Lucy Mangan understands.
“The finale just about delivered. It was true to the series’ overall subject – war, and the pity of war – and, after doing a lot of wrong to several protagonists last week, did right by those left standing. Whether the million signatories to the petition to remake the entire final season, or the majority of the estimated 45 million around the world due to watch the last episode, will agree – who knows. When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Overall, I think, it won”.
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Quick shout out to whoever it is at the Express who was tasked with searching Twitter for any Game of Thrones reactions that contained a swearword.
The Washington Post’s review seems to have something against Very Good Boys:
I actually sort of chuckled when Jon was reunited with his direwolf Ghost, once a powerful magic creation but now reduced to a loyal, very big Good Dog. It was a fitting reunion, and conclusion, for a show that shrunk itself down to size in exactly the same way.
A few more comments from BTL, including one praising me that I’m throwing in because I am the real monster around here.
summerbabe: That was a beautiful ending. For all the misgivings of this season’s pacing, I thought it was a confident, extremely moving episode. The tragedy of Dany being so close to the throne and yet not being able to see the person she had become; that shot of her being carried away into the distance was heartbreaking. Each character also felt like they ended up in a place true to the person they had become. It was a generous, fitting end to what overall has been a remarkable achievement in television.
Gurgle: Wow. Really enjoyed that. Loved the whole Stark montage at the end, they are the central family after all. John and Ghost, awesome. I really don’t think it could have, or should have ended any other way. Well done HBO on crating an amazing series. As a fantasy novel fanatic, who has been reading theses novels for 40 years, since I was 6, I’m overjoyed that something like this was possible. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
PeakKardashian: Many thanks to Mr Stuart Heritage for keeping up the good humour at this difficult time.
Variety has done a nice job at verbalising what I couldn’t, quite, in the frantic rush to liveblog:
“The best series endings allow the story to live on in the viewer’s mind even after the plot has ended. And while nothing about Sansa, Arya, or Jon’s storyline at episode’s end seemed like a crucial part of the King’s Landing endgame or particularly designed to serve fans in the way Tyrion’s banter had, they mattered all the more for that. Theirs will be among the stories I return to when I recall what Game of Thrones was for a decade.”
The Chicago Sun Times had a more positive reaction, thank heavens.
The reviews for the episode are starting to come in. Here is a spectacularly wrong one by the USA Today, entitled I’m A Great Big Whiny Piss-Pants And I Don’t Care Who Knows
I should probably now amend some of the entries in the Game of Thrones awards I wrote late last week.
From now on, please note that Best Reunion should be Jon and Ghost, the category Worst Pet Owner (won by Jon Snow) should now be changed to Best Pet Owner, and Most Tragic Unrequited Love should be changed to Best Doggy Who’s A Good Doggy You Are You Are and Ghost should win it.
The GoT finale managed to invent democracy and, well, um
So who had “Arya invents colonialism” in their end of show pool
— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) May 20, 2019
I might – MIGHT – be tempted to lobby to liveblog Westworld now I’ve seen the new trailer
HEY HBO HAVE WE GOT A DEAL OR WHAT?
So @stuheritage I'll write that Flat Earth Arya tv series with you, if you're interested.
— C. D. Tavenor (@tavenorcd) May 20, 2019
I’m only now getting to read back through the comments you left during the episode, and there are some absolute doozies. A selection:
Frank_George: Absolutely hilarious running commentary, with genius irreverence and plot line summarising. Too funny.
annamayo: Obvious choice for king. It’s now very much a Bring Your Own Chair job.
boston: Actually as Drogon is Danny’s child shouldn’t he be first in line?
kjohehir: Bran had to serve some major function, why else spend so much time on his journey? GRRM gave the storyline his blessing, I can wait until he decides to finish the books and reserve judgement until then, but the book is always better than the movie. I don’t feel I’ve lost any time by riding the dragon for the past 8 years.
Oakesy: Hang on who the hell rebuilt the wall
Well now, this is something. The New Yorker has a post-finale interview with Emilia Clarke, where she reveals that her character’s arc was based on Lawrence of Arabia. So now I have to go and rewatch that.
OK, so now that’s over I’m going to hang about for a bit. Officially I’m not allowed to go to bed until Lucy Mangan has written and filed her review of the episode. Don’t ask me why, because I honestly don’t know. In the meantime I’ll update intermittently with reactions and whatnot. You should definitely go to bed, though. You’ve been through a lot today.
