The queen is dead, long live the queen
There can be no question, Cersei Lannister is the queen bitch of Westeros. But she only just inherited the title. Before I go further, there are spoilers here. If you have issues with that I refer you to my previous post on spoiler rules.
Anyway, this week we saw the passing of Lady Olenna Tyrell, poisoned by Jamie Lannister - and boy did she go out in style. There's nothing quite like taunting your would-be killer only to tell him, with your last breath, that you killed his son and revel in making him relive it. This may not sound like the sort of thing to be celebrating, but that is one of Game of Thrones' real skills; the lines of good and bad are blurred.
There are a lot of truly heinous characters who you cannot help but love; the Euron Greyjoy scenes the last couple of weeks have been TV gold, especially his little chat with Jamie. But the "good" characters are not without their flaws and dark sides. Danaerys and Jon bickering this week was one good example and Sansa and Arya have both done their share of dark things. One of the reasons Game of Thrones remains so engaging is your allegiances shift and no characters are too pure or, indeed, too evil. Even the aforementioned Cersei has her moments. So it was brilliant to see someone so unrepentantly defiant as Lady Olenna was this week. She clearly had no interest in Jamie's opinion of her and reveled in all she had done. It was a tour de force from Diana Rigg, as it has been since she first appeared. If you missed it, relive the moment here.
And, before we wave goodbye to Lady Olenna, here are some of her best moments.
Over to you Cersei, you have got the dark stuff down, but you have big shoes to fill on the throwing shade front.