This comes with a disclaimer: nobody has to feel the way I do. Everybody has a right to be enraged right now. I am too, but not heartbroken, in a sense. Also, I’ve been burned many times by mediocre nihilistic white male writers. So when the absurd leaks were corroborated and confirmed by interviews, I started mourning the characters with a week advance. I’ve been through several stages of grief during the week, still hoping that somehow that stuff was fake, because honestly? My sixth grade tale about a dragon in a child’s attic made more sense. But I digress.
So last night something happened: subtitle leaks dropped on reddit an hour before the episode. I read them. It was somehow worse than I expected. What gave me pause? Jaime Lannister saying he doesn’t care about innocent lives. It has to be fake, I told myself. Come on. I waited, the episode started. I wasn’t watching, nor I plan to for a few days, if ever. I’ll do it when I feel ready to laugh. Long story short, someone confirmed the subtitles were real.
So HERE comes my point. I don’t feel anything if not bitterness about what happened. Cause guys. That person running on screen? It wasn’t Jaime Lannister. It wasn’t. This isn’t me being delusional: this is a fact. The same can be said by pretty much everyone who was on screen.
D&D, in their total inability to write on their own, and in their haste to finish this show and move on, have decided to end the story one way or another, and bent characters to plot devices we don’t know nor care about.
There is a difference between the worst thing a character could reasonably do and something they would never but end up doing cause the writers need to put an end to their story. Whoever was on screen last night, it wasn’t Jaime. Jaime Lannister broke his oaths and killed his king to save half a million lives.
But because he had to die in the end, he was written as a character who ultimately doesn’t exist. The episode was so disconnected from the rest of the season - from the rest of the series - it barely made sense. For him. For Tyrion. For Cersei. Yes, it started last episode. And it went down on a downward spiral, to the point where apparently his hand has grown back before death (go on twitter and reddit, the screenshot is everywhere). Jaime’s whole character is based on the fact that he is a good person who has done terrible things, but who wanted to be good again. Who cared, who loved. You know, J’aime.
So no, I’m not mourning Jaime. As far as I’m concerned, this show ended with Bronn f*cking off into nothing to wait for Highgarden. I won’t have this mess ruining my love for him. Cause this isn’t him.
And to tackle another point: it takes a quick pick at my blog to see what I think about who he should have stayed with. I won’t let this nonsense taint my love for jaime/brienne either. According to these clowns, Jaime loved Brienne. He wanted to stay in the north. He wanted a chance. Until they needed him south to die and they sent what clearly was his doppleganger to do it. So I’m going to make the best of it. He loved her? Ok. Thank you for confirming it. We already knew it, better than any of them ever understood. And since whoever rode off south clearly wasn’t the same man, they can’t ruin it for me.
Here’s my last point, which I’ve already mini-ranted about on twitter: it’s ok to change plot points from books to tv, it’s all right. Not so much to trash the characters you’re lifting from. In the end, as many people have already said before and better than me, Jaime was Jaime for just a bunch of episode here and there, and butchered otherwise. Brienne too, deserved better than watching a tower from afar and ending up alone, unable to save the man she loved from his own demons and ghosts.
I don’t know if GRRM will finish the books, and if endgame will be the same, but two things are for sure: if it is, it will be made in a way that will make sense. Real Jaime? Real Jaime would go back to KL, but he won’t leave Brienne crying with no explanation. Real Jaime wants to make a new path for himself. He will have motives and honor.
And last but not least if the creator of the series tells you you need other six seasons to end things properly….maybe f*cking listen.