I’m putting this down in writing now, but that was a really good episode of television. Still, quiet, reflective. This has always been Game of Thrones’ real strength, not the big buck battle scenes. Not the greatest finale I’ve ever seen, but far from the worst. A million miles away from Dexter. And Ghost! What a good dog.
Well that didn’t take long
two or three cool things aside, i kinda can't believe how dumb and bad all of that was.
— simon simon simon (@Simonjenkin) May 20, 2019
And that’s it. Game of Thrones has ended, and I’m happy with how it ended. Now to venture forth into the rocky unknowns of the internet to be told how wrong I am.
Jon’s out with the free folk now. His dog and his pals. What a happy ending. This is a good ending. I like it.
This is all the ending I need, quite frankly. Jon Snow touching a cartoon wolf and looking happy about it. It looked a bit ropey for a second there, but by god they pulled it off. Game of Thrones is saved!
And SMILING?
IS JON TOUCHING GHOST?
IS... IS THAT GHOST?
The Stark sisters set off on their new journeys, as queen of the north and Flat Earth Theorist Number One respectively.
Meanwhile, Jon goes back to Castle Black where all his friends are, and looks miserable.
Tyrion, Davos, Samwell, Bronn and Brienne now have a lively discussion about how to create a functioning infrastructure in the wake of a dragon attack.
Apparently after the credits rolled for the final time, the people of Westeros started a petition to get Samwell’s book rewritten by a competent writer.
Samwell has presented Tyrion with a book. It is called A Song Of Ice And Fire and ahhh do you see? Do you see what they did there? It’s very funny, and very smart.
Long live Tyrion the Chair-Looker.
Tyrion is now looking at a chair. I’m pleased that this is how Game of Thrones is ending, with Tyrion looking at a chair.
And there’s Brienne, writing a book about Jaime, presumably called Shagged Me Once, Then Left Me For His Sister.
Jon says goodbye to Bran, and Bran is only slightly weird and creepy in return. In Bran’s world, this is effusive praise.
Jon says to his sisters “Come and visit” and they’re all like “Bog off weirdos”. Arya tells him that she’s going ‘West of Westeros, where the maps stop’, because she was a FLAT EATH THEORIST ALL ALONG. I saw this coming. Nobody else did, but I did.
Not a bad ending for Jon. The Night’s Watch was where he had his happiest days. I mean, all his friends stabbed him to death there and everything, but still.
“Should I have killed my auntie?” Jon asks. “Ask me in the inevitable reunion series,” says Tyrion.
“I’ll never see you again, will I?” Jon asks. “Again, ask me in the inevitable reunion series”, repeats Tyrion, looking straight at the camera and moving his hands like he’s slapping money at a stripper.
Back to prison. Jon’s being sent to the Night’s Watch, even though there’s a dirty great hole in the wall and all the zombies are dead. Cool beans guys.
Bran the Broken, I ask you. What about Bran the Interdimensional Time-Travelling Psychic Detective? It isn’t as catchy, granted, but at least it’s flattering. Even Bran the Buzzkill would be a better title.
The title of this episode, incidentally, is Hey Guess What Guys Bran Gets To Be The King.
Who does Bran ask to be hand? Tyrion, the prisoner who literally just said that Bran’s defining trait should be his disability and not, you know, THE WAY HE CAN LITERALLY SEE THROUGH TIME. Weird choice.
And that’s that. Bran is unanimously voted as king by everyone. Sansa says she wants to be in charge of the north. Tyrion instantly names him Bran the Broken, which is a bit of a shitty thing to do all said.
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Tyrion says he wants Bran to be king, and then the king after him to be elected. And Bran says yes. And Tyrion makes it official. Even though he’s still a prisoner. This is some parole meeting, I tell you.
Oh yikes. Tyrion is now giving a speech that is basically ‘But aren’t stories the REAL king?’. This is like when actors turn up at the Oscars and say how films can stop racism.
Samwell tries to invent democracy, but he’s laughed out of town. And a good thing too, because I live in 2019 and I’ve seen how democracy pans out. Hoo boy it ain’t pretty.
Tyrion, even though he’s a prisoner, has told everyone to pick a new king or queen. None of them seem to want to, perhaps because the dragon busted up the fancy chair.
