biteho.com

Like every episode in Season 8, the Game of Thrones finale was full of Easter eggs, as well as callbacks and references to the journey many of the characters have undertaken to get to where they are at the end. A big one in Episode 6, “The Iron Throne,” came during a conversation between Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow that went all the way back to a critical moment in Season 1–one that had a great deal of meaning for Jon. Be warned: We’re talking spoilers for the Game of Thrones series finale here, so read on at your own risk.

After the sack of King’s Landing in Episode 5, “The Bells,” Daenerys has Tyrion arrested for freeing his brother Jaime, going against the queen’s orders and thereby betraying her. Jon meets with Tyrion in his impromptu cell, where Tyrion laments finding out he was wrong about Daenerys. He tries to convince Jon to do something about Dany since Jon is also a Targaryen and has a better claim to the Iron Throne. Jon, of course, struggles with the situation because of his love for Dany, and Tyrion talks about how he understands that Jon loves Dany.

“Love is the death of duty,” Jon responds. He’s remembering a pivotal moment from his past–a conversation he had with Maester Aemon, way back when Jon was new to the Night’s Watch in Season 1. During that discussion, Aemon revealed his true identity as Aemon Targaryen, a man who could have been king, but chose the life of a Maester and a man of the Night’s Watch instead.

At the time, Jon had been considering breaking his new Night’s Watch vows to ride south and join Robb Stark in his campaign to defeat the Lannisters and rescue Ned Stark. Aemon stopped him by telling him a story about how his own vows were tested during Robert’s Rebellion. He wanted to go south to help the other Targaryens, but ultimately, kept to his vows and did his duty. It’s that story that convinces Jon to stay on the Wall and keep his vows, as well.

Jon’s sense of duty has repeatedly been tested by love. He didn’t leave the Wall to aid Robb, which meant that Jon didn’t die at the Red Wedding, but one wonders how Jon’s presence could have helped save Robb’s life. When he went north of the Wall with Lord Commander Mormont, Jon joined the Wildlings he discovered there to find out what Mance Rayder was planning. He fell in love with Ygritte but was unable to betray the Night’s Watch for her, which ended in her death in Season 4 at the Battle of Castle Black. And finally, Jon chose duty over Daenerys, killing the queen before she could hurt anyone else after she destroyed King’s Landing.

In the end, Jon always chooses duty over love. Tyrion gets him on that point before the conversation is over.

“Sometimes, duty is the death of love,” Tyrion says. “You are the shield that guards the realms of men, and you’ve always tried to do the right thing, no matter the cost. You’ve always tried to protect people. Who is the greatest threat to the people now?”

Tyrion knows how important Jon’s sense of honor is to him, just like Maester Aemon did (although Aemon might have given Jon different advice if he’d known that Aemon was Jon’s great-great uncle, or that Jon was intending to kill Aemon’s niece). Jon struggles with whether he made the right call in killing Daenerys, but we’ve seen throughout the show that it was the only one he could have made.

Many people are subscribed to multiple streaming services, and every week, places like Hulu, Amazon Prime, and the horror-themed Shudder release new content to their users. This week, there are plenty of options to check out on Hulu, while the two other aforementioned services only have a couple new offerings.

The most notable release of the week is Season 3 of AMC’s Preacher on May 21 on Hulu. Based on the comic book series of the same name, the TV show follows a priest who is searching for God and comes across bizarre characters during his travels. Also, the complete series of Baywatch comes to Hulu on May 23.

If you’re looking for horror flicks to check out, then May 20 is a good day for you, as both 100 Bloody Acres and Effects hit Shudder. It is a very light week for these streaming services.

Below, you’ll find the list for what’s coming out on these services this week. Additionally, both Hulu and Amazon Prime Video have revealed what’s coming to those services for the month of June.

