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Credit: HBO
Believe it or not, Game of Thrones wrapped on HBO more than six years ago, with many longtime characters dead by the time the final credits rolled. Season 8 was certainly divisive among fans, but the consensus seems to be that the finale was just not a strong conclusion. I personally haven’t rewatched many episodes since the 2019 finale, but the mood recently struck me to revisit one very specific scene with Jaime and Brienne, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s performance has me bitter all over again about how Jaime’s story ended.
Credit: HBO
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Unforgettable Scene
The scene I’m referring to comes from the fifth episode of Season 3, called “Kissed By Fire” and available streaming with an HBO Max subscription. By this point in the series, Jaime was at his lowest. He’d violently lost his sword hand, and he seemed to be at death’s door from the infected wound. It was in this state that Jaime stepped into a large steaming bathtub, where a dismayed Brienne was already cleaning up.
Barely holding on to consciousness, Jaime revealed the backstory how he became known as the “Kingslayer.” In this telling, he wasn’t an arrogant young knight who killed the king at the first opportunity, but a faithful member of the Kingsguard in King’s Landing… to a certain point. Jaime was almost growling when he got to the key part of the story, telling Brienne:
[Aerys] told me to bring him my father’s head. Then he turned to his pyromancer. ‘Burn them all,’ he said. ‘Burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds.’ Tell me, if your precious Renly commanded you to kill your own father and stand by while thousands of men, women, and children burned alive, would you have done it? Would you have kept your oath then? First I killed the pyromancer, and then when the king turned to flee, I drove my sword into his back. ‘Burn them all,’ he kept saying.
Game of Thrones had established Ned Stark’s version back in Season 1, and fans had no reason to doubt him. Ned was the good guy, after all, and Jaime was the guy who tossed a kid out of a window to cover up his incestuous affair.
“Kissed by Fire” did give reason to doubt. Feverish and missing a hand, Jaime was in no shape to spin an elaborate lie. When he snarled that he didn’t tell the story to Ned because “by what right does the wolf judge the lion,” I believed him. Jaime still did despicable things, but there were new shades of gray.
Credit: HBO
Why I’m Mad Again About Jaime’s Ending
Now, a lot went wrong on Game of Thrones after the Battle of Winterfell, but it was “The Bells” as the penultimate episode that made me furious on Jaime’s behalf. I’d been resigned to Jaime likely dying by Cersei’s side on the show, and there are even hints in the books that George R.R. Martin may do the same if he ever finishes the saga. But I wasn’t prepared for Jaime to say this about the people of King’s Landing in his final scene with Tyrion:
To be honest, I never really cared much for them. Innocent or otherwise.
Were there some solid moments in this sequence between the brothers? Sure. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Peter Dinklage delivered as Jaime and Tyrion said their final farewells, but I was soured on the whole scene once Jaime dropped that line. I could believe Jaime falling back into old habits about Cersei, but I just couldn’t buy that the man who killed King Aerys to save the city would say that he “never cared much” for the common people.
For me, this scene was the worst for Jamie in “The Bells,” and that’s saying something. In fact, other than the brothers’ farewell, my favorite thing about the sequence is probably that it’s about as darkly lit as the Battle of Winterfell, which could help me try to forget it. Still, with the passage of six years and now rewatching Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s performance in the Season 3 bathtub scene, I can at least look back on the highlights without dwelling on that ending.
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