I’m so glad to hear this because it speaks to a lot of the frustrations I’ve had with the show that I always get downvoted for expressing.

I think the finale actually works on an emotional level more than most other moments in the show because we’ve seen the rivalry between the cousins occur many times now. The tension has been built, so when he walks into the court we feel it immediately not just because of “oh they’re both here trying to convince this king” but “oh they have literally been at each others throats since they were kids, and there is a personal rivalry between them”

> Aside form “less war hungry than Daemon” I can’t really think of any personality characteristics I’d ascribe to her in the finale. Like I would shed some context for some reason to care about any of these people.

1000x this! So many of the characters are only understood through their actions as they relate to the plot. But we need to see them in moments that have nothing to do with it.

When you watch a show like Andor, you get so many details of characters that add emotional context to their actions. There’s a villain who appears in only one episode, but we get a scene of him preparing for a ceremony with his wife and kid. His clothes don’t quite fit him anymore because he’s gotten fat, he’s dismissive of his wife, and hard on his son. It’s nothing to do with the overall story, but his presence throughout the rest of the episode is changed dramatically because we see underneath the surface just a bit. There is SO little of that in HOD.