”The human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about.” — William Faulkner
Game of Thrones’ “The Bells” is about as dour and nihilistic as a TV episode can be. It was a bleak 80 minutes of endless, caustic mayhem at the hands of one of the show’s most beloved and treasured characters. Though to be fair against the handwringing of some, this was a long time coming prophetically foretold in both thematic exposition and dramatic foreshadowing since the beginning.
The show’s overarching conceit has been analyzing and critiquing the power structure of words. Whoever controls language controls the world. That’s been the Great Game since episode one, the linguistic fray of dominance and subjugation and who wields that power best. For no one truly rules over another, but we give leaders (or tyrants) that power because they say they have it and usually through a name of standing, which equals right, and we believe and allow it through the unconscious desire to be enslaved, and ultimately destroyed. As Varys once counseled Tyrion, “Power resides where men believe it resides.”
The most destructive force in the universe is knowledge. It’s a brutal, illuminating truth that leaves none in its path unscorched. For what is knowledge if not the deeper, better understanding of signifiers and the signified, i.e., codified symbols we call words — the reality and meaning of all things. And there is no more violent and harmful word than that of proper names, owing the entirety of identity and self to an “other” whilst being the designation and property wholly embodying “mine-ness’.
Once Daenerys learned the truth about Jon Snow, that he is really Aegon Targaryen the 6th of his name, the power dynamics between them inverted and collapsed the identity that Dany had held onto and formed since her young days as a street urchin. She could no longer be the Queen of Sanity and Righteousness, but that of a vengeful and spiteful being who looked the truth in the face and couldn’t help being consumed by its brightness, and it brought out the worst of her impulses and exposed her heart of darkness, dooming The Realm.
Secrets In The Dark
”The Bells” opens with Varys penning the truth of Jon Snow to who knows, presumably lords and noble house of Westeros, trying to win them over to his cause because The Master of Whispers knows the inner workings of Dany’s mind, she is diving into madness. It’s notable that this episode harkens back to the one character who understood and played the game better than anyone, Tywin Lannister. It was Tywin whose strings machinations in the first four seasons set the course of history in motion. And he would’ve continued to do so if it hadn’t been for Tyrion killing him while he sat voiding his bowels (a just, and deserved death after years of being evil, to be sure).
It’s in this opening moment that we’re let into the fact that Game of Thrones is circling back around to the central linguistic theme, the perfect metaphorical imagery of flames from the candles giving light to the words on the page, the purest and most accurate power source in the world. Vary’s little bird enters the room and recounts to him that Dany isn’t eating nor seeing anyone, and Lord Varys knows there isn’t much time before she’ll break bad and unleash hell. But it’s too late for him to finish his words, for Tyrion has been allowed into Dany’s room and he informs her of Vary’s scheming to have her usurped and Jon replace her as King.
Dany confides that the real traitor is Jon, because she had sworn him to secrecy of his parentage and the right he would have on the throne, by telling Sansa and Arya whom he truly is. But being the surrogate son of Ned Stark, Jon has formed his identity and moral compass around the professing the truth (though ironically, Ned lied for years to keep Jon’s identity/truth hidden) and living by the most important words one can utter — oaths, or unbreakable pacts. Jon had to confess because that’s who he is. To lie would be the greater sin and transgression, would be uncharacteristic of him, and to keep it locked and sealed within isn’t in him.
Dany knows she can’t kill Jon, he’s too beloved by the people and his true name makes him all the more forceful. Perfectly captured against the cold and darkness of cinematographer Fabian Wagner‘s formal eye, Dany takes Varys out into the darkness of Dragonstone and there she sentences him to die for his treason by the fire of Drogon. There is no purer death than that of fire, as Melisandre told Stannis when they ruled over Dragonstone. Dany, The Dragon, has been awoken.
The Gates
The Targaryen army marches to Kings Landing and the Unsullied, Dothraki riders, Jon, Tyrion, Greyworm, and Ser Davos wait outside the gate staring down The Golden Company purchased by Cersei. The set design of King’s Landing here has never been more visually impressive to behold. Gunning for more production design awards at The Emmys, surely this massive backlot set will win the Game of Thrones artisans yet more awards.
Meanwhile, Cersei lets more and more commoners into The Red Keep, assuring that if Dany uses Drogon to destroy the city she’ll have to become Queen of the Ashes. Cersei surveys the city with the gleam of over-confidence, her fatal flaw, that she and her army will withstand the upcoming attacking. Jaime enters the city, trying to find his way to Cersei as do The Hound and Arya, making their way in secret to try and assassinate Cersei and for The Hound to defeat his brother, The Mountain, in an act of pure vengeance and retribution.
The night before, Jamie was in captivity of Dany, as he was found trying to sneak back over into the city. Tyrion went and had the last conversation they would ever have, and it’s one of the most tender moments the show has ever produced. Both men know they won’t ever see each other again, and both have lived their lives paying off the other brother’s debt, and this is the final act. Tyrion frees and Jaime and the two embrace and say their goodbyes, fearing that they will be killed and perish. And as is the case, Jaime indeed does fall.
