Game Of Thrones Season 8: 8 Ups And 1 Down From 'A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms'

Downs...

1. Arya & Gendry's Romance Felt Forced

This episode is so great that there aren't many downsides, and even scenes that perhaps get a little short shrift, such as Daenerys and Sansa almost putting their differences aside, still largely work. The ones that don't, and feel a little jarring, are those between Arya and Gendry.

When the pair had a little flirtation last week, it was a fun moment between two long lost friends, which then may develop into something more over time. Just one episode later, and they're sleeping together (because of course the showrunners couldn't let the 69th episode pass without a sex scene).

There are some good moments in the sequence: it's Arya taking control (which fits a broader pattern with females in this episode), and finding a sense of her humanity again, which is nice to see. But that itself, and the earlier moment between them, lacked some of the natural ease the scenes Arya and Gendry used to have. We're barely reacquainted with Gendry, and Arya still exists in a weird place between little sister and emotionless killing machine, and yet before you know it he's showing her his special hammer. They've both come so far that things were never going to be as they used to be, but that itself is part of the problem: here it feels like the show forcing them together - and extremely quickly, because there's so little time left - as a sense of fan-service, rather than it growing organically.

That was always the key to Game of Thrones' best romances, and in a regular season there'd be time to let those feelings blossom, but here they're simply pushed together. It makes sense from Arya's point-of-view, but the executation (and that sex before a battle that's going to kill you is something of a tired trope) is lacking. It's a shame that, in an episode full of those sweet, sweet character interactions, this one didn't work the way it should've done.