The Dragon and the Wolf

"The Dragon and the Wolf" is the seventh and final episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones. It is the sixty-seventh episode of the series overall. It premiered on August 27, 2017. It was written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss and directed by Jeremy Podeswa.

Plot
Season finale of the epic series.

Appereances

 * Main: The Dragon and the Wolf/Appearances

First

 * Prince Rhaegar Targaryen (in vision)
 * High Septon (Robert's Rebellion) (in vision)

Deaths

 * Lord Petyr Baelish
 * Eastwatch garrison

Cast
Starring
 * Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister
 * Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Ser Jaime Lannister
 * Lena Headey as Queen Cersei Lannister
 * Kit Harington as King Jon Snow
 * Liam Cunningham as Ser Davos Seaworth
 * Sophie Turner as Princess Sansa Stark
 * Nathalie Emmanuel as Missandei
 * Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy
 * Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth
 * Conleth Hill as Varys
 * Jerome Flynn as Ser Bronn
 * Rory McCann as Sandor Clegane
 * Iain Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont

Guest Starring
 * Jacob Anderson as Grey Worm
 * Anton Lesser as Qyburn
 * Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Ser Gregor Clegane
 * Daniel Portman as Podrick Payne
 * Staz Nair as Qhono
 * Wilf Scolding as Prince Rhaegar Targaryen
 * Rupert Vansittart as Yohn Royce

General

 * The episode title is a reference to the sigils of House Targaryen (a three-headed dragon) and House Stark (a direwolf). Previous episodes have followed a similar theme in nomenclature: "The Wolf and the Lion" in Season 1, referencing the sigils of Houses Stark and Lannister, and "The Lion and the Rose" in Season 4, referencing the sigils of Houses Lannister and Tyrell.
 * Cersei and Jaime refer to bringing sellswords from Essos, making this only the seventh episode to refer to the eastern continent by name in seven TV seasons (it is so large, comparable to Eurasia, that most characters just refer to the overall region of it they are heading to: "the Free Cities", "Slaver's Bay", etc.). In this case, it isn't entirely necessary, as the Golden Company is based largely in the Free Cities region - although Euron could have to pick them up from somewhere further east.
 * With a runtime of 79 minutes, 43 seconds, this episode is the longest episode of the television series thus far.

