The Game Revealed, HBO’s Game of Thrones behind-the-scenes series, has returned for the post-season-seven period, as announced two weeks ago. While the interviews-loaded series is technically only available to subscribers of the network this year, each week HBO is throwing viewers a bone by posting some of the material for free on YouTube.
This week The Game Revealed is spotlighting a particularly harrowing moment from episode 3 of this season. In “The Queen’s Justice,” we saw the last vestiges of the show’s Dornish contingent consigned to a hellish fate, with Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) and her daughter Tyene (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) doomed by Cersei (Lena Headey) as payback for their murder of the innocent Princess Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) in season 5.
In “A Goodbye Kiss,” we hear from Headey and Varma, along with episode director Mark Mylod, who reveals that this “incredibly intense” scene was filmed on the very first day of shooting for season seven. The actresses provided great insight into the scene, along with the director. Check it out here:
Lena!
Wouldn’t it be cool if the NK mounted on his undead dragon headed straight for KL and destroyed the Red Keep per Dany’s vision at The House of The Undying?
Pro/con evidence: In Bran’s vision of a dragon’s shadow passing over KL, the sky was sunny enough to cast a shadow on KL rooftops.
Does the recent snowfall there mean that the sky is now too dark to produce this predicted shadow?
OR
Does it mean that a dragon surviving The Fight for the Dawn will cast said shadow *after* the NK is defeated and attention returns to rulership of Westeros?
What I didn’t get about this scene: Ellaria and the three Sand Snakes portrayed themselves as fierce, fearless warriors, and yet when they were captured and chained up all of a sudden they were scared, spineless victims.
What happened to the bravado?
What did they expect might happen after they murdered innocent Myrcella? Hypocrites…. “We don’t hurt little girls in Dorne.” Yeah right.
Ten Bears,
Ellaria and the Snakes lived pampered, indulgent lives in Dorne – in their narrow, little world of course they were tough. Then they encountered the real world and realized they knew even less than Jon Snow and Sansa. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
And the scene with Cersei, Ellaria and Tyene was one of the best in the season. A fitting end for the Dornish rebels.
Well thats because Elleria and Tyene didn’t have ‘agency’ to get out of a situation like that and being chained up there was nothing they could do but only to ‘ruminate’ over their bleak sitaution 😛
Mind you? D&D could have written that scene better rather than stooping down to and using “Literary calumny” to screw up the scene as we’ll never know for sure if Elleria dies of old age after seeing Cersei poison Tyene with the ‘Kiss of Death’ and ruminates over her bleak situation as she watches her daughter decomposing and rotting away in front of her!
So Ten Bears – Would I make a good literature professor or do I need to improve my bullshitting skills some more – LMAO 😀
Black Raven,
I’m a bit puzzled. By ‘literary calumny’ do you mean ‘character assassination’ in that show Ellaria and Tyene are not book Ellaria and Tyene? That is true, the adaptation of those characters from page to screen was very loose. I thought it was perhaps more horrible having the fates of Ellaria and Tyene (and Septa Unella last season) being left to the imagination than checking back to see the corpses rot. Maybe there will be a tour of the black cells in season 8.
It was a harrowing scene though well acted.
Dame of Mercia,
Tyene is dead for sure, she’d die in a fee hours she was a slim girl. Ellaria…well, we can assume that she’s been kept alive for a while to see the corpse of Tyene rot, unless Cersei decided to end her some time later.
Given Indira Varma isn’t returning we’re given three options.
a) she’s dead now
b) dany will never take over king’s landing (she would free her ally) or king’s landing will be destroyed (killing Ellaria)
c) D&D will forget about her and they will hope we do, to end the disasterous Dornish plot for good
And I’d bet for C. After Ellaria’s capture, it’s established Dany lost Dorne Army while she didn’t. That Army is in Dorne, they weren’t in Yara ships, and there are more Ellaria’s daughters or somebody loyal to Dany who would have taken control. It’s just a plot reckelssly abandonned.
Such tremendous acting in this scene from both Lena and Indira (and Rosabell didn’t do too bad either).
What really nailed the horrific revenge scene was that small moment of humanity and vulnerability from Cersei. “Why did you do it?” (i.e. killed innocent Myrcella).
Cersei devised the most horrific death possible for both baby snake and mama snake. There’s some… ugh, warped beauty in that scene. The actors did such an outstanding, amazing job.
And baby snake’s death and mama snake made to watch it, unable to help, and then made to watch her rot is horrific. Oh yes, Cersei sure knows how to torture.
I wonder if Jaime is aware of actually how horrifically Cersei revenged herself. No matter, as of the season finale, he’s finally offfskiii!!! Yay!!!
Indira did amazing job… and Ellaria was one of my fave charathers. I know they destroyed Dorne, but in one scene when Jamie was in Dorne, Doran said to Ellaria something like “You are mother to 4 of my niece’s.” So she has 4 daughters and we only saw one of them. Soooooo Ellia, Dorea, Obella and Loreza are coming for blood in season 8 <3 p.s. sorry my english is not so good.
Black Raven,
Oh, you’d make a great literature professor. Just don’t forget to use your agency.
Nice one – I thought my comment would amuse you 😀
Dame of Mercia,
Ah, I wrote that post somewhat ‘tongue in cheek’ as neither Ten Bears or I had any idea what some of those words (or the meaning in context) was in that previous article – In the Game of Adaptation, You Win or You Die
I’ve still no idea what ‘agency’ means as used by the author Tyler Dean in his section Aging Child Actors
Winner: Sansa Stark / Loser: Arya Stark’Sansa wins and Ayra loses’
“The Sansa of the novels is painted almost identically to the Sansa of the show, but, being thirteen, there is very little chance for her to have agency in a world that largely only allows sexually mature women to have any modicum of power.”
Ah and as for ‘literary calumny’ no idea either! Googling ‘Calumny’ came up with ‘defamation’ or ‘slander’ so no idea why the author used that word as in:
“Needless to say, my ideal Game of Thrones might have taken some different paths, but I’m every bit as interested in being pleasantly surprised by the showrunners’ choices as I am in being disappointed by their literary calumny.”
Only that perhaps he doesn’t approve of how D&D have done their own thing and not kept strictly to GRRM’s source ‘Book Canon’? I have to wonder if the author is a friend of Linda Antonsson over on Westeros.org as that the sort of thing she is always whinging on about 😛