The decade’s long journey has finally reached its conclusion, and not without controversy. The reaction to this season has been mixed, to put it mildly, and this episode will do nothing to change that. After last week’s divisive episode, there was no way this finale wouldn’t generate more of the same reaction.
As always the music and visual spectacle were phenomenal, the two elements that have never wavered, instead going from strength to strength. So too the acting, with yet more wonderful performances from the whole cast, although Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage and Maisie Williams stand above the rest in this finale.
The whole focus of the last two seasons has been to bring the story to its conclusion, rushing through plotlines and skipping significant character development, instead resting on its laurels, in order to get to the end. So the stakes were high for this finale, to say the least. And, much like the rest of the season, it only partially delivers.
There are incredible moments of high drama and tension, with a couple of elegant twists, but the end result feels distinctly unexceptional. The showrunners promised a bittersweet ending, and this is certainly it, although probably not the way they intended.
Regardless, it’s been a magnificent run and it’s hard to imagine any other programme having quite such a grip on the public consciousness. It has certainly changed television drastically — a look at the upcoming fantasy sagas, such as Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequels or BBC’s His Dark Materials series, is a testament to that. And that is certainly something for which we can be eternally grateful.
S08 E06: The Iron Throne — Episode recap and discussion
WARNING — SPOILERS AHEAD
Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones. Photo: HBO
We open with Tyrion assessing the still-burning city, tormented and distraught. Meanwhile, Grey Worm is executing Lannister soldiers, at Daenerys’ behest, which Jon finds suitably appalling. But he is not about to stop because Jon asked him to, leading to a rather tense stand-off before Grey Worm resumes slicing Lannister throats.
Tyrion goes on the hunt for his brother and sister and finds their remains buried beneath the collapsed dungeons. Peter Dinklage is at his magnificent best here, his heartbreak expertly portrayed without any words, which given the writing this season, is probably for the best. He is well and truly alone in this world now, no more Lannisters and his oldest friend, Varys, gone at his bidding.
There is a rally oddly reminiscent of a Nazi-era demonstration. Although this time it’s the brown people doing the rallying and conquering, so it’s subversive? The imagery here is far from subtle, so too the decision to have her speech in Dothraki and Valyrian rather than English, and Daenerys’ speech promises more horrors to come. There is no remorse in her expression or her words, despite looking across a city burnt to a crisp. Tyrion joins her atop the steps and relinquishes his handship before being promptly arrested for treason.
Arya sneaks up on Jon and states the bleeding obvious, that Daenerys is a killer and Sansa will not bend the knee. Jon visits Tyrion in his cell and Tyrion says much of the same, as well as imploring Jon to take the throne.
Daenerys is in the throne room at long last, her vision from the House of the Undying finally fulfilled. She reminisces about her childhood to Jon, who is in no mood for whispering sweet nothings. Daenerys tries to justify her burning a city of a million people and her planned conquests to come, to build a better world, but Jon is having none of it.
Daenerys begs Jon to rule with her, to create her vision of a just world. They embrace in a passionate kiss and Jon stabs Dany through the heart with his dagger, a clear nod to the Azor Ahai prophecy that they had seemingly abandoned (where the Prince That Is Promised stabs his beloved through the heart in order to save the world). Drogon swoops into find his mother dead, and, in a tear-jerking scene borrowed from The Lion King, implores her to move before crying out in anguish. There is a tense moment as it looks to all the world as if Jon is about to be burnt to a crisp. Drogon instead turns his fury on the throne and melts it to smithereens before flying off into the distance with Dany’s body.
In the lore of Game of Thrones, dragons are said to be as smart as men, if not smarter, and Drogon’s decision to burn the throne rather than Jon clearly shows an awareness of the true cause of his mother’s death, even if the show has rarely portrayed them as more than wild beasts hell-bent on burning things.
