Month: May 2019

2. Green Eyes

For years, fans have been parsing Melisandre’s prophecy to Arya in Season 2:

“I see a darkness in you. And in that darkness, eyes staring back at me. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes sealed shut forever. We will meet again.”

A couple of weeks ago, it seemed that the first two parts of the prophecy had already come true. She killed Walder Frey, who had brown eyes. Then she killed the Night King, who had blue eyes. And thus, her third victim would be Cersei, who had green eyes.

But after tonight, that’s no longer possible.

Instead of Cersei, perhaps the prophecy was referring to Daenerys, who also has green eyes (although if the show was true to the books, they should be purple–but whatever). A lot of the carnage in this episode was shot from Arya’s point of view, as she tried (and failed) to save the women and children around her. That might be enough motivation to push Arya toward one last act of vengeance, despite the Hound’s warning to choose a better path.

OPINION: When I first saw Kano in Mortal Kombat 1, I hated him. I bloody hated him. He had a bullshit knife projectile, an even more bullshit cannonball roll. And I mean, just look at the guy–he sported a bright white gi, a dumb bandolier (for what?), and a cheap-looking metal mask. I hated the sight of him, especially because he was the one Obviously Bad Guy in the original roster. He was also just straight up the least interesting character. In a game with ninjas and magical projectiles, Kano was just a boring goon with a knife; a waste of space.

He didn’t get any better in the following 26 years, suffering from some questionable redesigns, like the one where he started wearing a lock of Sonya Blade’s hair around his neck like a creep. In Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, instead of being a man of Japanese-American descent, Kano was retconned to be Australian, a supposed nod to the misinterpreted accent of Trevor Goddard’s (RIP) cockney version of Kano in the 1995 Mortal Kombat film. This was an interesting decision, but not one that fundamentally changed how unexciting Kano was.

Can’t spell Kano without “No.”

UNTIL NOW. In Mortal Kombat 11, a game filled to the brim with objectively top-notch character redesigns, Kano is suddenly ALL ABOUT his Australianness. It’s a great move, the perfect move, and what’s more, this redesign is executed in an unprecedented, brilliant way. In fact, MK11’s Kano is the best and most authentic Australian character in any video game, ever. Yes, even more Australian than Roger, the playable kangaroo in Tekken.

There’s a depth to his character that goes beyond an imagined upbringing and accent that elevates him far above just a caricature. You can see it in the way he carries himself. The humorous Australianisms, throwaway swears, and casual “mates” that drop naturally into his quips. His more relaxed personality and grounded appearance–he looks like a dad you might meet at a beach BBQ, downing beers with his belly hanging out, embarrassing you in front of your friends with his 70s pornstar moustache and misguided, chauvinistic jokes.

Every little detail about Kano in Mortal Kombat 11 is in service of fleshing out his new, amazing personality–no longer just a Crime Dude with a knife, he personifies the mischievous, rowdy, and give-no-shits nature of the best and worst Australian society has to offer (often associated with being a “larrikin,” a dated but idealised embodiment of these tropes).

It’s rounded out with a stellar voiceover job by JB Blanc, who I was convinced was a native Aussie until I looked him up (he played Gustavo Fring’s personal surgeon in Breaking Bad!), which sounds genuine without being over-the-top and cartoonish like say, Junkrat in Overwatch (though I love him too). Kano in Mortal Kombat 11 is endlessly entertaining to me–he is the world citizen’s Johnny Cage.

I bloody love Kano now. I love how well he represents my country. I love how you can learn so much about Australian culture by simply observing and studying Kano. In fact, I love the details about his character so much that I spent far too much time ignoring my regular work and compiling this handy dossier of Kano-isms to teach you about Australia. Hey look, you’ve read this far, might as well keep on learning with…

KANO: A CULTURAL GLOSSARY

KNIVES

Kano’s primary weapons of choice are his signature knives. Now, the obvious connection you might be drawing here is the well-weathered Crocodile Dundee quote (“That’s not a knife…“) but there’s a more modern line to be drawn–Australia’s strict gun laws. It is incredibly difficult to own any kind of firearm in this country unless you have a very good and specific reason, as it damn well should be. Kano doesn’t have the luxury of bringing goddamn firearms into a fighting tournament like literally all the American fighters, so I imagine he just had to get really good with whatever he could obtain from the shops easily. Sure, he’s supposed to be an inter-dimensional arms dealer or something, but according to Baraka in Mortal Kombat 11, all the guns he provided to the Tarkatans were busted anyway so who the hell knows?

