Love motivates the riskiest and most surprising moments in Game of Thrones. Wars start and end — and characters live and die — over romance, erotic obsession and family solidarity.

The audience’s love for the show’s richly detailed world keeps us watching, despite a mounting suspicion that the showrunners themselves love certain characters too much. Having now left George R.R. Martin’s books far behind, Game of Thrones seesaws between brief flares of violence and destruction, and sentimental coddling of key characters in ways that seem at odds with previously established traits and narrative arcs.

Thematically, this season finale was an ironic echo of the very first episode, in which baby Bran Stark is thrown from a tower after catching Jaime and Cersei Lannister in flagrante twincesto.

Oh Jaime, Poor Jaime

Oh, for those sweet summer days when Jaime’s biggest problem was stopping people knowing he was boning his sister! These days he has to manage the increasingly status-conscious, cock-obsessed Bronn, plus the ranks of Unsullied and Dothraki massed outside King’s Landing. He also has to deal with being cut out of the strategy loop by his volatile sister-queen, for whom even mild concern about the armies of the dead is a devastating personal betrayal.

Of course Cersei would never willingly ally with Tyrion, Daenerys and Jon — the three people she instructed the Mountain to kill first if the meeting went pear-shaped. But her immediate repudiation of her promise to fight the dead made Tyrion’s attempt to forge a coalition look woefully naive.

Good faith was politically fatal even a few years ago — as poor Ned Stark discovered, and as Jon and Sansa are only slowly learning. But as the stakes of this Great War become more existential, backroom machinations of the sort favoured by Cersei, Varys, Littlefinger and even Tyrion seem increasingly irrelevant. Has Cersei signed her death warrant by sticking to old tactics?

Just like the Suicide Squad’s enjoyably jocular banter last week, this week’s King’s Landing reunion luxuriated in how much Blackwater under the bridge has passed for characters who once shared loyalties — or enmities. Tyrion’s chuffed to see not just his old buddy-for-hire Bronn, but also his former squire Podrick, who’s been accompanying Brienne of Tarth since Jaime sent the pair packing back in season four.

Given Bronn’s earlier discussion with Jaime on the uses of gold, the brothels of King’s Landing will surely be rolling out the red carpet for legendary shipper Bronn and legendary swordsman Podrick when they head off for “a drink”.

Meanwhile, Brienne shares a rueful moment with the Hound, whom she left for dead after their vicious fight at the end of season four.

After Brienne tells Sandor that Arya’s alive and in Winterfell, the two emotionally stunted warriors quietly agree they have something like respect for the fierce little she-wolf.

When Will We Get The Cleganbowl?

But Cleganebowl fans got a cruel bait-and-switch when the Hound’s face-off with his disconcertingly tinted brother Gregor proved a fizzer. “You know how it ends for you. You’ve always known,” says the Hound with uncharacteristic composure. I wonder what he’s seen in the flames…

Of course, the pleasure of Cleganebowl is that the future fraternal smackdown remains #FUCKINGCONFIRMED so that we may continue to #GETHYPE. What is hype may never die, but rises again hyper and stronger…

CleganeBowl #GetHype #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/J4Gc9DnJYN

— Night's King (@WightsKing) August 24, 2017

Well, having paraphrased the Drowned God, let’s glory in the moral resurrection of Theon Greyjoy. In a poignant moment at the hall at Dragonstone, Theon ashamedly confesses to Jon that he’s always wanted to do the right thing but felt torn between the impossible choice of Starks or Greyjoys, and so he’s betrayed both.

For a guy who knows nothing, Jon has a pretty wise response: that Theon doesn’t need to choose. He’s both Greyjoy and Stark, and the moral beacon of Ned Stark’s kindness is still alight somewhere inside him: “He’s a part of you, just like he’s a part of me.” This is some advice I hope Jon will remember when he finds out Ned wasn’t his biodad.

And now the Force Ghost of Ned Stark is telling Theon to save his sister Yara: the only Greyjoy who loved him. Perhaps she’s being held captive on Euron’s terrible longship Silence, in which case Theon and Yara’s remaining ironborn must chase Euron to Essos, where Cersei has sent him to bring back sellswords from the Golden Company.

Run Away, Little Theon

“Run away, little Theon,” mocks ironborn captain Harrag on the beach, “it’s what you do best.” But triumphantly, Theon owns his weakness for the first time: I loved his blood-tinted grin when Harrag tries to knee him in the nads and it has no effect. In the swaggering, macho world of the ironborn, he has nothing for them to hurt. And then, perhaps remembering the time he saw Ruben Guthrie, Theon beats Harrag to a pulp.

The Stark siblings’ love has wavered before their collective weird headspaces. But now, they reclaim their family honour in their ancestral hall, putting to death the traitor in their midst with the dagger he’d tried to use against them.

This united front was a huge tonal shift from the mistrust we’d seen in the early scenes — it felt like another showrunner bait-and-switch. But it was nonetheless immensely satisfying to see Littlefinger completely lose his game face (into Arya’s bag it goes!) and beg for his life on his knees. “In his own horrible way, I believe he loved me,” Sansa tells Arya later.

Obviously Bran had a quiet word to both his sisters. And now, finally, Sam and Bran sit down to assemble their respective puzzle pieces of Jon’s — or should I say, Aegon Targaryen’s — parentage. And, sick as I am of hearing Bran intone, “I became the Three-Eyed Raven,” I adored Sam’s delightfully honest response: “Oh… (long pause) I don’t know what that means.”

Bran, the Wiki of Westeros, blue-ticks Sam’s evidence by greenseeing back to the secret Dorne nuptials of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark – the Dragon and the Wolf after whom the episode is titled. After seven seasons’ worth of semi-legendary tales of Prince Rhaegar, he looked disappointingly ordinary in his first onscreen appearance. Clearly the costume department just dusted off the old Viserys wig.

Three Cheers For Incest

Another letdown: how bad Jon Snow is at sex. I know, he’s probably only done it that once with Ygritte in the cave, but it was deeply awkward to see him flopping on top of Daenerys like a landed fish, staring intensely into her eyes with overwrought little micro-shakes of his head.

Both the Wolf-Dragon ship and the Night King’s blowtorch-like destruction of the Wall with his new ice dragon felt purely ritualistic. Both events have been hinted at so heavily, for so long, that actually witnessing them felt a little anticlimactic.

The reaction of witnesses, however, was more intriguing. Beric’s and Tormund’s terror and dismay lent a human dimension to the CGI mayhem of the dead’s invasion. Presumably they’re still stranded atop the wreckage, and will live to attack the wights next season.

And Tyrion seems to have borrowed from Ser Friendzone’s playbook in lurking outside Daenerys’s door. Did he fancy his own chances with the queen? Or does he feel the sting of rejection yet again, even after valiantly salvaging the Coalition of the Living (or so he thinks…) by gambling his very life with the sister who loathes him?

Bran’s not quite right: Robert’s Rebellion wasn’t founded entirely on a lie. Sure, Rhaegar and Lyanna were genuinely in love… but so was Robert with Lyanna. Robert’s love poisoned both Jon’s chance of knowing his parents, and Robert’s subsequent marriage to Cersei, driving her back into her brother’s arms.

In an episode about the love (and love lost) between brothers and sisters, aunts and nephews, Jaime sacrificed the most. Realising Cersei no longer treasures his love, he remembers the desperate parting words of his old shipmate Brienne: “Fuck loyalty!” And, sheathing his golden Lannister hand, he heads north to do what’s right.

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She tweets at @incrediblemelk.