Season 6 of "Game of Thrones" Ends Its Run With Fire and Blood

Fire and blood, vengeance and tears, pins and pies, kings and queens, heart trees and heart-to-hearts, solemn pledges of fealty and dark secrets, and death and dragons. By the old gods and the new, what a finale that was.

There were some sensational moments throughout this week’s episode of Game of Thrones (“The Winds of Winter”) that made me feel that we are now moving into the final act of this narrative. Winter has most definitely come. 

I loved the scene between Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) in Meereen as she bade farewell to her lover Daario (Michiel Huisman) and then offered Tyrion the role of Hand to the Queen, literally pinning his future on his chest. There was a tremendous sense of having come full-circle here as Tyrion stepped back into the role of the Hand, a position that makes the most sense for the cunning and keen Lannister. While he’s been a murder suspect, a fugitive, a reluctant gladiator, a negotiator (and much more) during the last six seasons, this is the role that allows Tyrion to be his very best and it harkens back to Season 2 of Game of Thrones, when he saved King’s Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater. 

With Tyrion by her side, I don’t see how Daenerys can’t win the coming war… though of course there is the bigger war between the forces of good and evil on the horizon, as we move into the final two seasons of the series. I loved the new alliances that sprung up in the wake of the chaos of the last few episodes, as Lady Olenna (Diana Rigg), the last remnant of House Tyrell — decimated by Cersei (Lena Headey) — forged an alliance with Dorne, the Greyjoys, and Daenerys, one brokered by Varys. Fire and blood, indeed. The sight of their amassed fleet — accompanied by dragons Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion — ended the season on a note of both triumph and dread as Daenerys fulfilled her quest for the past six seasons and made her way to invade the Seven Kingdoms.

After so many false starts and setbacks, this was a huge accomplishment, both for Clarke’s character and for Game of Thrones itself, positioning the players in a new configuration on the board. That the war of man would seem to be that between two women, in Dany and Cersei, is a fantastic surprise for a show that has perhaps not treated its female characters that well over the years. Was this always meant to be a stealth feminist show in the making? Hmm.

Let’s hope now that newly crowned King-in-the-North Jon Snow will also join forces with Daenerys’ coalition of the willing and rout the Lannisters out of King’s Landing for good: that showdown seems to be coming sooner rather than later, though I am not entirely sure how the narrative will twist and bend to allow either Jon to get far enough south or Dany far enough north for the two of them to finally meet… and likely fall in love, finally joining the great houses of Stark and Targaryen, ice and fire, in a single union. (The dragons and the men would likely come in very handily against the Night King, after all.)

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but be haunted by that look that passed over the face of Sansa (Sophie Turner, so fantastic this season) when she noticed that Lord Petyr Baelish (Aidan Gillen) was glaring at her brother. Littlefinger wants the Iron Throne for himself (his “pretty picture” of sitting upon the razor-like seat of power with Sansa by his side was creepily pathetic) and I fear that Jon will be the next victim of Littlefinger’s plotting. Come on, Sansa: take this guy out next. (We also learned that Sansa *did* know that Littlefinger and the Knights of the Vale were coming to lend their forces against House Bolton, so now I’m even more confused why she didn’t at least tell Jon that they had allies coming. Odd.)

Cerise proved to be just as cunning and dangerous as ever this week, unleashing the vast caches of wildfire underneath King’s Landing to destroy the Sept of Baelor and immolate her enemies… before turning her thirst for vengeance upon Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham) and delivering her to the Mountain for his pleasure. (Shudder.) It’s Cersei who crowns herself Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, mounting the Iron Throne just in time for Daenerys’ invasion… and for Jaime for return to King’s Landing and see what his sister has done.

(Poor Tommen, meanwhile, who opts to plunge to his death after seeing the explosion at Baelor's Sept. He really did love Margaery and his mother's act of vengeance is more than he can bare, knowing that she was behind the destruction of the sept. So the king, the first and last of his name, opts to take a very long walk off a very short windowsill.)

While taking out her numerous enemies and ascending to the Iron Throne, Cersei, aided by Qyburn (Anton Lesser), cleared the decks as it were, paving the way for the final act of the show by removing so many major players from the great game: Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer), the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce), Lancel Lannister (Eugene Simon), Mace Tyrell (Roger Ashton-Griffiths), Loras Tyrell (Finn Jones, who looked so different in this episode that I swear it was a different actor), Kevan Lannister (Ian Gelder), poor aforementioned Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman), and Grand Maester Pycelle (Julian Glover), felled by Qyburn’s little birds.

But those weren’t the only deaths, as Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) was able, at long last, to avenge the Red Wedding, slaying many of the Freys and baking them into a pie, which she served to Walder Frey (David Bradley) before removing her face — one of the very best moments in a season finale loaded with them — and slit his throat, ending the reign of the Freys and finally enacting the vengence she’s been craving since Season 1. Arya’s list is long, but she crossed off a few names this week, thanks to the help of the skills she learned while in the employ of the Jaqen H'ghar (Tom Wlaschiha) and the Faceless Men. (Was that part of Jaqen’s plan all along? Who can say?)

