It's the season finale, so it's time to wrap some stuff up.
The Three-Eyed Stark
Benjen's technically dead, so the magic that sustains him won't allow him to pass through the Wall. He drops Bran and Meera off by a weirwood tree near the Wall and heads back north to do what he can to slow the Walkers. With no Hodor around to drag him, all Bran can do is visit the past. He goes back to the Tower of Joy where he was so rudely cut off before, and follows his father up the tower, where he finds Lyanna Stark bleeding out after giving birth to Jon Snow. Lyanna makes Ned promise not to tell Robert.
Mr. Sam Goes to Oldtown
Sam finally arrives at the Citadel, just as the white ravens are being released to signify the onset of winter. When he presents himself to the registrar, it turns out they haven't received any updates from Castle Black in quite some time, and their records are horribly out of date. Nevertheless, while they sort things out, Sam is allowed to access the fancy, cgi library. Gilly and Li'l Sam have to wait in the lobby.
Old Man River
With Riverrun retaken, it's party time! The Freys and the Lannisters drink to their victory. While Bronn makes time with some serving girls, Jaime sits down to have a chat with Walder. The elder Lord compares himself and his deeds favourably to Jaime, which doesn't sit well with him, since he's not actually proud of the whole Kingslayer thing. Later, after the party's over and the Lannisters have departed, Walder sits alone, eating a meat pie and grumbling to his serving girl about his sons' tardiness. The girl tells him they're already there, which is confusing, since they're nowhere to be seen. When she points to the pie, and Lord Frey discovers a toe, things become a bit more clear. She whips off her face, revealing that she was Arya all along. The last thing Walder Frey sees before he dies is a Stark smiling down on him.
Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Sansa apologizes for not telling Jon about Littlefinger and his army. He forgives her, but says they need to trust each other more, since they've made so many enemies. Later, Sansa sits alone in the godswood, and Littlefinger tells her that everything he does is in the service of one vision: His butt on the iron throne... also, Sansa at his side if he has the time. He goes in for the kiss, but she blocks him, still miffed about that time he sold her to a sadistic rapist.
Afterwards, the Lords gather for a meeting. Jon tries to persuade them to work together in the war to come, but they're far from united. Lady Mormont shames the Northern Lords who failed to support Jon's army, and reminds them that the North is supposed to remember things. They realize the error of their ways, and proclaim Jon the King of the North, much to Littlefinger's chagrin.
The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
It's time for the trial of the century. Every named character in King's Landing except Cersei, Tommen (who is held back by Ser Frankenmountain), Qyburn, and Pycelle assembles in the Great Sept of Baelor to see the gods mete out punishment on Loras and Cersei. Since Loras is the only one there, he goes first, and there's no need for a trial, since he admits everything and renounces his name and titles to become a brother in the Faith Militant. When they finish carving a star in his forehead, the High Sparrow dispatches a few brothers to bring Cersei to the sept.
Elsewhere, another small child leads Grand Maester Pycelle down to Qyburn's lab, where he's set upon by a gaggle of child spies who gleefully stab him to death. Back at the sept, Lancel notices a small child running down the steps and follows him down into the tunnels where he, too, gets a good shanking. He doesn't die, though, and he notices something fishy going on and begins to crawl towards a light in the distance. Up above, Margaery notices something's wrong, too, and tries to convince the High Sparrow and everyone else that Cersei must be up to no good, and they all need to get the fuck out. The Sparrow's not having it, though. The gods must be satisfied, so no one gets to leave, and they're going to try Cersei in absentia. They don't get much beyond the opening arguments, though, as Lancel reaches the light just in time to discover that it's a candle being used as a time-delay fuse to detonate the cache of wildfire Qyburn's placed under the sept. The whole place blows right the fuck up, taking Lancel, Kevan, Margaery, Loras, Mace, and pretty much the entirety of the Faith Militant with it.
Back at the Red Keep, Cersei smiles. She heads to the dungeon where she's had the ass-whooping septa chained to a table. She confesses all her sins, then turns the septa over to Ser Frankenmountain for as much torture and rape as he can dole out. Everything's coming up Cersei. Her son, however, is despondent, and throws himself off his balcony to his death. With Tommen dead, and all the Baratheons wiped out, there's no successor, and with most of the Small Council dead, there's no way to call a meeting to decide who ought to rule.
Coincidentally, Jaime is back from the Riverlands. As he and Bronn ride into King's Landing, they see the smouldering remains of the sept and wonder just what the fuck happened while they were gone. Jaime arrives in the throne room just in time to see Qyburn place the crown upon his sister's head.
The Queen of Burns
With her family dead, Lady Olenna has but one thing on her mind: Vengeance. She's not the only one who's interested in seeing the Lannisters dead, so she pays a visit to Dorne. When the Sand Snakes and their mother fail to convince her that they have anything to offer, Ellaria rings a bell, and Varys walks out of the shadows to steal one of Doran's best lines.
