The big thing is to exit on a high note, and the show definitely ends on a cliffhanger big enough to bring people back next year. Last year's finale shot of a blackened, naked Danerys holding her three baby dragons was pretty epic, but this episode had three impressive closing shots back-to-back-to-back to cement our major story lines: Dany in Qarth, Robb's romance, Tyrion and Shae, and the men of the Night's Watch north of the wall. The show seems comfortable with what it has become. The transitions between scenes, locations, and even worlds in this week's episode are confidently handled, and that confidence seems reflected in how D. B. Weiss and David Benioff write, how Alan Taylor directs, and how the actors perform. Even without a lead character per se, the show has somehow improved by leaning on its impressive ensemble cast. Just watch how Peter Dinklage and Sibel Kekilli interact this week and tell me that it's not one of the best shows on television right now, or ever. After last week's episode of Game of Thrones - focused on one event for the entire episode, well paced, well written, and very well acted - it's only natural to feel a slight let-down when the next, and final, episode of the season airs. In this case, it's not that the episode itself is a disappointment, it's that there won't be an episode next week. Dany learns a valuable lesson while searching for her dragons in the lair of the undying warlock clan of Qarth. She misses her Khal (nice to see Jason Momoa back for a few scenes), she wants her Iron Throne, but more than anything, she wants her dragons. Y'know, just in case you didn't get that since she spent most of the season obsessing over her status as the mother of dragons and how the dragons were going to win her Westeros and all that business. Turns out, the uptick in magic in the world (Pyat Pree's tricks, Melisandre's shadow vagina assassin) are the result of Dany's dragons. Or, more likely, they're what happens when Winter is Coming and the White Walkers return from their hidey-holes and secret caves north of the wall.
Review of Valar Morghulis
