PICS: Game of Thrones – The Iron Throne

It happened. After 73 episodes over eight years, Game of Thrones is over.

*Spoiler alert: Don’t read this until you’ve watched the finale of Game of Thrones, now on Showmax.*

Episode 6 of Season 8 first aired worldwide (including on M-Net) at 03:00 our time, on Monday, 20 May 2019, and audience numbers in the US topped 19 million. This broke the series record set the previous week, when more than 18 million viewers tuned into HBO to watch The Bells, the penultimate episode.

Here are some images released by HBO of the final episode.

 

Now, the whole of Season 8 has been controversial – how could it not be, with a show in which so many fans are deeply invested? But it seems that the finale is going to be one of the most hotly contested episodes of the entire series, judging by fans’ reactions online.

But there are a few things we can agree on, surely – such as the most affecting, genuine moments from the final episode. We particularly liked these:

• Daenerys first laying eyes on the Throne that she has imagined reclaiming for her entire life, since she was “a girl who couldn’t count to 20”. (She used to be a little girl! Then she was a legitimate Breaker of Chains, a real force for good, no matter what she ended up becoming. Let us never forget that.)
• Drogon torching the Throne. The Throne, not Jon. (Did he know somewhere in his reptilian heart that it was the pursuit of the Throne that had really killed his mother?)
• Tyrion sobbing over his siblings’ remains. (This is a man who murdered his father with a crossbow without batting an eyelid, remember.)
• Ser Brienne completing Jaime’s legacy in the Book of Brothers. (He left her, she has every right to let his name be buried with his body – but instead, she made sure that history won’t forget the goodness he had in him, or his courageous fight for what he thought was right.)
• Brandon the Broken saying, “Why did you think I came all this way?”. (We didn’t see this ending for him coming at all – but, of course, it was always going to.)

Still a Game of Thrones novice? Now you can stream the entire boxset of Season 1 to Season 8 on Showmax, with no waiting between episodes. Got around three days and 16 minutes free? Well, we’ve got just the thing…

Start watching now »