Game of Thrones: Mother’s Mercy Recap [SEASON FINALE]

Synopsis of 5×10: Arya pays the price for defying the Faceless Men, Sansa stands her ground once, and Brienne finds herself facing the object of her hatred. Meanwhile, Dany finds herself across the world in an unknown place while Cersei is rock bottom. The Wall has their usual problems.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I mean, we all know how I’ve felt about this season, guys: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was lack luster, incredibly slow paced, and overall  just a bore. There was nothing that really got me excited except for the final scene of “Hardhome” and I feel like a lot of characters’ characterization was diminished to nothing but a few typical tropes that needed to be filled in, i.e. “Sexy Warrior” (Sand Snakes, cough cough).

But let’s just get to the recap.

Starting in Braavos, Arya disobeys the rules of the Faceless Men by going and targeting the first man that earned a spot on her list, the pedophile and killer Meryn Trant. Posing as a child in the brothel, he demands that the other girls leave so that he may break the silent one. As the others scurry out of the room, Arya reveals herself and she stabs the crap out of him and blinds him (foreshadowinnngggg) as she asks him if he knows who she is.

I mean, he doesn’t, but she gets satisfaction from killing him.

When she returns to the House of Black and White, the nameless girl and Jaa’qen are displeased by her actions, and in the craziest sequence of the episode he drinks poison, dies, and then reveals himself to be the nameless girl the entire time. As Arya pulls away the different faces she finds herself staring at her own as her vision begins to blur.

Stannis finds himself approaching Winterfell with a heavy heart – Melisandre has abandoned him, his daughter is dead, and his wife has hung herself out of grief. Over half of his men had abandoned the camp in the middle of the night, and as he approaches Winterfell, his measly group of men look like nothing compared to the oncoming storm. At home though in Winterfell, Sansa decides that she has had enough of the Boltons and decides that she needs Brienne’s help. She lights a candle in the window of the tallest tower, but Brienne abandons her post right when the light appears in the window.

As Sansa watches the battle below, she tries to return to her room, when Myranda confronts her, bow in hand, and arrow pointing at her heart. Reek stands by terrified as Sansa dares her to kill her, dares her to harm her when she’s all that Ramsay has to any real claim of power. When it appears that Myranda might just release the arrow, something comes over Reek, and he attacks her, pushing her over the ledge. Sansa and Reek look at each other, and Reek looks down to Myranda’s body to only realize that they too can jump but escape. Grabbing each other’s hands, the two leap from the walls of Winterfell, trusting that the snow below will catch them.

Brienne though, has found the object of hatred for the past few years. Stannis has lost, and as he crawls through his men he makes one final stand before having to rest against a tree. Brienne though, isn’t as unbiased as his previous foes. She’s been lusting for his blood for years, and cannot wait to see the man suffer. Finding him, she says her piece, swings down her sword, and the scene cuts.

While Tyrion and the others figure out how to keep Mereen afloat now that Dany has flow off on her dragon, she is facing some problems of her own. With Drogon severely injured and her without a clue as to where they are, she finds herself at a loss when some familiar ponytailed men atop of strong horses find her and begin to encircle her, leaving her fate questionable. She didn’t leave the Dothraki on the greatest terms, after all. Also, wasn’t she being super rude when trying to force Drogon to fly? He was attacked trying to save you, show some respect man.

Tyrion finds himself now as the leader of Mereen in her absence while Jorah and Daario go on a rescue mission. After disappearing since Jorah kidnapped Tyrion from the brothel, Varys finally arrives and makes some quick quips about the dwarf’s situation before making sure Tyrion realizes that he is the one in power for once.

Another Queen is finding herself in a horrific situation also. After finding herself at the end of a losing battle, Cersei decides to admit to the sins she has been accused of to save herself from facing any harsher punishments depending on what else could come out about her. In one of the more powerful scenes of the episode (seriously, say what you will about the extras and the nudity and everything but Lena Headey does a fantastic job of showing Cersei as a broken and fallen queen who will still do all in her power to maintain her presence), Cersei is stripped nude and her hair has been shorn off and she has to walk the entire length of the city to make it back to the castle.

While the poor commoners that she essentially created scream at her and threaten her she remains tall, the pain visible in her eyes. Once she makes it through the gates of the castle she instantly collapses, sobbing her heart out as the people she expected to help her stand there staring on with blank eyes. There is one person there to help her though, a silent knight who is as tall as a MOUNTAIN. Let’s be real, of all the story lines to happen that was one I was not expecting in the slightest.

Things aren’t going well for Jamie and Myrcella though. When they begin to depart for King’s Landing, Ellaria kisses the young princess right on the mouth and of course we all know what that means. In one of the most groan worthy and frankly disgusting scenes of the entire show, the Sand Snake who “saved” Bronn’s life/ was a shameless use of female nudity tells Bronn that he “wants a good girl, but needs a bad pussy.” What the hell happened to the female warriors who wanted nothing but to avenge their father? Why did they turn into nothing but a quota filler for female nudity? It’s disgusting and it’s gross.

But back to the whole “getting kissed on the mouth” thing. So Jamie and Myrcella are having a tender moment where she reveals that she’s always known that he’s her father and to be honest that was weird. I mean, I get that she loves Jamie so she’s happy but at the same time it’s not like incest is normalized in this world (who else thinks Game of Thrones is going to be the show to normalize incest in the US? Or at least make it not as “eww” factor? Also, shouts out to Taylor, longtime friend of the blog for feeling the same). But as they have a tender “father-daughter” moment, she starts to bleed from the nose and passes out in his arms.

Ellaria is on the shore, wiping the blood from her own nose and wiping her lipstick from her mouth, drinking an antidote before walking off with her daughters.

But let’s be real. None of this matters.

None of it.

Because the writers of this show really do suck.

The story telling this season has sucked.

Did anything serious happen? Did this season feel like everything happened in a week? Where’s Margaery and Loras? What’s going to happen to Jorah and his Grey Scale? Why did Arya’s storyline take so long to progress? In general? Why did they have to be so awful at progressing a story?

I thought the Stannis/Shireen story line was the worst it could go.

But then they killed Jon Snow.

This isn’t a spoiler, but it’s one of the worst written scenes in terms of cliff hanger and plot line. It’s already been known that they have discussed Kit Harrington’s salary for season 6 and 7. They have been hyping up the “who are Jon’s parents?” story line SO MUCH. They have just done so much for his character that killing him just didn’t make any sense. The timing was off, it wasn’t an impactful death like any of the other Stark family’s, and it just seemed like a weak ending to a weak season.

And now the directors, the writers, and Kit are saying that Jon’s def dead and def not coming back. I’m just sick of it. I have a feeling that they’re trying to “pull one over us.” Idk. Once again:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah. This season sucked.

It wasn’t good, let’s all be real. I’ll continue to watch – I’m super invested. And the second that the next book comes out I will read it voraciously, but I don’t I’ll enjoy it.

How did you all feel about the season finale?