UK TV review: Game of Thrones Season 6, Episode 10 (The Winds of Winter)
Review Overview
Wildfire
10Wipe-outs
9Winter
10Paul Greenwood | On 28, Jun 2016
Warning: This contains spoilers.
There’s a splendid Robin Williams stand-up routine from the 80s where he talks about being a new father and the shock of seeing a soiled nappy for the first time.
“You may have been a lumberjack, you may have been a marine, you may have seen blood and guts,” he says, “but you’ve never seen caca like this.”
And that’s pretty much how I feel about Game of Thrones – I’ve sat through the worst, most shocking stuff that cinema has to offer in well over three decades as a film-watcher, shrugging off the filth and depravity as though it were nothing, munching on my sweeties all the while.
But I’ve never seen caca like this.
And it’s not just a question of graphic content, far from it. It’s the sheer audacity and impact of the developments, coupled with the nature and matter-of-fact-ness of the show’s shocks that has delivered, time and again, moments and scenes to make the viewer recoil with their hand over their mouth. That’s not easy to achieve, and married to the unrivalled technical specs and performances, it’s the reason Game of Thrones has thrust itself to the position of Best Television Programme Ever.
Everyone involved has to take a bow, few more than director Miguel Sapochnik. Many fine directors have graced the series, but Sapochnik has surely written himself into TV legend with these two final episodes, delivering a richness of storytelling that radiates off the screen in moments both huge and subtle. Though the previous episode’s blood and thunder has been replaced more by opera and majesty, this finale was equally gripping – after last week’s Battle of the Bastards, this was more Inglourious Basterds.
First, Loras getting his forehead carved, then a room full of (mainly) baddies going up in flame. As Cersei gazed out over King’s Landing to the Sept, we could clearly see what was coming, but its brilliance lay in the way it was stretched out with wicked Hitchcockian glee (and The Godfather and Shakespeare tossed in too), ratcheting the tension through perfect timing and editing. And rarely has music been so prominent in the show, but it was used to perfection here, with this episode deserving of a soundtrack release all of its own.
The result was maybe half a dozen fairly major check-outs in the opening quarter of the ep, bloodthirsty even by the standards set. Tommen was never the most thrilling character, but it was a tragedy nonetheless for this misguided innocent. The only slight disappointment came with the setup of Margaery seeming to have had a plan for a while, only for her to get exploded too.
The moral is never underestimate Cersei, who has taken the undermining of her power very badly indeed. And perhaps now she’s gone full circle, from villain to sympathetic victim, to once again chief villain, able to accept, possibly even welcome, the death of her last remaining child because it allowed her to plonk herself on the Iron Throne.
With two seasons to go, we’ll soon need to hit the nitty-gritty of who’s going to sit there permanently. We have a new king in the north, a new queen in the south, and that would have been plenty for most episodes, but the way almost every season seems to finish on Daenerys points to her being favourite to land the job.
“You have your armies, you have your ships and you have your dragons,” Tyrion tells her. At long last, she’s on her way from misery to Westeros today, and with the size of fleet she has under her command, she now looks unstoppable.
An alliance will be needed to cement her position, but who will Dany aim to marry? Jon and Jaime seem the likeliest candidates. We now know for certain that Jon Snow is actually a Stark after all, the son of Lyanna, and Bran knows who his father is but he’s keeping that to himself for now, the scamp. All signs point to him being a Targaryen, which gives Dany the choice of her nephew (not a dealbreaker round these parts) or the man who killed her father. Although let’s not rule out Tyrion.
A season where the sometimes overly deliberate pacing occasionally seemed to be a problem has proven to be well worth it, with this finale combining culminations and beginnings in one beautifully judged package, closing off chapters and setting up new ones. Despite the near-perfection of the pacing, that niggle remains of just what those White Walkers are up to. Any number of characters have managed to cross continents in the time it’s taken them to head south, if indeed they are, although perhaps a clue came from Benjen, who can’t cross the Wall because the dead can’t cross the Wall.
Last week, we got Ramsay’s much-heralded comeuppance, but Walder Frey’s demise proved a decent runner-up in the cold, hard vengeance stakes, given the events of the Red Wedding. If a Lannister always pays their debts, so does Arya Stark of Winterfell. In any other context, a girl is a psychopath, but this was a glorious payoff three years in the waiting and we smiled along with Arya, as she sliced Frey up real nice.
Her father wouldn’t be proud of her, but those three little words that Ned Stark threatened us with for so long have finally come to pass: winter is here. It’s nowhere near here for audiences, though, for whom it means 10 frigid months of GoT-less telly. That will be especially hard to take, because, over the piece, and against sterling competition, season six has emerged as the finest yet.
For us, winter can’t come soon enough.
Game of Thrones Season 1 to 6 are available on Sky Box Sets. Don’t have Sky? You can also stream it on NOW, as part of a £7.99 monthly subscription. The show is also available on DVD, Blu-ray and pay-per-view VOD. For more, click here.
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