Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4 Recap: The Pieces Are Falling into Place

If you missed GQ's recap of the season's third episode, click here before reading below.

At the beginning of this week’s Game of Thrones, Jon steps up to eulogize the many, many people who died in the Battle of Winterfell. "It is our duty and our honor to keep them alive in memory, for those who come after us, and those who come after them."

As Game of Thrones bids a formal goodbye to the many characters who died in last week’s climactic battle, it’s worth thinking about how neatly so many of those complicated arcs were resolved. If anyone lives long enough to tell Jorah’s story, it will be the story of a once-disgraced man who redeemed himself, in death, by saving the life of the queen he loved. You could tell a similarly romanticized story about the late Theon Greyjoy, whose charred skeleton will forever be distinguished by a pin bearing the sigil of House Stark.

But those are the dead, whose complicated lives and brave sacrifices will get, at best, a single line in some dusty book at the Citadel someday. In the aftermath of the Night King’s defeat, the unlikely survivors are left to figure out what their lives will mean. Some, like Arya Stark and the Hound, simply shrug and pick up where they left off. (In both cases, by heading to King’s Landing to kill somebody they hate.) Some, like Jaime and Brienne, forge a new path toward happiness. (At least until Jaime backslides.)

And then there’s the biggest question of all: Who will end up on the Iron Throne? Of course, there are only a few episodes of Game of Thrones left, so it’s time to start whittling down the list of candidates. The first to be eliminated is Gendry, southron bastard, who suddenly becomes Lord Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End—and all because Daenerys decrees it. In an episode full of missteps, this is Daenerys’s savviest play. By legitimizing Gendry, Daenerys publicly establishes her respect for the traditions of Westeros, her appreciation for Gendry’s role in defeating the Night King, and her generosity in absolving Gendry of any responsibility for his father’s rebellion against the Targaryen dynasty. And at a time of great political turmoil, it comes with the bonus side of taking one prospective rival for the Iron Throne and turning him into a happy ally. It’s an act of "benevolence" that also happens to suit Daenerys’s needs perfectly—and once word gets out, it could easily inspire other ambitious houses to calculate the odds and cast their lot with the dragon queen.

At this late stage of the series, I don’t think Game of Thrones is interested in following consequences to their logical conclusion, so I don’t think we’ll ever check back to see how Gendry is faring as Lord of Storm’s End. But I think it’s worth considering how Daenerys’s decision—however generous—doesn’t actually involve any consideration about what’s best for the Seven Kingdoms. Sure, we know that Gendry is a good and noble person. But even a cursory flip through the history of Westeros will show that being a good and noble person doesn’t always translate to being a good and noble leader.

Then again: Could any leader untangle the knot that has led to such a violent and multifaceted war for the Iron Throne? Right now, the struggle seems destined to come down to even more bloodshed, with countless smallfolk written off as collateral damage by whoever ends up winning. But the impending war is just one problem. The aftermath will be another problem, and even harder to resolve. At some point, Westeros is due for some stability—and if Game of Thrones has a long-term problem, it’s that none of the serious candidates for the Iron Throne seems like a particularly good fit for the job.

Let’s start with the woman who currently occupies King’s Landing: Cersei Lannister, the vindictive and relentlessly self-interested queen. Cersei’s current strategy for retaining power is, characteristically, extremely clever and extremely cruel. She’s using the people of King’s Landing as a kind of shield; if Daenerys wants to attack the Red Keep and depose Cersei, she’ll need to cut through thousands of innocent citizens first. There’s a callous, burn-it-all-down logic to Cersei’s gambit: Even if Daenerys turns out to be ruthless enough to do it, she’ll be remembered forever as a monster, not a liberator, by the people of Westeros.

But Cersei is also playing a longer game—a game that only requires her to wait until her baby is born. It’s variation on a game she once played with Robert Baratheon: Raising a child as the heir to two legendary families (in this case, Lannister and Greyjoy) while secretly ensuring that the child’s lineage is wholly Lannister.

By now, Cersei has enough experience to know that a royal heir can become a frustrating and long-lasting problem. (There’s a reason, after all, that one of Cersei’s first acts as Queen Regent was killing as many of Robert Baratheon’s bastards as she could find.) If Cersei can just hold on to King’s Landing long enough to have her baby, she’ll have re-solidified her own royal lineage and created a bloodline that will be that much harder to stamp out.

If you’re looking for evidence that a baby can grow up into a world-altering threat, look no further than Daenerys Targaryen, who was literally born as the victors of Robert’s Rebellion tried and failed to wipe out any trace of the Targaryen dynasty. But if she’s going to reclaim the throne, she still has a lot to overcome. Daenerys’s campaign has endured plenty of setbacks but nothing quite like this episode, which is strung together with three devastating losses: the funeral of Jorah Mormont, the fatal goring of her dragon Rhaegal, and the beheading of Missandei.

