That's it for another season of Game of Thrones.
By Sam Clench
SPOILER ALERT: This is a recap. That means we'll be discussing all the juicy details from the Game of Thrones season seven finale.
If you haven't seen the episode yet and don't want to know what happens, leave now.
Staying at this point would be almost as dumb as, say, trusting Cersei Lannister to act like a rational human being, or falling madly in love with your aunt.
We have reached the final phase of Tyrion's insane plan. So far his stupidity has killed off the permanently drunk priest, several deeply beloved extras and a dragon, so things can only get better from here, right? I'm sure that's right. Let's be optimistic.
As Bronn and Jaime survey Daenerys's army of castrated Unsullied from the walls of King's Landing, they discuss the importance of cocks in male life. Apparently everything a man does is driven by his cock, and when he loses his cock, he loses all purpose.
I don't see what poultry has to do with anything, to be honest, but we know The Hound loves a good chicken so maybe there is something to Bronn's theory.
Eventually the Dothraki arrive and swarm across the field below them, screeching "alalalalalala" like a suicide bomber in a South Park episode.
Some of our favourite characters are reunited as Daenerys's delegation, minus the queen herself, is escorted towards the dragonpit. The Hound and Brienne bond over that time they almost killed each other. Tyrion reminds Bronn he will double whatever anyone else pays him - presumably this means two castles.
The most important reunion of all, however, happens when Cersei marches into the pit with her queensguard. The Hound sizes up his undead Frankenbrother and all but confirms the most hyped fan theory of all.
"You know who's coming for you. You've always known," he says. That's right, CLEGANEBOWL is almost definitely going to happen ... at some point. Once it does, I can die a happy man.
Daenerys, ever the attention seeker, makes a dramatic entrance on Drogon's back and casually takes her seat without saying a word. Sure, I flew here on a dragon. What of it? Don't you guys fly dragons to your meetings?
"We've been here for some time," Cersei says pointedly, assuming the role of unamused family matriarch at a Christmas lunch as she chides the youngster for her tardiness.
Everything is a bit tense, so Euron breaks the ice with a nice tasteful dwarf joke, continuing his streak of burning a Lannister every time he appears on screen. "Why are you talking? You're the smallest problem here," he tells Tyrion. Euron clearly has no idea about Jon's pecker, which will be making its long-awaited appearance later.
The latest version of Jon's perpetually ineffective apocalyptic warning speech does little to sway Cersei, so The Hound wheels out the captured wight and chops it to pieces in front of her, demonstrating its immunity to normal weapons. She seems genuinely terrified. Jaime seems genuinely concerned. Qyburn seems genuinely aroused.
Visibly shaken, Cersei agrees to a truce, with one condition - when the war against the dead is over and the war for the Iron Throne restarts, Jon must remain neutral. That seems reasonable enough. Mission accomplished! I guess that crazy trip north of The Wall was worth it after all ...
No, wait, Jon has to screw everything up, because he's a colossal dolt. He confesses that he has already pledged himself to Daenerys, the deal falls apart, and Cersei storms off.
"I'm grateful for your loyalty and your smouldering stares but I really wish you weren't such a dumbass," Daenerys tells him.
Desperate to salvage the alliance, Tyrion seeks out Cersei in her office, flanked by the undead Gregor. Does she really let that thing in her chambers? He must smell rancid. Perhaps slowly rotting flesh is the kind of odour you just get used to.
The meeting deteriorates into a shouting match and Cersei threatens to have Tyrion killed, as is her wont. He inexplicably goads her on. Generally speaking, I would say encouraging the insane monarch with a murder fetish to cut you in half is a bad negotiating strategy, but it seems to work out OK for Tyrion here.
Back at the dragonpit, Jon the emo is moping. "No one's less happy about this than I am," he tells Daenerys. That's a bit obvious, coming from the man who could probably get an Aston Martin DB9 for his birthday and still manage to look miserable about it.
Daenerys, meanwhile, is really bothered by the setting. She thinks the Targaryens should never have locked their dragons away, despite the fact that said dragons were uncontrollable killing machines. "They filled people with wonder and awe," she says. Actually Daenerys they filled people with fire and tooth holes. Big difference.
Before Tyrion returns with the news that he has saved their deal with Cersei, the couple manage to squeeze in one more reference to Daenerys's alleged inability to have children. Even Jon seems to be picking up on the foreshadowing at this point, and as we established earlier, he's a dumb dumb.
Sansa is irritated that Jon pledged the North to Daenerys without consulting her first. To be fair, last week we learned a pigeon can fly across half of Westeros in about two hours, so he really could have talked to her. We're not dealing with Australia Post here.
Littlefinger sees the opening he's been waiting for. "I've heard gossip that the dragon queen is quite beautiful," he says, implying (correctly) that Jon is thinking with his dick. Bronn's theory from earlier is looking better and better.
Littlefinger also wants Sansa to believe Arya is plotting to kill her, which is admittedly plausible considering the handbag full of dismembered faces she discovered in the last episode.
So what's his endgame here? Get Sansa to strip Jon of his title and execute her sister, obviously. Then ... something something chaosh ish a laddah?
Daenerys is in the map room planning her trip to Winterfell. Jon suggests she accompany him on his pleasure yacht, because it would be a strong display of military unity and ... look, it will give them plenty of time for incest. That's literally the only reason.
Pedobear Jorah immediately recognises Jon's smooth moves for what they are and suggests Daenerys ride in his nondescript white van instead, but she can't really hear his pleas from all the way over there in the friendzone.
