And the worst part about this is the way the writers portray the common people. Just because Theon murders someone, means that they will follow him all of a sudden. It’s as if everyone who wasn’t born from a royal family is just a sheep. They’re all murderous sheep.
GL: “Game of Thrones” treats them like they’re disposable.
AY: Exactly, the show seems to say that everyone is disposable unless you’re born with royal blood. That would be fine for the 15th century.
GL: But they’re catering to a modern audience.
AY: Yeah, and it’s like they’re trying to bring back a long dead thought process that should stay dead. They’re romanticizing monarchy. I’m not a fan of monarchy. Do you want to talk about Sansa and Arya?
GL: I really loved the scene right after Littlefinger’s execution, when Sansa and Arya are talking about Ned Stark’s words, “The lone wolf dies but the pack survives.” They’re two very different people, and they acknowledge that in that scene. But they’re together, they’re in Winterfell, and they’re harkening back to the start, paying a sort of homage to “Game of Thrones”’ beginnings.
I wish they ended on this scene, because for me, that felt like the show coming full circle—a fitting conclusion for a family that’s gone through so much. Instead, they threw in a really predictable, anticlimactic, and rather boring White Walker, ice dragon, and wight attack scene.
AY: It was a waste of a climax. There was a better way to do it with a zombie pileup. I am a huge proponent of zombie pileups.
GL: But the ice dragon made things too easy. The ultimate problem of the seventh season finale of “Game of Thrones” is that events were too predictable—we knew Jon and Dany were going to end up together, and we knew that the White Walkers would bring the Wall down. And as mentioned earlier, the writers are heading into a dangerous territory of not being able to kill major characters off. And that doesn’t mean that “Game of Thrones” has to blow up septs or murder favorites in order to keep audiences engaged. They just need more scenes like Tyrion and Cersei’s conversation—scenes that are emotionally complicated enough to add something to the show’s premise.
—Staff writer Aziz B. Yakub can be reached at aziz.yakub@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Grace Z. Li can be reached at grace.li@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter at @gracezhali.