Game of Thrones -- "The Bells"

Game of Thrones
HBO
Season 8: Episode 5
"The Bells"
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

Well, that just happened. Unless the upcoming series finale goes off into some unforeseen, insanely extreme directions, "The Bells" will likely go down as the most controversial episode of Game of Thrones in its eight year run. However, I feel like I need to echo a term coined by the very crowd who seems so enraged by "The Bells: but y tho?"
Game of Thrones gained fame for its uncompromising nature. Earlier this season, it seemed to go light on the darkness, and fans complained that it wasn't being true to itself. This week, it reached the apex of its darkness, and those same fans seem to be unhappy.
"The Bells" centers around Daenerys attack on Westeros' capital, King's Landing. Daenerys' father was once king, but the people turned on him, he lost his mind and ordered for the city to be burned down, and he was murdered by his own king's guard. The young child, Daenerys, went into hiding in a land across the sea, with the lone thought keeping her going all those years being that she would one day retake the throne. Since the first season, Daenerys has toiled and built up resources with the singular idea that "I will sit on the throne." While she fried slaves (conveniently gaining an army while doing so), she also showed a cruel streak in punishment to her enemies, crucifying some and burning others alive with her three dragons, which are akin in Westeros to reusable atomic bombs. Along the way Daenerys is given titles, and her idea that she should and will sit on the throne is continuously reinforced. When she finally gets back to Westeros, she quickly begins losing resources to help others, and is continuously given nothing but contempt in return. She loses more and more allies to death, and experiences the dislike of the people she thought and has been told she would rule. Then, she finds that her closest ally actually has a better claim to the throne than she...and everyone else would rather him, anyway. Beneath this all, the show has continuously reminded the viewer that a streak of madness runs in her family (likely due to generations of inbreeding).
In "The Bells," when Daenerys hears the titular objects ringing to announce King's Landing's surrender, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Daenerys disregards them, and burns the whole city to the ground. The show has been building to this moment since the beginning. It's even shown these events in people's visions. Nevermind the fact that even the sound of the bells themselves ringing must remind her of when the city rejected her family so many years ago. And yet, fans are acting like this entire season is now a betrayal.
The Sopranos, often regarded as one of the greatest shows of all time, ended on HBO, Game of Thrones' own network, 12 years ago. The Soprano's ending essentially showed the viewer, one last, definitive time, "This guy that you can't get enough of? He's a sociopath. We've shown you who he is this entire time, but you've let the perspective of the camera lens wash that away. He's not the protagonist. He is an evil man." I'm glad Twitter didn't exist back then.
"The Bells" is incredibly shot, and absolutely terrifying. It reminds me of those old stories of early Civil War battles, where citizens would show up as spectators, only to run with terror, as the battle spilled over to where they were watching. The Battle of King's Landing begins with a sense of exhilaration, as Daenerys, riding her dragon, the fire-spewing Drogon, makes short work of King's Landing's defenses, then in a rather brilliant moment, nearly instantaneously destroys The Gold Company of soldiers who were supposed to annihilate her armies. The horror begins when she doesn't honor the surrender. Characters who have argued for her virtue, despite mounting evidence to the contrary of that virtue, are suddenly put in a position where they realize that they're allied to and in service of not the hero, but the bad guy. The horror only increases when Daenerys moves past just annihilating the remaining enemy soldiers, to destroying the entirety of the city itself. From the moment she dishonors the surrender, the camera never takes her point-of-view again...it stays with the horrified people on the ground.
"The Bells" also ends numerous main characters' story arcs and lives. If I've got a complaint here, it's that I wish some of these moments could have been shaded in a bit more. They're not tossed off by any means, but they most definitely could have received just a bit more time and dialogue. The show also could have saved a few dollars on the special effects budget with just a few more minutes of character time, and a little less burning terror.
Still, for all the hate this episode is receiving, it feels like a monumental achievement in not compromising. The show has argued from the beginning that power corrupts, and is never more awfully wielded than by those who want it the most. More than anything, "The Bells' is the climax of that thesis. We'll see in next week's series finale what Game of Thrones is able to do with the scattered pieces that are left.