Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

-John Donne, "No Man Is An Island"

"Did someone just fucking mention bells?"

-Daenerys Targaryen, probably

Game of Thrones' second-to-last episode, "The Bells", was, in every sense of the word—bad, good, sloppy, erratic, beautiful, sexy(?)—a fiery shitshow of epic proportions. First things first: Varys (Conleth Hill) met his end when he finally tried to spill some tea so hot it lit him on fire. But this was only the beginning; with her camp's traitor turned into Westeros' smoothest candle, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) set her sights on King's Landing immediately. No bullshit, no stalling, shockingly little preparation from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, just mother effin' fire and blood straight to Cersei Lannister's dome. Luckily, whichever pirate sniped Rhaegal out of the sky last episode only works every other weekend, because Daenerys and her last living son, Drogon, smashed the Iron Fleet, torched the city's defenses, and merked the Golden Company so quickly and easily you'd think they were a Dothraki horde fighting zombies in the dark. With the city won and Cersei out of moves, King's Landing rang its bells—an agreed-upon sign of surrender— and after an eight-season odyssey, the Iron Throne belonged to Dany. The story was over. The credits rolled. Benioff and Weiss announced episode 6 is just Jon Snow (Kit Harington) rubbing Ghost on his good boi noggin for 90 uninterrupted minutes.

Except, nah. Daenerys Targaryen actually just snapped, man. A lifetime of rage, entitlement, abuse, and just a little of that good ol' spicy Targaryen blood erupted all at once out of Daenerys, who sicked her monstrous offspring back on a docile King's Landing, torching soldiers and innocent townsfolk alike. Jon looked on in horror. Arya looked on in horror. Missandei looked on in horror from whatever the Westeros afterlife is, Robert Baratheon sitting next to her just absolutely smashed on ghost wine.

It was...a lot. I certainly have questions. You most likely have questions. Let's get into it.

Daenerys, Why Did You Do All That?

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Image via HBO

I should probably start off by saying the destruction of King's Landing from a purely technical and spectacle standpoint was gorgeous in its carnage. Director Miguel Sapochnik and his DP Fabian Wagner were coming off a lot of (somewhat deserved) flack for shooting "The Long Night" with a filter you could only see through if your TV was calibrated using the heart of a dying star. But I loved with they did here, shooting the mayhem from the ground up and having the world fall down around the viewer; the effect is making a huge set-piece feel claustrophobic, like the best, muddiest parts of The Battle of the Bastards. (Also shot by Sapochnik and Wagner.) It gave off the vibe of an old-school monster movie, with the key part being that we don't see any of Dany after she snaps, highlighting the fact that she, not just Drogon, is also the monster swooping in out of the sky.

Story-wise...woof. A lot to unpack here, the funniest part being that if Mad Queen Dany is really the path we want to head down, it's not bad! It makes sense! I'm 100% here for Daenerys just flying off the deep end and, through a mix of Targaryen heritage and overall frustration with life, deciding to turn her enemies into ash piles without any remorse because dropping a ten-ton living nuclear warhead on Cersei's head is easier than getting her to sign a peace treaty. Dany said she was gonna do it! Back in like, Season 2 Daenerys was all, "I am going to literally burn entire cities into goddamn nowheresville using my horrific monster children" and Jorah Mormont was just like, "please say that again but slower." But he wasn't listening. No one was really listening because Daenerys is like five feet tall and when she came to Westeros she still only had the second nicest hair next to Jon. So on the surface, I get it; Daenerys has always promised a whatever-it-takes approach to conquest, and I don't hate her finally making good on that vow.

But much like a significant portion of Thrones' back half, the writers just didn't put in the work. Almost, but not quite. There's a thin but definite line between ruthless (Tywin Lannister) and batshit murderous insane (King Aerys II Targaryen), and Dany has always straddled it toward the ruthless side. Torching the Unsullied's masters in Astapor. Crucifying the slave masters in Meereen. Executing the Tarlys. Being super okay with boning her nephew. All Most of these are, obviously, not very nice things, but they're not cruelties, they're means to a very clear end: Dany winning the throne. That's what sits awkwardly in her destroying King's Landing...she had won. And the moment she kept going past that victory she leaped from ruthless to cruel with nary a hint of warning. Being rash and petty and flying straight to the Red Keep to BBQ Cersei for the lols? I'd buy it! Burning innocent children in the streets? An unexpected development to say the least!

