Episode 5 of Game of Thrones season 8 aired today. And boy that was some murder and mayhem. Honestly speaking, I haven’t seen devastation of this scale before on TV. That being said, here are the best moments from the episode.

1. Lord Varys writes letters talking about Jon’s true parentage and him being the true heir to the Iron Throne. 

As we witnessed in the last episode, Varys is not very happy with Daenerys. At the beginning of today’s episode, knowing what Daenerys is most likely to do, he sends letters informing the realm about Jon’s true identity. 

2. Varys tells Jon that he should be on the Iron Throne, not Daenerys. 

Varys tells Jon that whenever a Targaryen is born the Gods toss a coin. He doesn’t know how Daenerys’ coin has landed but he’s certain that Jon is the right ruler for the 7 kingdoms. 

3. Tyrion learns of Varys’ betrayal and informs Daenerys. 

Tyrion tells Daenerys that Varys had betrayed her. But Dany blames everyone for it. She tells him that Varys knew because Tyrion told him about Jon after learning it from Sansa, who was told by Jon, despite her begging him not to do so. 

Dany looks like she has been in mourning for days after Rhaegal and Missandei’s death and seems mighty pissed at everyone. 

4. Daenerys burns Lord Varys for betraying her. 

Varys gets summoned by Daenerys for his sentencing where Tyrion told him that it was he who informed the Queen of his betrayal. 

Varys then tells Tyrion that he hopes to be wrong in the matter. But then Dany calls on Drogon to burn him. After a brief moment of staring at him, Drogon turns him to ashes. 

5. Daenerys promises to rule by fear after Jon doesn’t respond to her advances. 

Dany tells Jon that the people of Westeros love him more than they love her. And all she has is fear. 

Following which she proceeds to kiss Jon who doesn’t reciprocate. This truly puts the final nail in the coffin as Dany tells Jon that she will use fear then. 

6. Tyrion releases Jaime from Dany’s chains and they say an emotional farewell. 

Jaime gets caught trying to get past the siege to King’s Landing. But Tyrion releases him and tells him to escape with Cersei and start a new life. 

When Jaime tells him that Daenerys would kill him for what he is doing, Tyrion tells him that Jaime’s all he had when he was growing up. 

7. Drogon lays waste to the Iron Fleet. 

Euron Greyjoy looked prepared but Daenerys rides Drogon and descends upon his fleet.

Drogon takes swift turns to escape the scorpions and attacks the ship from behind. 

The two decimate the entire Iron fleet in a matter of minutes. 

8. Drogon then takes apart every scorpion on the castle walls. 

After watching Rhaegal die due to one these weapons, Daenerys smartly decides to take them all out before they can hurt Drogon. 

9. Daenerys attacks from inside King’s Landing and takes out the city gates with Dragonfire. 

Daenerys doesn’t wait for her armies to breach the city walls. 

She attacks from behind and takes out the gates of King’s Landing with one swift motion. 

10. The sack of King’s Landing.

With the gates open and the Golden Company shattered, the war begins. 

11. The Golden Company meets a quick and not-so-painless end. 

Drogon burns most of them alive, following which the Dothraki, the Unsullied and the Northmen attack. 

Their commander Harry Stickland tries to escape but is speared down by Grey Worm. 

12. The Lannister soldiers throw their weapons and surrender to Daenerys. The people in the city ring the bells to signal it.  

After a brief faceoff with Daenerys’ army, Drogon appears and puts the fear of death in the Lannister soldiers. 

Following which they surrender by throwing their weapons on the ground. 

13. Daenerys takes one look at the Red Keep and loses her cool. She goes full Targaryen. 

Even after the city surrenders, Daenerys appears to have been enraged by the Red Keep, where she lost everything. And then she unleashes herself upon the entire city. 

14. Fire & Blood. 

Daenerys takes Drogon on a ride of the entire city to be very precise and kills thousands of innocent people who have called it their home. Men, women and children, all burn as she turns the entire city into ash. 

15. Grey Worm follows suit and starts by killing a Lannister soldier.

Like Daenerys had told him earlier in this episode about knowing when the time was right. Perhaps, this was what she was talking about.

The rest follow in his footsteps as chaos ensues. 

16. Jon looks stunned by innocent people getting slaughtered and even tries to help some. 

Jon asks his men to stop and retreat but soon realises that in the heat of battle, they are well beyond his control. 

He also saves a woman from getting raped by one of his men. At this moment he understands that his men do not hold themselves to the same moral standards he does. 

17. Jaime and Euron fight to the death. 

Euron taunts Jaime and the latter takes him on but gets stabbed multiple times. 

But as Euron taunts him, Jaime takes his sword and stabs him in the gut and leaves him to die. 

18. The Hound tells Arya not to be like him and leave him. They share a very emotional farewell. 

Sandor Clegane had loved Arya to whatever extent he could actually love. So he tells her that vengeance would only get her killed. He asks her to leave King’s Landing. 

Arya, then says his real name for the very first time and thanks him before the two part ways.

19. The Mountain kills Qyburn like swatting a fly on the wall. 

Qyburn was the one who made a monster out of The Mountain. But when he tries to tell him to listen to Cersei and protect both of them, The Mountain simply kills him. 

20. Welcome to the main event of the night – The Cleganebowl. 

The Hound and The Mountain finally settle age-old scores. But despite The Hound repeatedly stabbing his brother (even putting a sword right through him and then stabbing him in the eye), the unbreakable creature doesn’t die. 

He nearly does to The Hound the same thing he did to Oberyn. 

But in a sense of poetic justice, the two of them die together when The Hound pushes his brother through the wall into a pit of fire and falls with him. 

21. Cersei and Jaime die together. 

Jaime tries to escape with Cersei but all the pathways are blocked with falling debris. Both realise that they are about to die and Cersei panics and tells him that it couldn’t end like that. Jaime tells her that nothing else mattered but them. 

22. Arya narrowly survives but wakes up to a city turned to ash. 

Arya brushes past death multiple times but when she wakes up, everyone in the city is dead, including the boy and his sister who tried to save her. 

And in what might have been a bit of a biblical foreshadowing, she finds an ashen horse and rides it out of the city. Now, for those who don’t know this, this could be a hint at the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Death. 

Seven hells! I’m gonna go take a breather and contemplate everything after watching this episode. 

All the screenshots have been sourced from Hotstar and are the property of HBO.