As the afternoon breaks, out in the bay where Euron Greyjoy has his fleet amassed, the sun sits behind an overcast sky and the shrieking of Drogon is heard. He flies down and as fast a dragon has ever flown in the show before and obliterates the fleet. The only weapon Cersei had devised, the laughable giant crossbows, are no match for an engraved Targaryen out for blood. After finishing off the fleet in textbook assault, Dany and Drogon fly over the walls of Kings Landing and rain down hellfire, destroying all the perched archers and crossbow marksmen. Drogon blows down the front gates where The Golden Company stand guarding it, rendering their professed battle skills moot and meaningless, and the surviving soldiers are put down by Jon and the Targaryen hordes.
They enter the city as Dany and Drogon make waste of the rest of the armed forces atop the walls. They come face to face with the Lannister Army who understand that they cannot win this fight, and drop their swords signaling their surrender. Up in The Red Keep, Qyburn informs Cersei that they have lost the day and what they must do in order to face needless violence is to ring the city bells, signaling their admission of defeat. It take a few minutes, as the tension palpably builds, and Tyrion looks on, longing for peace. And then they finally ring. Surely, the fight is over and only brave soldiers were sacrificed in the fray.
Some critics have lamented director Miguel Sapochnik’s “The Long Night” episode left much to be desired. I don’t agree with those sentiments. But here, in these moments, Sapochnik delivers the most fluid sequences of action and spectacle that have come to define the later seasons of the show. It’s utterly mesmerizing and engulfing.
For Whom It Tolls
“There’s a beast in every [wo]man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hands,” Jorah Mormont once advised to Dany before she conquered the masters of Astapor with young Drogon and acquired the Unsullied. Surveying the damage of the city, she looks around hearing the bells ringing throughout, taking in each breathe as a new idea races across her face. She’s won. She’s done what she has set out to do from day one and sacked the city without great collateral damage and innocent lives lost.
But as she sits atop Drogon, her gaze falls on The Red Keep and the symbolic order it stands for and has meant to her and The Realm for hundreds of years. The Keep symbolically penetrates up into the sky, and as the image of the male member stands tall the notion of Jon and his truthful betrayal, her father’s own madness, the loss of her closest advisors and friends, brings her to break the wheel in unholy fashion. What Daenerys is after is to crush the patriarchy once and for all and stop Jon and his words. In a matter of speaking, extrapolating the morality of what she does next, Dany in actually enacts in this moment the most feminist thing in the show’s run. She knocks down and burns The Red Keep, and symbolically reduces the father figure to the ground.
Although it doesn’t begin nor end there, for Dany thusly lays waste to the city and begins to burn every man, woman and child alive. Every building is taken under siege and laid down, as more metaphors of the feminine topple the phallic regime.
She fulfills her self-proclaimed prophesy that she would “crucify the Masters…set their fleets afire, kill every last one of their soldiers, and return their cities to dirt.” The hero becomes the villain, which historically and ironically “villain” comes from the word “peasant,” transforming all of Dany’s magnanimity and good-will inert for the sake of redefining her self through her own terms, her own self-actualization, her own renaming.
Emilia Clarke’s dramatic turn from inconsolable leader to hell-bent Fire demon is some of the best acting in the entirety of the show. Like the production design and Sapochnik’s stellar directorial efforts, Clarke’s acting prowess is unrivaled and should be taken into serious consideration for the Best Actress Emmy.
As Dany pours destruction upon Kings Landing, Jon understands that the words spoken by Varys, the threat that Sansa and Arya saw in Dany, and his own utterances have lead to this disaster and terrible outcome. Words, Jon’s own words and epistemological ideology, have wrought this fire upon millions and he is beside himself. He is as much to blame, if not more so, than Dany is. And so he fights his way out of the city as his own people become ravenous animals no longer recognizable to him. Same with Arya. She tries her best to help save the lowest of the low but there’s nothing to be done, but to behold the white horse of the apocalypse arising from smoke and ashes.
Aftermath
Cersei and Jaime in some inextricable and unlikely happenstance, find each other as the Keep collapses around them. They make their way to their hopeful escape only to find their route blocked, and the visage of death bowing over them. They came into this world together and together they will leave it. As f*cked up as their relationship has been, for all the terribly atrocities that Cersei brought out of Jaime for his addiction to her and her gravitational pull on him, they are a physical yin and yang pulling, tearing, and creating aspects of the world in a doomed loop of travesty.
As the walls implode on to them, they hold each other and the flattening of the wheel breaks on them both, they pay for their crimes and slayings and it’s as empty and unfulfilling as was their addiction to the other.
The city sits in ruins and untold calamity has befallen it. The best of the heroes are now the antagonists. There’s only one chapter more to go in the mythology. We all know this won’t have a happy ending. So what now until then? Perhaps examine the darkness of our abyss and characters, and from that gain a far reaching light that we are all tied together and what we do affects everyone else. Words have consequences. Let’s use them wisely or we will eradicate that which we hold dear most precious, and blot out the sun.
How will Game of Thrones conclude?
Game of Thrones airs on HBO Sundays at 9PM EST.
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