After all the hype surrounding Game of Thrones' "Battle of Winterfell," the series' penultimate episode, "The Bells," ended up exceeding it in just about every way. But like so much of the wildly inconsistent eighth season, it wasn't without plenty of head-scratchers.
Let's take a look at some of the moments from Game of Thrones' "The Bells" that just didn't work.
1. The total ineffectiveness of the scorpions: "The Last of the Starks" ended with Euron Greyjoy using a scorpion to take out one of Daenerys Targaryon's dragons, Rhaegal, with not one but three successful shots from a boat bobbing in the ocean hundreds of feet away. So with King's Landing armed to the teeth with these giant crossbows, Daenerys and Drogon would be in for a world of hurt, right? Not exactly. In "The Bells," not a single person, including Euron, comes remotely close to hitting Drogon, and so Daenerys goes from being surprisingly vulnerable to utterly unstoppable within a single episode. Besides, if this battle was always going to be such a blowout, what was even the point of killing Rhaegal last week instead of this week?
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2. Arya and Jaime's plot armor: For a show whose motto used to be "anyone can be killed," "The Bells" seemed to go out of its way to put the plot armor of the very character who uttered that phrase on full display. Sure, none of us wanted Arya Stark to die, but the degree to which she continuously survives fatal situations over and over again just becomes comical here. The same is true with Jaime Lannister, who hangs on for far too long after being stabbed twice by Euron, although at least the Kingslayer ends up dying another way.
3. Arya using her own face: Speaking of Arya, is there any good reason for a character who has the power to literally put on a different face to just stroll into King's Landing with the intent of murdering the queen without any disguise whatsoever?
4. Jaime no longer caring about people: Jaime, the man whose redemption arc kicked off when it was revealed that he killed the Mad King in order to save the people of King's Landing, suddenly declares in a conversation with Tyrion that actually, "to be honest, I've never really cared much for" the people of King's landing, "innocent or otherwise." Huh? There might be a scenario in which Jaime's regression, which also includes his return to Cersei, is earned, but this wasn't it.
5. Euron stumbling upon Jaime: After his ship is destroyed, Euron arrives on shore in the exact place Jaime arrives, and at the exact moment he gets there. Sure, why not?
6. The Dothraki: Remember when "The Long Night" made a big deal out of Daenerys losing most of her Dothraki forces? Well, she seems to have a pretty good amount of them in "The Bells," and even more in a preview for next week's episode. The number of Unsullied also seems to randomly change whenever the plot needs it to.
7. Dany's sudden descent into madness: The basic idea behind Daenerys' transformation into the Mad Queen certainly makes sense and has been set up well throughout the series, but the execution was seriously lacking. It seems within Daenerys' character not to care about who she has to kill to defeat Cersei or to flip out and burn down the Red Keep. But flying around the city burning civilians alive while ignoring Cersei comes completely out of nowhere, and not in a good way. If this was the culmination of Daenerys' character development, the season needed to spend far more time naturally and gradually getting us there — a fact, really, that is true of nearly all of season eight's issues.