In King's Landing

 * The Dragonpit appears for the first time in this episode. Although explicitly stated to one have been the home of the Targaryen dragons, the structure is clearly too small to hold full-size dragons, in chambers that ringed the inside of the arena. In the books, it is enormous, easily large enough to have held forty dragons (although there were never more than 20 alive at any time during the reign of the Targaryens). This is the result of impracticalities in filming: the crew had the opportunity to film in an actual Roman colosseum for the scene, and went with the realism of a real ruin rather than try and CG something that would have been the right size, but might have looked fake. Notice that Drogon - who isn't even as large as some of the centuries-old dragons like Balerion - can barely fit inside the arena with his wings fully extended.  Nor can he possibly fit in any of the entrances - in the books, the main entrance is big enough for thirty knights to ride through abreast on their horses.
 * It might be waved aside that in the TV continuity, the chambers for the dragons are all on the outside of the structure, and they would just fly in through an open roof for public events, and the arena is some sort of top section above the rest - but this would be fan theorization. The TV writers have made no attempt to explain the discrepancy.
 * It is also mentioned in dialogue that the dragons that grew up in the pit never reached the full size of the others, but were increasingly stunted and sickly - but that still doesn't explain how Tyrion says that Balerion could reside inside of it.
 * Daenerys laments that keeping the dragons restrained in the Dragonpit made them grow stunted and sickly. Other characters have previously mentioned that the Targaryen dragons grew smaller over the generations like this, until the last one left a skull not much bigger than a dog's.  Many characters do think this in the novels, but it has never been confirmed as the exact reason the dragons dwindled.  Daenerys has a conversation with Jorah and Barristan Selmy about this in the novels debating this:  Barristan points out that by the same logic, men who live in small huts should give rise to a race of dwarfs, while men who live in castles should give rise to a race of giants.  The far more pragmatic answer is probably that, much like their Targaryen masters, generations of heavy incest severely damaged the health of later generations:  all Targaryen dragons descended from only three original ones they brought to Westeros (siblings mated with each other, aunts with nephews, etc.).  Some suspect another theory, that the Maesters secretly started poisoning hatchlings whenever they could, because they champion science and abhor the magic that dragons represent.
 * As the showrunners point out in the Inside the Episode video, the parley at the Dragonpit is the first time that most of the starring cast members have interacted with each other in the same scene after seven TV seasons: so many major characters appear in it, and they had to plan out reaction shots for each of them (instead of just having some them stand in the background), that it took 10 full days to film the entire sequence.  The entire sequence has 17 named recurring characters in it:  Cersei, Jaime, Gregor, Qyburn, Euron, Jon Snow, Tyrion, Daenerys, Varys, Davos, Theon, Jorah, Missandei, Sandor, Brienne, as well as (briefly) Bronn and Podrick.
 * Starting in at least Season 5, the TV series defined the core of its starring cast by pay grade as specifically five actors, called "Tier A": Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and the three Lannister siblings (Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime).  The younger Stark siblings might not have been included because they were under-aged.  Nonetheless this generally matches which characters get the most POV chapters in the books (Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion, etc.).  Thus this scene is the absolute first time in the entire series that all five "Tier A" cast members have been in the same scene together.
 * Some of the characters besides Daenerys had a few brief scenes together in the Season 1 premiere, "Winter is Coming": Jon and Theon were in the courtyard when King Robert's royal party - including Tyrion, Cersei, and Jaime - arrived at Winterfell, but they were just in the background and didn't share any lines (Jon then didn't appear at the feast with Cersei due to his bastard status).  Similarly, Tyrion had separate scenes with Jon and then Theon before departing Winterfell.  Jon also had a very brief scene with Jaime at Winterfell, which the producers explained in the TV commentary that they put in because they realized these two core characters wouldn't meet again for many seasons.
 * The special effects for the undead Wights are greatly improved for the one displayed at the Dragonpit. The novels make this more clear, but every part of a wight will continue to move, even after it has been severed from its main body - i.e. a severed hand will continue to slowly crawl around to try to claw someone to death.  Understandably, this would have been difficult to emphasize in large scale fight scenes, with dozens of severed wight limbs still crawling at the Night's Watch.  The display of the wight in the Dragonpit puts extra focus on getting this detail across:  the wight's severed hands keeps moving, after it has been cut in half through the waist, the upper half of the wight continues crawling around, and if you pay close attention, even the severed legs of the wight continue to thrash around.
 * In pop culture terms, wights do not follow "zombie" rules like from The Walking Dead, but deadite rules from The Evil Dead. Destroying the brain does nothing - wights were shown at Hardhome being shot through the head with arrows, or outright decapitated, to no effect.  The only way to fully stop one with a sword is total body dismemberment of every joint.  Fire is more effective - not just because it destroys their entire body, but because wights are extremely flammable, as if their flesh was made of pitch (even a few sparks will set them totally ablaze and then burn away to nothing).
 * Daenerys repeats her famous line, "Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor", providing a direct translation for Jon: "A dragon is not a slave". She previously said this in Season 3's "And Now His Watch Is Ended" when she declared to the slave-masters of Astapor that she wouldn't sell Drogon, right before burning them all to death. "Buzdari" is actually the Astapori Low Valyrian word for "slave"; the High Valyrian is "dohaeriros". Daenerys was likely defaulting to the term she was most used to using, rather than trying to say something profound. Given she had to translate for Jon, the point is moot anyway.
 * Jon asks if Daenerys has confirmed her infertility with someone other than the witch who cursed her in the first place. He asks half-seriously and half-humorously, since it is indeed precisely the sort of thing someone would get a second opinion on. In the books, Daenerys believes she is infertile, but in her final chapter at the end of the fifth novel, while stranded in the Dothraki Sea again (corresponding to the Season 5 finale), she starts passing blood again - which she interprets as being sick, but which might mean that she has started Flowering again and her reproductive organs have recovered.
 * Multiple lines in this episode contradict information previously established in dialogue by the TV series (which originally matched the books):
 * Jon asks Tyrion how many people live in King's Landing, and he responds "a million" (which Jon repeats later). In Season 3, Jaime Lannister stated that the population is half a million ("five hundred thousand"), which is what it is in the novels.  It's possible that Tyrion was including a rough guess at how many refugees have flooded into the city during the course of the war (which is a factor), but it seems more likely that the TV writers just wanted a round number.
 * Cersei states that the Golden Company has "20,000 men". When they were first mentioned in Season 4, however, Davos and Stannis stated that they have 10,000 men - which is accurate to the novels.  It might be waved aside that Cersei is simply in error, but this would also be fan theorization that the TV writers themselves didn't address.
 * Cersei states that the Golden Company has men, horses, and Elephants - the first time that their use of war elephants has been mentioned in the TV continuity. Elephants are in quite regularly used in Volantis and not an uncommon sight in the southern Free Cities, imported as beasts of war.
 * Tyrion says that nothing can erase the past "50 years" of bad blood between their families. Apparently he is referring to when the Mad King's reign began (rounding to a broad figure).  Actually, the first two decades of the Mad King's reign were a time of peace and prosperity in the Seven Kingdoms - because his capable Hand of the King, Tywin Lannister, was the one really holding the realm together.  While the Timeline is somewhat in flux at this point, in Season 4 the chronology was more certain, and at that point Littlefinger said that Robert's Rebellion was "20 years ago" (which is more or less accurate, as it was "17 years ago" in Season 1, and other statements give that about 3 years passed between Season 1 and Season 4).
 * Sandor Clegane hasn't seen his brother Gregor Clegane (or what's left of him) since he stopped him during his rampage at the Tourney of the Hand in Season 1's "The Wolf and the Lion". When Sandor eyes his brother's bizarre appearance and wonders "What have they done to you?", this introduces a meta-narrative joke the writers probably didn't intend - given that the last time Sandor saw Gregor in Season 1, he was played by a different actor (the role was recast twice since then).
 * Euron's insult to Tyrion that dwarfs are killed at birth in the Iron Islands because of their physical infirmity hasn't been mentioned in the novels - though it is stated that this is done among the Dothraki, the wildlings, and in the pirate dens of the Three Sisters off the north coast of the Vale. Given that hard way of life on the Iron Islands, it's reasonable to assume they follow the same practice.  As Tyrion recounted in Season 1's "The Kingsroad", most commoners throughout the Seven Kingdoms will leave a dwarf baby out in the woods to die (because they can't work enough to sustain themselves and are just another mouth to feed), but he was spared this because he was born into a wealthy noble family.

