Game of Thrones, ‘The Queen’s Justice’ Plot Summary:
Cersei (Lena Headey) puts her glorious plan of victory in motion. First, she gets her revenge on Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) for killing Cersei’s daughter. Next, she convince the man from the Iron Bank (Mark Gatiss) to await repayment of their exorbitant debt, and back her in the war. Then she plans a move no one sees coming…except Jamie (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who helped plan things. Meanwhile, at Dragonstone Dany (Emilia Clarke) and Jon (Kit Harrington) finally meet…and things get awkward. The siege of Casterly Rock begins.
Cersei’s Bloody Path of Revenge:
Cersei Lannister knows a thing or two about revenge, especially bloody, terrible, and horrifying revenge. The apex of her revenge is undoubtedly her making toast out of the Tyrells, and Sparrows. However, that was done from afar…tonight she got up close, and personal. Literally getting her hands dirty. And Lena Headey ate these scenes up with furious gusto. In fact it might some of her best work in the series. Her confronting Ellaria in the cells, and then executing (eventually) her favorite daughter was some of Headey’s finest work. It was her trademark performance — quietly, and viciously holding herself back from going utter batshit crazy. However, this time it was done — in a justifiable way.
Normally, we can’t get behind Cersei Lannister. She’s a pretty deplorable human. However, exacting revenge on the woman who coldly murdered Cersei’s innocent daughter? You can’t argue with Cersei on this one. She was wronged. Her daughter did not deserve a death like that. So she struck back at her killer, by taking away her daughter — who is not-so innocent. In fact, she’s a stone cold killer. So, the normal contempt we’d hold for Cersei should not be apparent in this scene — because she’ll make up for it later, for sure.
Dany Meet Jon
This was awkward…in a good way. Being this is Game of Thrones, there was no way the first meeting of these two was going to go well. Absolutely no way. However, the writing here is what really sold it. The writers took two characters, who have extremely similar characteristics, and brought out their worst qualities in one scene — blind stubbornness. Both Jon and Dany are bullheaded in their convictions, and here we saw that in full display. It was nice to see Jon written in a stronger tone instead of the “You Know Nothing Jon Snow” role of reluctant leader.
Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) plays a major role in these scenes, and it’s his words that coax the two to a tenuous alliance. Very tenuous, I might add. Dinklage is always brilliant, but I think this season he’s taken on a terrific role as a confident man who is barely treading to keep his head above water. His line about Jon looking better than him at brooding was classic.
The Reveal of Casterly Rock
Hands down my favorite scene of the episode. This was a scene filled with great twists, and turns. First, we see the Unsullied getting completely trashed by the wall defenses at Casterly Rock while Varys and Tyrion narrate the scene.
But, then we have our first twist.
Tyrion built a sewer system passage that would allow him to ship his gaggle of courtesans into his room. This room and passage allows the Unsullied to break into Casterly Rock, and take it…all while Tyrion masterfully narrates.
But then comes the final, tragic twist. The Unsullied have defeated a skeleton crew. The Lannister army is marching on House Tyrell…and the Iron Fleet has destroyed all of the Unsullied’s fleet.
It’s an amazing sequence that grabs you by the heart, give you hope, then burns all that hope to the ground. Vintage GOT.
Sage Words from Little Finger
This was an extremely small, but massively important moment. Little Finger (Aidan Gillen) has been Sansa’s (Sophie Turner) low-key whipping boy for this season. He’s constantly put in his place, or shut down by the now grown-up (and temporary) Queen of the North. In this episode it looked like we were in store for another one of these scenes, until the former Master of Coin, stops Sansa and drops a huge knowledge bomb.
“Don’t fight in the North or the South. Fight every battle everywhere, always in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before.”
It’s a great scene, and of course Aiden Gillen completely slays it. However, this is way more important than we think. We’ve all noticed how much Sansa is getting to be like Cersei, right? I mean she flat out said she admired her. Now with this seed planted in her head, we could see the transformation to a new, ruthless version of Sansa coming way quicker than we expected.
Olenna Tyrell’s Final Moment and Her Final F-U to The Lannisters
One of the greatest additions to the series was the grand lady Diana Rigg as Olenna Tyrell. She has played the role of the fire breathing, bile spewing uber bitch. She has had so many mic drop, deep burn moments that I’ve frankly lost track. She has played an amazing adversary of Cersei, and I’ll miss her verbal sparring with the now Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
So it’s fitting that Lady O was given one last opportunity to steal the show, and present a massive middle fingers to the Lannisters. In her final scene in the series she not only emasculates Jamie, not only does she rip Cersei to shreds…but she reveals she was actually the one who ordered the murder of Joffrey.
Riggs exuded such loathsome fury, that you have to sit there and be impressed. It was a grand final moment for a character who regularly stole the show.