BEERS

On top of a seemingly infinite supply of knives to throw, Kano also has a seemingly infinite supply of beer to drink. And he drinks. A lot. There’s an intro animation where he drinks a beer. There’s an outro animation where he drinks a beer. There’s a between-rounds animation where he drinks a beer while spacing himself out for the next round. One of Kano’s fatalities has him sculling (quickly drinking) a beer, glassing (hitting) his opponent with the bottle, and then waltzing with their corpse like the fun-loving guy he is.

Drinking is Kano’s most endearing new character trait to me, because of how true to character it is–Australians love to drink. We have one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the world. It is a central part of our cultural identity. It’s part of our day-to-day. Pubs are places you take your families for lunch. Our oldest living former prime minister is famous for inhaling beers like the best of us, and even has a brew named in his honor. Hell, I had a couple of beers at lunch before writing this. Drinking defines our best times and our worst times–having a laugh, and having a brawl. Kano’s drinking behaviors exemplify both.

PISSING

Kano’s default intro animation sees him pissing on the floor before a fight (“Bloke’s gotta mark his territory”). It doesn’t matter if it’s outside in the dirt, in a robotics lab, or on a nice glossy stage. His brutality victory animation also sees him piss on the floor. I mean, I get it–a person who drinks as much as Kano is going to need to piss a lot, and honestly, when you’re camping or driving through the rural areas of Australia you’d be forgiven for pissing on the side of the road or by a tree–only about 0.2% of Australia’s land mass is urbanised (though 90% of the population occupies that 0.2%, it’s wild). Hell, even after a big night of drinking I could understand if you needed to piss in an alley or something, even though it’s legally a punishable offence here.

But Kano’s pissing habits are more likely an indicator of his disregard for the self-seriousness of Mortal Kombat’s pageantry, which is definitely an Australian attitude to take. And I just want to make it clear that we don’t all piss on the street at every opportunity, okay?

SHIRT, NONE

Kano doesn’t wear a shirt in his MK11 default costume. He definitely isn’t the most toned fighter on the roster, though he does alright (“Over 50 and still a rippa!”). But it’s a dad-bod flaunt more than anything, and like most dads, he’s probably reached an age where he doesn’t give a shit anyway. Especially when you’re in Outer Realm and it’s hot. It’s hot in Australia, too. Our summers regularly hit over 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit), even higher with climate change, so it’s not a big deal to see people walk around without shirts. You do what you gotta do, and Kano is a practical guy.

KANO, THE NAME

I have no idea where series creators Ed Boon and John Tobias actually got the name “Kano” from. My best guess, via Google, is that “Kano” is a Japanese name that loosely translates to “masculine power”, and given that his original nationality was Japanese-American, I guess that checks out. It still checks out in Mortal Kombat 11–Kano is a pretty manly middle-aged white man, after all. But man, Kano works so well as an Aussie-as-hell Australian name.

We like to truncate long words in Australia, but not only that, we like to add an “O” to the end of words, too. Avocado? Avo. Liquor store? Bottle-O. Gas (service) station? Servo. Afternoon? Arvo. I could go on forever. With Kano’s retconned nationality, I could 100% believe that “Kano” is just an Australian nickname for something longer. What could that be? Kane? Kayden? Caleb? It could be anything. But it works–“Yea mate, Kano’s (Kayden’s) gone to the servo (gas station) to pick up some durries (cigarettes)”.

SHITS, NONE GIVEN (See also: SELF-DEPRECIATION)

There was a thing in entertainment news recently, where middle-aged American actress Anjelica Houston threw shade at the middle-aged cast of Poms for, what I can gather, doing what she thought was a dumb middle-aged movie idea. Jacqui Weaver, a beloved middle-aged Australian actress who is part of the Poms cast, publically retorted in a separate interview, seemingly without any regard for social etiquette or self-preservation, saying simply, “She can go f*** herself.”

Australians aren’t one to beat around the bush and put up with bullshit. The blasé, single-minded dismissal of pretentiousness, I think, is an endearing cultural trait. Kano does this so many times in his interactions with the rest of Mortal Kombat’s high-and-mighty cast of rulers, gods, and narcissists, casually dismissing whatever holier-than-thou shit they might have going on. This sits comfortably together with a self-deprecating lack of awareness, too, for better or worse. Some of my favourites:

Noob Saibot: “I am Death’s hand!”

