It took us a while, but we’ve finally figured out why it was that Game of Thrones‘ series finale felt so oddly familiar, and it has zero to do with George R.R. Martin’s effort to pay homage to The Lord of the Rings. The real reason Game of Thrones‘ final episodes had such a well-worn vibe is that we pretty much saw the same plot lines play out before in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. Yes, that movie.
Comparing the major notes of Game of Thrones‘ ending with what happened over in Panem, there are so many similarities that one could even be forgiven for thinking the movie had some kind of subconscious influence upon the creative choices for the series’ conclusion — the ones that didn’t come straight from Martin’s mind, that is.
Let’s dig into some of the many mirroring moments between Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games‘ final scenes then, shall we?
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The shield of innocents
For starters, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey)’s cruel little trick of packing the Red Keep with innocent civilians came straight from the President Snow playbook. Like Cersei, Snow wanted to use his city’s citizens as a human shield against the invasion from the District 13 troops. The point was not just to create a physical barrier, but to force his attackers to reveal their own darkness in the process of trying to liberate the oppressed masses from the Capitol’s control. Sound familiar?
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
City sneakers
Then the whole subplot of Arya (Maisie Williams) and The Hound (Rory McCann) trying to blend in with the crowd en route to the Red Keep also directly echoed Katniss and Gale’s effort to get to the gate during the crowd rush — hooded cloak disguise and all. Like Arya, Katniss had just one kill on her mind at the time, and she didn’t care if she didn’t get to go home afterward.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Hell’s bells
When Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) broke mad and burned everyone with her air attack, she was partly spurred on by the sound of bells for some reason. That might not have made much sense, but it’s worth noting that when the innocents of the Capitol had fire rained down on their heads as Alma Coin’s team dropped those bombs on everyone, they came down in little packages that had a tiny ring-ting-ting sound before the explosion commenced.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Violent delights
Cersei’s booby traps might not have been as elaborate as Snow’s, but those little bursts of wildfire we saw throughout the city proved she wanted her attackers’ trek through the capital to be filled with some explosive surprises, just like what Katniss’ “Star Squad” encountered.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Becoming the bad guys
Just as Jon (Kit Harington) became appalled by the sight of destruction caused by his side, we also saw Katniss looking wrecked by the devastation her team was wreaking on the people of Panem. Jon and Katniss both came into the fight on one team and realized mid-battle that they were no longer working for the good guys.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The tyrants
Jon later listened to Daenerys rally her troops after claiming her reign, and he quickly realized that she was a tyrant in the making, just like Katniss soon discovered the maniacal ambitions of the also silver-haired Alma Coin after she proposed restarting The Hunger Games to get even with the citizens of the Capitol.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
One clean shot
Jon was one of the few people who still had the confidence of the Mother of Dragons after the war was through, the same way Katniss was the only person who could be trusted to wield a weapon around Coin. So, they both wound up being the only ones with the will or means to take out their dangerous new leaders and had to betray the women they’d been fighting for just as they began to take the power our heroes helped them win.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The sullied
We could also easily compare Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) becoming a monster in the process of carrying out his queen’s orders to the way Gale Hawthorne was at least partially responsible for those terror bombs on civilians (and they both flitted off to do more war things in the end, too).
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The uninspired deaths
Cersei’s crushing death was surprisingly uneventful, considering how artful her own murders had been, and the same was true for President Snow, who was ultimately left to the will of the masses instead of going down with any kind of the spectacle audiences expected. In both cases, they were propped to be the Big Bads of their respective series until a greater threat emerged in the final acts.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The exiles
When Jon took Daenerys out, his life was spared and he was instead sent to the Night’s Watch to live in exile, before choosing to go beyond the Wall to live with the Freefolk. And guess what happened to Katniss? She, too, was sent back to the ruins of District 12 after being pardoned for her crime, which was also the place where she could roam the way she always wanted to.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Drunk messengers
Each of our heroes also received the news of their sentences from a person who’d been on both sides of the fight — for Jon, it was Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), who’d been a Lannister but had aligned with Daenerys before she broke mad, and for Katniss, it was Haymitch, who’d spent plenty of time in the Capitol before joining the resistance. (Note: In the book version, it was Plutarch Heavensbee, and he had also been working for the resistance from inside the Capitol.)
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The real winners
Ultimately, the people who came into power in the end of both stories were wholly unexpected but had shown an aptitude for getting key information to the right people at the right time. In Game of Thrones, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) helped ensure Jon and Daenerys would become at odds by getting the truth of his heritage out, and in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, Commander Paylor helped alert Katniss to Coin’s bad deed by letting her talk to President Snow.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The decision makers
Both new leaders were each duly elected by a council — in Game of Thrones, it was the Lords and Ladies of Westeros who chose Bran, and in The Hunger Games, it was the surviving victors who picked Commander Paylor — and, in some ways, the wheel was broken on both accounts by their inaugurations.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The very good boys
If all that wasn’t enough to prove these stories were in sync, there was even an emotional pat session with a neglected pet to cap off both: Game of Thrones finally reunited Jon with his direwolf Ghost, and The Hunger Games finally saw Katniss warm up to Buttercup, the much-maligned cat that her sister had cared for before she died.
All told, there were so many moments from Game of Thrones‘ big conclusion that looked and felt an awful lot like the grand finale of The Hunger Games. So, if you too have spent the past two weeks trying to figure out where you’d seen all of this before, perhaps it was just the memory of Mockingjay – Part 2 lingering behind certain scenes.
It does kinda make sense that two sagas about women on fire and birds and men named Snow might share some common threads in the end, right?
Source : TVGuide