You just gotta work with the evidence you yourself provided, you know? It's like if Benioff and Weiss decided to have Tyrion fuck a pie, right, like mid-episode just cut to Tyrion absolutely going to town on a freshly-baked pie. A few of us would probably be like "that seems a little out of character." Imagine if the explanation from the showrunners was then, "Well, we've shown Tyrion having sex before." That's not the same! Adjacent, certainly but not the same. If you want to have a character end up as the pie-banging guy, you need to dutifully plant that seed for longer than an episode and a half. If not, you're just, you know, you're just having a guy fuck a pie.

Is This Really the End for Jaime and Cersei Lannister?

Lost somewhere in all the above salt, snark, and pie-desecrating metaphor is the fact that I oddly enjoyed this episode, mess though it was. Except for one glaring issue: The stupid lives and unearned deaths of Day 1 characters Cersei and Jaime Lannister.

Let's start with Cersei Lannister, the baddest woman in Westeros, Queen Schemer, Ned Stark head-snatcher, peak Gamer of Thrones, she who bombed a Sept with wildfire and watched it freakin' burn from her bedroom window. Last week, Cersei chopped off the head of Daenerys' closest friend and was like, one glass of wine away from doing that pro wrestling "suck it" gesture while she did it. This week, Cersei...crossed her fingers and hoped for the best without a backup plan or, honestly, a front-up plan. So ends Cersei Lannister's Season 8 run, having left the Red Keep a grand total of one (1) time. It's so odd that Varys and Cersei, this show's savviest, ace-up-their-sleeve characters, both died in the same episode by getting hoisted so severely by their own petard.

Then there's Jaime, who over the course of eight seasons (and a lost hand, a steamy bath confession, and one night with a knight) we watched leave the sins of his past behind, toxic relationship to his sister and all. When he dipped on Brienne last week to return to King's Landing, many—myself included—thought his speech about being a "hateful person" was a coded way of saying he was off to kill his sister, not reunite with her, because he wasn't a hateful person, not anymore. Except...nope. Jaime, freed from bondage by his brother, makes it into the Red Keep just in time to die with his arms around his sister, looking her in the eyes and saying "nothing matters but us."

Again, this is technically fine. Sometimes people are just trash and deserve to die together in a castle basement surrounded by dragon skulls. That was, word-for-word, my exact high school yearbook quote. And top-to-bottom, the performances put in by the Lannisters this episode were stellar. Tyrion's heartbreaking farewell to his brother ("You were all I had") was Peter Dinklage's best work in ages, and Lena Headey's desperate, tearful pleas to Jaime to not let her baby die absolutely tore me asunder.

But the final resting spot of Jaime and Cersei is just so emblematic of Season 8's overarching issue; it's two characters stripped of everything that made them dynamic and everything that made them grow, standing in a spot I assume George R.R. Martin vaguely dictated to the showrunners years ago, so they can die right on the scheduled time before the finale.

Did the Cleganebowl Live Up to the Hype?

ABSO—and I cannot stress this enough—FUCKING-LUTELY. I don't really love delving into theories much, but the one that's stuck with me as the most intriguing since I got into this Game of Thrones fandom is the idea the Clegane brothers, half-burnt Sandor "The Hound" Clegane and mostly-dead Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane, are destined to meet in combat. (This video explains it pretty succinctly.) After years of anticipation, "The Bells" made it happen and honestly? It ruled. What can I say? I'll spend thousands of words harping on storytelling devices and character development but I'll be good-goddamned if I'm not going to love a horrifically scarred warrior fighting his monstrous undead brother in a crumbling castle while a dragon flies around in the background. That's the most metal shit I've ever seen in my life. I want this scene airbrushed on to the side of a Volkswagen Bus. And by that I mean I want it tattooed across my chest.