Kano: “Bugger off, mate”

and:

Sonya: “I only deal in dead criminals.”

Kano: “Talkin’ out of your clacker (anus), luv.”

not to mention:

Kano: “Why is it we ain’t we mates, Raiden?”

Raiden: “Perhaps your life of sin and licentiousness”

Kano: *pause* “Yea that could be it.”

CRIME

Okay, so despite his newfound endearing dad energy, Kano is still a dishonest dude by nature. He’s a little bit of a sleaze:

Kano: “Want to taste Australia’s best blood sausage?”

Skarlet: “I would rather taste your blood, Kano.”

Kano: *pause* “Would you settle for me sausage?”

…and he’s definitely still wickedly unscrupulous, often talking about making shady deals, cutting people open, and delivering heads in boxes. No doubt you’ve already drawn the “Australia is a criminal colony” conclusion, and look, that’s fair. A lot of white Australians are descended from the convicts who arrived from England in the 18th century, but a lot has changed since then.

Today, Australia is a massively multicultural nation that is heavily comprised of immigrants and refugees (my family included) from all over the world–Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa–and we’re also home to some of the world’s oldest indigenous cultures. What I’m saying is that the English criminals we’re often associated with are a part of our history rather than our identity. Kano is an exception, rather than a rule to our modern upstanding values. But then again, our current, mostly Anglo government regularly locks up refugee families and children in off-shore detention centres so hey maybe not.

And now, a crash course in Australian slang:

KANO’S FIGHT QUIPS: EXPLAINED

“On Ya Bike!”	F*** off, basically. You don’t actually need to be referring to someone’s physical bicycle for this to work.
“Best chuck a u-ey!”	A u-ey is usually in reference to a u-turn in a car, but also can be used to refer to a 180-degree turn. Again, Kano is basically telling someone to f*** off. Related: doing doughnut in a car is called a “dough-ey”.
“Nice bit of tucker.”	“Tucker” means food, but I know very few city people who use that term in casual conversation. Also, Kano eats a lizard while he says this, and I don’t know any Australian who has ever eaten a lizard. Does a crocodile count? They taste like chicken.
“Don’t be a bludger.”	“Bludger” is slang for a lazy person. “Bludging” might also mean skipping out on school or procrastinating. You hear a lot about bludging in this country.
(To Cassie Cage) “You sound like a shithouse American tourist.”	Basically what it sounds like. American tourists are shithouse.
(To Baraka) “That’s a bonza attitude!”	“Bonza” means good!
(To Kano) “Whaddaya say we split some stubbies?”	A “stubby” is a term for a small-sized bottle of beer, as opposed to a “longneck”, although the measurements for beer vary by region in Australia.
(To Scarlet) “Now your blood’s worth bottling.”	“You’re very special”, basically, but to be honest I have never heard anyone say this so someone at NetherRealm obviously just Googled “Australian slang” when they ran out of ideas.
(To Kotal) “Let’s just give it a burl.”	“Give it a go”, basically. We had a former GameSpot employee who said this quite regularly, and for a long time I thought he was just making words up.
(To Jax) “We ain’t here to f*** spiders”	A turn of phrase that means you came here for a specific reason. Not f***ing around, and not spider f***ing, naturally. That’s gross.
(To Jax, when asked about his first crime) “I was an ankle biter, five or six.”	Ankle biter is Australian slang for child. Australian children do not actually bite your ankles. Except for maybe that feral kid in Mad Max 2.
(To Johnny Cage) “Good luck with that, ya drongo.”	“Drongo” is Australian slang for “idiot” or “stupid person”.
(To Liu Kang) “Whatta bunch of dills.”	“Dill” is also Australian slang for “idiot” or “stupid person”.
(To Kabal) “Back off, you ungrateful yobbo.”	“Yobbo” is also Australian slang for “idiot” or “stupid person” (we have heaps), but usually a rude or particularly unsophisticated one.

