Spoilers ahead for Episode 5 of Game of Thrones Season 8, called "The Bells."
The eighth season of Game of Thrones was a long time coming, received a whole lot of hype, and clearly has a massive budget to bring the saga to a close. So, it seemed like the show had the time and resources to make sure that silly mistakes don't make it into the finished product. Last week, eagle-eyed fans spotted what looked an awful lot like a Starbucks coffee cup sitting on the table at a Winterfell feast, and this week, Jaime Lannister seemingly had two good hands.
Yes, an official photo released by HBO shows Jaime and Cersei emotionally hugging it out, shortly before they died together in the Red Keep courtesy of Dany and Drogon. Jaime has his arms around Cersei, and his right hand is visible. Instead of the golden hand that got him captured when he was trying to sneak through Dany's lines to get back to King's Landing, the hand is flesh and blood. For whatever reason, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau wasn't wearing his fake hand when the picture was taken. Check it out:
Unlike the coffee cup mistake, however, Jaime's intact right hand did not appear in the episode. HBO confirmed to Fox News on May 13 that Jaime's right hand only appeared in the episode still that has caused such a buzz on social media, and a look back at the episode proves that in Jaime's scenes with Cersei, he was either visibly wearing the golden hand or his right hand was out of frame. HBO presumably won't need to release a statement like last week with the coffee cup!
So, no, Jaime did not channel his inner starfish and regrow a lost limb in his final episode of Game of Thrones. He did manage to accomplish quite a lot considering his lack of two functioning hands, though. Admittedly, he did get skewered by Euron Greyjoy, but he wasn't so badly injured that he couldn't skewer Euron right back, and it was enough to kill the Iron Islander. Jaime made his way through the enemy forces and dragonfire to reach Cersei, and he might have escaped with her if not for a blocked tunnel.
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He made a valiant effort to escape with the woman he loved. Unfortunately, Jaime was doomed from the moment he decided to return to Cersei rather than staying safely with Brienne. At the end of the day, Jaime spent too long absorbed in Cersei, and it was oddly fitting that they died in each other's arms.
That said, am I still annoyed that "The Bells" had Jaime say that he didn't care about the innocent people of King's Landing considering the whole reason he killed Aerys was become Aerys wanted to "burn them all" rather than surrender the city? 100%.
Technically, neither Jaime nor Cersei died on screen, but Jaime at least has to be dead. He likely would have died from the injuries he sustained courtesy of Euron if he hadn't been crushed by rocks before he had the chance to bleed out, and "The Bells" sold their final scene together as a death scene. Besides, there will be quite enough to take care of in the series finale without digging the Lannister twins miraculously alive out of the rubble of the Red Keep.
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Tune in to HBO on Sunday, May 19 at 9 p.m. ET for the series finale of Game of Thrones. There are still several plots that need to be wrapped up, and the showrunners are planning to go into hiding from angry fans until the finale is over. Will Dany's actions result in another civil war? Will everybody somehow be happy with how the show ends? We'll have to wait and see.
