[Spoilers for Game Of Thrones season 8, episode 6.]
Last night, for better or worse, Game Of Thrones finally came to an end. The decisions made throughout its final season—regarding a beloved cast and once-intricate plot—culminated in a episode filled with often baffling resolutions to years of obsessive speculation and theorizing. While there was a lot to groan over, perhaps the worst was the last scene to feature Brienne Of Tarth, a fascinating character who, across these last few episodes, was rendered down to a heartbroken knight defined by her love for Jaime Lannister.
As part of the ending montage, viewers see Brienne sitting down before the records book used by new leaders of the Kingsguard to document their predecessors’ most noteworthy achievements. Rather than do anything to mark her growth from a character defined in relation to others to someone who ostensibly learned to stand confident in her own decisions, Brienne’s story ends with her turning to Jaime’s section and writing that, in short, he’s a good dude even though he dumped her for his sister after a one-night stand.
The shot of her concentrating over the book, quill in hand, is one of the purest meme prompts popular culture’s provided in some time. The internet, of course, is taking full advantage of the opportunity through a seemingly endless torrent of better ideas for what Brienne could have been scribbling in the book.
An entire subgenre of the memes sees Brienne adding mean, post break-up notes to the book in revenge for Jaime leaving in the middle of the night to return to Cersei, forgoing common courtesy and the character work that might have helped explain his about-face, in an earlier episode.
Brienne’s writing scene is the perfect set-up for just about any other recognizable pop culture reference, from The Breakfast Club and The Snowman…
… to, beautifully, Jersey Shore.
If a great character had to go out this way, it’s at least some comfort that the inherent hilarity of the bumbling Thrones finale has given the internet such generous joke templates. We may not have been left with an ending that made good on the promise of the show’s first few seasons, but we’ve been provided a different kind of enjoyment: a shared cultural moment that sets up some very good, very stupid memes.
Farewell Brienne Of Tarth. All hail Brienne The Blogger, First Of Her Name.
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