The Widow Drogo
Preparations are nearly complete, so it's time to depart the warm, safe lands of Essos for the frozen nightmare of Westeros. But first, Daenerys has to dump Daario. She's going to need to forge an alliance or two if she wants to hold on to the throne, and that means marrying a powerful lord. Daario's willing to come along and be her side piece, but Daenerys isn't up for that, so she orders him to stay behind and keep the peace while the people elect new leaders. Afterwards, she has a short chat with Tyrion and makes him her Hand. Then it's time to go, and the assembled Targaryen-Tyrell-Dornish-Ironborn fleet sails off into season seven.
What I Liked
-Jaime plays "Have you met Bronn?" That's a great game.
-"Shut up, Barbara, adults are talking." I hope they devote a whole episode next season to Olenna just calling people fucking morons.
What I Hated
-Trial by boredom. They spend waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long getting dressed at the beginning of the episode.
-The High Sparrow bars everyone from leaving the sept. The King and Cersei aren't there. Clearly, something nefarious is afoot. Even if he doesn't want to leave, there's no reason to keep everyone else there.
-Lancel was close enough to blow out the candles before they ignited the wildfire. I can't remember if he tried or not, but he definitely could've done it.
-Murderous children. There's a hell of a leap between relaying information and murdering a dude, and it just doesn't feel earned in any way.
-Fire solves everything. While I hated the whole Faith Militant story, wrapping it up so quickly and cleanly like that seems like something a six-year-old would do: "And then everybody blew up. The end."
-Cersei is crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Everyone in King's Landing except Qyburn and Ser Frankenmountain hates her. Literally everyone. She just blew up the local church and a good chunk of the surrounding neighbourhood. The food shipments from the Tyrells that were pacifying the populace would immediately stop. The people rioted once before, and this time there would be no stopping them.
-Bran can't quite hear what Lyanna says to Ned in the past. Is he going to have to go back again and really jam his head in close? What's the point of these flashbacks if they're still not showing us everything?
-Lady Mormont's speech somehow convinces the assembled Northern Lords to not only pledge their allegiance to Jon, but to declare him King of the North. It wasn't a particularly good speech.
-Tyrion becomes Hand of the Queen. Fucking why? On screen, she barely knows the guy, and what little governing he did in her absence damn near destroyed the city.
Final Thoughts
There was no tension at all in the pre-explosion scenes. Tension can only exist if there's a chance -however slight- that a plot could go awry. But we've all known for weeks that someone was going to get blown up, so there was no way Lancel was going to blow out the candles, and there was no way Margaery was going to get out of the sept.
I'm glad that Tommen's dead. He was a terrible character. But now who will look after Ser Pounce?
While it's nice to finally get quasi-confirmation that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, I'm left wondering why exactly Bran had to go back in time to find that out. What use is that knowledge to anyone at this point?
I understand that time passes between scenes, but it sure looks like Varys borrowed Littlefinger's teleporter. Part of the problem is that the various story lines don't move at the same pace. So it could be weeks or months at King's Landing, and only a few days at Winterfell. Sam's only just made it to Oldtown, but Varys sailed from Essos to Westeros and back in the space of two episodes. Plus, no one seems to age or really change their appearance in any discernible way. The Westerosi barbers must be really good.
The show moves the plot forward in a staggered fashion that I don't really like. It feels like things take forever to build up, and then they resolve everything in five minutes. This episode was the most blatant example. They spent twenty minutes setting up for the trials and having Loras confess and whatnot, and then blew everyone up. Why even bother showing Loras getting his head carved?
How the hell did Arya manage to bake the Freys into a pie? Killing them without getting caught, I could buy. But butchering them, bringing their meat into the castle, sneaking into the kitchen and baking a pie without anyone noticing seems a little ridiculous.
Cersei becomes Queen because the High Sparrow has a moment of absolute intransigence and stupidity, and everyone gets blown up. How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeenient. She's basically replaced Ramsay as the personification of evil on the show. Everything went her way, and everyone who opposed her wound end up dead, even though no one at all with any power should support her, and the hoi polloi should be rioting until her head is on a stake.
A good number of the victories on this show are completely unearned. Battles are won through the lucky arrival of reinforcements that no one knew were coming, armies are sabotaged by magic ninjas, and enemies are burned to death due to extreme stupidity. Daenerys, Jon, and Cersei aren't where they are due to any particular cunning or intelligence; Daenerys is magic, Jon is lucky, and Cersei has some kind of forcefield that turns everyone around her into a moron.
This season's been pretty disappointing, overall. I'll keep watching, since I like some of the characters, but I won't be expecting much out of it.
Despite all its flaws, this was an average episode. I gave it an extra half-star because Lady Olenna told the Sand Snakes to shut the fuck up.
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