Deus Ex Westeros

“Game of Thrones is in many ways a show about faith: in gods, in others, in oneself.”

“But it also demands, as any such show will, another kind of faith—in storytelling.”

“authorship. In the universe that is being constructed as a setting for the other things—a universe full of its own authors.”

“Who knows, in this world, things others do not?”

“Who decides how the stories will play out, and how the games will be played?”

“The Lord of Light, and the Three-Eyed Raven, and Bran, and Hodor, and time travel, and resurrections, and dragons, and magic: Their presence has made Game of Thrones not just a work of fantasy, but also, in its way, a work of logic. This is a universe with its own rules to be obeyed—and, for the audience, its own disbeliefs to be suspended.”

“It has been fantasy that has, against all odds, made sense.”

“Again and again, fate, which is to say the show’s authors, collectively, intercedes.”

“Showrunners are their own kinds of gods; they tell their own kinds of truths.”

“This is a season, after all, that has at times seemed almost overly aware of Thrones’s success as a cultural phenomenon.”