Starting Sunday at 10 PM Eastern, HBO will cruelly deprive us of fresh #content to anticipate, criticize, and logic into elaborate metaphors for climate change for ten whole months. The gap between Game of Thrones seasons is long and full of terrors, so before Sunday’s finale, we’re taking every chance to comb through every maddening frame of this series while we still can. Luckily, HBO just released pictures of this week’s finale that hint at the fallout from Episode 9’s stadium-burner. Here’s what we got out of these eight stills.
“A man is very disappointed that a girl did not murder the person our cult was paid a boatload of cash to murder (but who we also wanted to murder for religious reasons, because our cult is a sort of spiritual redemption and massively profitable business two-for-one.” Arya has likely pulled what a friend accurately dubbed “some O-Ren Ishii shit” and seduced/killed her Public Enemy No. 4, Meryn Trant. Jaqen is now pulling his surrogate dad/assassin tutor schtick, and is probably imposing whatever the House of Black and White’s horrific analog punishment to “you’re grounded!” is.
An image that requires almost no analysis, let alone overanalysis: it’s the perfect visual representation of how much Daenerys’ wow moment royally screwed over her henchpeople. Tyrion is like, “I committed fratricide and got kidnapped and survived slavery for this?!,” Daario is like, “Wow, I really have no purpose now without a boss to sleep with,” and Jorah is just, like, really sad. It must suck to have your relentless nice guy-ism finally wear down the object of your unrequited affection only to have her fly on outta there via dragon.
“I know you’re feeling really sad about burning your only child at the stake in front of her mother and your entire army — who I bet feel real good about what they’re fighting for now — but it was the right thing to do, because the world is unjust and my magic, unlike anyone else’s, actually works! Would it make you feel better if we had sex?”
Sansa looks very surprised here, but at least she doesn’t look sad and/or brutalized! I mean, compared to her recent wardrobe choices, that beige item is practically the Salsa Girl Emoji dress. Maybe it has something to do with finding out her brothers are alive, or maybe Stannis has just told her he’s about to slow-roast Ramsay Bolton and that’s what Sansa’s happy face looks like after several years of nonstop trauma.
Jon looks sad and alone and like he’s just got some bad news, which describes Jon in pretty much every episode this season except “Hardhome.” Honestly? I’ve got nothing.
Jon is telling Sam about either Hardhome or the bad news he just got, or both. Sam is validating Jon’s high-minded morality, even though the track record of that working out for the Starks (and their illegitimate offspring) currently stands at 0 for 6. Also, there have been way too many ominous conversations with Alliser Thorne and Ollie for Jon’s transition back into life at Castle Black to go smoothly. “One last moment of bromance before everything goes to shit” seems like a safe prediction for what’s going on here.
I’d be cool Lena Headey just repeating, “Look at my face. It’s the last thing you’ll see before you die” for the rest of the series. Let’s assume that’s what’s happening here, since she’s clearly not out of Westerosi Inquisition Prison yet.
Except this looks awfully conciliatory! Could it be that weeks without food, water, or elaborate hairstyles have finally worn Cersei down? Either way, this is both a nice shot that nicely captures the dynamic between the “humble”-yet-ascendant High Sparrow and his prisoner… and a visual that kinda reminds me of this mansplaining statue that circulated around the Internet a few weeks ago.