Game of Thrones: S8 Ep 4 – "The Last of the Starks" Review

By Laura Prudom

This review contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4, "The Last of the Starks". To refresh your memory, read our review of GoT S8, Episode 3, "The Long Night," and if you're confused about the meaning of "dracarys," you're covered.

In many ways, "The Last of the Starks" is the strongest Game of Thrones episode of Game of Thrones we have known for a long time, full of political machinations and murmured patterns. In others, he suffers from the same narrative frustrations as those experienced this season (and probably every season since the series began to exceed George R. R. Martin's books).

It is somewhat realistic to think that even the most heroic and weighted characters begin to fall prey to mistrust and paranoia while there are so many things at stake (aside from the characters who do not). Do not have that head down, like Cersei and Daenerys), but It's always exasperating that after all these people have gone through and all the horrible things that they've seen, they can not not put aside their differences and just try to see things from the point of view of the other. (We can probably say as much of our world and the many civil wars on which Martin was inspired to elaborate his story.)

Martin has always espoused the idea that power corrupts, and we are clearly on the verge of seeing it big with the blood of every man, every woman and every child of King's Landing. Cersei is obviously ready to use them all as human shields, while Daenerys is so determined to reach her goal and so traumatized by all that she lost (her two closest friends and two of her children very quickly) that She is too blinded by hate to stop. consider collateral damage.

The series has positioned these two "Mad Queens" in an impossible-to-win pool game, where mutually assured destruction seems to be the most likely outcome. Yet, Daenerys once declared that she had not come to Westeros to be the "queen of ashes". forgot that wish, or will Jon and Tyrion be able to hold it?

Now that the White Walkers are destroyed, it is impossible not to go back on the vision she had in the House of Immortals, where something that certainly looked like snow was falling on the iron throne through holes gaping in the roof of the red dungeon. Of course, we all thought it would be the King's job of the night, but the damage could just as easily be due to a dragon's fire or a wildfire – and in "The Long Night" he It was impossible to tell the difference between snow and ashes. outside Winterfell. We certainly would not want to let Cersei go by simply blowing up the hidden caches of a forest fire that she has in the city, as Daenerys' father has already tried, during a petty demonstration: "If I can not have the throne, no one can do it. , "And in some ways it would probably be the best result for everyone." (Euron at to have done the math and understood that something was questionable about Cersei's pregnancy after Tyrion's passionate speech, is not it?)

But the show leans so heavily and awkwardly into Dany's routine Mad Queen, I still hope the show will offer us a satisfactory turn for this heavy prefiguration – if not, what were all its long (often boring) journeys to Essos?

Watch the preview of Game of Thrones Season 8, episode 5 below:

We see that Daenerys can be strategic when she has to – legitimize Gendry as true Baratheon to retain her – but we also see how she is alone without Jorah and the Dothraki behind her. What has it served if she does not have the love of people or a family that will be at her side anyway, like Jon? How much more must she lose before gaining some perspective? In some ways, it seems that the show prepares her to sacrifice herself for Jon, to finally realize that the needs of the kingdom must pass before her own desires – but it is also likely that Varys will be the third treason that was prophesied to Dany Les books: "Three betrayals will know you: once for the blood and another for the gold and another for the love". Varys almost flatly states that his love for the kingdom will outweigh any loyalty to Dany. So she can not be the one who will kill him (as Melisandre had predicted) after attempting to murder him before the final confrontation with Cersei?

Varys and Tyrion are not the only ones disturbing this week. We can not blame the Stark sisters for wanting to keep the idea that "the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives", especially if all those who have tried to tear their family apart, but it is always exhausting to see Jon do the same. disastrous mistakes that he has made many times in the past, trusting all others to be as honorable as he is. By telling Sansa and Arya the truth about his identity as Aegon Targaryen, he proves that Daenery is right: Sansa immediately begins to undermine Dany's claim and, in his mind, it is probably perfectly rational, given of everything she has seen of the Dragon Queen so far.

The best conclusion of this episode (and this season) is perhaps that there is really no line of demarcation between our so-called "heroes" and "villains" – Sansa and Arya have our loyalty because they are Starks, but their behavior this season is just as manipulative and mercenary as Cersei, even though Daenerys seems to behave as selfishly and harshly as Sansa, Arya and Sam have warned Jon that she would, thus seeming to justify the mistrust of the Starks.

Jon is perhaps the only character in the series to have clean hands while remaining faithful to his wishes, but his naivety also puts everything he loves in danger – and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. He saw what honesty cost Ned Stark and when Daenerys told him that some truths were far more damaging and damaging than the cost of hiding them, he selfishly placed his honor and comfort above the maintenance of peace, for lying to his sisters would make him feel guilty. It is not because he is a reluctant leader that he is more qualified than Daenerys, when he does not know how to negotiate or make compromises if necessary.

As Tywin Lannister once said, it's not holiness, justice or strength that make a good king, but wisdom – "a wise king knows what he knows and what he does not know. Sometimes wisdom means knowing that a secret – like that Ned has prevented everyone in his life from keeping Jon alive for all those years, to the detriment of his marriage and reputation – far more honorable than the truth .

In this way, as frustrating as this episode is, because all these people should know more, it is perhaps one of the most honest in a long time, especially when Jaime, even after experiencing something really pure, good and healthy with Brienne, admits that he is "hateful" just like Cersei, and will face him one last time. It's a heartbreaking moment, but despite Jaime's hard-won redemption ark in recent seasons, it's true to the character. Ditto Arya's polite refusal on Gendry's proposal – she told Ned a long time ago that "it's not me" when he predicted that she would someday marry a lord, and that's a satisfying reminder to hear him say the same thing to Gendry. Like her wolf, Nymeria, she needs to be disintegrated – she always has a name to wipe off her list, after all.

Where "The last of the Starks" is missing, it is in its recurring shortcuts. We've heard that werewolves are expensive (but now that Rhaegal and Viserion are both dead, the dragon budget has probably gone down by two-thirds), yet Jon arbitrarily decided that Ghost should go north with Tormund with a gesture or even a goodbye. of his absent master, although his ear was torn off and his side was scratched in a battle where we all thought he was dead anyway? The werewolves were an essential element of the first seasons of the series (and are still so in the books of George RR Martin, and this, thanks to the focus by A Song of Ice and Fire on the abilities of warning of the Starks) It is heartbreaking to see them as marginalized here. I almost want Jon to die again just for treating his trusty sidekick so badly.

Of course, there are other games to spare – why would Daenerys not be content to fly behind the Euron fleet where there did not seem to be a ballista and burn them from behind? How did the dragons not see the Euron fleet for miles? What's the point of Bronn now fighting another major battle? But at this point, the series is so eager to embark on a final straight, it is really not worth falling asleep because of artifices.

It may be just because of the truncated sequence of episodes that everyone's decisions are far more extreme and cumbersome than before, whereas in the good old days, we could not really guess who had poisoned Joffrey or sent an assassin after Bran alone predict that it was the same person!). This is not a dealbreaker, but the series seems to lack nuance compared to the complex way of playing this game – and it could well bring us to an end of division.