‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks”: 5 Clues and Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

There’s initially a moment of silence when Cersei Lannister smugly asks Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) if she has any last words. The camera lingers on Missandei’s face, and there’s a torment of fear, resolve, sadness, anger, and courage in her eyes. Then, she cries out, “Dracarys.” It’s the Valyrian word for “Fire,” and the command Daenerys uses to tell Drogon to unleash his dragonfire.

It’s also full of meaning for Daenerys, Missandei, and their allies.

On the surface, this is Missandei telling Daenerys to avenge her with fire and blood. As the showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss explain in the show’s post-credits featurette, the message is “clearly for Dany.” Benioff says, “Missandei knows that her life’s over and she’s saying…’Light them up.'”

Actress Nathalie Emmanuel cheekily confirmed this reading on twitter last night, but there is another layer to it if you consider the trajectory of Missandei and Daenerys’s relationship.

We first meet Missandei as a downtrodden and mistreated slave in Astapor in Season 3, Episode 1, “Valar Dohaeris,” and by Episode 4, “And Now His Watch is Ended,” she is firmly in Daenerys’s camp as a freed servant and ally. However, she doesn’t know until the end of that episode, when Daenerys reveals that she’s been able to speak Valyrian the whole time, just how formidable Dany is.

This is the moment where Dany buys the Unsullied and then turns them on their masters. It’s the scene where she “sells” Drogon only to reveal that you can’t enslave dragons. The word she uses to unleash this hell and turn the table on Missandei and Grey Worm’s oppressors? “Dracarys.”

So it’s not only a call to Dany to burn Cersei to the ground, but a rallying cry that reminds Missandei and Grey Worm of where they started and what Daenerys and Drogon do to their enemies.

At the start of Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks,” it looks like everything is quite possibly coming up Arya (Maisie Williams). She’s the hero of Winterfell, her beau Gendry (Joe Dempsie) has been named the legitimate lord of Storms End, and he wants to marry her. However, she turns down his proposal and…decides to hit the road with the Hound (Rory McCann)?? Suggesting she has no plans of coming home to Winterfell again?? What is Arya doing?

Quite simply, she’s fulfilling her mission to murder everyone on her list of names. You remember her list, right? At the top of it is Cersei Lannister, followed by the Mountain.

While it’s certainly cute to see Arya and the Hound ride again, the two are headed to violent ends. The Hound obviously wants to have a final showdown against his brother and Arya Stark is going to try to murder Cersei Lannister. Maybe we’ll see her whip out one of those Nameless Men faces yet.

Last night Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) swore to keep the truth about Jon Snow’s true identity a secret, and then a few scenes later, spilled the beans to Tyrion Lannister of all people. In the scene, you can see she’s conflicted and upset. She questions if there’s possibly a better ruler for Westeros than Daenerys…and offscreen she tells Tyrion, who naturally tells Varys (Conleith Hill).

So how could Sansa betray her own family’s trust? Because she’s gone full Littlefinger.

As Benioff and Weiss confirm in the post-episode featurette, Sansa has learned to think a few moves ahead in the Game of Thrones. She’s well aware, as Dany is, what will happen if more people learn about Jon Snow’s Targaryen lineage. Information in this case is her weapon, and she chooses to deploy it in this scene because it’s her last chance to make such a move and position Jon to take the Iron Throne.

With Daenerys on the throne, the North will never be free. With Jon on the throne, the North will be the leaders of the realm. Sansa just played her riskiest hand yet in the proverbial Game of Thrones.

One of the few fun moments of “The Last of the Starks” involved a drinking game with odd rules, all dictated by Tyrion Lannister. It turns out, this is the same drinking game Tyrion has been playing with various characters since Season 1.

As Insider sagely pointed out, this is the same game, with the same rules, that Tyrion plays the night he and Bronn (Jerome Flynn) met Shae (Sibel Kekilli), and it’s the one he attempts (poorly) to play with Missandei and Grey Worm in Meereen. Here, it has a somewhat bittersweet ending as it sets up a night of passion for Brienne and Jaime…which only falls apart when Jaime learns what Cersei is up to in the capitol.

One of the best little subplots in all of Game of Thrones involves Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman) and his, uh, talents. Podrick famously loses his virginity in a King’s Landing whorehouse and the sex workers all refuse to take payment because the lad was apparently so good. That level of game returned last night as Podrick easily picked up not one, but two maidens of Winterfell.

The first girl he hooks up with is easy to spot as the camera lingers on her smiling at him and Pod smiling back. The second, though, is the girl the Hound rejects. As Sansa sits down to face off against the Hound, she looks to the end of the Hall, where you can see Podrick flirting with two girls at once. Both ladies seem down for whatever it is Podrick Payne has in mind, so good for Pod? At least someone’s having fun on Game of Thrones.

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