Just, top-to-bottom fantastic. Qyburn, who I have to assume has never seen Frankenstein, getting his head smashed in for giving sass to an eight-foot-tall science experiment. Cersei casually strolling around The Hound like someone trying to get off the subway while a crazy person screams in the doorway. The Mountain actor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson—who no doctor can convince me isn't Earth's last living frost giant—apparently putting it in his contract that zombie or no zombie he's going to take his shirt off. Sandor laughing in the literal face of death and tackling his brother through a wall and into a sea of flame, the ultimate karmic payback for the burn scar he received as a boy?

Just...so great. The hype finally arrived. Long live the hype.

Where Is Arya Riding Off To?

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Image via HBO

Extremely hard to say. After barely surviving Dany's rampage by hiding under the building that just happened to fall on her head, Arya awoke in a burnt-out King's Landing to spy a single horse, which she appears to ride straight out of the city. Strange, because in the preview for next week Arya appears to be right back in the city, gazing at Daenerys' victory march. So what gives?

A few options: 1) The horse is just a horse and Arya, being the most resourceful of the Starks, decided to get away from the area where an insane dragon lady just slaughtered hundreds of people. She comes back when the coast is clear. 2) Arya is inside the Soul Stone. 3) Arya, who you may remember saved all of humanity two episodes ago, is effing off to sunnier shores and we never see her again.

Or, if I must put this evil into the world, the destruction at King's Landing opened Arya's eyes to her own mortality and the fragility of life, so now she's off to find Gendry for marriage and good ol' fashioned castle keepin'. This is, without a doubt, the worst option, so expect...this exact scenario to happen Sunday, 9PM EST, only on HBO.

How Does This All End?

Right, yeah, so next week is the end. Like, The End. The series finale. When next week's episode ends, the show Game of Thrones...also ends. Forever. We're all gonna' have to go back to tweeting about our actual lives and frankly it's going to be terrible.

With the end on the horizon, let's check in on all our major players still alive in the Game of Thrones:

Jon Snow - Perpetually confused by everything, even his own existence. Incredibly unfit to rule but probably will end up on the Iron Throne anyway through a combination of luck, happenstance, and literally slipping on a banana peel on to the Iron Throne.

Daenerys Targaryen - Recently did a whoopsie and committed genocide. Probably going to rub a few people the wrong way. Suddenly takes after the father who once declared "burn them all" and then *spoiler* *spoiler* immediately got stabbed in the back.

Arya Stark - Extremely likely to stab Daenerys in the back.

Sansa Stark - Presumably buried underneath mounds of snow after the sheer volume of her "I told you so" caused an avalanche at Winterfell. Probably not gonna' be thrilled with how Daenerys conducted her siege.

Bran Stark - Warg'd into some cherry trees from a thousand years ago, please call again later.

Yara Greyjoy - I guess still taking back the Iron Islands, which she positioned as being helpful but in hindsight kind've seems like volunteering for the smallest load of the group project.

Tyrion Lannister - Doesn't really understand why he's still alive, either. If he's not immediately executed by Daenerys, he's most likely going to die in some other exceptionally unsatisfying way. Maybe cross-bowed by Bronn.

Holy shit, Bronn: This subplot is still happening. Can you believe that?

Oh Also Euron Died.

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Image via HBO

Sorry, that is less a question and more of a general statement. Euron Greyjoy died at the hand of Jaime Lannister, but not before looking straight into the camera and laughing at you for wasting seven years of your life. In some ways, I'll dearly miss this insane pirate son of a bitch, especially the way he barely mattered to the plot until Season 8 and the way Pilou Asbæk played him like Captain Jack Sparrow except addicted to black tar heroin instead of rum. At least Euron died doing what he loved...getting stabbed through the chest and bleeding out on to some sand. I'm assuming he was into that. Sexually, I mean.

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