Boy oh boy s6e10.
When I first watched this, and on many of rewatches after, this was my second favorite episode ever. And it featured my favorite 20 minutes ever. And still, those opening 20 minutes are my favorite.
But this episode just....
Like, there's the silliness of Varys teleporting around the world. Varys promising Fire and Blood and then next season recoiling at the thought? Bran watching Jon be born but for some unknown reason not getting close enough to hear his name??
But the two major, major gripes.
1) How, exactly, does Cersei have a claim to the Throne? I mean..who?What? Even if every Baratheon and every distant Baratheon relative is dead, and by some ancient law if that happens then the crown passes to the Queen and her family...Cersei wasn't Joffrey's Queen lol.
So she just seats herself on the Throne and no one says shit? There's no uprising, no protest, nothing? This from the show that had King's rising up left and right when it became known that Joffrey was illegitimate. Riots starting in the streets because of it?
I remember King Stannis making a point about this long ago and I brushed it off, as I did much of the criticism at the time, convinced that D&D were just trying to narrow it down to the nitty gritty. I was very wrong.
2) I realized much too late that this is where the nail was placed in the coffin that was Jaime's arc. So, his entire arc this entire time has been that while, yes, he's an asshole and deserving of death, the ONE thing that everyone across the world knows him for, killing his own King, was his most honorable act. And deep down he's been trying to restore his honor. So here we are, episode 10, and Cersei does the exact thing that Jaime ruined his honor for, lights the wildfire. Not only that, it causes their son to throw himself out a window.
ANd Jaime says..not a word. Nothing. Not even an argument.
Personally, I imagine it's exactly the opposite in the books. Cersei, with her enemies closing in around her (maybe fAegon and Arianne, maybe Dany, maybe both) has decided to light the fuse and blow the city up. She has grown to love the flames. And Jaime shows up, just in the nick of time, and does the deed again. Now I suspect it will be a moment of extreme irony as Dany will proceed to then blow the wildfire up anyway, which will just be the peak of tragic, but still, it makes Jaime's story make some damn sense.