Davos calls Greyworm by his real name, and then asks if he’s pronouncing it correctly. Davos is too good for this stinking world.
He’s marched out into the open, where everyone suddenly is. The Starks. Brienne. Yara. Other characters who I can’t remember.
Back to Tyrion. He wants to sleep, but he can’t. I know how he feels.
Then he picks up Daenerys and flies off, either to eat her or hump her. We’ll never know which.
Ruined with fury, the dragon melts the iron throne, because at least he’s intelligent enough to understand that the real villain here is the concept of an institutional monarchy.
The dragon looks a bit annoyed too, come to think of it.
For what it’s worth, Jon Snow is taking the news that he just deliberately stabbed his girlfriend/auntie quite badly.
Daenerys is dead. The moral of this story is to be good at maths or else your nephew will stab you.
Daenerys hugs Jon, and reminds him that she’s terrible at basic arithmetic. They kiss. But WAIT. He’s bloody stabbed her.
This is why their relationship won’t last. That and the fact that she’s his auntie.
Jon asks Daenerys to forgive Tyrion and construct a world of mercy. But she’s all like “No way, I love killing people”.
Jon walks up to her and tells her that she’s a war criminal. She says that she never used to be that great at maths. These two are as dumb as rocks.
Dany sees the Iron Throne for the first time. A choirboy hums the Game of Thrones theme tune. She approaches the throne. This is what she has always wanted. She touches the throne. The music gets dark. Somewhere, in a Hollywood recording studio, a cellist is complaining about RSI.
Tell you what, people saying that Game of Thrones is busy rushing from setpiece to setpiece are wrong. This is the last episode ever, and there’s plenty to wrap up, but we just had an eight-minute scene of two characters quietly discussing the nature of love. That’s not bad.
Ohh, Tyrion’s telling Jon that he also loves Daenerys. ‘Love is the death of duty’ says Jon. ‘Duty is the death of love’ replies Tyrion. ‘Death is the love of duty’, I add, trying to join in. I’M JUST TRYING TO JOIN IN.
I’m really going to miss Peter Dinklage’s little inflections. I want him to do the voice on my satnav. I want to be *convinced* to take the second left on the next roundabout.
The TL;DR of this scene is ‘Daenerys must be killed by someone’. I’m going to count to ten and then I’ll go and do it myself if it’ll get me to bed any quicker.
Jon’s visiting Tyrion. “Did you bring any wine?” smirks Tyrion. “No” replies Jon, who CANNOT PICK UP ON ANY SOCIAL CUES WHATSOEVER, THE BOOB. Please don’t let him be king.
HBO there, describing a television programme about a naughty dragon
Nothing else matters. #TheFinalEpisode
— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) May 20, 2019
Jon Snow stares at Daenerys. She walks off. He sees Arya, covered in blood. “What happened?” he asked, because he essentially has the short term memory of a concussed goldfish. Please don’t let Jon end up as king. The poor boy is an absolute boob.
And now Daenerys and Tryion are having a hissy little whisper fight, like the fight you have in the car with your wife when the kids are sleeping in the back. Tyrion resigns as hand, Daenerys arrests him. He leaves.
Daenerys, now kitted out in a swish little leather number, surveys her army. She addresses them from miles away, and yet they can all hear her perfectly well, despite all the distance and horses. Either she can really project or her soldiers have got really impeccable hearing. Also props to whoever trained her dragon to learn enough human language to scream at all the dramatically appropriate points.
Arya and Jon are both approaching Daenerys now. They both want to kill her. That’s where all the suspense from this episode is going to come from, isn’t it? It’s going to be Catch The Pigeon, but about who gets to kill the queen. I’m down for that, I have to say.
Judging by the music accompanying the scene of Tyrion uncovering his dead brother and sister, this is going to be 80 straight minutes of mournful cello. Now That’s What I Call Mournful Cello.
And another bit of smouldering wreckage; this time it’s the bit of smouldering wreckage that crushed both of his siblings. This makes Tyrion sad. I think Tyrion might actually be the only one of these people who I’ll actually miss, you know.
Tyrion’s still wandering around the smouldering wreckage. But it’s a different bit of smouldering wreckage, so don’t say this show can’t do character development.
