Game of Thrones Series Finale: Bran Stark Becomes King After Jon Snow Kills Daenerys Targaryen
Warning: This post contains spoilers.
Winter is gone.
Eight seasons and innumerable gory deaths later, Game of Thrones concluded Sunday night.
When we left off, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) had followed in her father’s bloody footsteps, becoming the Mad Queen as she massacred King’s Landing despite the city’s surrender. The question of how her noble-to-a-fault lover Jon Snow (Kit Harington), secretly the true Targaryen heir, would deal with her shocking transformation loomed.
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With Tyrion’s (Peter Dinklage) prodding, Jon cozied up to Dany as she asked him to join her in “liberating” the whole world as she did King’s Landing … aka, killing everyone.
“Build a new world with me. This is our reason,” she begged. “We break the wheel together.”
“You are my queen, now and forever,” he whispered, drawing her close — before stabbing her in the stomach.
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Dany bled to death, and Drogon flew over, breathing fire into the Iron Throne until it melted down. The dragon then snatched up her corpse in his claws and flew away.
Flashing forward a few weeks, the Unsullied were ruling what was left of King’s Landing, keeping Tyrion and Jon as prisoners, as the Northern soldiers laid siege outside. The lords and ladies of Westeros gathered and decided to choose a new ruler after quickly tossing aisde Samwell Tarly’s (John Bradley) idea of democracy (“Maybe we should give the dogs a vote as well!”). Tyrion nominates Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) for king.
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“He is our memory. The keeper of all our stories … of the past. Who better to lead us into the future?” he asked.
But would Bran, whose crippling fall arguably kickstarted the war, accept the crown?
“Why do you think I came all this way?” he asked, as wrly as the Three-Eyed Raven can manage.
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The North will remain an independent state ruled by Sansa (Sophie Turner), and “Bran the Broken” became king of the Six Kingdoms. Poor Jon was sent North of the Wall (again) to lead the Wildlings back to their own land, Tyrion became hand of the king (again), Arya (Maisie Williams) went off on her own (again) … and Sam presented the small council with a history book titled, you guessed it, A Song of Ice and Fire.
At least Jon reunited with Ghost! And all in all, the Starks — the house who lost the most at in season 1, when Ned’s head was chopped off — emerge victorious.