Hulu

May 20

• Federal Hill (1994)

May 21

• Preacher: Complete Season 3
• Bernie the Dolphin (2018)
• Jesus’ Son (2000)

May 22

• Tracers (2015)

May 23

• Baywatch: Complete Series
• MasterChef Celebrity Family Showdown: Special Part 2
• Backtrace (2018)
• Lulu on the Bridge (2011)

Amazon

May 19

• Federal Hill (1994)

May 20

• Jesus’ Son (1999)

May 22

• Lulu on the Bridge (1998)

May 25

• Morning Glory (2010)

Shudder

May 20

• 100 Bloody Acres (2013)
• Effects (1980, also available on Shudder Canada)

Obviously, this post is going to contain MASSIVE spoilers for the Game of Thrones season finale. Now’s your chance to stop reading and escape unsullied.

After eight seasons, the final moments of Game of Thrones brought some big shakeups from what viewers have been expecting. The destruction of King’s Landing has seemingly led to a better world in the Season 8 finale, although not the one that some characters have been working toward for years. Westeros moves forward not through conquest, but through (a tiny bit of) democracy.

A whole lot of wrap-up got handled in Episode 6, “The Iron Throne,” the last of the show. First and foremost, we saw the end of Daenerys Targaryen. After she destroyed King’s Landing, she finally lost the support of some of her best allies (although not all of them). Jon begged Dany to show Tyrion mercy, and when she refused, he took action–murdering Daenerys to stop her from ruling the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond) with fear and dragon fire. After her death, Drogon showed up a few seconds later to melt down the Iron Throne (which was more symbolic than a moment that made sense, but whatever), then flew away with Daenerys’s body clutched in his claw. Our only clue as to where he went came a little later into the episode when it was mentioned that he’d last been seen flying east toward Essos, the continent that includes the cities Dany and her dragons freed from slavery, and Valeryia, the destroyed country from which dragons and Targaryens originally hail.

The Unsullied took Jon into custody, but without a leader to tell them what to do with him, they just kept him locked up for a while. Next, they convened a council of the lords and ladies of Westeros at the dragon pit in King’s Landing, to decide who should lead the Seven Kingdoms and what should be done with Jon and Tyrion. (It included a few familiar faces, including one who’s had quite a glow-up.) At Tyrion’s suggestion, the most powerful people in Westeros voted on their new monarch: Bran Stark.

In part, Daenerys’s influence really did help “break the wheel,” ending part of the system of inherited power in the country. Bran took the throne because he was the wisest among the powerful people of Westeros, thanks to his abilities as the Three-Eyed Raven, and his disability means he can’t father children of his own. That means that when Bran eventually dies, there will be no eldest son to inherit his title, and nobody will be forced to live under the thumb of a king just because he was lucky enough to be born a prince. Instead, the lords and ladies of Westeros will convene again and vote on a new king. It’s not a perfect system, of course–the great houses are still great because they have money and land, and they’re still keeping that power in their families forever–but at least there’s some semblance of representative democracy in Westeros that will probably make life a little better for regular people, at least for a while.

Bran used his new authority to immediately name Tyrion the Hand of the King, essentially pardoning him for betraying Daenerys. The idea is that Tyrion’s sentence for treason will be a lifetime of service, trying to make up for his past mistakes by being a good ruler.

Things work out a little less great for Jon. The Unsullied and Sansa Stark are willing to go to war over his fate–the Unsullied want justice for their queen, while Sansa wants to save her brother and the man once named King in the North. They compromise, with Jon exiled back to the Wall to rejoin the Night’s Watch. It’s not much of a real sentence since there’s not really a Night’s Watch anymore. “The world will always need a home for bastards and broken men,” Tyrion says of the organization. When Jon arrives at Castle Black, he finds Tormund and the rest of the Wildlings and decides to leave the Watch and go beyond the Wall with them. You could interpret this as Jon going on to become King Beyond the Wall, but it seems much more likely he’s just going to go live out his life in freedom with his buddy Ghost.