Jorah’s fate was sealed last week, but the latter two deaths can at least partially be chalked up to Daenerys ignoring some legitimately good advice from Sansa Stark, who has somehow become the only Game of Thrones leader to even mention the practical concerns that used to be this show’s bread and butter. When Daenerys insists that it’s time to march the army down to King’s Landing—at a time when the funeral pyres from the Battle of Winterfell are probably still warm—Sansa argues, sensibly, that the surviving soldiers need time to rest and heal before they march 1,500 miles and square off against Cersei’s army. Daenerys ignores her, and immediately stumbles into an exceedingly obvious trap that results in the death of a dragon and the capture of her closest friend and adviser.

As in much of season 8, Daenerys’s arc is being rushed, and her competence as a leader is being undermined by poor strategy that feels like it’s only happening because the plot requires it. (Seriously, Daenerys didn’t send a single scout to see if Euron Greyjoy’s fleet might be waiting for her at Dragonstone?) But she does at least attempt to secure a bloodless victory. Somewhat reluctantly, Daenerys sends Tyrion to parlay with Cersei, promising mercy in exchange for an unconditional surrender.

This offer is rejected, as literally anyone who knows anything about Cersei could have predicted, and Cersei decides to chop off Missandei’s head to provoke the dragon queen. If Daenerys takes Missandei’s last words to heart, her next plan will be blasting everybody with dragonfire—and history shows that Daenerys doesn’t need much convincing on that front.

Is all of this going where it seems to be going? For years, Game of Thrones has flirted with the idea that Daenerys might ultimately turn out to be the second coming of her father, the Mad King. Now, with more reasons than usual to break out the fire and blood, we’ll see if she has the temperament to avoid alienating her would-be subjects with a full-on massacre.

Meanwhile, there’s Jon, who has all of the goodness and none of the caginess that might make him a competent leader. Ned Stark may not literally be Jon’s father, but Jon shares his flaws. Given every reason not to tell anyone the truth about his parentage, Jon decides to tell Arya and Sansa anyway—misjudging Sansa in particular, who immediately breaks her oath of secrecy by telling Tyrion about it.

And so Tyrion and Varys, Daenerys’s closest advisers, have a new problem on their hands. By blood, Jon has a better claim to the throne than Daenerys. By temperament, he’s a more predictable, measured leader than Daenerys. He was born in Westeros, which makes him an easier sell than a Targaryen who spent the vast majority of her life overseas. And he’s a dude, which means he’ll face fewer questions in the patrilineal society of Westeros.

But there are also problems. Jon has already sworn an oath of loyalty to Daenerys. What’s more, he doesn’t even want to be king. And he and Daenerys are hooking up—even as she periodically looks over at him like she wants to kill him.

And hey, maybe she will! Tyrion—who continues to be described as "clever" despite acting like a naive idiot for the past few seasons—misjudges both Cersei and Daenerys in this episode, and it’s entirely possible that Daenerys will snuff out her biggest rival for the Iron Throne before a cooler head can stop her. But there are other, less bloody options that remain on the table. In a conversation with Varys, Tyrion tosses out one last Hail Mary: a wedding between Daenerys and Jon, who could do a lot to shore up each other’s respective weaknesses. It would solve a lot of problems! But Varys suspects—probably correctly—that Daenerys will never consent to dividing the power of the Iron Throne she sees as her birthright.

And so Daenerys’s already shaky grasp on power is being threatened by the treasonous plotting of her closest remaining advisers. Once Cersei is inevitably deposed—probably in next week’s episode—it seems likely that the final Game of Thrones conflict will come down to Daenerys vs. Jon.

Maybe one of them ends up on the Iron Throne. Maybe one of them ends up dead. Maybe they broker some kind of truce—say, Daenerys settling for Six Kingdoms and making Jon the King in the North.

But whatever happens, will it really solve the crisis of leadership at the center of the series? What’s frustrating about Game of Thrones right now is that I can’t tell how much of this is intentional. Right now, are we supposed to be looking at these three would-be leaders of Westeros—one ruthless and egomaniacal, one self-righteous and intransigent, and one either fatally naive or just straight-up dumb—and recognizing that none of them is making much of a case for the Iron Throne? Or are the very real flaws of these characters just a temporary, artificial way for Game of Thrones to drag out the drama for another couple of episodes? Because based on the events of this season, if the future of Westeros lies in the hands of any of these ding-dongs—well, good luck to the people of Westeros.