Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 4 Recap In the previous episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the Army of the Dead attacked Winterfell, and Arya killed the Night King. In Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 4, after a brief celebration, Daenerys set her sight on King’s Landing. Mourning and Celebration After a speech from Jon, the remaining leaders burned the bodies of those who fell during the Battle of Winterfell. The feast afterwards seemed somber until Daenerys declared Gendry Lord of Storm’s End. He rushed to find Arya and proposed to her, but she declined since she was never a lady. Sansa and the Hound addressed their history. The Hound told her that she would have never gone through what she had with Littlefinger and Ramsay if she had left with him. Sansa admitted that those experiences helped her grow out of her naivety. During a drinking game, Tyrion accused Brienne of being a virgin, and Brienne left for her room. Jaime followed her, much to Tormund’s dismay. Brienne and Jaime slept together. Truth and Promises Daenerys went to Jon’s room. She urged him to keep his true parentage a secret, so they could be together. In the war room, the leaders of Daenerys’s various troops reported on the state of their armies for the upcoming move on King’s Landing. Sansa recommended waiting until the troops healed up. However, Daenerys didn’t want to waste time for Cersei to get stronger. Jon would take the allied troops down the Kingsroad while Daenerys and her armies sailed down to Dragonstone to start the siege on King’s Landing. While Tyrion and Jaime were alone together, Bronn approached them armed with the crossbow from Cersei. Since she had promised Bronn Riverrun in exchange for killing her brothers, Tyrion promised him Highgarden if they won. Despite promising Daenerys, Jon let Bran tell Sansa and Arya the truth while they were in the Godswood. As the armies moved out of Winterfell and everyone said their goodbyes, Sansa told Tyrion about Jon’s parentage, and he told Varys. Arya left with the Hound, separate from Jon and the allied armies. Treason After learning about Jon’s parentage, Tyrion and Varys discussed what to do with this new information. Tyrion still wanted to believe in Daenerys, but Varys sensed that her desperation for the throne could threaten the lives of the people. Tyrion thought that marrying Jon and Daenerys would be a good option since they loved each other anyway. Varys feared that Daenerys would overpower him. He believed Jon would be the best leader for Westeros since he didn’t want to rule and the people believed in him. Most importantly, Jon had the stronger claim, and Daenerys understood that. Dracarys The siege on King’s Landing didn’t go as planned. Qyburn had upgraded his scorpions and fitted Euron’s fleet with them. They killed Rhaegal, sunk Daenerys’s ships, and captured Missandei. After Jaime found out, he left Winterfell for King’s Landing. Cersei let the people of King’s Landing into the Red Keep to prevent Daenerys from burning it down. Tyrion and Qyburn, the two Hands, met to discuss terms. Daenerys demanded Cersei’s surrender and Missandei’s release. Cersei demanded Daenerys’s surrender or else Missandei would die. Tyrion appealed to Cersei and her love for her children directly. The Mountain executed Missandei, whose last words were, “Dracarys,” seemingly a request for Daenerys to burn the city down. What did you think of this week’s episode of Game of Thrones? Let us know in the comment section below!<doc-sep>HBO The battle of Winterfell is over, the Night King has said his last good night and everyone is ready to get back to normal life in Westeros. What's that? There's still a lot of messy stuff that still needs to go down? Sounds like Game of Thrones is ready to deliver in episode 4! This week we're recovering from last week's bloodbath and things are still kind of hectic. So hectic, in fact, that someone left a very modern, very Starbucks-looking coffee cup in the middle of Winterfell's dining hall. C'mon guys, who's running the joint here? But if you thought the action was over, you're wrong. It's time for a very pressing threat: negotiating the byzantine machinations of patrilineal monarchy in a region where everyone wants to just kill the crap out of each other! If the start of season 8 got off to a slow start for you, then episode 3 delivered on the carnage. (If you still haven't watched that ep, then now's the time to stop reading and go and catch up on the action). We lost old favorites -- you were a good man, Theon -- and it all culminated in the most explosive ending since the Red Wedding. Arya taking her dagger (the very dagger that was dispatched to kill Bran all those years ago -- TWIST!) and stabbing Ol' Man Winter right in his frosty zone. Ice, Ice Bye-Bye. So, what's next? Like, we've literally been building to this moment for years and now the dead are buried -- how do we build the stakes from here? All that's left to do is cue up the episode, switch your TV to moody dark mode and get ready for a good old-fashioned game of "Who gets the knife chair?!" It's episode four, and it's on. 