There’s no new King in the North, but there is a queen: Sansa Stark. During the council, Sansa refused to let the North be ruled by a southron king again, even if that king was her brother. Bran allowed the North to keep its independence, thus transforming the Seven Kingdoms into six. That makes Westeros technically two countries, rather than one united one (although one can’t help but wonder how Dorne feels about all this since it has remained pretty much independent as well). Who knows how that’ll change the political situation in Westeros in the future.

Bran formed a new small council with a few critical surviving folks. With Tyrion as his Hand, Ser Davos became his master of ships, and Bronn of the Blackwater–now lord of Highgarden, as per his agreement with Tyrion and Jaime Lannister back in Season 8, Episode 4–was named master of coin. And although he didn’t finish his Maester training at the Citadel, Samwell Tarly became Grand Maester. Ser Brienne is named Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and her longtime faithful squire, Podrick Payne, is also knighted and joins the order.

The episode also tied up a few other loose ends. After things settled down, Grey Worm and the freed Unsullied boarded ships to head back east (presumably with the Dothraki, as well). Grey Worm’s destination was the Isle of Naath, which recalled his earlier conversation with Missandei back in Season 8, Episode 2. The pair had planned what they’d do after defeating the Night King and winning the Iron Throne for Daenerys: return to Naath, where the Unsullied would protect the isle’s peaceful people, as Grey Worm said. Though Cersei had Missandei killed, Grey Worm is still executing on the plan to make a home of Naath and to protect its people.

Also boarding a ship was Arya Stark, who decided she wouldn’t return home to Winterfell or live her life as a highborn lady. Instead, she means to explore the world by finding out what’s west of Westeros, a task she mentioned she might want to try her hand at back in Season 6 when she was still in Faceless Man training in Braavos. We don’t know what might be out there, in fact, but if anybody can handle what she finds, it’s Arya.

Oh, and Drogon is still out there. Apparently Bran is going to use his Three-Eyed Raven powers to maybe try to track the dragon down. In any event, dragons are still alive in the world, and that means there could one day be more of them.

And that’s it. War is over in Westeros, finally, and the fate of its people is in the hands of a group who seem to want to make life better for everyone in general. Whether they succeed is quite literally another story. As Tyrion told Jon, we’ll have to check back in 10 years to see whether the pair made the right decisions.

While not a games-focused retailer, Amazon often has some of the best gaming deals available online, even discounting some new games on release day and dropping the price on expensive first-party Switch games. The digital store currently has great discounts on some noteworthy games for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. And if you live in the US, you may have a three-day weekend ahead of you due to Memorial Day, which means even more time for gaming–so we’re here to let you know about all the best deals.

On Nintendo Switch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is back in stock this week for $10 off, a rare price for one of the Switch’s flagship games. Both Pokemon: Let’s Go games are down to $45 and can help you get your Pokemon fix until Pokemon Sword and Shield are out later this year. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is also discounted at $45, and you can grab Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for $49.94.

Over on PS4, Nier: Automata‘s Game of the Yorha Edition is only $28 and includes all DLC and bonus content. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is only $25. On both PS4 and Xbox One, don’t miss Monster Hunter World for $19, Devil May Cry 5 for $40, and The Division 2 for $45. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is also only $45 on Xbox One, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a bit cheaper than elsewhere at $26.20.

Remember that if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you’ll get free two-day shipping on many of these games. See more of the best game deals at Amazon below!

Nintendo Switch:

PS4:

Xbox One:

When it comes to spoilers in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Marvel Studios and Sony aren’t being anywhere near as cautious as with Avengers: Endgame. A new promo manages to spoil something major that was hinted at in an earlier trailer, which is impressive since the clip in question is only five seconds long. If you don’t want to be spoiled, now’s when you should stop reading.

