The ‘Game of Thrones’ Finale Left Me Laughing in Hysterical Disbelief

Game of Thrones means a lot to me. I started reading the books over ten years ago, at a time in my life where I was aching to break free of a depression-filled life. The show came out right after I moved to New York City, and it’s long been a sort of unifying event for me and my friends.  As the years went by, the series didn’t just become a personal favorite, but a professional raison d’être. Both the show and the books inspire the work I do as a critic and wannabe creator. So needless to say, I was hyped for the final season.

What I did not expect was for the series finale of Game of Thrones to leave me laughing.

Oh, I was a mess last night. Between Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) plopping down a big ol’ book entitled “A Song of Ice and Fire” (GET IT?) and Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) just deciding to become Christopher Columbus and Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) earnestly arguing for kooky tree boy Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) to lead them all, I was done. The abrupt tonal shift between the melodramatically tragic first half of “The Iron Throne” and the incomprehensibly light second part jarred me beyond belief. I spent the first half hour of the episode with my hands cradling my jaw, terrified for the darkness that might consume all of Westeros, and then labored through the episode’s last forty minutes hysterically howling.

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What happened? Part of it was pacing, and part of it was tone. However, the show’s finale also suffered from a severe case of self importance.

The first half is a slow and somber death march through the desolation of King’s Landing. We see Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) holding court like a fascist dictator, and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) wrestling with making a terrible choice to protect the realm. Everything about this first act is shot in grey tones, giving everything an apocalyptic quality, but also shading everything we’re seeing in black and white. There are some shockingly dramatic visuals, from the eerie control Daenerys has over her troops, to Drogon giving his queen her own wings, and finally the way Dany dies in Jon’s arms.

These are beautiful, epic scenes that are larger than life. They reminded me of German opera and classical poetry. There’s sorrow and anguish and something superhuman about what’s unfolding. It’s over-the-top, but the show understands this, and tonally Game of Thrones swoons into its own melodrama.

Then we cut from Drogon dramatically melting down the Iron Throne — Do you get the symbolism? DO YOU!?! — to Tyrion walking into the sunshine-soaked Dragonpit with a straggly depression beard. The shift in light, color scheme, and tone is obscene. To go from something that feels written by Goethe to a comedy sketch laden with satire is misguided to say the least. Toggling from epic mythological storytelling to a bunch of nobles laughing at the notion of democracy undermines the hugeness of Daenerys’s final moments.

What follows then is a rushed series of events that felt, to me watching for the first time, ridiculous. Tyrion Lannister manages to not only wiggle out of a death sentence, but to make himself the most powerful man in Westeros with the slightest of sales pitches. He nominates Bran Stark because…he’s got a good story? (Uh, so do a lot of people, bud.) Sansa Stark seems to be the only person who still has a grasp on the reality of the situation and cleverly uses her moment to stump for Northern independence, but everyone else’s actions in this scene are baffling. If I wasn’t laughing at Edmure’s intentional sword gag, I was giggling at Robin Arryn’s weird glow up, or hysterically shaking my head at what was happening.

After that scene, we got a light-hearted Small Council meeting complete with brothel jokes that included a honey comb and a donkey. Again, I was laughing at the tonal inconsistency as opposed to Tyrion’s “wit.”

The show ends with a super dramatic montage of the Stark siblings taking over. This has impact on its own, except it’s preceded by some narrative fumbles and ends with the most on-the-nose finale music cue I’ve ever heard in my life. Were they — they weren’t, were they? Was the choir singing “Game of Thrones” to the tune of…Game of Thrones? (I still can’t tell if I’m imagining it or it really happened, guys.)

Moments like these, where Game of Thrones made an overly winking nod to their own lore and popularity really ruined the dramatic mood for me. Those big little flourishes even reminded me of a story my friend told me years ago where she was almost asked to leave a regional theater production of All My Sons because she burst into laughter with the lead actor broke character to showboat the line, “They were all *my* SONS.” Of course, it was the end of the play, so the ushers let it slide, but the point is when dramas make a point of stressing their own importance, they actually destroy their own hold on the dramatic tension. The actor’s delivery took my friend out of the play, and that’s what Game of Thrones did to me as well.

So when Sam practically jazz hands through his explanation of A Song of Ice and Fire, it’s not a fun, subtle Easter egg, but a sad joke. When the choir sings the name of the show out loud, it’s not profound, but indulgent. And when you follow absolute despair with satire, you make fun of your own tragedy.

For me, Game of Thrones ended not with a bang, or a whimper, but a giddy case of the giggles.

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