By On Game of Thrones, moments of 'female empowerment' come thick and fast. What started as a series with a boob count rivalling the death toll and threesomes used as a segue between battles now seems shaped by the strength of its queens, ladies and female fighters.
While Cersei has long been a fearsome ruler and Daenerys' fate as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms was sealed early on, it's rarer the show grants its female characters different shades to their personality or allows them to be more than one type of woman.
In this week's episode, the second instalment of the final season, two long-suffering female characters were allowed to try on different female roles in scenes which hinted at a softness beneath their iron resolve.
For Brienne of Tarth, this came when Jamie Lannister recognised her not as a second class female fighter but as an equal, proclaiming her as Brienne, "a knight in the Seven Kingdoms".
Brienne's time in Westeros has been dogged by jokes about her odd size and questioning of her ability to protect those she has sworn allegiance to. We've never seen her tire in the face of these jibes. As she said during the second season after capturing Jamie: "All my life men like you have sneered at me, and all my life I've been knocking men like you into the dust.”
Jamie knighting Brienne doesn't atone for the way he or every other man has treated her, but it was the quiet and moving moment of respect she deserves. As she knelt in the candlelight in front of a room of men recognising her as an equal, the tears in her eyes felt like a reminder that vulnerability can be strength too. It suggested Game of Thrones has realised swinging a sword or wearing a crown isn't the only way women can be powerful.
In and amongst the reunions and emotional reconciliations - so bountiful that The Hound fittingly remarked that he "might as well be at a wedding" - Arya too had a scene which showed a different shade to her character. Staring down what might be her last night before death she tells Gendry, “I want to know what it’s like before that happens”, and their horny crypt coupling ensued.
Some have criticised the scene as gratuitous or not in line for how Arya would respond to the traumatic events of her past. But it can also be read as a brave way of reminding viewers that she's no longer the little girl that started off the show. Arya's adolescence has been muddied with such trauma that this scene felt like she has finally been allowed to be a normal 18-year-old, one with authority in her own sex life in the way the teenage boys in the show have long been allowed without a raised eyebrow.
"We haven’t seen Arya’s sexual side—or even much of her humanity—since Gendry left her in Season 3," episode author Bryan Cogman told Vanity Fair, explaining that it was important to show her as a human being.
It was a far cry from the often gratuitous and misogynistic sex scenes rife in the early seasons. Instead, it showed Arya in control and her usual witty self as she remarked, "I’m not the red woman, take your own bloody pants off."
It was an interesting reminder that Arya's status as a ballsy female icon doesn't exclude her from being sexual, a duality that undoubtedly wouldn't seem like a paradox with a male character. Ending with Arya and Gendry together - as has long been hinted by the show - but without granting them a sex scene would have pandered to the idea she's still a child, and been patronising to a character who has clearly grown and matured in front of us.
With both Brienne and Arya, Thrones has finally let these powerful female characters be more complicated than just superhuman pillars of strength. Instead, it was in how they handled themselves when the armour was off.