The promo confirms that MJ (Zendaya) finds out Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) secret identity as Spider-Man, making her the second of Peter’s school friends to realize he has extraordinary powers–the other being Ned (Jacob Batalon). The video was caught by a user on Twitter, who shared it.

This plot twist was first hinted at in the latest Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer, in which MJ confronts Peter with his secret identity, telling him, “It’s kind of obvious.” Still, given the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s reliance on secrecy and misdirects in trailers, it was hard to believe this is how the story would go.

In the latest clip, though, it’s clear that not only does MJ know, she figured it out on her own. What remains to be seen is precisely how she figures it out. Granted, Spider-Man does seem to go wherever Peter does and conveniently pop up as soon as he disappears. So perhaps it’s not that hard to figure out.

Spider-Man: Far From Home sees the cast of the first movie return, along with the first appearance of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill since they popped up in Endgame. Another intriguing new addition is Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio. While traditionally, Mysterio has been a villain in the comics, the trailers thus far have painted him as a hero from a parallel dimension. Still, we’re convinced he’s lying and turns out to be the villain of this particular story.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is in theaters on July 2.

Popular battle royale title Apex Legends has received a new patch that addresses a variety of issues concerning audio, hit detection, PC crashes, and more. Respawn Entertainment community manager Jay Frechette took to the EA blog to detail the patch, which is available now for all three platforms.

Frechette discussed improvements made to audio performance. “We have made improvements both in our code and with our content that will hopefully fix [sounds dropping out, missing sounds for an extended duration, or distortion for a period of time].” These fixes should lower the encounter rate of the described audio issues.

Also in the audio department, Frechette confirmed the team has addressed other issues, “including increasing the volume of close proximity enemy footsteps and lowering the overall volume of the game from the character select screen to the end of the drop sequence.”

Hit detection has been contentious for Apex Legends but this new patch should eliminate most incorrect hit detection with the help of some behind-the-scenes bullet damage tracking. “We expect there will still be some remaining hit registration problems, but with these fixes and diagnostic information, we are better equipped to track them down,” Frechette wrote.

It seems internet connectivity can result in incorrect hit detection. In order to better determine how internet connectivity factors into hit detection, Respawn has “refined the functionality behind [their] network problem indicator icons in the upper right of the screen.” These icons may show up more frequently now, but they will help “[narrow] down the cause of any bugs” the team may notice.

Lastly, PC crashes seem to be ubiquitous amongst Apex Legends players. Respawn noticed, specifically, “that Intel CPUs sometimes were not executing the instructions properly in one particular function.” The crashes seem to occur when writing to invalid memory. And so, Respawn found that “lowering the clock speed always fixed the crashes, even if the CPU wasn’t overclocked or overheating.” Intel has been notified, but this patch includes a temporary workaround to prevent and/or limit the number of crashes in the meantime.

You can check out the full patch notes below.

Audio Fixes and Improvements

One of the biggest issues we had to tackle was improving the audio performance to address reports of sounds dropping out, missing sounds for an extended duration, or distortion for a period of time. We have made improvements both in our code and with our content that will hopefully fix these issues for many players, and should lower the amount and length of time they encounter audio issues for others.

We have also addressed some of the other mix issues with the game, including increasing the volume of close proximity enemy footsteps and lowering the overall volume of the game from the character select screen to the end of the drop sequence. We will continue to monitor mix issues and address them as necessary. Below are the notes on improvements we’ve included in today’s patch as we continue to work on future improvements.

Performance

• Improved audio engine to be around 30% more CPU efficient, lessening the chance of distortion or dropouts.
• Lowered impact on data loading through code and content changes to improve potential dropout issues.