🚨🚨🚨Sound the spoiler klaxon -- and abandon all hope, ye who enter here🚨🚨🚨 Recovery breakfast With the battle of Winterfell behind us, it's time to bury the dead. Some poor sod has been up all night chopping wood for the funeral pyres so we can farewell our fallen heroes, like Theon, Ser Jorah and Beric (though I'm putting money on Beric getting torched and waking up like he was taking a cheeky nap. Fire is like a warm bath for him). But once those bodies start burning, the general consensus seems to be "Hey guys, are we hungry?" Thankfully someone had the forethought to cook up a load of bacon and eggs (hopefully on a different fire) so everyone retires to have a much needed brekky. In the halls of Winterfell, everyone is trading stories and returning to the general busywork of trying to hook up with each other. Except for Jon and Dany, who have gotten over the inconvenient disruption of wight-slaying to get back on their bullshit. Who should rule the Seven Kingdoms? Are we, like, related related? Their silent staring at each other says it all. Having finished her breakfast (she loves eggs cooked over a fire), Dany decides to play her next hand, anointing Gendry as Lord Gendry of Storm's End -- ensuring she will forever have the allegiance of the folks at Storm's End and giving Gendry a good excuse to get new business cards. Meanwhile, Jon is getting some solid backslaps for his dragon-riding skills. "What kind of man climbs on a fucking dragon? A mad man, or a king!" cries Tormund. Dany, just like every woman who's watched a male colleague get credit for their projects in the team all-hands meeting, rolls her eyes. But not for long, because let's not lie, she also wants to tap that. Meanwhile at Makeout Point... Helen Sloan/HBO Gendry has a sweet new last name and he wants to share it with the woman he loves. He bails up Arya, who's steered clear of all the drinking in her honor and is off working through her PTSD with a bow and arrow. After one night of prebattle passion, Gendry declares his undying love for Arya and proposes marriage (we've all definitely been on that Tinder date). But Arya is super chill now, and pulls the classic Danny Zuko Grease move on Gendry and is all "sorry that hookup didn't mean we'd be together forever." Classic Arya. "Any lady will be lucky to have you," she says. "But I'm not a lady, I never have been. That's not me." Gendry is left to cry it out, quietly sobbing, "What happened to the Arya Stark I met at the beach?" But tonight isn't just about relationships ending! After admitting her armor still very much has its V-plates intact, Brienne leaves the party in the hall of Winterfell. But not before Jaime follows her out, ready to put on some of those sweet moves he's learned down south. (How someone can have so much game when they've only made out with their sister, I'll never know.) In Brienne's quarters, Jaime is ready to try his fake hand at wooing someone he didn't share a womb with. Crazy. "I hate the North," he says, by way of a confused pickup line (see: picked up my last date at Family Games Night). "It grows on you," Brienne replies, proving once and for all that the North is a grower, not a shower. Speaking of... let's leave those two for now. Daenerys has come by Jon's room for a booty call (booty raven?) and while they try to make out, Jon can't get that aunty taste out of his mouth. Dany isn't feeling it either ("I try to forget," she says, speaking the words that all of us Jon-and-Dany shippers constantly say to ourselves as we watch this show). Also, she's sad because power gets her motor running and no one in the North is bowing down to her like she wants. Except Jon, but... y'know. She tells Jon they can be together, but only if he swears to keep their Family Ties a secret. "I owe them the truth," Jon says of his sisters. "Even if it destroys us?" Dany replies. As far as Daenerys sees it, Jon needs to bring his family in line behind Dany as the one true queen. Meanwhile Jon is no doubt yearning for the days when loving someone meant being shackled to them in a Wildling camp before having sex in a cave spa. Simpler times. A very awkward secret Helen Sloan/HBO It's time for a reccy in the war room for actual postbattle talk, and Grey Worm doesn't have good news. The big