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Game of Thrones bungles the execution of its last great villain

Another season of Game of Thrones is over, and nobody knows when it will return. After a run of seven short weeks, last night’s extended ‘The Dragon and the Wolf’ brought the curtain down on Westeros for the time being, except the curtain here was the colossal wall of ice that is the last barrier between the living and the dead.

‘The Dragon and the Wolf’ is a strange beast – extending its running time to 80 minutes allows the filmmakers to avoid most of the pitfalls of this season (notably the characters’ mysterious ability to teleport around the vast continent) but they are missing the confidence to know exactly what to do with that space. The episode opens with a, quite literally, theatrical summit at an abandoned ‘dragon pit’, that feels both far too stagey and also incongruous with the tone of the show during the halcyon days of its early seasons. Cersei, Jaime, Jon Snow, Tyrion, Daenerys – not to mention almost all the beloved supporting characters – are brought together for the first time, but this sucks a lot of the tension out of the scene. Deals in Game of Thrones used to be bartered by individuals; this United Nations style convention feels out of place.

It also occupies a lot of space in the episode but reveals very little. Cersei twists and turns under the pressure of the looming threat of dragons, but ends up pursuing a course of action that fits precisely with her quotidien motives, which have been immutable since the first episode. House Lannister is going to watch the world burn (or freeze) and then rule the ashes. Jaime, however, is not onboard with his sister/wife’s plan and dashingly rides north alone, defying her will.

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