In one of his last conversations, Littlefinger tells Sansa that sometimes he likes to play a game where he thinks of the worst possible reason someone could be doing what they're doing and sees if that explains their actions. While the worst reasons are not always the true reasons, sorting out people's motivations goes a long way in predicting what they will do. The finale of season seven is all about people and their motivations.
THE PACK SURVIVES
Sansa's story arc has come to a nice completion this season. At the beginning of the story, she was very motivated . . . to leave Winterfell, to marry the prince, to live out her fairytale. As time and events proved those ambitions to be wrong, her motivation became merely to survive. She's been in survival mode for years now, looking for a way to find some kind of security and stability for herself.
When Jon made her Lady of Winterfell, she found that. Now, as Arya pointed out, she has much of what she always wanted . . . power, nice things, importance. This could have been a place where Sansa fell to the dark side. She could have allowed the desperation of her years in survival mode to make her reckless about her rise to power. It would have been the same mistake Cersei has made over and over again and it was what Littlefinger was counting on when he started pitting her against her sister.
She didn't take his bait. Instead of falling for Littlefinger's trap (as basically everyone else in the show has), she had him put on trial and executed. Unlike the Stark men, she didn't kill him herself. She had Arya do it, as a nod to Arya's more visceral need for blood vengeance. It was really the only power Arya wanted in the situation anyway.
I think it's fitting that Littlefinger on the same episode where the Wall came down. Littlefinger's plots and villainy would have been eclipsed by the Long Night in any case. He no longer served a purpose. Had GRRM not added the element of the threat to the North and kept this as more of a political chess match kind of thing, Littlefinger could have possibly survived to the end. He didn't though, and I'm glad.
Not just because I found him cringingly awful, but because it actually subverts a trope. Littlefinger represents the common man who rises to power on his wits, despite all the power and lineage of the others. However, as the story has continued, we see that ancient bloodlines and abilities DO matter in the end. Littlefinger, at the end of the day, was small and unimportant. The realization of that probably hit him right before the blade hit his throat.
MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD
This was one of the best Lannister episodes we've seen in a long time. Lannisters are best when in groups because they're all so complicated when together. It's easy for them to be focused on what they believe to be their goals when they're not around each other. When they come back together, emotions and loyalties and concerns begin to muddy the water.
For a long time, Cersei's been hellbent on killing Tyrion for the deaths of her father and children. She had bounties out on his head. She sent people after him. Tyrion's death seemed like something she needed to heal on some level. And yet, when they found themselves together again, as much as they fought, she couldn't kill him. Even when he challenged her to do it, she couldn't. The scene between them is possibly the best scene of the season and one full of emotional complexity and subtle character development.
Later, she almost kills Jaime as well. I think of Jaime wasn't slated to be on next season, he should have died when she argued with him about his oaths and his honor. In a way, it would have been a fitting death for him and a shocking turn of events for a show that used to kill off main characters but hasn't in a while.
Like Sansa, Jaime's character arc reached a climax in this episode. When we first meet him, his only true motivation is Cersei. Everything he has done in his life has been for her, to be near her, and to keep their relationship. Every oath he took was out of the need to be near Cersei. When he meets Brienne, he begins to question that, to question himself and what he's doing with his life. However, at that point, he still had Cersei and their children to protect, so he can't do much to change things.
Now he has no children (except for maybe the one she's carrying) and Cersei isn't the person she was. He makes an oath to ride North to help with the White Walkers and when she tells him it was all a lie, he loses it. For once, he chooses his honor over Cersei and begins a real path toward being the knight he's always pretended to be.
It's possible that Tyrion, on the other hand, may be more loyal to Cersei than he thought. Tyrion was fine with Dany taking over Westeros until they got there and he realized it meant people he loves may die. Other people think he was upset by her executing the Tarleys. I don't believe that. I think he was upset with the idea that it could have been Jaime standing next to them. Tyrion goes out of his way to make this Truce happen and when it falls apart, he risks his life to see Cersei privately.
Their conversation ends with him realizing she's pregnant again. The next time we see him (and her), she is lying to Jon and Dany about helping them. It's quite possible Tyrion told her to lie, assuming it would at least get Jon and Dany out of the area (which means his family would be out of harm's way). This might explain the strange reaction he had to Jon and Dany at the end of the episode.
Honestly, if Tyrion has gone back to being loyal to House Lannister and his sister, it wouldn't surprise me. He's always been a loyal Lannister, always craved their approval, and was more hurt by the fact that his father and sister turned on him than he was by the thought of being killed. For Cersei's part, she knows that when she and Tyrion are allies, they are powerful allies. If she has a new baby to protect, she knows Tyrion will do a better job of that than anyone.
FIRE AND BLOOD
We know for sure that Jon Snow is really Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar and Lyanna and the actual true heir to the throne. He will make a terrible king. Jon doesn't know this yet. All he knows is that his motivations have changed because he is in love with Dany. In fact, when he couldn't give his oath to Cersei it was because he's in love with Dany. To betray that oath would be to betray the woman he loves and after everything that happened with his last relationship, he just couldn't bring himself to do it. It was a stupid move on his part, but just not in his character.
Jon's motivation has been to deal with the White Walkers. Everything he's done up to that point had that as the foundation of his plans. Dany is a new element to him. Suddenly even his plans to deal with the Long Night are complicated by her. The same can be said for her. Dany's first motivation was just to survive, then when her brother died, she wanted to take the throne back for her son, then when she lost him, she wanted it for herself.
The thing is, none of that has ever been solid for her. Dany is about movement and motion. She's about altering things and moving forward. Even though she wanted the iron throne, she never really understood, fully, what that meant, other than that she wanted to go home. One of the reasons she was so grumpy when she got to Dragonstone was because it didn't feel like home to her. Nothing did, not until Jon got into the picture and she started to fall in love with him.
I realize I'm writing about something that sounds like sappy romance here, but it isn't. I believe with people who are born Dragons, there is a certain attraction they have for one another. It's why certain Targs were fine being married outside the family and others just could not handle the idea. This is a family of destiny, a family with a destiny, and these two people who have been without home, identity, or any really true grounding are finding it in each other.
At the end of the day, as much as he thought he was a clever man, Littlefinger's fatal mistake was not really grasping the motivations of other people. While he chose to believe that the worst reasons, the most selfish reasons, would be what prompted people to move forward, that isn't always the case. In fact, often it is the more 'socially acceptable' motivations that can be the most powerful and the darkest. Theon beat a man to deal so he could rescue his sister. Jaime leaves Cersei for honor. Jon and Dany begin to move away from their original goals for love. Sansa kills Littlefinger to protect her family. In none of those cases would someone say their reasons were 'the worst,' but that doesn't make them any less deadly.
Final Thoughts:
This episode ran 80 minutes and it needed it. It gave time for there to be lots of interactions between people. The Hound and his brother. The Hound and Brienne. Tyrion, Pod, and Bronn. While none of these moments matched the mastery of the scene between Tyrion and Cersei, they were still really good.
Beyond conversation, some of the LOOKS people would give each other were great moments of acting. Cersei's first look at Tyrion was gloriously murderous. Jaime and Brienne kept looking at each other like two people who are trying to hide a romance in high school. Cersei kept looking at Brienne like she was on to her.
As I mentioned before, Theon left to rescue Yara. I have no idea how he's going to do that given that he has no idea where she is. His conversation with Jon about the matter was pretty good though.
Finally, I hope the final season is better than this one. This one wasn't as bad as season 5, but it wasn't good either. They're not running the final season until 2019, so they best make it good.
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