Fast forward a few weeks and a Great Council of Lords has been called to determine the future of the realm. Jon is notably absent from these discussions, another peculiar decision by the showrunners given that he is “the rightful heir”. Tyrion tells the council to choose the next ruler, here and now, and there is a stunned silence. Edmure Tully (did anyone else forget he was alive?) steps forward to make his claim, being very selective with the truth. Veteran of two wars, proven track record of statecraft? Sansa very quickly shuts him up.
Sam votes for democracy. Cue laughter. Tyrion proposes Bran the Broken as the next king. His story is certainly a compelling one, as Tyrion points out, although on paper he is a far more interesting candidate than in practice. The council all agrees, except Sansa. A nice little political move by Sansa, allowing everyone to affirm their fealty to Bran before her, meaning they can’t really take back that fealty when Sansa proposes the North’s independence. She learned from the best.
Tyrion informs Jon of the Council’s decision to send him back to the Night’s Watch to appease Grey Worm and the Unsullied. Jon still can’t really come to terms with killing his beloved queen, and Tyrion still seems on the fence about it all, but at least he’s there to clean up his mess.
Gwendoline Christie in Game of Thrones. Photo: HBO
From there it’s all about tying up the loose ends. The remaining Stark children say their goodbyes, the ultimate winners in the Game of Thrones — a comeback story for the ages. Arya is off to explore new worlds to the west of Westeros. Screw all the prequels, this is the spin-off I want to see. Jon returns to Castle Black, stripped of titles and lands, as if that was a punishment for a man so uncomfortable with power and haunted by his decision to murder his queen.
In the end, Dany’s vision was realised, even if she wasn’t the one to see it fulfilled. The wheel has been broken, at least for the time being, although I can’t imagine any future Great Councils will be quite so smooth when determining the new king or queen. Sansa is the first female Queen in the North while Ser Brienne is the first female Lord Commander of the King’s Guard. Bronn finally got his castle, and much more, while Ser Davos gets his seat on the Small Council. The final scene is a call back to the very first episode as Jon rides out beyond the Wall. All rather neatly tied in a bow, with a hopeful message that Winter is gone and Spring is here to stay.
It’s hard to tell whether or not this is a satisfying ending. There were a couple big twists, but for the most part, it was a fairly saccharine episode. The biggest question that remains from both this episode and the season as a whole is whether they’ve done enough to justify those twists.
Daenerys’ future was foreshadowed for several seasons, but the lack of build-up to her descent into self-righteous madness cheapened and diminished its power. Bran being put on the throne makes a lot of sense, but it feels unearned given the role he has played this season, barely on screen other than creepy, emotionless stares and dry dialogue. Not to mention how calm and unselfish the council that crowned him was. Thousands of Ironborn fought to be an independent kingdom and yet there was no objection from Yara Greyjoy when only the North was given independence. Maybe they have done the maths and realised that all of their kingdoms were too weak and this method promises the possibility of one of their own ending up on the throne. It was all perfectly logical, but that is perhaps the problem. It was reasonable, calculated and ultimately lacking emotion.
Reflecting upon eight seasons, the contrast is stark between the material sourced directly from the books and when it overtook them. The shift to a plot-driven, spectacle based show rather than characters scheming makes it very much a series of two halves. The second half produced some exceptional television, particularly when it came to portraying big battles, but the writing definitely suffered from that swing in tone. There is a reason George RR Martin has not been able to finish his sprawling books, despite having been working on them for decades. And all those reasons were exposed in the final few seasons of Game of Thrones as Benioff and Weiss did their damnedest to achieve what Martin could not.
The ending was all very hopeful, and there is nothing inherently wrong about that, it just felt rather unlike Game of Thrones. There’s never going to be a way to please everyone, but this season really hammered home that Game of Thrones is in the end just a television show. It was still a damn good one, but it suffered as most programs do when trying to find a satisfactory conclusion. It is undoubtedly a shame that viewers will never get the product that might have been had the books been completed, although perhaps it is fallacious to assume that Martin will be able to pull of what the showrunners ultimately couldn’t – find a way to end the story while maintaining its thrilling and subversive nature.
