S6·E10 — The Winds of Winter
The hour retold
Cersei Lannister’s response to a trial she cannot win by any legal means is the season’s — arguably the series’ — most devastating single act: the Great Sept of Baelor, packed with the Faith, the Tyrells, and every enemy who came to watch her humiliated, goes up in a green conflagration of wildfire she has been quietly stockpiling since Tyrion first found it years earlier. The sequence is a horror set piece disguised as a coronation, methodical about who dies and in what order — Margaery, Loras, Mace Tyrell, the High Sparrow himself mid-sermon — and its aftermath is worse: Tommen, the one Baratheon child gentle enough to survive his family, steps quietly from a window rather than live in the wreckage his mother made of everything he loved.
Elsewhere the season settles its remaining debts with the same finality. At the Twins, Arya Stark serves Walder Frey a pie made of his own sons before opening his throat — a promise kept from two seasons back, delivered with a flourish the show has clearly been saving. In Winterfell’s hall, the North proclaims Jon Snow King in the North by acclaim, an old ritual repeating itself on a new Stark almost despite him. And beneath the Tower of Joy, Bran’s visions finally complete themselves: a dying Lyanna Stark, a promise extracted, a baby renamed and hidden in plain sight as a bastard — the show confirming, with no fanfare beyond a single quiet shot, the parentage the books have been arguing about for twenty years.
The finale closes by resetting every board on the map at once. Cersei, having destroyed the one institution powerful enough to check her, takes the Iron Throne over the ashes of everyone she loved and everyone who opposed her, sitting alone in a hall built for a family now reduced to her. Daenerys, her queenly apprenticeship in Meereen finally behind her, names Tyrion her Hand and turns her armada west at last, three seasons of preparation collapsing into a single shot of sails filling with wind. The Winds of Winter is a finale that behaves like a culmination and a beginning simultaneously — it spends five years of accumulated plot in ninety minutes and somehow leaves the board more dangerous than it found it, which is the mark of a show that has finally stopped setting pieces down gently.
What happens
- The Great Sept of Baelor goes up in green fire with the Faith, the Tyrells, and Cersei's trial inside.
- Tommen steps from a window; the last of the prophecy's gold shrouds is used.
- Arya serves Walder Frey his sons in a pie, then his own throat.
- Bran sees the Tower of Joy's end: a boy named Aegon, a sister's promise. Lyanna's son wears Stark colors now.
- The North proclaims Jon the King in the North; Cersei takes the Iron Throne; Dany's armada finally sails west.
The people of the episode
Cersei Lannister — Everything she feared to lose is gone; only the throne is left, so she takes it.
Arya Stark — "The last thing you're ever going to see is a Stark smiling down at you."
Jon Snow — The White Wolf, raised by acclamation he never sought.
Daenerys Targaryen — Tyrion pinned as Hand; the horizon finally points home.
Bran Stark — Knows the realm's greatest secret and can tell no one yet.The fallen — spoilers
- King Tommen I Baratheon — The gentlest king, out a window after the sept took his queen and his faith.
- Queen Margaery Tyrell — Saw the trap before anyone; the Sparrow wouldn't open the doors.
- The High Sparrow — Vaporized mid-sermon by a cache of Aerys's wildfire.
- Loras & Mace Tyrell — The rose's heir and its lord, gone in the same green flash.
- Ser Kevan Lannister & Grand Maester Pycelle — The old regime, finished by wildfire and little birds.
- Lancel Lannister — Followed a candle into the dark and couldn't crawl fast enough.
- Walder Frey — His throat cut by a serving girl wearing someone else's face.
- Lothar Frey & Black Walder — Baked into the pie their father complimented.