KANO’S MOVELIST NAMES: EXPLAINED

Spewin’	“Spewin'” is what you say if you can’t believe something happened. I guess it also means “vomiting”. The combo string that has this name involves Kano spitting (not vomiting) in his opponent’s face so I think “Spewin'” probably refers to the act of surprise here.
Fair Suck Of The Sav	This is another one I have never heard anyone use seriously, but it basically means “to have a fair go”, and the “sav” refers to a sausage, which is a little gross. We also call sausages sandwiches “sangas”. They are our national food–a staple at hardware stores, school fetes, and at polling places during government elections.
Cut Snake	What happens when you cut a snake? It gets angry. “Cut snake means “angry”. Don’t cut a snake.
FIGJAM	This is incorrectly written out in lower case letters in Mortal Kombat 11, but it’s actually an acronym for “F*** I’m Good, Just Ask Me”, as immortalised in the hip-hop track of the same name by Australian group, Butterfingers.
Penal Colony	Australia was originally founded as a penal colony. Makes sense.
Face Like A Dropped Pie	Another kind of obvious turn of phrase–what happens when you drop a pie? It gets pretty ugly. Personal-sized meat pies are another iconic Australian food thing. Most people in the world think the idea of meat in a pie is gross. Those people are wrong.

KANO’S GEAR NAMES: A CRASH COURSE IN CLASSIC AUSTRALIAN ROCK

A number of Kano’s equippable eye masks are actually classic Australia rock music references, and I was honestly giddy when I saw some of these mentioned. Not familiar with one of Australia’s golden eras of music? Mortal Kombat 11 is a great place to start. Follow those YouTube links for a good time.

Hunter Kollector	Hunters & Collectors, more affectionately known as the “Hunnas”, were an 80s pub rock band. Holy Grail is a karaoke classic I remember GameSpot’s editor-in-chief belting out on the regular back in the day.
Mental and Everything	Mental As Anything were a laid-back 80s pop-rock band. They’re great, I love them. The Nips Are Getting Bigger is one of their best songs, but it’s definitely not the biggest. That accolade goes to…
Live It Up	Live It Up, which is Mental As Anything’s biggest hit. This is an absolute classic. Listen to it now. I think it was in Crocodile Dundee? I haven’t actually seen that movie, so I wouldn’t know.
Midnight Oil Marauder	Another 80s group, Midnight Oil remain one of Australia’s most successful political rock bands. Their frontman, Peter Garrett had a long stint as a government minister. He’s also well known for his uh, unique dance moves.
Bed Burner	Beds Are Burning is Midnight Oil’s most famous track, and probably one of the most iconic Australian rock songs of all time. It’s a protest song that deals with the ever-present issues of indigenous land rights.
Cold Chiseled	Cold Chisel are yet another beloved 70s/80s Australian pub rock band fronted by Jimmy Barnes, who Americans might know better as the screaming cowboy in the sky in that one video. Their best song, another karaoke classic, is Khe Sanh, which tells the story of a returning Vietnam veteran.
Mister Dirty Deeds	Everyone knows AC/DC, right? Right. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is what this is a reference to. Good band, good song. Bon Scott was gone too soon.
Cruel Sensation	I want to say that this one is a reference to New Sensation, a song from Aussie 80s rock band INXS. But it could also be a reference to another 80’s rock band, The Cruel Sea.
Kill.u.tonight	Similarly, I reckon this one is a reference to Need You Tonight by INXS. Another great song. That guitar riff! These are ALL great songs.
Eye Hooks	This gross reference is likely related to 70s glam-rock band Skyhooks. They had a bunch of hits, but Horror Movie is probably the one that skyrocketed them to success. They’re basically Rocky Horror Picture Show, the band.

TL;DR

I’ve left out a bunch of things, and there are certainly a few Kano references in Mortal Kombat 11 that don’t quite hit the mark. But man, going through all these Kano details makes me so proud to be an Australian, and so happy to see and play as a genuine Australian character. I’m so damn impressed by the effort, commitment, and execution of dad Kano. It definitely feels like there were some bonafide Australians (maybe Queenslanders? There are a higher amount of maroon [state colour] outfits and QLD location references) who worked hard to turn Kano into the lovable bogan (unrefined person) he is in Mortal Kombat 11. That, or some really dedicated Americans did a lot of in-depth research and managed to pull it off with measured grace.

Either way, good onya. Kano is the best Australian to ever appear in a video game, and everyone at NetherRealm who had a hand in his redesign or even so much as looked at Kano during development deserves a promotion. That would be bonza (good).

The topic of “crunch,” or developers working long hours to complete milestones, has been much-discussed in the games industry over the years. Now, Swedish developer MachineGames, which develops the new Wolfenstein series for Bethesda, has commented on crunch.

In a recent Reddit AMA, production and tech boss John Jennings said the very nature of making games–and specifically “finding what’s fun”–is not so simple to model for when it comes to development timelines. He suggested that periods of crunch do occur at MachineGames, but the studio is trying to eliminate crunch, even if that makes life for the studio’s management more difficult.