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Joe is the film and TV critic for The Lincolnite. He is a Master’s student at the University of Lincoln, having abandoned the sunny beaches of the Cayman Islands for the slightly colder climes of Lincolnshire to see whether he could make it as a writer. Joe graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland in 2016, where he studied the Liberal Arts and drank far too much bad American beer.
The Lincolnite welcomes your views. All comments are reactively-moderated and must obey the house rules. Please stay on topic and be respectful of other readers.
The Lincolnite welcomes your views. All comments are reactively-moderated and must obey the house rules. Please stay on topic and be respectful of other readers.
There has been a further 53% spike in COVID-19 cases so far this week in Lincolnshire, and hospital-based coronavirus-related deaths have gone up by one compared to last week.
The latest figures show there have been 422 coronavirus cases so far this week but government recorded deaths have decreased by three — an increase of 53.45% compared to the 275 cases and two deaths last week.
The government’s COVID-19 dashboard on Friday recorded 51 new cases in Lincolnshire, 33 in North East Lincolnshire and nine in North Lincolnshire.
There were no deaths reported in government figures, however a decrease in numbers earlier this week was due to residents being more accurately designated to their correct addresses.
NHS England, however, reported one local hospital death in Greater Lincolnshire’s four health trusts so far this week (but none on Friday), equal to this time last week.
On Friday, national COVID cases increased by 10,476 to 4,610,893 while deaths rose by 11 to 127,956.
Lincolnshire County Council’s director of public health Professor Derek Ward said that of the 270 cases in the last seven days, about 110 were the new Delta variant, implying at least half/two-thirds could be the Indian mutation.
Lincolnshire’s coronavirus case date up to June 18.
However, he said Lincolnshire had a much better chance of getting enough people vaccinated before the lockdown delay ends than some other areas of the UK. Over 900,000 doses have been administered in the county so far, almost 80% of the population.
The R number in England has remained unchanged from last week, staying between 1.2 and 1.4, latest government figures have shown.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also said he is “very confident” that the final stage of lockdown will take place by July 19 after delaying it by a month this week.
Vaccinations have also opened for all adults, meaning anyone over 18 can now book a COVID jab.
Meanwhile, the ONS weekly infection survey has estimated that 105,000 people nationally had coronavirus, outside hospitals or care homes, in the week ending 12 June. The figure is equal to 1 in 520 people.
Coronavirus data for Greater Lincolnshire on Friday, June 18
61,605 cases (up 93)
42,639 in Lincolnshire (up 51)
9,854 in North Lincolnshire (up nine)
9,112 in North East Lincolnshire (up 33)
2,194 deaths (no change)
1,622 from Lincolnshire (no change)
302 from North Lincolnshire (no change)
270 from North East Lincolnshire (no change)
of which 1,312 hospital deaths (no change)
816 at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (no change)
42 at Lincolnshire Community Health Service hospitals (no change)
1 at Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation Trust (no change)
453 in Northern Lincolnshire (NLAG) (no change)
4,610,893 UK cases, 127,956 deaths
DATA SOURCE — FIGURES CORRECT AT THE TIME OF THE LATEST UPDATE. POSTCODE DATA INCLUDES DEATHS NOT IN HEALTHCARE FACILITIES OR IN HOSPITALS OUTSIDE AUTHORITY BOUNDARIES.
A teenager alleged to have murdered a 12-year-old appeared “oblivious” when he spoke hours later to a mutual friend, a jury at Lincoln Crown Court was told on Friday.
The friend told the jury that he spoke to the defendant later on the day when Roberts is alleged to have been murdered at Fishtoft.
At the time of their conversation Roberts had been reported missing and some of his friends spent time looking for him in Boston.
The witness said: “I called him (the defendant). I talked to him about what a girl had told me. Something had happened. He (Roberts) had disappeared.
“He (the defendant) was oblivious to it. More like he didn’t really care. We talked about how weird the situation was because Rob wasn’t the type of person to run off. We talked about that for about 10 minutes. After that we shifted the conversation.”
The witness said that earlier on the same day he met up with the defendant in Boston and they spent time together.
