If you haven’t watched it, turn away and head back to the Citadel to complete your homework.
Olenna vs. Varys: Surely the best meeting between two characters in the history of Game of Thrones.
Cersei Lannister: He’s not serious enough. Samwell Tarly scored again too because as he put it, he read the book and followed the instructions to successfully navigate a risky and infectious surgery.
Samwell Tarly managed to defy the odds and cure Jorah Mormont of the deadly greyscale, only to be “rewarded” by Archmaester Ebrose. It’s Lady Olenna all along, which she reveals to Jaime in what is perhaps the best predeath speech Game of Thrones has ever seen.
It’s also interesting that the episode dropped in an intriguing idea about time being a fluid concept: Littlefinger’s vague, poetic speech to Sansa – which was actually created to embolden her as a leader – spoke of every eventuality playing out simultaneously.
On Jaime Lannister taking Highgarden and killing Olenna – “We made a decision to cut to the chase and cut right to Jaime, single-handedly going to the person who he is there to see, and that is Olenna Tyrell”.
In “The Queen’s Justice“, Jaime stormed Highgarden, the Tyrell’s land, and took all of the Tyrell’s wealth and gold.
Jaime Lannister exorcised the ghost of a previous military failure by using Robb Stark’s own tactics to his benefit by taking Highgarden. The Tyrells are among the many enemies of the Lannisters, after all, and Cersei is crossing names off a list. He strangled himself trying to reach the sword as his father cooked in his armour – an image of desperation that was very much recaptured in Ellaria and Tyene reaching out for one another after Cersei had poisoned the latter. You betrayed my family.
“She’s going to the death of you” Olenna warns Jaime of Cersei.
Jaime’s eyes grew wide with shock and anger as Olenna clutched her poisoned wine, tipped it into her mouth, and downed it with no hesitation. Olenna downs it with an unsentimental quickness, then returns his softness with a knife, confessing that it was her who had Joffrey poisoned the day he Wednesday her granddaughter, Margaery. However, she has proven to be quite a force on her own, navigating between men stumbling in and out of power. “Horrid. What sort of monster would do such a thing?”
Olenna vs. Serving Boys: We don’t mind when Olenna knocked that random Cheese Boy around, did we?
Olenna orchestrated Joffrey’s murder, yet her excuse for the matter attracted neither praise nor disgust. She didn’t try to paint her past actions in any sort of noble light. So, with Cersei already blowing up half of the population, and now playing with her food, the Mad Queen transition is well under way. But the trick there is that Cersei had no idea yet that Olenna had anything to do with the death of Margaery’s husband, Joffrey, son to both Cersei and Jamie.
Somewhat ironically, for all of her anti-Targaryen rhetoric, she appears to be Aerys reborn, and if she’s not careful, she is destined to fall exactly the same way he did. Power is power, sure, but secrets and knowledge have weight.
What did YOU think of Rigg’s final scene as Lady Olenna?
While Olenna never played a role in killing a White Walker, freeing slaves in Essos, or blowing up the Sept of Baelor, she did play a role in so many different major events in the show. She continued to play the game.
In a dark but surprisingly poetic series of events, Cersei Lannister finally got revenge for two of her children’s deaths. As the dangers in Westeros have ramped up, there’s been less and less time in the HBO series for the kind of acid-tinged banter Olenna deployed so expertly.
May I mention a runner-up?
And “The Queen’s Justice” was no exception. If not, who would you choose?
Robert Baratheon: I don’t know.