*Warning: Spoilers ahead*
With so many reunions and exciting details to cover from the big premiere of Game of Thrones’s final season (Dead Ned Umber! Jon and Dany ride dragons! The dragons watch as they make out!), it’s not surprising many fans were too distracted to pay any mind to Bronn.
But we have to dig deep into one of the biggest plot points of the night: that Cersei has tasked Bronn with killing BOTH of her brothers, Jaime and Tyrion. And she doesn’t want just cold, hard vengeance. Nope, it’s evil Queen Cersei, and she wants poetic revenge.
Cersei tells Qyburn to give Bronn the crossbow Tyrion Lannister used to kill their father Tywin in order to murder Jaime and Tyrion. Queen’s justice served?!
Let’s unpack this for a second. Bronn has been by Jaime’s side for the past six or so seasons. He helped in the Battle of Blackwater to defeat Stannis Baratheon’s fleet, helped Jaime capture Highgarden, and threw himself off the Scorpion (that shooter thing that he hit Dany’s dragon Drogon with) and onto Jaime Lannister, thereby saving his life.
After all that, he’s been rewarded very little. He’s made it very clear that all he wants are a castle and a lordship. But is he really willing to kill Jaime (whom he’s served as right-hand man for the past few seasons) and Tyrion (whom he saved during trial by combat in season one) for a big house and fancy title?
Cersei thinks so, which is why she sent Qyburn to ask him to kill her lover and imp brother once the war against the living dead is over. But did she forget Bronn has a bit of a bromance with both Lannister brothers? And back in the dragonpit last season, Tyrion tells Bronn: “Remember my offer. Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll pay double,” when he asks the sellsword to stop working for Cersei and come join him as his bodyguard. Could this be a foreshadowing of Tyrion paying off Bronn to keep his life?
To us, it seems Cersei is sort of losing her marbles. She’s really going to ask brothel-loving Bronn to go kill them with a crossbow? That’s a stretch, which means she’s either going crazy (she slept with Euron, you guys), or she hopes in the end Bronn will fail. If that’s part of her plan, and she just wants Bronn to betray her, then it seems she has other endings in mind for Jaime and Tyrion.
Actor Jerome Flynn, who portrays the somewhat sleezy Bronn, recently told Digital Spy that Bronn is less sentimental than we think. “Bronn’s a determined type. He’s either going to get his castle, or he’s going to die getting it,” he said. That doesn’t bode well for Tyrion or Jaime, but it definitely sounds like a win for Cersei.
We’ll just have to tune in to the next episode of GoT on Sunday, April 21, on HBO at 9 p.m. to see if Bronn’s got it in him. (And he better take an anti-pox pill for the road.)
