'Game of Thrones' Final Season Enters the Iron Throne Endgame with Fire and Blood

"The Long Night" is over, but the bloodshed is just beginning as HBO's fantasy epic moves closer to its deadly finale.


[This story contains spoilers for season eight, episode four of HBO's Game of Thrones, "The Last of the Starks."]


Few people anticipated the Night King's death midway through the final season of Game of Thrones. In a series defined by shocking twists and turns, creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss' decision to kill off the scariest villain in the Seven Kingdoms with three episodes still remaining immediately ranked as one of the most controversial decisions of all — although it opened the door for an admittedly alluring question: if the Night King isn't the ultimate villain of Thrones, then who is?


Everyone on Thrones is the hero of their own story, of course: Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and the Stark siblings Sansa (Sophie Turner), Arya (Maisie Williams) and Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright); Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and her ferocious dragons; Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and the Lannister twins Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Without a frozen undead menace standing in the way, Game of Thrones has left the core cast with nowhere left to hide as their true human nature comes to the surface, all while the race for who will sit on the Iron Throne accelerates … assuming an Iron Throne even exists at the end of the series.


How does the series move forward after director Miguel Sapochnik's "The Long Night," then? The fourth episode of the final season (not to mention the final episode directed by David Nutter, architect of the Red Wedding) begins to deliver the answer, and it's an answer soaked in two of the things Daenerys Targaryen loves best: fire and blood — though not in the fashion she normally prefers.


After losing Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) and a large swath of her army in the Battle of Winterfell, the Dragon Queen suffered a couple of additional casualties in the latest episode, both of which can be summarized in a single word: "Dracarys." The identities of those deceased parties follows the below photo of Team Targaryen at the Winterfell funeral; consider this your final warning that major spoilers are ahead.


Two of Daenerys' oldest and most trusted allies are now dead and gone forever. First: Rhaegal the dragon, shot out of the sky by Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbaek) and his fleet as Daenerys and her own forces returned home to Dragonstone. In the aftermath, one main character went missing: Missandei of Naath (Nathalie Emmanuel), abducted by Euron. Days later, Daenerys marched a portion of her army to King's Landing for a tense standoff with Cersei. Tyrion does his best to cool the fury between the two queens, with a last ditch plea to his sister's better angels.


"I know you don't care about your people," Tyrion tells Cersei. "Why should you? They hate you and you hate them. But you're not a monster. I know this. I know this because I've seen it. You've always loved your children, more than yourself, more than Jaime, more than anything. I beg you, if not for yourself then for your child. Your reign is over. But that doesn't mean your life has to end. It doesn't mean your baby has to die."


For a moment, it looks like Tyrion's overture works. Soon, it's clear that Cersei plans to hold her ground. She tells Missandei to offer her final words now if she has any. Indeed, she does, as Missandei defiantly looks out at the crowd and utters one word in High Valyrian: "Dracarys."


With that, Cersei gives the command to the Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson), who proceeds to behead Missandei in one swift move. The episode ends with a red-eyed Daenerys marching away from the scene, ready for war — a war that's certainly coming in the upcoming penultimate episode.


"The Last of the Starks" doesn't feature a body count nearly as high as the one featured in "The Long Night," but the deaths of Rhaegal and Missandei especially somehow land with even more brutality than the casualties sustained at Winterfell. Is it because of Missandei's romantic hopes for her future with Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) moving back to Naath? Is it because we have lost yet another one of Dany's dragons, a creature the audience has watched develop since infancy — and this time, there's no Night King to raise Rhaegal back from the dead? (So we think, anyway.) Perhaps it's because of what the deaths imply: so many more deaths exactly like Missandei and Rhaegal's are on the way— ones that are completely shocking, heartbreaking, and ultimately avoidable.