It was an extraordinary moment of reversal that was well plotted by David Benioff and Dan Weiss and beautifully directed once again by Miguel Sapochnik: that Arya, in the guise of a serving girl, emotionally tortures Walder Frey by slowly revealing the fate of his sons was an exquisite moment of revenge, a dish literally served cold by our Stark-turned-assassin. The way the scene ramped up from the silence in the hall to Walder peeling back the crust of the pie to the glee with which Arya sliced open his throat and watched triumphantly as he bled out was as precise as it was impassioned.

This was one of the most satisfying episodes of Game of Thrones ever. That it followed on the heels of last week’s incredible installment only made this giant-sized finale all the more rich and textured. That we returned to the Tower of Joy, courtesy of Bran’s greensight, and finally — FINALLY! — got proof of R+L=J was really just the icing on a perfect lemon cake.

"Penny Dreadful" Ends Its Run Rather Unexpectedly

Sorry, Penny Dreadful, but that was a simply dreadful finale.

Sunday's installments of the Showtime drama — which ended up being a series finale for Penny Dreadful — were ultimately the two weakest episodes of the series' entire run, which would have been forgivable... until it surprised viewers by announcing that it had reached its conclusion with a chyron reading, "The End" before rolling credits. Wait, what?

Airing back-to-back, these two final episodes were at times simply painful to get through. The plodding penultimate episode offered up a seriously wonky timeline and some credulity-straining goings-on in London, during which supposedly thousands of people died in the plague fog while others — Patti LuPone's Dr. Seward for one — strolled through town as though nothing untoward was happening. (Even after the frogs came up through her pipes.)

Also worth noting: These episodes also barely featured Eva Green's Vanessa, who was in maybe two scenes in the finale ("The Blessed Dark") and none in the penultimate episode ("Perpetual Night"), which felt odd as it's her story arc that is building towards resolution here. The series set up a final battle between Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), Lupus Dei ("the Wolf of God"), and Dracula (Christian Camarago) over the soul of Vanessa Ives — but ultimately Ethan kills Vanessa (a request that he denied her in Season 1 when she was possessed and viewers saw firsthand the consequences of her possession, unlike here) and Dracula just exits stage left with no explanation whatsoever. Where exactly was the change within Vanessa where she realized that she had erred giving herself to Dracula and bringing on the endless night? Where was any scene with Vanessa, really, other than a brief one of her "unhinged" with Dracula and one where a white-clad Vanessa meets her end in a room full of burning candles?

It felt incredibly anti-climactic and to have Ethan shooting Vanessa in her stomach after kissing her removed any real agency from Vanessa herself — perhaps creator John Logan didn't want Vanessa to kill herself (and make her ascension to Heaven more, well, complicated if you go in for that liturgy), but it felt like a sad end to a powerful character who had waged war against Satan himself for control of her immortal soul.

Not buying the spin that this was what Logan had planned from halfway through Season 2: the resolution here felt messy, rushed, and downright nonsensical at times, creating as many new dangling plot strands as it did tying up others. The fact that Season 3 wasted so much time mired in the Wild West (ugh) — with its main characters separate and isolated for nearly all of the season — AND it ended up being the final season feels especially unlikely.

While Perdita Weeks’ thanatologist Catriona Hartdegan made for an intriguing new character, she is ultimately left as a leather-clad cipher of sorts, an anachronism who contained so much story potential but whose inherent possibilities were simply jettisoned by the end. (The same holds true for Simon Russell Beale’s Ferdinand Lyle, who was ignominiously ejected from the series — a storyline that seemed to point towards the rise of an Egyptian mummy in the future — several episodes ago. Yes, the point was that Vanessa was isolated and lone, but that seemed to be more the work of coincidence than any effort from Alexander Sweet/Dracula.) What was the point of spending so much time with Dr. Jekyll (Shazad Latif), introduced this season, but never showing Mr. Hyde, who ,while teased, never actually manifested himself. (Other than a painfully obvious reveal that his inherited title is "Lord Hyde.")

Ultimately, Vanessa Ives reclaimed her faith and was welcomed to the Kingdom of Heaven, felled by her former lover's bullet, and the other (male) characters grieved her. Lily (Billie Piper), finally freed by Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadway), leaves behind Dorian Grey (Reeve Carney), who fades into the background like one of the many portraits that line his grand hall. The Creature (Rory Kinnear) chose mortality rather than immortality for his poor dead son, and recited a final ode for dear Vanessa. Some beautiful images, yes, but these final scenes lacked the impact required by a series finale to stick its landing. Instead, it felt haphazard and forced, a poor end to a series that was brimming with passion and dark magic.

I loved Penny Dreadful so much, but these last two episodes soured me in such an unexpected and sad way. A shame, really.