In a way, the end of Game of Thrones maintained the status quo. Jon looks back at the Wall as the gate closes. Back then, the Free Folk were the enemy of the Night’s Watch, along with the White Walkers lurking in the woods now, with the Night King eliminated once and for all, they are friends. They ride into the Haunted Forest, just as those three rangers did in the series premiere. He is once again Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, that fabled group of exiles: the sword in the darkness, the watcher on the walls, the shield that guards the realms of men. But as Tormund told Jon in season 8, episode 4, “The Last of the Starks,” the North “isn’t home” for the Free Folk he intends to bring them up to Castle Black and then “back where we belong” - the frigid expanse beyond the Wall.Īt the very end of the final episode, Jon accompanies Tormund and the wildlings as they travel north from Castle Black. The war against the Night King, the White Walkers, and their army of the dead pushed the Free Folk to do something they would never have done under their former leader Mance Rayder: They pledged their allegiance to Jon Snow and fought alongside the “southerners” on the side of the living. The humans who live north of the Wall call themselves the Free Folk it’s the people of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros who refer to them derisively as “wildlings.” (In turn, the Free Folk refer to everyone else as “crows” and “southerners.”) The Free Folk, like the inhabitants of the North, are descendants of the First Men - the first humans to settle the continent of Westeros, following the nonhuman Children of the Forest. HBO What does the series finale’s final shot sequence mean? The very first shot of Game of Thrones, with Will (right) and his fellow Night’s Watch rangers heading out from Castle Black. Terrified, Will flees south and ends up being captured near Winterfell, where Ned Stark beheads him for the crime of desertion. Will is eventually chased by the reanimated corpse of a wildling girl - we’ll come to know them as wights - and runs into a White Walker beheading Gared. When he fetches his comrades, they return to the area to find that the bodies are gone. Will comes across a group of wildlings that have been massacred, their bodies dismembered and arranged into a strange pattern. The group heads into the Haunted Forest to investigate reports of wildlings approaching the Wall. The Night’s Watch is responsible for patrolling the lands beyond the Wall, keeping an eye on the Haunted Forest immediately to the north for threats such as direwolves and wildlings. The very first shot of Game of Thrones shows three rangers of the Night’s Watch - Gared, Ser Waymar Royce, and Will - on horseback at Castle Black, waiting for the gate to the tunnel through the Wall to rise. HBO and HBO Wait, how did Game of Thrones start? Wide shots of the Wall from Game of Thrones’ pilot episode (left) and series finale (right), with men of the Night’s Watch heading north from Castle Black. (Oh, and another old friend: Jon’s direwolf, Ghost.) In the final moments of the episode, the three ride out from Castle Black, leading the wildlings north of the Wall. Jon heads north to Castle Black, where he encounters his old wildling friend Tormund Giantsbane and a group of the Free Folk. (When Tyrion tells him of his fate, Jon’s response echoes what we’re all thinking: “ There’s still a Night’s Watch?”) As the result of a compromise between the Unsullied - who want Jon’s head because he killed their queen, Daenerys - and the Starks, Jon is exiled to the Night’s Watch. (Bronn, the Master of Coin, is presumably finding a budget for the construction of a new, wheelchair-accessible throne, since Drogon melted the iron one.) Arya Stark is sailing westward to explore the world beyond “where all the maps stop.” Sansa Stark is the Queen in the North, leader of a region that is once more an independent kingdom.Īnd Jon Snow, the man who was briefly known (to a select few) as Aegon Targaryen, does not get to choose his own ending. The youngest of the Stark clan, Brandon Stark, is serving as the ruler of Westeros: Bran the Broken, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. The end of the series’ final episode showed us the fates of the four surviving members of House Stark. Let’s take a trip back through time to break down what it all means. And in a meaningful bit of parallelism, the show reminded us of the origins of the people of Westeros. The series finale, “ The Iron Throne,” and the pilot episode, “Winter Is Coming,” both focused on the nexus of the show’s drama: the North. In fact, the show literally ended in the same place it started. Game of Thrones’ eight-season saga is now finished, and in a practice that is not uncommon in prestige television, the end of the series harked back to the beginning.
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