The epic saga of Game of Thrones came to what is widely considered a not-so-epic end back in 2019, with a finale that for many was underwhelming at best and awful at worst. After I rewatched the pilot on the 12-year anniversary back in April, I decided that it was only fair for me to revisit the series finale for its fifth anniversary in May and see if some of the sour notes from 2019 are a little sweeter circa 2024 ahead of House of the Dragon Season 2, which will make for blockbuster summer streaming for those with Max subscriptions.
For some context, I wasn't exactly angry about how Game of Thrones ended back in 2019; more just disappointed. I'd run out of enthusiasm back in Episode 4 of the eighth and final season, starting very specifically with Daenerys' decision to legitimize Gendry into a valid claimant for the Iron Throne. So, my hope for my finale rewatch was simply to find a silver lining in the disappointment, and there was ultimately enough to make me want to start the series over again.
Daenerys' Speech (And Emilia Clarke's Performance)
I was one of what seemed like relatively few back in the day who didn't have a problem with Dany snapping and roasting King's Landing. There was plenty of foreshadowing; the problem was the pacing that led to that fateful decision. Her finale speech in King's Landing really showed the culmination of her journey, not least because she spoke in Dothraki and High Valyrian. Nobody could deliver a grand speech in a fictional language quite like Emilia Clarke, and I didn't fully appreciate the scale after the first time I watched the finale.
Do I know how there were so many Dothraki when the majority of them were supposed to have perished during the battle of Winterfell? I sure don't, but that doesn't take away from Dany's speech.
Jon And Tyrion's Reactions To Dany's Speech
Jon and Tyrion weren't fluent in High Valyrian, but both men clearly clocked the moment in Dany's call to war when she mentioned Winterfell and Lannisport. With both already questioning her leadership after she burned King's Landing, the expressions on Kit Harington and Peter Dinklage's faces really hit me a little harder this time. Plus, seeing Dany's sense of righteous fury while Jon and Tyrion grew uneasy strikes me as parallel for what's to come in House of the Dragon's second season as the Targaryen family tree rips itself apart on dragonback, with the common folk presumably paying a high price.
Plus, Jon always felt more like the son of Ned Stark than of Rhaegar Targaryen, and it tracks that he'd be more concerned with Winterfell than blindly following Daenerys.
Drogon Didn't Roast Jon
There were two moments that I was pretty convinced a rewatch couldn't redeem for me, and one of them was that Drogon didn't immediately roast Jon after Jon killed Dany. Jon himself clearly expected it! And while I still think it's nearly as bizarre as Grey Worm not immediately executing Jon well before a council could determine his fate, House of the Dragon Season 1 establishing that dragons definitely have minds of their own and are not 100% beholden to their riders kinda sorta reconciled me to Jon surviving Drogon.
It also encourages me to rewatch from the beginning to see what foreshadowing there may have been – or what can be interpreted as foreshadowing in hindsight – of the "fire" in Jon as the "song of ice and fire."
Jon's Fate Was What Ned's Should Have Been
This was actually my favorite element of my rewatch, and something I entirely missed the first time around: Jon's fate was what Ned's would have been if Joffrey hadn't gone rogue and had him executed. Just like Ned, Jon was considered guilty of treason. Just like Robb with Ned, Sansa had an army of Northmen ready to attack if anything happened to Jon. And just like Season 1, the compromise that would prevent a war would be for the accused man to give up any claims and titles to go to the Wall as a member of the Night's Watch.
This could have been War of the Five Kings 2.0, with whoever was left alive in the Seven Kingdoms. Instead, Jon's fate happened as Ned's was meant to. Talk about a throwback to the very beginning!
The North Becoming Independent
Sansa declaring that Bran could be king of the Six Kingdoms because the North was remaining independent was one of the best parts of the finale even back in 2019. I still think the shot of Yara Greyjoy and the new Dornish Prince immediately after Sansa said it was pretty hilarious, since I have to imagine the Iron Islands and Dorne would have seceded as well if they'd known that was an option before voting.
But Sansa's journey is one that deserves to be revisited, not least because I was originally annoyed by how Game of Thrones' later seasons completely rewrote her A Song of Ice and Fire arc. The girl who couldn't wait to go south became Queen in the North.
Arya's Goodbye To Jon
Part of why I'm glad I rewatched the finale is that I was originally so disappointed in the Stark kids splitting up that I couldn't really take Arya's decision to see "what's west of Westeros" all that seriously. That meant that I didn't really appreciate her goodbye scene with Jon, when theirs was established as such an important relationship at the beginning of the series. Arya showed more emotion in the farewell to Jon than the whole rest of the finale, and the reference to her still having Needle tugged at my heartstrings.
Rewatching this did make the Stark kids splitting up sting all over again, but also made me want to revisit the earliest days of all of them together again.
The Last Shot Parallels The Series' First Shot
Another moment I didn't fully note the first time around was how the last scene of the series with Jon going beyond the Wall was a direct parallel to the first scene of the series. This time, instead of Night's Watch brothers leaving the Wall to find dead wildlings and White Walkers, Jon was traveling with the wildlings after the threat of the White Walkers passed. For as many shortcomings as there were in the last season and certainly the finale, the show did come full circle. This was fresh in my head after rewatching the pilot and now has me in the mood to revisit everything in between.
If all of this seemed Stark-heavy, it's because they were the surviving characters with the most disappointing endings for me. That's not to say that the Starks were flawless – Ned basically got himself executed, Rickon never learned to serpentine, and I could write a whole separate piece about how the show changing Robb's marriage from the books made him look terrible. But the finale made me want to rewatch the Starks in particular from start to finish, and that won't be hard to do with Game of Thrones streaming in full on Max.
