As Game of Thrones moved towards its epic conclusion, almost every action shed new light
on something that had been said before.
From cryptic prophecies to long-awaited callbacks, here are the lines that deserve a little extra
attention — even the shortest sentences might have more meaning than you think.
Bran's transition from young, naive boy to the Three-Eyed Raven and ruler of the Kingdoms
of Westeros was a plotline that ran through the entire series, from the first episode
to the last.
As he became more and more omniscient, he essentially became a totally different person
— or non-person, as the case may be.
As each of the Stark siblings reunites with Bran, they gradually figure out that he's
turned a bit… well, odd.
Neither Sansa nor Arya seem to be able to make any sense out of his proclamation that
he's the Three-Eyed Raven, although they do use his talents to hold Littlefinger accountable
for his crimes.
In the season eight premiere, Jon Snow finally meets back up with his long lost little brother,
and sets up one of Bran's most cryptic lines of dialogue:
"Look at you.
You're a man."
"Almost."
In the context of the final episode, Bran's reply here takes on an entirely different
meaning.
Not only does it indicate that he's not quite a regular man as the Three-Eyed Raven, the
"almost" hints that he still has a major piece of his destiny to fulfill: being named as
the new king.
"Why do you think I came all this way?"
It's not surprising that Jaime Lannister's return to Winterfell brings with it some fairly
awkward reunions, considering that the last time he came to visit to the Northern castle,
he tried to kill a child by shoving the poor kid out of a window.
As we're all well aware, though, Jaime the Kingslayer has plenty of other sins under
his belt that go beyond his long-running affair with his own sister.
Of course, nobody besides Bran knows that Jaime is the man who tried to kill him all
those years ago.
"The things I do for love."
As Jaime stands in front of both the Stark and Targaryen factions at Winterfell, ready
to answer for his crimes, he comes face to face with Bran himself.
He seems to be steeling himself for the moment where Bran reveals one of Jaime's worst moments,
but that revelation never comes.
Instead, Bran simply echoes Jaime's exact words from the moment where Jaime pushed him
out of that tower.
"The things we do for love."
This ultimately lets Jaime know that despite Bran's long journey to become the Three-Eyed
Raven, a being who seems beyond concepts like revenge and forgiveness, he'll never forget
what Jaime once did to him.
One of the season's most heartbreaking moments comes right after the assault on Daenerys
and her fleet.
After losing one of her dragons, Rhaegal, to one of Qyburn's scorpion spear launchers,
her ships are attacked by Euron Greyjoy.
In the skirmish, Missandei, who has long been one of Daenerys' most trusted advisors, is
kidnapped by Greyjoy soldiers.
Tragically, Missandei ends up losing her life so Cersei can prove a twisted point to Daenerys.
Offered the opportunity to speak her last words, Missandei gives her final response.
"Dracarys."
Fans of Thrones will recognize this as the command Daenerys uses to make her dragons
breathe fire on her enemies, but it means even more to Missandei: the first time she
ever saw Daenerys use it, the Mother of Dragons employed it against a slave owner in who once
owned and abused Missandei, which ultimately freed her.
“Dracarys."
Even though Missandei can't directly unleash dragonfire with her last words, it's one last
reminder of how much Daenerys has given her and how much power and love Daenerys inspires
in her subjects — as well as the burning rage Cersei has now unleashed.
Jaime and Cersei Lannister have been inextricably linked, often physically, since the very beginning
of the show.
Even after the show's seventh season, when Jaime left his sister behind after she threatened
to kill him, viewers knew that their destinies were still intertwined, and the only question
was how.
Still, it might've been a little surprising when, after years of character development
and a slow-burn romance, Jaime left Brienne and his Northern allies behind to rejoin his
twin-slash-lover.
After a fight to the death with Euron, he still returns to his true love and queen in
a last-ditch attempt to escape.
When the two find their path entirely blocked as the ceiling begins to cave in above them,
Jaime says something that explains all of his actions:
"Nothing else matters.
Nothing else matters.
Only us."
Since the beginning, these two have stuck together, and as Jaime told Brienne back in
Winterfell, almost every evil act he committed was in service to her.
For Jaime, a few years of playing the role of a good guy just aren't enough to erase
those sins.
To him, the only thing real is his relationship with Cersei, and they deserve to die together.
After her victory at King's Landing, Daenerys disappears for a few victory laps on Drogon
the Dragon before returning to her newly conquered city.
Landing at the ruins of the Red Keep, Daenerys addresses her Unsullied and Dothraki army,
giving off distinctly tyrannical vibes as she informs her troops that their war is far
from over..
It's tempting to think that Daenerys would be satisfied in her quest for world domination
now that she has killed her rival queen and taken the capital city.
She's even giving this speech while standing above Cersei's body, buried in the rubble
beneath her.
Instead, she asks her armies to join her in "liberating" every person in Westeros.
"Will you break the wheel with me?"
The speech is made to an overwhelming roar, but at this point, the only wheel left to
break is the one of conquest that Dany's going to roll across the continent.
Daenerys has always pledged to rid the world of injustice, but in her quest for total control
of every inch of the Seven Kingdoms, it becomes frighteningly apparent that she's more power-hungry
than anyone anticipated.
After resigning from his position as Hand of the Queen due to Daenerys "slaughtering
a city" that had already surrendered, Tyrion is taken into captivity to await his fate,
which will most likely come in the form of being roasted by dragon fire, just like his
pal Varys.
