Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8, episode 5. If you don't want to know what happens, stop reading now.

• Jaime Lannister died in Game of Thrones second-to-last episode.

• His final moment was a loving embrace with his sister, Cersei.

• The conclusion to the character felt out of step, and sacrificial of years of development.

For years, Jaime Lannister has arguably been the most interesting and best written character on Game of Thrones. Jaime's transformed from a villainous figure in the first season—someone who not only looks like Prince Charming from Shrek, but is willing to push a child out a window and stab a protagonist in the back of the leg—into a sympathetic figure able to believably demonstrate change and also garner pity and reverence. The role has been a gift to actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, whose portrayal of the character has never been short of brilliant.



As far as that same character's endgame, goes, though—well, it turns out, last week I was wrong. Apparently, asking showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to keep consistent with the same character development they themselves put on screen was too much to ask.

At the end of the final season's latest episode, "The Bells," Jaime and his sister-lover, Cersei, met their end together, holding each other in one final forbidden loving embrace. The post-episode feature saw the showrunners argue that Jaime always wanted to die with the woman he loved—and that may have been the case...back in season two.

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Why would Cersei still be the woman that Jaime loves? Yes, blood is always going to be thicker than water, but let’s consider all that’s happened. Even setting aside the fact that Jaime and Brienne clearly had something that the show should've, and did lean into, Bronn showed up to Winterfell last week, and if Cersei had her way, he would’ve shot a crossbow bolt right through Jaime’s face. Did everyone forget that this happened? Did Tyrion seriously live through this, and still suggest that his brother escape and live a life far away with his murderous, scheming sister? It seems like the showrunners might have completely forgotten that they wrote this branch storyline for Bronn.

When Jaime left Cersei a season ago, following her double-crossing in the fight against the White Walkers, that should have meant something. Just as his desperate plea to join the North in the fight should have meant something; just as his choice to be the one to finally knight Brienne, and finally consummate his seasons-long simmering relationship with her should have meant something.

Helen Sloan/HBO

At least Jaime, en route to his sister, got to give Euron Greyjoy the loser’s death he so badly deserved. After hearing what Tyrion said at the wall last week, Euron knew that Jaime and Cersei had still been sleeping together, and that Cersei’s unborn child was Jaime’s, and not a Greyjoy, as she had claimed. This, combined with the world collapsing around them, gave Jaime one last heroic moment—ridding the show of one of its last remaining truly heinous characters.

Was this meant to show that Jaime still was a changed man? If that was the intention, I’m not quite sure it worked—defending yourself in a fight to the death doesn’t mean you’ve grown, it just means you aren’t ready to die yet. Especially not at the hands of a hyperactive pirate.

It all rings a bit empty and sudden. It’s almost like someone, at some point, made a mandate—Jaime and Cersei have to die together, in one another’s arms—and Benioff and Weiss had to bend over backwards, undoing years of writing and development, to get those chess pieces into an endgame situation where that could happen.

Cersei deserved better, that's for sure. But for Jaime, it's almost like the last several years didn't happen. If someone wrote an ending for Jaime and Cersei in 2013, it could've been exactly what we saw last night. And considering what we've seen transpire in the time since 2013, that's a pretty major problem.

Evan Romano Evan is an associate editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE.

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