Game of Thrones Episode 5: Three Levels of Structure

Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 5: Three Levels Of Structure
This week, we’re looking at Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 5: The Bells.
Let’s set aside for now the question of whether or not this episode is actually good. This has been debated ad nauseum everywhere, and I’ve already waxed poetic for four episodes about some of the issues that have plagued the character development in Game of Thrones Season 8.
Instead, I want to talk about what you can learn from this episode as a screenwriter or TV writer. I also want to discuss why this episode has sparked so much outrage and what you can learn from that when getting feedback on your own scripts or approaching your own rewrites.
To talk about Episode 5, let’s start by going way back to Episode 1 of Season 1.
If you’ve studied screenwriting with me in my Write Your Screenplay classes, you’re familiar with the concept of mirrors. This is the idea that elements of the structure of your screenplay evolve from reflecting back on moments that have already happened, but in a different way.
Game of Thrones Episode 5 starts with a moment that is one of those mirrors, a reflection of something we saw back at the very beginning of Season 1.
In the Game of Thrones pilot, we saw a king named Ned Stark execute a man named Will.
Will was a ranger who went out beyond The Wall and encountered a White Walker, a creature Ned Stark believed had long since gone extinct.
When Will comes back, Ned, as king, carries out what he believes to be his duty. Not understanding Will to be telling the truth about the White Walkers, Ned executes him. Not only does he execute Will, he brings his son to watch and learn what it means to be a king.
Game of Thrones Episode 5 begins with a moment that is very similar, a reflection of that moment that launched us into the series.
Except this time, it’s Daenerys pronouncing the death sentence and the person being executed is Varys.
This time it’s Varys who is speaking the truth nobody wants to hear and it’s Daenerys operating as she believes a queen must operate in order to solidify her power.
Thematically, what’s happening is the Game of Thrones engine is growing out of events that have come before.
Yes, there are problems with how we got here. Problems such as Varys not acting like Varys, Daenerys not acting like Daenerys, the brilliant Tyrion suddenly becoming very stupid, and everyone being manipulated like puppets by the writers, which I discussed in my previous podcast.
These issues with the path we took to get here do get in the way of what should be a very powerful scene being able to affect us in the way it should. There’s a part of us wondering, “Um, yeah, but wouldn’t she…? Um, wouldn’t he…? Didn’t they…?”
So, to get the full value out of this podcast and analysis, imagine, just for a moment, the writers of Game of Thrones have found a way to believably get us to this point.
Imagine they’ve rewritten the scenes in the previous episodes and found a believable way to chip away at Daenerys’ morality while still leaving her a living, breathing character genuinely trying to do good, and pushing the ever-manipulative Varys into getting caught in his own betrayals without simply being stupid about it.
Let’s assume for a moment this all actually made sense.
(For a deep discussion of one way to do such a rewrite, check out my Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4 podcast.)
Had that rewrite happened, you can imagine just how powerful this scene would have felt as a mirror of the scene that started it all and as ...