Jon Snow and Greyworm are getting into a bit of a tizzy on whether it’s good to kill lots of people (Greyworm) or no people at all (Jon). Personally I’m on the side of no people, but try telling that to Greyworm. Sheesh.
Tyrion realises that he has to go and explain to Daenerys that burning down entire cities full of children isn’t really on.
We open with Tyrion glumly trudging through the ashes of King’s Landing. Lotsa dead kids. Really pandering to fans of dead children so far, this episode.
THE EPISODE BEGINS
Ladies and gentlemen, settle down. The final episode of Game of Thrones is here.
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Right then. Two minutes. It is all about to end.
(By which I mean that I’m going to still be liveblogging three hours from now)
OK, so here’s my Euron Greyjoy story.
Five years ago, the actor who plays Euron – Pilou Asbæk – hosted the Eurovision song contest. I wrote a piece about what a weird choice he was, because five years ago he played a very shut-down character in a Danish political drama, and as a result he invited me to Copenhagen to interview him.
I land at the airport. His publicist calls and tells me the interview is off. “But I just flew here”, I reply. She sighs, and says she’ll call me back. Five minutes later, she reluctantly says that the interview can go ahead, but he’s cancelled the rest of his scheduled interviews for the day and also she wants to approve the text before I send it to my editor. I say no, she sighs again and gives up. The interview is on.
Except Pilou is unwell. “My wife has been sick, my daughter has been sick and my mother-in-law has been sick”, he says. “And now BLAM. It hit me two days ago”. The interview takes place, but Pilou starts to look worse and worse. And then he gets up, leaves the room and proceeds to loudly and copiously vomit all over the place.
The interview ends and I spend the next two years feeling terrible that I put this poor man through such an ordeal during such a bout of ill health.
Then a colleague visits the set of Pilou’s new show and brings up my interview. He replies by saying something like “Oh man, I was so hungover that day”, which he later clarified on Twitter.
Pilou wasn’t ill. Pilou was so hungover that he threw up. He tricked me. This is the most Euron Greyjoy story in the world, and I thank you very much for indulging me.
Actually, given everything, I think the most annoying thing about Game of Thrones this year is the way that they aren’t even announcing the episode titles ahead of time.
Honestly. Last week’s episode was called The Bells. They could have announced that, surely. Nobody would have guessed that all of King’s Landing would be totalled by a grumpy dragon from reading the words ‘The Bells’, would they?
Next time someone makes a show as big as Game of Thrones, don’t be daft. Just tell us the titles.
*NB, I reserve the right to retract this if it turns out that tonight’s episode is called Hey Guess What Guys Bran Gets To Be The King or something similar.
According to The Guardian’s snazzy audience data tool, I can see that lots of people are coming here after using the search term ‘Game of Thrones spoilers’. So, if this describes you, allow me to help you out a little. Here are some RED HOT GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS:
- Ned Stark dies in season one.
- The Red Wedding happens at some point.
- Ed Sheeran turns up, but doesn’t really do a lot and it’s quite annoying.
- The Night King dies quite easily, it turns out.
- Dragons.
- In the finale, I forget the names of several key characters and then get fired.
Hope that helps.
This is your 30 minute warning. The Game of Thrones finale starts in half an hour. Which means you have two hours to prep the ‘Worst episode ever’ GIF you’re planning to tweet as soon as the credits roll.
But that said, let’s have a quick sprint through all the ways that the Game of Thrones cast has attempted to cushion us against tonight’s badness.
EMILIA CLARKE, Vanity Fair: “It fucked me up, knowing that is going to be a lasting flavor in someone’s mouth of what Daenerys is . . .”
KIT HARINGTON, PopBuzz: [When asked to describe the finale in one word] “Disappointing”.
In fact, here’s a video compilation.
Game of Thrones cast tried to warn us about Season 8 pic.twitter.com/fa52CedDGM
— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) May 9, 2019
Is this really going to be the worst series finale in all of television history? It’s possible, but I don’t think so. Why? One word: Dexter.
Remember the Dexter finale? Of course you don’t, because you checked out of Dexter after five years, because his stupid dead dad wouldn’t ever shut up. But Dexter ended with a sequence where Dexter gave up murdering, got a new job as a lumberjack, wore the least convincing beard in living memory and stared at the camera for about 45 seconds.
I’m not saying that the Game of Thrones finale won’t be bad. I’m just saying that it will have to be bad on an almost incomprehensible level to be worse than Dexter.