battlefield mahjong table before us, we learn that half their armies are dead (let's remove those tiles from the game board) and Cersei's armies have been bolstered by mercenaries. Jon pledges the Northern armies to Daenerys, and they will join the Dothraki and the bulk of the Unsullied to march on King's Landing (let's move those tiles on the game board, just so we all follow along and to give some visuals to this very talky scene). The rest of the crew will sail to Dragonstone (because the VFX team have already made the CGI renders of that castle and it would be a pity to waste them). "We have won the great war," Daenerys says. "Now we will win the last war." Despite this Churchillian call to arms, Arya and Sansa are still powerfully suss on Jon's new girlfriend. It's time for an intervention in the godswood. Out by the weirwood tree, Jon reveals to his sisters that he has a big family secret. And in classic gutless fashion, he makes Bran tell it. But then we cut away and don't actually get to hear stone-faced Bran drop this mad gossip?! I was living for that! Chekhov's crossbow Remember when Cersei gave Bronn of the Blackwater a crossbow and a price on her brothers' heads and Bronn was all, "That's convenient because I like money and killing people"? Well, it's payday! Jaime and Tyrion are having a brotherly chat about conquests (Tyrion is so freaking thankful that he can finally do that without hearing about his naked sister) and Ser Bronn busts in.<doc-sep>HBO Cersei was always going on about how she and Jaime were the "last Lannisters" and that no one else mattered but them. Seeing this behavior from the Starks is concerning. Meanwhile, Jon's insistence that he's not a Stark has a whole new meaning for him now, but it comes after seasons of repeating it — including the time he mentioned it to Tyrion just as Drogon swooped him from above, as we're reminded when Tyrion tells Sansa later in this episode.<doc-sep>
Here are some of the problems with this episode: • So much happened off-screen. Missandei's capture, the reveal to the Starks...and we didn't get to see any pay-off on the latter. We've barely gotten to see Jon dealing with the news, and now we don't even see his family's reaction. • Missandei's death is the show at its racist and misogynistic worst. They literally put her back in chains before chopping her head off to further the plot of other (white/male) characters. • Cersei, someone who is brutal and ruthless, didn't just kill all her enemies when they were right in front of her??! It makes no sense. • Jon knows how to keep a secret when it matters. When lives are at stake. Just look at his time with the wildlings beyond the Wall. His character has become more and more two-dimensional and the show is suffering as a result. • GHOST. Ghost is SO IMPORTANT to Jon and yet he's not only sending him off with Tormund, he didn't even say GOODBYE to him?! The Jon Snow whose LAST THOUGHT before he died was of Ghost (in the books, at least)?! Jon Snow would NEVER. • Between Arya's "she's not one of us" and Sansa going all Littlefinger and planting information with Tyrion, the Starks are not exactly acting heroic these days. We're still supposed to love them, and yet they're acting exactly like the characters we most despise. • Daenerys just helped save the damn North, at great loss to herself and her people. But no one gives a fuck, and Sansa is still being petty? Sansa is better than this. • Speaking of Sansa, she was STRONG FROM THE START, and having her suggest it was good that she was RAPED AND TORTURED is really fucking fucked. • The whole “Dany as the Mad Queen” thing is suuuuper forced. Dany isn't held to the same standards as other characters by a long shot. The fact that Tyrion and Varys are turning on her, when they are the ones who thought she was the Last Great Hope, makes no sense. • Meanwhile, Arya really left her family just to pursue her list again after all that?! That's really what they're going for with her?!! • AND JAIME LEFT BRIENNE after they finally got together?! To go back to Cersei??! He better be going back to murder her, otherwise...what character development??? • Rhaegal's death was purely for shock value and made no sense. How did Daenerys, flying through the sky, not see Euron and his fleet? If Euron was able to hide from sight, he didn't have a clear shot of Rhaegal. Yet he manages to hit him multiple times. Meanwhile, every single shot misses Drogon even though he winds up much closer? What is logic?! • Euron Greyjoy is a boring, flat character who has had no effective development on the show but is brought in as a convenient plot device whenever he's needed. His impact on the plot is completely unearned and unsatisfying.