When asked to describe how the defendant appeared, the witness said: “He was obviously feeling down. In general he was drained. A bit snappy. To put it bluntly he was just different.
“Physically he was injured on his hand. He was all plastered up. I asked him what happened. He said he cut himself.”
The witness said he later learned from a friend that Roberts was dead.
The 14-year-old defendant, who cannot be identified because of a court order, denies the murder of Roberts Buncis.
The jury has been told that Roberts was lured from his home by the defendant in the middle of the night who then stabbed him “again and again” leaving him with multiple knife wounds.
Roberts’ body was found in a wooded area near to a footpath in Fishtoft on the morning of December 12, 2020.
A petition has been launched to fully re-open the toilets on Lincoln’s Westgate car park after council leaders announced they would only be opening the facilities for events.
The City of Lincoln Council’s executive will examine the plans later this month, which will also see the Victorian urinals at The Lawn on Union Road and Newport Arch closed permanently, and facilities at Lucy Tower opened for special events only in a bid to save £86,000 per year.
However, Fiona Purkiss of Midas Art in the Bailgate, along with other business owners, said the Westgate facilities need to be open and accessible to all on a daily basis.
Fiona said it was good that the disabled facilities would remain accessible, but that the walk to the Castle Square facilities — the closest public toilets to remain open — was too far for some of those without radar keys.
According to Google Maps, the distance between the two facilities is 450-550m depending on whether users go via the castle or the Bailgate.
A screenshot of Google Maps showing two routes people could take from the Westgate toilets to Castle Square. | Image: Google
She said that since the toilets closed at the beginning of the first COVID-19 lockdown, she had already seen people caught short, having to take drastic action or have an accident.
“I have had people come into the shop a bit anxious about needing the toilet. I would not say “no” [to them using my toilet] but it’s not actually suitable for the general public,” she said, adding she also had security concerns due to her own loo being accessed through a stockroom.
“I witnessed three men stood there. They got out of their car, tried the door and shouted back before weeing up against the wall.
“It’s been going for some time, we have had some very embarrassed, middle-aged women arrive who would not make it to Castle Square. They have been forced to wee in a carrier bag or a tissue box they kept in their side door.”
“It’s mortifying for them,” she said.
Fiona Purkiss, of Midas Arts. Photo: Daniel Jaines
She said a suggestion that people use the toilets of pubs and restaurants could leave people feeling uncomfortable if they did not wish to purchase anything while there – particularly during lockdown when patrons are required to queue during busy times, and must have tables pre-booked.
She added that a lack of facilities could put visitors off coming to the city and that it was disruptive to delivery drivers, taxi drivers and others, including parents waiting to pick their children up from Westgate Academy.
The council, however, feels its proposals have been misrepresented by opponents.
It has denied the toilets will be closed permanently – but says that they have been “mothballed”.
Councillor Bob Bushell, Portfolio Holder for Remarkable Place at City of Lincoln Council, said: “The city council welcomes petitions and recognises they are a good way for people to convey their concerns to us.
“However, it is essential that people who are considering signing any petition are presented with the full and correct facts so they can make a judgement on whether to sign or not.
“Following consultation with the public, we are proposing to keep open the disabled toilet and allow the main facilities to be available during events such as Lincoln Christmas Market.
“At other times, alternative facilities are available on Castle Square, a short five minute walk away.”
“We have also never suggested that people use toilets in cafes and bars to supplement our provision, we have merely highlighted that paying customers have these facilities at their disposal and should use them if needed.
He said the proposals would also keep the toilets open at Tentercroft St and the bus station.
“Add to this the upcoming refurbishment of toilets at the Central Market and we feel there is a significant spread of facilities across the city, uphill and in the city centre, to serve the needs of shoppers and tourists alike.”
“Good food doesn’t have to be dull.” That’s what Ben Jennings at Twisted Street Food told The Lincolnite when we went to try out his now famous potato skewers, as well as a brand new item on the menu.
