Sansa Stark's Game of Thrones celebration scene with The Hound rang so false, encapsulating all the problems in this week's episode

Vanity Fair

"Every piece of their interaction is confusing and limited. Worse, it obfuscates each character’s growth," says Sonia Saraiya, who explains why the scene during the Battle of Winterfell victory celebration made no sense on many different levels. "It feels like a repudiation of both of their character arcs—and, as I have said again and again this season, a missed opportunity for growth and connection," she says.

"This is a lot to write about one scene, I know. But it goes to illustrate two points. One: these characters, for so long, have been so beautifully drawn that this compressed, sloppy conclusion is increasingly galling. It’s shortchanged their long-running, thorny, often quite moving transformation as characters. You could analyze nearly every scene in 'The Last of the Starks' in this way, and come up just as frustrated and confused as I am here. The way that I feel about Sansa is the way that other fans feel about Tyrion, or Jaime, or Jon, or Missandei. The show’s conclusion is crushing the nuance and movement out of each character, reducing them to bite-size takeaways. To me it seems as if Sansa sat down at that table not to speak to The Hound, but to tell the audience something they already know: she’s been through a lot, and she’s strong now. The way that she did that undermines her own statement—but at this point, Game of Thrones is entirely surface-level. We cannot read more nuance into this scene, even though eight seasons of backstory are there, waiting to be brought to bear into the scene. The other point is much simpler. If you want female characters in your show—if you want them to struggle and survive in a gendered world, if you want them to be stately queens or mad ones, if you want them to fuck or fight or cry or do all three at once—hire female writers. It will help."

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