Game of Thrones 6x10 'The Winds of Winter': A Winter of Fire

Game of Thrones 6x10 is monstrous, explosive, epic... and hopeful, delivering solid plot movement and the BIG REVEAL.

Reviewed while listening to THE GLORIOUS SCORE FROM THIS SEASON.

Despite its name, ‘The Winds of Winter’ doesn’t open with winter at all. Not in the traditional sense. No snow. No white walkers. No blistering cold that brings vindictive wolves. Those exist, but they come later, for they are not the only form of winter. The true heart of winter lies in fire. Merciless, purging, all-consuming fire. Scorching so much of the world that all that can be left in its wake is bitter hatred, unbearable grief, and silence. A winter born out of atrocity. A fire that burns the innocence of children and twists their hearts until they are only cold blooded monsters. Words are frozen on the tongue after what begins ‘Winds.’ Before there can be renewed hope, we must see the culmination of human evil. Not the evil of the Night’s King, detached and absolute, but the sickening evil of Cersei Lannister. Her name alone speaks of a devastating storm now. Fear Cersei. Fear the Ice Queen.

That is what she is, and she became the Ice Queen through fire we really should have seen coming, but the show deflected us just enough off the scent of her plan. Yes, Bran saw an image of Aerys Targaryen, the Mad King, yelling ‘Burn them all’ earlier this season. But there was nothing that tangibly connected him to Cersei. There didn’t need to be. What makes Cersei Aerys incarnate is no tangible thing. Only the will and malice of uncompassionate madness. She cannot make friends. She is surrounded by enemies, in every nook and cranny of the city. So she will just burn them all. Everyone. And she’ll do it through isolated, lost posterity. The vulnerable children of the streets who had no guidance, many of whom in all likelihood are vulnerable and easily manipulated because of all the things Cersei and her family had done before. She’s only breeding monsters from her own monstrosity, who can repeatedly stab an old man like vultures (despite the man’s own evil) and literally become mass murderers by blowing up a church full of people. Cersei gave the order, but those children found the caches of wildfire, and that boy led Lancel to the cellar, knowing full well what was about to happen. If that is the fate of Westeros’ next generation, then winter truly is here. Born from the ashes of wildfire.

‘Winds’ builds up to this tragic scene with arguably the most operatic and ambitious score Ramin Djawadi has dished out. It takes a moment for the Ludovico Einaudi-inspired sound to sync with the show’s tone (if you don’t know who that is, I’ll say his music is ethereal and leave it at that). But it’s what’s required to set a new tone, as we first watch a broken man betray who he is, on the day of Chicago’s gay Pride parade no less, and submit to the will of zealots. And then we learn that Loras’ confession, his broken nature, is utterly meaningless. He has no future. None of the people in the Sept of Baelor have a future. Olenna proclaims hers has been stolen from her after hearing the news. But perhaps the more poignant moment of grief comes not from the Queen of Thorns, but from a boy king staring out his window at an unrelenting smoke, his ears bare to the curdling screams of those who are at ground zero. His people, suffering, dying, burning. Because he failed to protect them from his own mother. This is not truly about Tommen. And it's not about Olenna. It’s about the innocent lives lost, and those who remain to suffer amongst the salt and ash. But we do have to see this all through Tommen’s perspective. He really wanted to be a good king. He tried to become the best ruler he could, for the good of these people. He was a good child. He was a beacon of light for the future. But the shadow of his progenitors was too great over his life, and his royal decrees. Tywin, Joffrey. Cersei. Cersei above all. He sees no future. He no longer believes he can make a better world. He has only, unwillingly, allowed it to burn. Like the children in the streets of his burning city, he is lost. The promise of a new generation making a better world is lost.

With that comes the winter formerly known as the reign of Queen Cersei of House Lannister. It would take a microsecond to determine that Book Cersei can move on quickly from the deaths of all her children. But show Cersei had a much stronger human element, an empathy we read in Lena Headey’s masterful performance that convinces us this is truly for her children, the light of her life. There was good reason to believe she would not move on easily at all. But now that they’re gone, what is left for her but lust for power? Her desire to feel good, and do terrible things because they feel good? She confesses her most sinister of motives before allowing Septa Unella to be tortured. With her on the Iron Throne, there is that sense of hopelessness you feel in the dead of winter. Westeros now finally has the ruler it has spent years earning. A Queen who, like some many in the realm, does things because they feel good.

It’s people like Cersei who bring unnatural forces like the White Walkers to humanity, to flood the poisoned world. Salvation, then, comes in the form of trust and unity. ‘Winds’ admittedly makes short work of alliances made and oaths given, and its minorly rushed and a tad sloppy. But just a tad. It mainly comes in the form of how quickly the Northern families move on from their betrayals of the Starks and say ‘We were wrong. Our bad. KING IN THE NORTH!’ And it’s most disappointing in seeing Olenna Tyrell and Varys share screen time and come out of that merely with the words ‘Fire and Blood.’ Surely the work of two great actors playing two mesmerizing characters deserves more than that. But Game of Thrones has to push forward, so it’s overlooked. The thing is, these are surprisingly trivial and forgettable slips when compared to the larger moments. Not just the wildfire explosion, which was a gut-wrenching marvel of sound and effects, but also the subtle beauty of Sam walking into the gargantuan Maester library in Oldtown. And Jon and Sansa finding hope in the knowledge of winter's arrival, the time of their family. The time for Wolves. ‘Father always promised.’ Then there’s Sansa’s rejection of Littlefinger, asserting her own independent rise. Then there’s Walder Frey finally getting caught by death, by a Faceless... Stark. Arya Stark. Together, they overwhelm the small mishaps of rushed writing. And they’re all just warmup.