Ben Jennings, 48, is originally from London but has lived in Lincoln for 13 years, and he has worked in and out of the hospitality sector for almost a decade.
Twisted Street Food was an idea he had around two years ago, and after COVID-19 postponed the launch, he is now up and running selling street food delights in the city since October 2020.
Ben is meticulous with his food prep. | Photo: The Lincolnite
“I just love food, I am so passionate about it and always have been,” Ben told The Lincolnite. “Street food suits me down to the ground, it’s far better than being static in a kitchen.
“For me, the experience is of equal importance to the quality of the food, so it has to be fun as well as tasty.”
Here is where you can find Twisted Street Food, outside The Victoria pub on Union Road, Lincoln. | Photo: The Lincolnite
You can find Twisted Street Food outside The Victoria pub on Union Road, as well as his monthly pop-ups at Lincoln Castle.
Ben’s big hit so far have been his twisted potato skewers, which are twice fried and served with seasoning and sauce.
The potato skewers start off pretty routinely. | Photo: The Lincolnite
He has developed sixteen different seasoned salts and offers them in batches of four to six depending on demand, varying from cajun spice to Spanish onion and Cornish salt.
“This is where the magic happens.” | Photo: The Lincolnite
Ta-da! | Photo: The Lincolnite
The potato becomes twisted with a spiral cutter, before they are fried and dosed with a choice of Twisted’s various spices and sauces.
The skewers are then fried before being seasoned and prepped for serving. | Photo: The Lincolnite
His latest invention is a wonderful chilli dog, based on a 1950s recipe from Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.
Ben has added a local twist to this legendary dish, offering Lincolnshire sausages, supplied by local butcher Foster’s on Monks Road, instead of the traditional Bratwurst.
The chilli dog looks mesmerising. | Photo: The Lincolnite
The chilli dog will come with caramelised onion, nine hour slow cooked beef chilli mix, blow torched mature cheddar and then garnished with fresh chillies, spring onion and American mustard.
The gourmet burger is a sight to behold. | Photo: The Lincolnite
Adding this to the menu alongside the already popular skewers and gourmet burger is part of the next step in Ben’s development with Twisted.
With a menu this good, how can you go wrong? | Photo: The Lincolnite
Ben added: “Street food is taking off, and with table service looking to be the route forward it’s cause for me to be excited, everything is just so much more civilised.
“The uptake has been massive since we started, people seem really interested in it, I think above all else the public are just delighted to be back out and about.
The gourmet burger comes with onions, molten cheddar, lettuce, gherkins, onion rings, tomato and a prosciutto crisp. | Photo: The Lincolnite
“As for myself, I’m hoping to be able to reach the festival and events circuits soon enough, as well as doing a few private events and carrying on with the success we’ve had at The Victoria and the castle.”
The twisted potatoes will cost £3.50 with seasoning and sauce, while the gourmet burger and chilli dog cost £8.50 with French fries and sauce.
Great options at Twisted Street Food. | Photo: The Lincolnite
A trial hearing has been set for the seven people charged with the murder of Sam Davies in Lincoln.
Sam, 23, died after being found with multiple stab wounds at a property in Coleridge Gardens on Thursday, May 27.
Three men were initially arrested and charged with his murder, and they were then joined in custody by four others.
All seven men appeared at Lincoln Magistrates Court on Friday, June 18, and a Crown Court hearing date has now been set.
The seven men charged with Sam’s murder are:
Joe Jameson, 23, of Whitehall Terrace, Lincoln
Daniel Heydari, 24, of Chestnut Street, Lincoln
Eric Kesel, 18, of Browning Drive, Lincoln
Eimantis Gochman, 19, of Sturton Close, Lincoln
Charlie Wakefield, 20, of Broxholme Gardens, Lincoln
Billy Gill, 20, of Beaufort Close, Lincoln
A 17-year-old Lincoln male who cannot be named for legal reasons
All seven will appear before Lincoln Crown Court on June 28 ahead of the trial of the murder of Sam Davies, and have been remanded in custody until that date.
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