Game of Thrones fans were not happy with how “The Bells,” the penultimate episode of the final season, turned out on Sunday night.
Warning: Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 5.
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The episode, which ran just over 80 minutes, ran through half a dozen major deaths, while providing little of the character arc fans wanted to see.
Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) became exceedingly vindictive after everyone in her inner circle learned Jon Snow (Kit Harington) has a legitimate claim to the Iron Throne. Then, she wiped a good chunk of the King’s Landing population with her dragon.
Other characters were unceremoniously killed off. Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei (Lena Headey) Lannister were killed by a collapsing ceiling, giving Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) no chance to kill Cersei.
The Hound (Rory McCann) and The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson) had their duel, but it was quickly over and both died.
Arya also spent much of the episode running around trying to help people before she found a random white horse to lead her out of King’s Landing.
During the King’s Landing chaos, Euron (Pilou Asbaek), Qyburn (Anton Lesser) and untold hundreds of innocent people were killed.
Earlier in the episode, Varys (Conleth Hill) was executed after Daenerys found out he was trying to get Jon to take the lead from her. Jon said he has no interest in sitting on the Iron Throne, and later Varys was burned alive by Drogon.
“He was absolutely true to his word the whole way through,” Hill told Entertainment Weekly about his character. “All he wanted was the right person on the throne and a fair person on the throne. He said it so many times in the scripts. I don’t have the distraction of love or desire or any of those things. And the people he needed to see clearly were both in love. So that makes perfect sense. And now with hindsight, I’m okay, but I really was inconsolable.”
The episode also featured some questionable plot decisions by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. For example, a week after just one well-placed arrow killed one of Daenerys’ dragons, they were suddenly ineffective against her surviving fire-breather.
Fans were not happy with any of this.
The right people lived and died, but this episode was awful. #GameofThrones pic.twitter.com/5siB9USR4b
— Meagan Navarro (@HauntedMeg) May 13, 2019
D&D have ruined #GameofThrones with this awful season and this episode will be remembered for destroying the whole series. I can’t believe that they destroyed Dany and Jamie’s characters in one episode. I wish I never watched this show.
— Greg H (@fangj0k3r) May 13, 2019
WELL THAT WAS AWFUL #gameofthrones
— Erica Valdes (@ericav22) May 13, 2019
Why was their big defensive plan just like giant arrows? #GameofThrones
— 🇵🇦 Myself When I Am Real (@FunkyJazzCat) May 13, 2019
The final episode of Game of Thrones airs Sunday, May 19 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
Photo credit: HBO