Another Game of Thrones recapper I should mention is Andy Daly, who’s been covering the show for Vulture. And ruining the show for me in the process, I might add. His offhand suggestion that none of this actually takes place on Earth, and that all the characters are just humanlike aliens, has been impossible to shake.
We should probably mention the petition really, shouldn’t we? Over a million people have now signed the change.org petition asking HBO to remake this final Game of Thrones season with ‘competent writers’. It’s not for me to say whether or not this petition is a good idea – ALTHOUGH IT’S DEFINITELY A BAD IDEA YOU WET-MOUTHED, GRASPING, BUTTHURT, NEEDY, SNOT-NOSED, MISERABLE, FRIENDLESS TODDLERS – but I shall nevertheless heed its call.
As one of the most competent writers in the biz, I have rewritten the entirety of Game of Thrones season eight, offering the most satisfying conclusion to what has been a mixed bag of a series. Things started to wobble in episode three, so that’s where we’ll pick things up.
***
EXT. WINTERFELL. NIGHT
To combat the threat of the Night King, Westeros has assembled a unified army the likes of which nobody has ever seen. Swarms of former enemies line up together in the murk of the evening in order to see off this existential threat once and for all. It’s really murky, by the way. It’s almost completely pitch black, in fact.
JON SNOW
Light a torch, somebody. It’s really dark in here.
Someone lights a torch, and now we can suddenly see what’s actually going on. Game of Thrones is suddenly a million times better.
TYRION LANNISTER
Yikes! It’s the Night King!
The NIGHT KING comes swooping down from the sky on his zombie dragon and murders everyone. Just straight-up fries them. It isn’t even close. Everyone dies – seriously, everyone – and it only takes about ten seconds because he is an unkillable zombie lord on an unkillable zombie dragon, and they are basically just tiny little blood balloons.
The Night King lands, winks to camera and high-fives the dragon. Freezeframe.
HBO ANNOUNCER
Game of Thrones has finished three and a half episodes early, so here are some nice cartoons instead.
FIN
***
There you go. I have given you all the Game of Thrones you deserve. Hey, HBO, send me a load of money so I never have to do another one of these overnight liveblogs again.
Another thing you should catch up on: the wonderful episode by episode recaps from Sarah Hughes. She, more than anyone at this publication, has kept Game of Thrones’ flame alive. Every single one of these has been a joy. Also, her piece on what Game of Thrones means to her is just a startling piece of writing.
Before the episode starts, remind me to tell you my Euron Greyjoy story.
While we wait here together, I’m going to pepper the build-up with some sparkling Game of Thrones content from recent weeks. We’ll start with one of my favourites: Luke Holland’s genuinely very hard Game of Thrones quiz. If you do well at this, do let me know.
Now, my head is telling me that we all understand this, but my heart is well aware that about two percent of you are probably great big dummies, so FOR THE LAST TIME:
I am about to liveblog an episode of Game of Thrones as it is broadcast. This means I will be writing about events contained within the episode, as well as referencing events of previous episodes. So, and I cannot stress this enough, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE. There will definitely be spoilers. Do not tweet me with your complaints.
Good evening, and welcome to The Guardian’s Game of Thrones finale liveblog. This is it; after eight seasons, 72 episodes, around 700 credited actors and over a million whiny, entitled, screeching, soggy-knickered manbaby petition signatories, Game of Thrones finally ends tonight.
Nobody quite knows what to expect from tonight’s episode. Our best hope is that the finale will wrap up all the show’s loose threads in a visually spectacular and satisfyingly dramatic masterwork that changes the television landscape forever. Then again, everyone from leakers to castmembers have been busy bracing us for what some people have called the worst finale in TV history, so we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up too much really.
Anyway, the important thing is that I’ll be here for you all the way through it. That’s right: you’ve been preparing to give the Game of Thrones finale your undivided attention for almost a decade now, and I’m asking you to read a liveblog. Say what you like about The Guardian, but at least we’re consistent.
And what a liveblog this will be. It has already begun (even though the episode won’t start until 2am British time) and I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to stop until about 5am (even though the episode finishes at 3:20am). How will I manage to fill such a genuinely colossal amount of time? GOD ALONE KNOWS. But you’re going to stay awake with me for the whole thing, right? Right? Good.
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