Quality of Life

• Lowered the master volume of all sounds during the character select screen through the end of the drop sequence.
• Lowered the volume of Wraith’s ambient kunai knife sound for those who are sensitive to the sound. If it is still bothersome we will remove it in a later patch.
• Increased the volume of close proximity enemy footsteps for all Legends.
• Increased the priority of enemy footsteps to ensure the sounds play even in heavy combat situations.
• Slightly lowered the volume of Pathfinder footstep sounds heard from the first person view.
• Fixed missing or quiet dryfire (out of ammo trigger click sound) and low ammo (the progressive change in sound that the gun makes as the magazine approaches empty) sounds for the R301, Hemlok, Flatline, and RE45.
• Increased the volume of the music that plays when winning a match.
• Added more detailed audio to the Training mission.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed occlusion bug for the Havoc’s “wind down” sound.
• Fixed issue with automatic weapon fire sounds occasionally getting stuck on, usually after a Legend respawns.
• Fixed bug with RE45 missing tail sounds (the echo in the environment after the shot) when in close proximity.

Hit Detection Fixes and Improvements

As we talked about last week, in this patch we’ve pushed some fixes that should eliminate many cases of incorrect hit registration. This patch also includes some behind-the-scenes tracking of bullet damage logic. We expect there will still be some remaining hit registration problems, but with these fixes and diagnostic information, we are better equipped to track them down.

One potential cause of hit registration bugs can be simple internet connection problems. In order to determine how much of a factor this is in reality, we’ve refined the functionality behind our network problem indicator icons in the upper right of the screen. These icons are now pickier about your connection quality and may show up more frequently than they did before.

These icon changes will be useful in narrowing down the cause of any bugs that we continue to see. Please continue to share videos and report hit registration issues you still encounter after the patch.

Fix for Lifeline “Pick Me Up” Banner Bug on PS4

• The issue has been resolved and we will be re-enabling the banner after the patch is live.
  • NOTE: We made changes to client and backend to address this, and it’ll take a little time to take full effect. We’re expecting the error to resolve within a few hours after the patch is live.

[PC ONLY] Crashes Specific to Intel CPUs

We investigated the crash reports from many people who were crashing frequently and found that Intel CPUs sometimes were not executing the instructions properly in one particular function. A common example was an instruction that only reads a register crashed on writing to invalid memory. With the help of many forum users, we found that lowering the clock speed always fixed the crashes, even if the CPU wasn’t overclocked or overheating. Thanks everyone, with a big shout out to Falkentyne, TEZZ0FIN0, JorPorCorTTV, and MrDakk!

This has been by far the most commonly reported PC crash over the last month or so and we’ve notified Intel about the issue. In the meantime, we’ve put a workaround in this patch to avoid the crashing at your original clock speeds just by changing the instructions used by that one function.

Additional Bug Fixies

• Fixed issue with the Fortified Passive ability for Gibraltar and Caustic where they would take damage through shields.
• Fixed the bug that allowed players to stick objects to Gibraltar’s Gun Shield.
  • Admittedly, it’s been fun to see the results of this, but the behavior is not intended by design and could get out of control. Items will no longer stick to Gibraltar’s Gun Shield. However, it will now deflect Arc Stars.

Xbox head Phil Spencer has published an editorial on the Microsoft Blog expressing the importance of diversity, and committing the company to combating toxicity online. To that end, he identified three key initiatives for the Xbox team.

The first initiative is continued vigilance from its Xbox Safety team, and expanding the composition of the safety team for a greater variety of perspectives. The group of community leaders known as Xbox Ambassadors will also be working on “community missions” to help create an inviting environment for players.

Spencer’s second initiative is to create more tools for players and community leaders to customize their level of engagement to their comfort level. Over the summer, Club managers will get more moderation features, and other content moderation tools will be available by the end of 2019. It also commits to easier parental control tools, along with Gaming Summer Camps launching this summer to teach kids healthy habits. A recently launched “For Everyone” portal on Xbox.com keeps track of these initiatives.

Finally, Microsoft will share its safety tech across the industry, including its teams working on research, data science, and moderation. It compares this plan to its PhotoDNA technology, which it has shared with police and tech companies to fight child pornography.

