A lot of people complain that the shifts in a lot of characters' arcs felt too sudden in this episode. They're not wrong. Because they also did for the characters themselves, as the entire episode is about who we all are, or what we reveal ourselves to be the moment fear takes control of us. It's sudden and dramatic by fear's very nature. The episode's title, "The Bells", even calls to attention the precise instant this happens for most of our key characters.
We see it in the war scene itself. It's not so much "one good side versus one bad side" as much as it is just one collective mass of people scared ******** fighting for their lives, and all it takes is one catalyst to bring that collective fear all the way to the forefront and, amidst pure chaos, for everyone to find out who they truly are.
Dany is that catalyst. As we know, she is already afraid. But once she hears the bells of surrender in King's Landing, that's the moment the fear fully takes hold of her. The throne, the one thing she's always wanted is now finally hers for the taking. The people of King's Landing do not love her, and she will not lose the product of her life's work the way she did everything else, so she does the only other thing she sees she can do: "Let it be fear". She torches the city.
So, motivated by fear, this is the very moment she puts the fear in everyone else. The walls break down completely. All masks come off. Everyone's true selves and desires rush to the forefront.
Grey Worm, feeling only wrath from the love taken from him, seizes this opportunity to massacre innocent surrendering forces.
Formerly surrendering forces fight for their lives. They want only to survive.
Some of the victorious forces of the North do the same, while others seize the opportunity to wreak savagery upon innocents. It's who they were all along, and we've taken their good will for granted.
We've all seen Jon Snow's face of realization: "This is wrong. This was wrong all along." From that point on, he can only make futile attempts to correct what can't be undone.
Knowing it's all over, Cersei's thoughts turn entirely to her unborn child. It's not about "who wins" the throne anymore. To her, the throne was merely her and her family's refuge, a refuge she held by committing countless evils in the name of protecting herself and those she loved. Now, all she knows is that she cannot let her unborn baby die, not here. She flees. She weeps for her child.
And even among all of this, the sound of the bells was only the moment the fear hit most of our characters. Others had fear take control of them slightly prior, but the bells served as the crossroads for those very fears nonetheless.
The moment fear took control of Jaime was one episode prior. By every observable metric, he was a changed man that had every intention of atoning for his past. But the moment Sansa told him that Cersei would be executed without him, that's when his fear took hold. He could not let the woman he'd loved his entire life, from the moment of their birth, die without him there. It was not a "reversal" or "squandering" of his character arc. He had indeed become a better man. But he was the only person to ever see that side of Cersei, and he was afraid to let it die. Even at the moment of he and Cersei's death, he tells her "it’s just us, that's all that matters". The fear made him realize that his memory of that love is all he would have been content with, and given familial love being the sole motivator for all of Cersei's sociopathy, it was literally his answer to her lifelong struggle.
Obviously, The Hound fears his brother. He knows this crossroads at King's Landing is his chance. He fears NOT getting revenge, and Arya thinks she shares this in common with him. So as a litmus test, he makes it as clear as he can to Arya: if you follow me down this path, you will die.
And despite all her talk, that is the moment the fear hits Arya. She doesn't want to die. She runs through the streets trying to escape, and in doing so finds that she doesn't want the people to die as well. Fear triggers her survival impulses, not just for herself, but for others as well. She's afraid to die. There's more she needs to do. There's more everyone needs to do.
And lastly, or firstly rather, seeing the crisis of "the bells" coming days in advance in true character fashion, Varys remains the person he's always been. He fears the wrong person being seated on the throne, one that leads by instilling this very fear in them at all, the fear that arises from fire and blood.
And that, my friends, is why this episode is brilliant. It is pure Game of Thrones. We're nothing but sacks of meat and blood, and some bone to keep it all standing. When life-or-death fear hits, we become our basest, most elemental selves, and no one is invulnerable.
TL;DR: Characters' arcs shift fast because the whole episode is about fear and who we reveal ourselves to be once that fear is put in us.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthro...ers_let_it_be_fear_aka_why_the_bells_was_one/