While in captivity, Tyrion is visited by Jon Snow, who is equally troubled by Daenerys'
decision to kill thousands of innocents in King's Landing.
Jon initially insists he's still firmly on her side, but over the course of the conversation,
Tyrion's bluntness seems to get through.
There's an especially crucial moment when Tyrion offers up a reminder that it's not
just Jon's life that's in danger, since he's the actual true heir, but that his rebellious
sister Sansa probably won't last long against the conquering dragon queen, either.
It was all well and good when Daenerys was destroying slavers, captors, and other evil
men, but now she's hell-bent on destroying anybody in her path, whether or not they truly
deserve to die.
When Tyrion tells Jon that love often overcomes reason, Jon offers up a memorable proverb
in response.
"Love is the death of duty."
"You just came up with that?"
The line actually came from Maester Aemon Targaryen, with whom Jon spent time during
his first stint with the Night's Watch at Castle Black.
Tyrion, however, has an equally sage response:
"Sometimes duty is the death of love."
With that line, Tyrion leads Jon to his inevitable fate, and the realization that Jon must kill
Daenerys to protect Westeros.
With that, Jon leaves to give Dany one last chance to step back from the edge of world-conquering
madness, and when she doesn't, he does his duty at last.
In a pretty great twist of fate, all three surviving Stark children end up right where
it seems like they wanted to be back during the first episode.
Sansa is the beautiful queen that she always fantasized about becoming, Jon is off to join
the Night's Watch (again), and Arya has become the skilled, fearsome adventurer she always
wanted to be.
During the tearful goodbye between them, Jon even insists that Arya's welcome to come visit
him up North.
Castle Black might technically forbid women from entering its gates, but Jon is pretty
realistic about the fact that nobody would be able to stop her.
However, the younger of the Stark women tells him she won't be able to visit.
She has other plans.
"I'm not going back north."
“Where are you going?”
"What's west of Westeros?"
It's unsurprising that Arya is already planning her escape from Westeros.
Ever since her time exploring Braavos, she's been hard to pin down, and now that the Realm
is safe in the hands of her brother, it's about time for her next adventure.
There's a whole unknown world out there for her to explore.
After saying her farewells to her sister and brothers, that's where she heads.
In the episode's closing shots, viewers see Arya one last time, gathering her weapons
and arranging maps before proudly strolling along a grand ship, which turns out to be
adorned with the symbols of House Stark.
No matter where she goes, she'll always have Winterfell with her.
Samwell Tarly was never a great fighter, but since he managed to defy all the odds and
fan expectations to survive to the final episode of the series, it was clear that he would
have a huge role to play during the ending of Game of Thrones.
A bookish and somewhat sheepish figure, Sam's strength was always in his studies, from the
time he did enough research on greyscale to cure Jorah Mormont's affliction to the time
he helped Bran confirm Jon's true heritage as Aegon Targaryen.
This all comes to a head during the series finale, when Sam, dressed in the white robes
of a Maester and a part of Tyrion's Small Council, presents the Hand of the King with
an enormous book written by the Archmaester, with whom Sam worked with at the Citadel.
Confirming a long-held fan theory that Sam would write or at least help write the history
of Westeros since Robert's Rebellion, Sam reveals that the name of the tome is A Song
of Ice and Fire.
"I helped him with the title."
This is, of course, the same title that author George R.R. Martin gave to the series of books
on which Game of Thrones was based.
As a survivor of all eight seasons, Sam was present for many of the major events of the
series, so if he was meant to play the role of a stand-in for Martin, that seems like
a perfectly fitting end for his character.
Maybe he'll be the one to finally finish writing The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.
With all of our usual suspects for who would sit on the Iron Throne either dead or imprisoned
and the throne itself melted into slag, the time comes for the remaining cast members
to choose a new leader of Westeros.
That's when Tyrion is brought before a new council led by the last remaining members
of the Seven Kingdoms' great houses, including Yara Greyjoy, the entire Stark family, an
unnamed Dornish prince, and long-lost faces like Robyn Arryn and Edmure Tully, who gets
dunked on so viciously that he might never recover.
"Uncle?
Please sit."
Tyrion is nominally there to stand trial for betraying the queen, so it seems unlikely
that he'd get the chance to suggest the next ruler of Westeros himself.
As usual, however, he's full of surprises.
Asked if he would like to rule, he says that he doesn't want it, but having had some time
to mull it over, he's made up his mind about the best candidate, and he reached his conclusion
for a pretty surprising reason.
He tells the assembled nobles that stories are the most powerful things in the world,
and then makes his endorsement.
"Who has a better story than Bran the Broken?"
By suggesting Bran Stark as the next King of Westeros, as well as suggesting that all
future rulers should be chosen by a council rather than simply born into their title,
Tyrion finally breaks the wheel Daenerys fought so hard to destroy, introducing a more merit-based
system of monarchy into the Seven Kingdoms.
"You've had a strange journey."
"Stranger than most."
Perhaps surprisingly, everyone assembled agrees, deciding that Bran does in fact have the best
story.
Certainly better than Jon, a secret king who literally came back from the dead to ride
a dragon into battle against an army of zombies and tragically kill his aunt-slash-lover,
or Arya, who became a faceless assassin, got revenge for her father's death by taking out
an entire noble house, and saved the entire world by straight up shanking the Night King.
Maybe Westeros has a different idea of what makes for a good story than we do.
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