“The gaming community continues to grow rapidly, and the imminent roll-out of new game services such as Apple Arcade, Google Stadia, and Microsoft’s Project xCloud, will make gaming available to even more people worldwide,” Spencer states. “Our industry must now answer the fierce urgency to play with our fierce urgency for safety.”

The full letter also serves partly as a mission statement for the company. It cites data on the current diversity of the gaming audience, the benefits of gaming for people with autism or Alzheimer’s, the connection between gaming and STEM education, and then explains the current events that have led to this safety-focused approach.

“This widespread embrace of gaming and its global communities have turned video games into the world’s leading cultural industry, bigger than movies or music,” it says. “But it also comes at a time when digital life includes a growing toxic stew of hate speech, bigotry and misogyny.”

Mobius Digital has released a new trailer for its upcoming open world exploration game, Outer Wilds. The game is scheduled to release for Xbox One and PC on May 30.

On Xbox One, Outer Wilds releases day one on Game Pass. Provided you’re already paying the $10 USD a month subscription fee, you can download and start playing the game come May 30. On PC, Outer Wilds is launching as a limited-time Epic Games Store exclusive.

After fans expressed a desire for the game to launch on Steam as well, Mobius Digital said people can feel “rest assured” that their feedback is heard and that the overall goal is to “bring the game to [players’] preferred platform as quickly as possible.” Mobius Digital explained that deals were struck with both Epic Games and publisher Annapurna Interactive–the latter of which is also responsible for publishing indie games such as Ashen, Donut County, and What Remains of Edith Finch–to “keep our small studio running long enough to ship the game at the level of quality that it is today.” The studio added that “[each] of these partnerships has enabled us to make the game better and more accessible for everyone who will play it.”

In Outer Wilds, you play as an alien caught in a The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask-like time loop. As the newest member of your planet’s space program, you travel from planet to planet within your solar system in search of an explanation as to why the loop keeps occurring. Like Majora’s Mask, you use what you learn from each loop to further your progress in subsequent attempts. “The planets of Outer Wilds are packed with hidden locations that change with the passage of time,” Mobius Digital said in a press release. “Players can visit an underground city before it’s swallowed by sand, or explore the surface of a planet as it crumbles beneath their feet.”

Given the smelly trash fire that the episodes leading up to it were, there was never any real chance of Game of Thrones’ finale, Season 8 Episode 6, “The Iron Throne,” being anything other than a disappointment. But at least they tried.

There’s a parallel universe somewhere where this exact episode was preceded by two full seasons of the phenomenal storytelling that Game of Thrones was once capable of, and in that brighter timeline, the show went out on the right note. It still would have been bittersweet, but it would have also felt earned, which this definitely did not. Too many plot points were swept under the rug and too many endings came from seemingly out of nowhere for this to feel satisfying.

Unlike the nonsensical Dothraki charge in Episode 3 or Euron’s magic scorpion bolts in Episode 4, there was nothing particularly terrible in the Season 8 finale; we got some surprises (Bran the Broken), while other plotlines concluded exactly as they needed to (Arya sailing West, and Brienne finishing Jaime’s page in the Kingsguard book). It just all felt a little tawdry thanks to the path we took to get here.

Look at where the show’s biggest characters ended, in broad strokes: Jon never fully embraced his secret identity, which was disappointing, but fitting; he’ll die a Stark, in the North, as he lived. (I kept waiting all season for something to make me start thinking of him as Aegon Targaryen instead of Jon Snow, but it never happened, seemingly by design.) Dany wound up being her father’s daughter after all, which is depressing, but not unrealistic. Some combination of Bran, Sam, and Tyrion–the characters who are supposed to be smart–rewrote the rules of Westerosi politics, transforming the realm from the hereditary monarchy it’s been for centuries into, essentially, something resembling a representative democracy. Sansa is Queen in the North, Arya leaves for her own adventure, and the Six-Plus-One Kingdoms are left in somewhat capable hands.

