[Answer] How Would You Rate Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 4, S08E04 "The Last of the Starks"?

[Answer] How Would You Rate Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 4, S08E04 "The Last of the Starks"?

If the series keeps up this pace, every episode of the final season of Game of Thrones may well become a classic. At least so far, we’ve gone from the long-awaited reunions of Episode 1, to the gathering storm of Episode 2, then the battle between the living and the dead in Episode 3, and now, in this episode, to a successful and deeply oppressive turn after victory. Even though we all knew that once the great war was over, all the tensions and contradictions lurking beneath the surface would inevitably erupt, the sheer dramatic force and conflict the show delivers still far exceeds expectations. It is astonishing. The loss of a dragon makes the coming battle truly balanced in a meaningful sense, and between Daenerys and Jon, the hand of fate is stirring beneath the surface. The dead are gone, but the survivors still struggle on in other people’s hell. If we were to judge it by García Márquez’s line from Love in the Time of Cholera—“My greatest regret about love is not that I cannot die for love”—then perhaps Jorah Mormont, who died fighting to protect the woman he loved, was the happiest man in the entire series. By the same logic, if Jon Snow—the man who understands nothing—had died on the battlefield, he would still have remained a man worth remembering in Khaleesi’s heart, rather than becoming an unpredictable pawn in fate’s hands.

Tyrion Lannister, who in the previous episode had little chance to shine apart from a faint hint of rekindled feeling with Sansa in a moment of crisis, absolutely deserves to be named the MVP of this episode. His small body appears extraordinarily great as he fearlessly walks toward the fully armed forces waiting beneath the walls of King’s Landing. Varys, who has had fewer opportunities to appear prominently in recent episodes, chooses another dangerous path to pursue his lofty ambition of serving the realm and the people. If Tyrion had not delivered such a fearless performance before the gates of King’s Landing, perhaps Varys might have been the most outstanding man in this episode.

By contrast, the lovers are in a far more regrettable position. In a way, this also reflects the general fate of love itself: when crisis arrives, we cling to one another because of external pressures. The Night King and the coming of winter brought couples exactly the kind of tension one finds in a horror film. Arya and Gendry, Jaime and Brienne, Grey Worm and Missandei—even Sansa and Tyrion seemed to carry a faint suggestion of old feelings resurfacing. But once the Night King was abruptly killed and winter seemed to leave before it had truly arrived, the couples who had huddled together for warmth in the cold were suddenly eager to part ways. The only pair still truly united in heart, Grey Worm and Missandei, are cruelly torn apart by fate, which is heartbreaking. (Only Sam’s couple manages to successfully conceive a child at such a critical moment, which is rather impressive.)

But the most nerve-racking development of all is this sudden turn into something like The Return of the Condor Heroes: the once-intimate relationship between aunt and nephew shifts into mutual estrangement, and one can only hope they will not meet each other on the battlefield someday. Judging from how the director keeps darkening Daenerys for the sake of the plot, compared with worrying about whether Daenerys and Jon will end up fighting each other, we may be even more worried about whether Daenerys can survive long enough to make it through the final two episodes instead of being killed off before the finale.

Daenerys’s dark turn almost makes the audience forget how evil Cersei is. Compared with a villain who has been openly villainous from beginning to end, perhaps what pains us more is seeing someone like Daenerys lose herself in the pursuit of her ideals and eventually become the very thing she once hated most. If not for the reminders and emphasis provided from different angles by Cersei’s two brothers, some viewers might already have switched sides in this war and begun supporting King’s Landing instead. More than all the external threats and conflicts, it is the subtle changes inside the characters’ hearts that truly propel the story toward its final destination. This legendary tale that comes around once in a thousand years is nearing its end once again, yet it remains shrouded in mist. In a moment like this, all we as viewers can do is wait and see.