WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR “GAME OF THRONES” SEASON 8, EPISODE 5
At the rate regulars dropped in Sunday night’s installment of “Game of Thrones,” it was clear it was the penultimate episode of HBO’s epic fantasy series.
The biggest two deaths came last, but there were plenty who fell before them.
Lord Varys, played by Conleth Hill, was the first one to go. In last week’s episode, he told Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) that he thought Jon Snow would make a better leader than Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) once he found out that Jon was the true heir to the Iron Throne.
This week, Varys had the chance to tell Jon (Kit Harington) that himself. Tyrion saw this, and as Hand of the Queen, filled Daenerys in on where Varys’ loyalties lie. Feeling Varys had betrayed her, Daenerys muttered “Dracarys,” ordering her last remaining dragon to burn him alive.
The next death of a regular character came after Daenerys began unleashing dragon fire throughout King’s Landing. As Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) tries to find his sister and lover Cersei (Lena Headey) to save her from death-by-Daenerys, he runs into Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbaek).
Euron has not only been fighting for Cersei, but sleeping with her, so he and Jaime have good reason to want each other dead. They battle it out outside the Red Keep castle where Cersei is hiding. Both deal significant blows to each other, but in the end, Jaime’s stab through Euron’s stomach does him in.
Badly wounded, Jaime hobbles away.
Meanwhile, Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) and her pal The Hound (Rory McCann) are also trying to get inside the Red Keep. Arya, so she can kill Cersei herself, and The Hound, to get revenge on his brother, The Mountain.
When Arya and The Hound reach a courtyard, the castle starts crumbling around them and The Hound tells Arya to save herself and leave. In a very anti-Arya move, she reluctantly agrees. Thanking The Hound, she validates their friendship, officially letting him know she’s finally forgiven him for killing her friend, the butcher’s boy, way back in Season 1.
Arya flees and The Hound makes his way up the stairs to find the brother that burned and disfigured his face as a child just as The Mountain (Haf ór Júlíus Björnsson) is running down with Cersei and her Hand of the Queen, Qyburn.
The Mountain moves towards his brother, and Cersei orders he stay by her side. He doesn’t, so Qyburn (Anton Lesser) tries to step in. That’s when The Mountain hurls Qyburn into the rocky staircase, killing him instantly.
Cersei runs past the brothers and then things get even more gruesome when The Hound and The Mountain finally face off. The Hound stabs his brother several times, but it does nothing thanks to the experiments that Qyburn did on his body.
The Mountain uses his thumbs to pierce both of his brother’s eyes, but The Hound can still see out of one. The Hound uses his remaining strength to rush towards his brother, knocking him off an edge of the damaged castle and into the fiery grounds below.
Cersei makes her way down the stairs just as Jaime arrives inside the castle. They embrace and he leads her to what he thinks is the way out. But once they reach the tunnels that would have led to the boat on the beach that could have whisked them to safety, they see that bricks from the burning castle have blocked the way out.
The normally-steady Cersei, finally rocked to her core, tearfully tells her beloved brother, “I want our baby to live. Don’t let me die.” Jaime tries to comfort his twin, telling her, “Nothing else matters. Only us,” as the ceiling caves in and bricks fall towards them.
While characters have gotten themselves out of disastrous situations before on “Game of Thrones, it’s unlikely the siblings made it of this one alive. That makes this episode the deadliest for the show’s central characters since Season 3’s “The Rains of Castamere,” referred to by fans as The Red Wedding.
In that episode, Catelyn Stark, Robb Stark and Talisa Stark were brutally slaughtered, along with the unborn baby of Robb and Talisa and the men fighting for the Starks.
Sure, Joffrey’s death in Season 4 was just as shocking. And there have been many losses since then. But none have been as impactful since the Red Wedding as the death of the Lannister twins in Season 8, Episode 5.
Next week we’ll find out who among the show’s remaining power players — Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion, Arya and Sansa — live. And even more importantly, who will sit on the Iron Throne and rule over Westeros.