Let’s talk about King Bran the Broken, First of His Name (and here’s a good joke about that very weird title). On paper, yes, he makes a good king. And it’s not completely incomprehensible that he winds up on the throne, since the show established that everyone just sort of accepts his Magic Powers of Knowing Everything as fact for some reason. As with the rest of this, I think there’s a version of this ending that lands better–one that follows a story in which Bran wasn’t written out of an entire season and didn’t return to the show as a soulless, dead-eyed husk of a character who did nothing for several years.

There’s an alternate theory for why Bran winds up on the throne that involves things like the Three-Eyed Raven’s true identity, both characters’ skin-changing/warging abilities, and cryptic Bran statements about how he’s not really Bran anymore. But since the show never really committed to any of that (seriously, when was the last time Bran actually warged into anything or anyone and did something useful?), we have to just take what we got at face value. Whatever.

Jon killing Daenerys definitely falls under the umbrella of “things that were inevitable but that doesn’t make them any less sad.” This episode had some insanely beautiful and effective shots, from Dany walking out to address her soldiers with Drogon’s wings spreading behind her to the pivotal scene in the throne room, up to and including the dragon flying away with his dead mother clutched in one claw. Where did he go? Maybe Bran will find him, maybe he won’t. Like so many other things in Game of Thrones’ neutered final season, that’s beside the point.

This is the thing: An ending can make sense without feeling satisfying. The reasons why Game of Thrones’ finale felt disappointing have less to do with the ways things actually wound up, and more with how we got here. If Bran had actually been present as a character and not just a doorstop for the past couple of seasons, fans might have cheered at the idea of him ruling over Westeros. If Dany’s full-on murderous insanity had been properly built up to–as opposed to simply foreshadowed and then flipped on in an instant, which unfortunately isn’t the same thing–her death could have been one of the most emotional television scenes ever, rather than something that felt like it simply needed to be done for the Story to continue its breakneck freefall toward a Conclusion.

The moments that worked best in “The Iron Throne” were the ones that were properly set up long ago, like Brienne finishing Jaime’s page in the White Book of the Kingsguard. It’s the right kind of bittersweet: The Jaime that we got to know over these eight seasons (and five books) wanted nothing more than to leave a legacy that could stand alongside those of past Kingsguard greats like Ser Arthur Dayne. And who knew that side of the Kingslayer better than Brienne?

But therein lies the quintessential difference between page and screen: If you only watch the show, do you know that side of Jaime? In George R.R. Martin’s books, events play out from specific characters’ perspectives. When we’re seeing the world through Jaime Lannister’s eyes, we’re also privy to his inner monologue, thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes, and fears. When the show was still based on the books, it felt similar–in early seasons we usually understood why the characters did the things they did. The show did a great job letting us get to know them.

In more recent seasons, it’s felt like the show kept us at arm’s length, deliberately leaving things offscreen–like Bran, Arya, and Sansa plotting against Littlefinger, or Dany learning to ride and control Drogon–in order to build up surprises and cinematic climaxes. Those moments often worked, but they also left us wondering exactly how the pieces fell into place behind the scenes. Maybe showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss orchestrated that shift deliberately, or maybe they just didn’t have the answers and so chose to not even try to come up with some. R’hllor knows George R.R. Martin has a hard enough time–the story’s complexity is often cited as one of the reasons the books take him so long to write.

The point is: The broad strokes of this ending may be what the author has in mind, and, if he ever manages to finish his own story, this may be the ending that we ultimately get. But the way we get there will likely be characterized not by the bad taste of a botched rush job, but by the careful plotting, endless detail, and realistic, complex characters that the story actually began with.

Here’s a silver lining: Even if you wanted Jon on the throne in the end, you have to admit that finally seeing him pet his direwolf again is an even better conclusion to his story. At least they got there in the end.

Photos: HBO/Helen Sloan