Lady Olenna Tyrell was the quintessential scene stealer. She wasn’t in many episodes of Game of Thrones (only 18 out of 63), but every time she popped up, all the attention fell on the Queen of Thorns. Take last night’s episode, “The Queen’s Justice,” for instance: the Lannister forces, led by Jamie, slaughtered the overmatched Tyrell army in Highgarden, but no one’s going to associate that with this episode. They’re going to remember Lady Olenna calling Joffrey a “c*nt” and Cersei a “monster” and a “disease.”
Even her final words, after Jamie makes her drink poison, are cutting. “Must have been horrible for you as a Kingsguard, as a father. It was horrible enough for me,” she said about Joffrey’s death. “A shocking scene. Not at all what I intended. You see, I had never seen the poison work before. Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me.” Olenna was the best, through and through.
Just ask Game of Thrones showrunner David Benioff, who told EW, “[Diana Rigg] is one of the best in the world and [Olenna’s final scene] is one of my favorites in the whole season.” D.B. Weiss added, “What I love about the way she plays the scene is that even though you leave the scene knowing she’s soon going to be dead shortly after you cut to black you still feel like she won. She’s probably the only character to win her own death scene.” That’s high praise from a guy who knows a thing or two or 150,000 about death scenes.
Olenna didn’t gloat like the Red Viper, or angrily choke like Joffrey. She took it like a champ. The quietest Game of Thrones death spoke the loudest.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