Because only two moments truly matter for the side of the good. The first, naturally, is the final and undeniable confirmation of what book lovers call the Equation. R+L=J. Is the reveal of Jon’s true parents a little underwhelming because it was all but a known secret before now? Sure. But there’s something magical in finally seeing the twist we knew would come, in knowing for certain, at long last, that Jon is meant for great things, and is in every acceptable way a candidate for ruler. For King. To watch it unravel on the screen, young Ned ascending the Tower of Joy to his dying sister in their final reunion, and taking the boy who is a prince. It’s rewarding in a different kind of way than a shock value plot twist would be. The show's had enough of those. Maybe it's time for a reveal to just be, one we all knew but eagerly waited to be confirmed. It affirms the character who we care about and see as perhaps the most good of the powerful rulers, as the one we can get behind, both because we like him and because he actually is the rightful heir. Jon Snow is the Prince that Was Promised. And he could probably lay claim to the Iron Throne. If he cared about that. But what is a throne to him, compared to the salvation of the world? The Northern houses proclaim him King in the North, and he silently accepts. But not because he wants the power. But because he must. He must lead them against the White Walkers. The North Winter. He’ll come for the other, for Cersei, after he’s done serving his duty.

It's a simple hero's journey, but it's thoroughly earned because this story gave every reason to believe there was no hero. After so much heartbreak, so many subverted tropes, we'd almost come to accept bad things would just keep happening. Sometimes it was fun in the brutal way. Sometimes it was just redundant and almost self-mocking when the show relied too heavily on those 'shock' moments. It really needed to shift from that, dramatically speaking. Sansa said, before the Battle of the Blackwater, that Joffrey would survive because the monsters always survive. They always win. This same Sansa has now been reunited with her brother.Or now, cousin. They're in their ancestral home and she smiles as she welcomes winter. This is fulfillment of hope in a world without hope for so long. Jon's hero's journey then is more than just a trope. It's something to hold on to for the viewer. We knew who he was, but to see it finally happen, in the context of needing a hero, makes it impactful, if not surprising.

Which leaves Cersei, and the true game of thrones, to Danaerys Stormborn. There isn’t much ‘Winds’ needs to do here, so Danaerys gets only a sliver of scenes in the finale. But those scenes matter. She must let go of her bonds to Essos, no matter how cold it may make her seem when she lets go of Daario, a man who genuinely loves her as a person and not just a queen. Then she must hear the belief she has instilled in the perpetual drunken cynic that is Tyrion Lannister, who says what many in the world are thinking. ‘No thank you’ to belief, he says. He’s seen, like so many, where belief gets you. For the Faith of the Seven, it literally gets them torched. And yet, here he is, with a woman he believes can be a great leader, one who, like Jon, moves to serve the people. He has more belief than many of the viewers might, perhaps. Definitely more than me. A lot of questions remain after Danaerys' track record of burning her enemies, even if those were focused attacks unlike Cersei’s carpet bombing. But Tyrion’s proclamation, if nothing else, leaves a real possibility that Danaerys can be benevolent all the time. Her heart has normally been in the right place, and she listens to sage counsel. So she’s miles ahead of Cersei, and now she has the army to play ‘the great game.’ Giving us that epic and heart-pounding final scene. Again, it gives Ramin Djawadi the stage and lets him give a truly uplifting score, over the backdrop of dragons and hundreds of ships, sailing out under a new dawn.

That is at the crux of ‘Winds.’ Because the show has made great and necessary strides this season moving simply beyond shock value grim betrayals and the machinations of monsters. There’s plenty of that, with Cersei just picking up Ramsay Bolton’s slack. But it’s tempered with these heavy but not overdone moments propelling Jon and Danaerys, and all who follow them, to the places on the board they need to be to make real genuine change. That’s the good kind of fire, measured against the winter. That’s the fire of belief. Thus, season 6 ends itself with a grander sense of story that goes beyond the slayings and ‘gritty’ realism. It finishes as a capstone to hope, putting the evil in power as a force to oppose and cheer our heroes on against, but making sure those same heroes are ready, with some well-earned victories under their belt. Bran is the Three-eyed Raven and now knows the truth of his brother, Jon is King in the North and allied with Sansa in trust, and Danaerys has the right people around her as she finally sets sail home. Cersei’s winter, and that of the Night’s King, finally have a formidable foe.

Winter is here. But a dream of spring nears.

Grade: A-

After the Review (since everyone has a post-show show now)

-Did they grab Ludovico Einaudi for that piece at the sept, and Cersei's coronation? I'm half-tempted to believe. It definitely had his sound.

-I WANT CERSEI’S GARB!!! I DON'T CARE WHAT SHE'S DONE!!! THAT GOWN IS THE SHIT!!! I’M SURE IT’S UNISEX AND AWESOME!!!!!

-I'm gonna take a leap and predict here that Danaerys will either marry Tyrion or marry Jaime. And one of them through marriage will be the 'third head.' It would make political, and dramatic, sense. Might be to easy plotwise, though.

-... and now we wait. Two more, shortened seasons. The end is near.

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