“As you’re a developer I’m sure you know that crunch is a difficult topic,” Jennings said in response to a question from a fellow developer. “‘Finding what’s fun’ in games is so hard to schedule and plan for. The labour laws in Sweden are very prescriptive about what’s legal but crunch is also something that we’re actively working at eliminating from our studio, and I say that genuinely, rather than as some trite PR answer.”

“We’ve built a policy over the last 12 month[s] and we’re putting in a lot of effort to stick to it, even if that makes life for us in management more difficult from a business perspective sometimes.”

Jennings did not lay out any of the specifics regarding MachineGames’ policy regarding crunch.

Before this, the developer of Path of Exile took a hard stance against crunch, with its CEO saying he refuses to require his team to work long hours. This came after reports of the studios behind titles like Fortnite, Mortal Kombat 11, and Red Dead Redemption 2 reportedly pushing developers to work extremely long hours. Recently, the developer of the popular battle royale game Apex Legends said it wants to “avoid crunch that can quickly lead to burnout or worse.”

The next Wolfenstein title is Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which launches in July for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A $30 USD budget-priced spinoff, the title lets you play as Soph or Jess Blazkowicz, who are B.J. Blazkowicz’s twin daughters. There is also an optional co-op mode, which is new for the franchise.

The series finale is the only episode left for Game of Thrones following Season 8 Episode 5, “The Bells.” The ending of the epic tale has drawn ire from many fans, but there might soon be another version for them to devour instead. According to one Game of Thrones actor, the conclusion of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” on which Game of Thrones is based, is already written.

As flagged on Reddit, Barristan Selmy actor Ian McElhinney made a claim during a panel in April at Epic Con in St. Petersburg, Russia, that will have book fans screaming: Supposedly, Martin has finished the last two books of the series, “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.” He just hasn’t published them yet.

“I don’t know if you know more than me about this, but what I’ve been told is that George has already written books six and seven,” McElhinney said. “And as far as he’s concerned, there only are seven books. But he struck an agreement with David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], the showrunners of the series, that he would not publish the final two books until the series has completed. So all goes well, in another month or two, we might get books six and seven, and I’m intrigued to know how Barristan, for instance, ends up going through those final two books.”

Martin is well-known for taking a long time to complete new entries in his epic–the first book in the series, “A Game of Thrones,” was published all the way back in 1996, and the last entry to hit bookshelves, “A Dance of Dragons,” didn’t come out until 2011. That means it took 15 years for Martin to complete four books; it also means that since Season 1 of Game of Thrones, book fans have only had what’s aired on HBO to hold them over as they waited for Martin to catch up.

In April, Martin told GameSpot sister site Entertainment Tonight that writing on “The Winds of Winter” has “been going very well lately,” but he also reiterated his usual position on when to expect the new book: “It’ll be done when it’s done.” So Martin hasn’t hinted that he’s sitting on two completed books, just waiting for Game of Thrones to end–but on the other hand, eight years is a long time, and it’s definitely possible he could have completed at least one, or maybe even both, in that period, given how long the others took to write.

How the books might differ from the TV show is a question a lot of fans want answered. Martin has said he’s known all along where the stories were going, and he told Benioff and Weiss what the major beats of the conclusion were years ago. But Martin also told Rolling Stone he wished the series had a few more seasons to wrap everything up, and there are plenty of examples of the show making changes or going in different directions from what’s in the books. It’s definitely possible things could wind up differently in “A Song of Ice and Fire”–or at least take a different path to the same place. After all, a lot of characters who have died on the show still live in the books, not the least of whom is Barristan Selmy.

Game of Thrones is at its best when bad choices have consequences and effect logically follows cause. The Red Wedding was the result of a string of terrible decisions that ended with devastating tragedy, making for one of the show’s most impactful events; compare that with Cersei’s destruction of the Sept of Baelor (and an entire city block) with zero repercussions over the show’s last couple of seasons, which made Game of Thrones’ world feel smaller and less realistic in the end.

In a short-lived callback to this show’s better seasons, Varys paid the price for his uncharacteristic carelessness in Season 8, Episode 5, “The Bells.” Like almost every other character on this season of Game of Thrones, the Master of Whispers made bad decision after bad decision in the last couple of episodes. His scheming was remarkably un-Varys-like; “Hey, I’m thinking about doing some treason. Would you like to hear about it?” When Varys burned toward the start of this episode, it felt like just one more choice for Dany that really was no choice at all. But in retrospect, it stings more than most of the deaths this season because of what we learned by the episode’s conclusion: Varys was right.

