SPOILER ALERT: Warning, this article contains spoilers from the Season 7, episode three of Game of Thrones, entitled The Queen’s Justice. Proceed at your own risk.
King Joffrey Baratheon met an unpleasant death during the Purple Wedding in Season 4, ironically the same color as his face after he was poisoned.
Viewers knew that Olenna Tyrell — the grandmother of Joffrey’s bride Margaery — orchestrated the assassination, and she confessed in dramatic fashion in Sunday’s episode.
Jaime Lannister and his army ambushed the seat of House Tyrell — Highgarden — easily overtaking it. The goal was to take out another of Daenerys Targaryen’s allies and plunder the coffers of the rich kingdom.
Rather than kill Tyrell’s ruler, Olenna, in some barbaric fashion, Jaime offered her a merciful death by drinking painless poison, which she accepted.
As she drank the wine, Olenna finally admitted that she killed Joffrey, Jaime and his sister Cersei’s son. Jaime was horrified by the revelation (and in the process learned his brother Tyrion was innocent of the crime).
“Tell Cersei I want her to know it was me,” she uttered before the episode cut to black.
“She beats him in the middle of her own death scene and there’s nothing he can do about it,” producer D.B. Weiss explained after the episode aired. “He knows it’s true the moment she says it.”
“We’ve been so lucky to have Diana [Rigg] on the show,” Weiss added. “It’s impossible to imagine somebody doing the role she’s done with the role.”
He later called her confession and death the “favorite scene she’s ever done for us.”
And with that, viewers say goodbye to Olenna Tyrell, but she made a major impact on the show. Will you miss her scheming ways? Be sure to tweet @GETFANDOM with your opinions.
As a bonus, rewatch the scene leading up to Joffrey’s death scene and see if the producers dropped any clues way back in Season 4. Sharp-eyed viewers will see Olenna taking a jewel from Sansa’s necklace, which is actually the “strangler” poison used to kill Joffrey.