As the meeting ends, Theon pulls Jon aside and showers him with praise, a bit like that weird fanboy who just spotted his hero at a comic book convention.
"You've always known what was right, even when we were all young and stupid," he says, apparently ignorant of the fact that Jon himself is young, stupid and knows nothing.
"Every step you take, it's always the right step," he continues, forgetting those times Jon stepped straight into an ambush from his own men, and charged the entire Bolton army by himself, and fell into the White Walkers' trap, giving the Night King the undead dragon he probably needed to bring down The Wall. Quite a few wrong steps in there.
"I've always wanted to do the right thing. Be the right kind of person," Theon concludes. "But I never knew what that meant." Perhaps it meant not murdering all your friends and destroying their treasured family home, Theon. Just a thought.
Anyway Theon has decided to rescue his sister, Yara, who is still in Euron's clutches. Standing in his way is the angry Aussie ship captain, who wants to be a pirate like Jack Sparrow, just with more pillaging and rape. They don't put those parts in the Disney films.
The pair end up re-enacting the McGregor-Mayweather fight. The angry captain is Conor McGregor - he comes out strong, if a little wobbly on his feet, and lands some solid punches. Theon, aka Floyd Mayweather without balls, lets his opponent tire himself out before going in for the kill.
Granted, this analogy isn't perfect. The weekend's megafight would have been much more entertaining with a knee in the groin or two.
Victorious, if a little concussed, Theon marshals the remaining Iron Islanders and sets off. I guess they're just going to leave that dead guy on the beach for someone else to clean up.
"I always knew you were the stupidest Lannister," Cersei spits at Jaime.
You see, when she said the Lannister armies would join the fight against the dead, dumb Jaime assumed she meant the Lannister armies would join the fight against the dead, when in fact what she really meant was the Lannister armies would not join the fight against the dead.
I presume this type of female doublespeak is also at work when my girlfriend insists Kit Harington isn't "that" hot.
How could Jaime fail to discern the truth though? It's not as if Cersei concocted some elaborate evil plot with Euron "a finger up the bum!" Greyjoy without telling him for no apparent reason. Oh wait, that's exactly what she did.
Cersei accuses Jaime of treason, conspiring with the enemy (because he was tricked into meeting Tyrion that one time) and being an "idiot". Finally, he's had enough.
There's an immensely tense moment as Cersei considers killing the love of her life for the sickening crime of wanting to save the world from an army of zombies, but he is eventually allowed to set off for the North alone as the first winter snowflakes fall on King's Landing.
Arya is called to the great hall, where all the northern lords have gathered. It seems Sansa is about to have her executed.
"You stand accused of murder. You stand accused of treason. How do you answer these charges ...... *pauses to put on sunglasses* .......... Lord Baelish?" she says.
It takes Littlefinger about five minutes to figure out what is going on, but when he does, the squirming is exquisite to watch.
He tries lying. He tries begging. He tries squeezing pained, unintelligible noises through his windpipe like a wounded piglet. He tries the "I creeped on your mother" thing. Finally, he tries the "I'm a paedophile who has always loved you" thing.
None of them stop Arya from cutting his throat. Due process isn't really a thing in Westeros.
Later, as Sansa and Arya make up with each other on Winterfell's battlements, the younger sister makes a confession.
"I was never going to be as good a lady as you, so I had to be something else," Arya says. I would argue that being "something else" didn't have to mean turning into a psycho serial killer who wears other people's faces for fun, but OK.
Inside, Samwell arrives at Winterfell, and immediately visits fellow nerd and kindred spirit Bran. Armed with the power of knowledge, they piece together Jon's real parentage, finally revealing the truth about the biggest Game of Thrones fan theory of all.
Bran flashes back to the wedding of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, whom we now know to be Jon's parents. The famous hunk Rhaegar has Viserys's hair and Ramsey Bolton's voice, so I suspect he's not quite as romantic as the writers imagined, but that doesn't change the upshot - Jon is a true-born Targaryen and the real heir to the Iron Throne.
Also, Rhaegar was awful at naming his children. He called both his sons Aegon! A little bloody creativity would be nice.
Meanwhile, Jon and Daenerys are rolling around in their cabin on the love yacht, as Tyrion stands outside and listens for some baffling reason I don't even want to contemplate.
The sound of Bran talking over their steamy sex scene is a bit of a mood killer, but perhaps that is a good thing, considering they are - and I cannot stress this enough - aunt and nephew.
I had previously wondered whether undead Jon's blood was still pumping, so consider that question answered. But ... how can I put this ... it isn't pumping for long. He needs to work on his stamina.
Nice glutes though. This guy squats.
Either the Night King has attached rocket jets to his undead dragon, or the last episode's messed up timeline suddenly makes a lot more sense. That thing can move.
Now is probably a good time to stress that the Night King wouldn't have a bloody dragon in the first place if Jon had not embarked on his mission beyond The Wall, forcing Daenerys to rescue him. It seriously would have been better for all the heroes to sit on their asses doing absolutely nothing for seven seasons. Nice going, idiots.
Anyway the dragon spews blue fire at The Wall until it crumbles, letting the entire army of the dead march through into the land of the living. Given how slowly the White Walkers shuffle, they should reach Winterfell for the climactic final battle by about season 14.
I'm going to assume Tormund survived the carnage, by the way. They can't kill him off yet. He has a beauty waiting for him back in Winterfell. Yellow hair. Blue eyes. Tallest woman you've ever seen.
And on that cheery note, we have reached the end of season seven. My watch has ended.
That's it for another season of Game of Thrones.
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