Daenerys Targaryen has lived up to the worst parts of her family legacy, burning King’s Landing to the ground, street by street, roasting tens of thousands of innocent people, apparently after the battle was all but won. The show and books foreshadowed this possibility countless times, so it isn’t exactly out of nowhere. But by cramming Dany’s actual transition from Good Queen to Mad Targaryen into just a handful of episodes, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have done the entire series and all its fans a disservice. Even though we knew this was a possibility, it was easy to root for Dany as she clawed her way up from nothing, overcoming abuse, rape, poverty, and countless other hardships to become the champion of the smallfolk, the freer of slaves–the Mother of Dragons and the Breaker of Chains.

The fact that all it took for Dany to break bad was the death of a few friends, the loss of two dragons, and some accidental competition from Jon Snow makes all our years rooting for Khaleesi feel a little bit gross in retrospect. Her madness was not buried as deep as we had wanted to believe; this bloodthirsty rampage was just a hair trigger away. But that doesn’t feel like a deliberate choice made for the betterment of the narrative; instead, it’s clearly the result of a series of shortcuts necessitated by these last two seasons’ shortened lengths. Dany’s transformation into the Mad Queen starts to feel better-earned if you imagine it taking gradual shape over a couple of full-length seasons (or books).

As it is, her actions in this episode don’t really make sense. Why torch every street and pointlessly murder thousands of innocent people when she could fly straight to the Red Keep and melt Cersei, the woman who’s actually wronged her? Even her father, the infamous Mad King Aerys, didn’t go crazy overnight–his insanity was the end result of years of escalating paranoia and violence. Yeah, we know, every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin–but nobody ever said they flip a switch, and that’s what we got this season on Game of Thrones.

Technically speaking, “The Bells” was a masterpiece of cinematic fantasy television. The Fall of King’s Landing might be the best battle of the entire series–the polar opposite of Episode 3’s poorly conceived, sloppily edited, largely nonsensical Battle of Winterfell (the fact that both episodes were written by Benioff and Weiss and directed by Miguel Sapochnik has to make you wonder how exactly “The Long Night” went so bad). Dany finally visited fire and blood upon her enemies–and the innocent, as well–and regardless of how unearned it was, it looked absolutely incredible. The brutality and terror of Dany’s attack was immediate and shocking in every shot, whether from Jon’s perspective as he tried helplessly to intervene, or Arya’s as she simply tried to survive (and help a few others get out along the way).

And could anyone have possibly envisioned a better Cleganebowl? The Clegane brothers, Hound and Mountain, clashed in mortal combat (and it looked a lot like Mortal Kombat) with a dragon spewing fire from the sky in the background, high above King’s Landing, the Red Keep coming down around their heads. Game of Thrones Season 8 has not been the cathartic flood of pay-offs for series-long arcs, foreshadowing, and predictions that many longtime fans deeply wanted, but the fight between Sandor and Gregor actually lived up to the hype. It was perfect, and much-needed, considering where several other character arcs wound up in the end.

Jaime going back to Cersei is, to put it mildly, a disappointment. Many fans are likely wondering what the point of his arc was, if it wasn’t overcoming his worst instincts and becoming a better person. Everything Jaime has done, all the things he’s been through, were for nothing? He experienced maybe the most significant growth of any character in the series just so he could backslide completely and go skulking back to Cersei to die with her in the end?

That seemed to be one of the main themes driving Game of Thrones’ penultimate episode ever, and thus, driving the series as a whole: Even the best of us can’t escape the worst parts of our instincts, our families, and ourselves. Tyrion made the same mistake–trusting his sister, against all odds–over and over, and it cost everything. The Hound went down with his brother–an ending I won’t complain about–but thematically, one that could have been avoided. And, of course, there was Daenerys, who actually had a choice–a real choice!–and elected, in that moment, seemingly with the flip of a coin, to tread the darkest path imaginable.

Even with everything that’s happened, it’s not clear how Game of Thrones’ final episode will wrap things up. Arya is the one island of hope in the fiery sea of nihilism and cynicism about human nature that Game of Thrones has become. She fought her darkest instincts, and chose life over revenge. If she drives a knife through Daenerys’s heart in the end, it won’t be because of a personal grudge, or to make way for Jon to seize power. It will be for the greater good, and an ending like that may be the best conclusion we can hope for at this point.