Game Of Thrones Season 8 Breakdown: What 'The Bells' REALLY Means

4. Cleganebowl: The House Of Clegane Falls

After 8 seasons (and far longer in-universe, as Sandor Clegane confirms), we got Cleganebowl and it was certainly something. In the end it wasn't just about two old rivals with unfinished business or about the show's two most formidable figures having a full-blooded, fetishised fight for our entertainment - it was harrowing and visceral and pained and brutal and not an opportunity to revel at all.

They destroyed one another, just as you have to imagine they always were - there's that image of destiny and choice once more - and fell simultaneously to their deaths through the crumbling wall of the Red Keep and into a pit of fire. You'd probably still check the Mountain's body for signs of "life," though, wouldn't you? Given what he's been through already.

The whole point of this match-up was also inherently tied to Arya's fate and future too: in the lead up to the fight, the Hound freed her of the dangerous path she's been so locked on since drawing up her Kill List. This was fundamentally a morality tale for her, with Sandor urging her to turn away, lest she end up exactly like him, which every strange paternal instinct in him screamed for her to avoid.

In that respect, it served a far greater purpose in the end than it might have.