At Winterfell

 * Littlefinger's lessons have come full circle, and he is undone at last by his greatest pupil.
 * Littlefinger's attempt to appeal to Yohn Royce shows how desperate he has swiftly become: Royce has never liked him, and now that the truth is out about Lysa Arryn's death, has no need to play along.
 * Although Sansa passes sentence on Littlefinger, she does not carry it out. This violates one of her father's key tenets of good leadership, that the man who passes the sentence must also swing the sword. Both Robb and Jon have taken this lesson to heart (i.e., Rickard Karstark and Janos Slynt). Sansa does allude to this in her conversation with Arya; the sisters seem to acknowledge, based on another of Ned's stories, that as long as the Starks act as one (a pack), Sansa need not swing the blade so long as Arya is the one wielding it.
 * Bran's participation at the trial, and Sam and Bran's conversation later, clarifies some of the mechanics of his powers: Bran can warg into the past to view events at his leisure, but must have some idea of what he is trying access. That is, he is not presented with relevant information and immediately assailed by the appropriate visions, but must sift through visions to find what he is looking for. Once he knew to look for a vision of Lyanna's wedding he could find it easily, but without some hint to search, he had no idea it happened. Similarly, he didn't know about Petyr Baelish's betrayal until he viewed the event himself. His situation is comparable to a modern person going through a predecessor's computer files with no idea of their filing system, but knowing that everything they need is there.
 * Although he dismissed Gilly's revelation at the time, Sam was indeed paying attention to the tidbit about Rhaegar's annulment.
 * Bran explicitly clarifies that bastards are supposed to bear the surnames of the region in which they are born: Jon Snow should have been Jon Sand, in spite of one parent being from the North and the other from the Crownlands.

In the books
[This section will be updated with comparisons after the sixth novel is released.]

Memorable quotes
Jon Snow: "There is only one war that matters and it is here." Jon Snow: "When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. There's no answers, only better and better lies." Jon Snow: "You're a Greyjoy and a Stark."

Sansa Stark: "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Sansa Stark: “You stand accused of murder, you stand accused of treason, how do you answer these charges… Lord Baelish?”

Sandor Clegane: "You're even uglier than me now. What did they do to you?" Sandor Clegane: “You know who’s coming for you. You’ve always known."

Podrick Payne: “I’m glad you’re alive."

Daenerys Targaryen: “Your capital will be safe until the northern threat is dealt with. You have my word."

Bran Stark: “You held a knife to his throat. ‘You said, I did warn you not to trust me.’” Bran Stark: "Jon is Aegon Targaryen. The rightful heir of the Iron Throne."