“It’s yet another circular story in an episode (and, indeed, a show) that is full of them. Here is Cersei, getting her revenge for the death of her daughter by forcing the woman who murdered Myrcella to endure roughly the same fate Cersei had: the loss of a child.”
“the murders in question, the death of the one daughter avenged by the apparent death of the other, have something in common: The horror starts, in both cases, with a poison kiss.”
“Poison, in Game of Thrones as in the world beyond it, is traditionally a weapon of last resort.”
“It is calculating. It is deliberate. It is used not for crimes of passion, but rather for killings that are planned, over time.”
“Poison is a tool of asymmetric warfare—one that is used, often, when the other side is unaware that there is a battle being fought in the first place.”
“A little bit science, a little bit magic, poison is used, in general, by those who have no other choice.”
“Which is to say that, in pop cultural stereotype if not in practice, poison is often considered a weapon of women.”
“Game of Thrones has, over its six-plus seasons, both embraced and complicated that stereotype.”
“Poison, in this sense, is an equal-opportunity weapon—the tool not of the woman, but of the vigilante.”
“It is used by those who have given up on (or who, indeed, never believed in) a communal notion of justice.”
“In a show that is deeply interested in the morality of killing—a show in whose moral universe the how of a death matters as much as the fact of it—poison is the refuge of the rogue.”
“It stands in contrast to the state-sanctioned killings that are often enacted reluctantly, but for a broader purpose”
“poison may be, often, used by women—but more to the point it is used by those who have decided to operate beyond the sanction of their societies. To kill someone with poison is to reject the rule of law.”
“Olenna, of course, does not seem sorry. She seems gleeful. She seems like someone who is using her final moments to enable one last act of vengeance against the woman who has won the battle, but not yet the war.”
“She seems to understand that vengeance is its own kind of poison. And she seems to understand that words, like toxins, can be their own kind of weapons.”