【"metaphorically eroticize the orient "】

This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7,"metaphorically eroticize the orient " episode 4, titled "The Spoils of War."

Season 7 has not been kind to Jaime Lannister.

Over the course of four episodes, our favorite Kingslayer has been disrespected by no less than his sister, punk rock pirate Euron Greyjoy, and Olenna Tyrell, who actually managed to use her own death scene to destroy him with the most epic display of shade in the show's history.

To add insult to injury, Cersei is apparently feeling confident (read: arrogant) enough that she's now ignoring Jaime's desire to keep their effed up incestuous relationship on the DL by openly flaunting it in front of the hired help, all while promising Euron that she'll probably marry him someday maybe if he's good just ask again later okay?

In episode 4, Jaime had to deal with something even scarier (or at least equallyas scary) as Cersei on a power trip -- a gigantic dragon, which would've made Olenna's sick burns look like a tickle, if Bronn hadn't knocked him into the river right before Daenerys ordered a dish of deep-fried and crispy Lannister.

SEE ALSO: 'Game of Thrones' episode 4 finally gave us the battle we've been waiting six seasons to see

This came after Jaime had to suffer the indignity of watching his men being incinerated, all while little bro Tyrion armchair quarterbacked from afar, quietly urging Jaime to flee instead of being the Big Damn Hero he's always been.

Jaime's killer instinct backfired spectacularly, because the episode ended on an odd note -- with Westeros' golden boy floating towards the deceptively deep bed of the Blackwater Rush river, seemingly drowning, with no sign of Bronn anywhere near him as he sank.

Is this the end of Westeros' most handsome antihero?!

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We're guessing no -- despite how heavy that armor is (and we all know that a golden hand adds ten pounds), there's no way the show would dispatch one of its main characters in such an inauspicious fashion, which makes the decision to end "The Spoils of War" that way kind of baffling. (Especially when the episode is Game of Thrones' shortest ever, clocking in at a mere 50 minutes, according to HBO's schedule.)

Director Matt Shakman played coy when asked about Jaime's fate, but told Mashablehe was interested in playing with the sounds that accompanied such a chaotic battle.

"For me one the biggest things about it was playing with silence. There is the camp at rest and then all of a sudden you hear this distant, hard to pin down noise, then it resolves into the hooves and then there's the chaos of the Dothraki coming and then in the middle of the fight, when things are at its worst, the sound drops out. And then it's quiet as Jaime takes in all the people dying around him," he explained. "And then obviously the battle heats up again as it reaches its conclusion. And then Jaime hits the water and all is silent again. Being able to play with that kind of push and pull between chaos and silence in the middle of the battle was important. I think that part of the conclusion there is that moment of silence that follows the chaos of it of his charge. What happens to Jaime, I leave it to you guys to watch in the future."

SEE ALSO: Next week's 'Game of Thrones' trailer is really playing up that whole Mad Queen thing

But let's be honest, after saving his ass once, Bronn will probably appear out of nowhere and haul Jaime's ass back to shore in episode 5 -- unless Dany and Tyrion rescue him so that they'll have a high-value hostage to trade back to Cersei, if she'll have him.

The showdown between Jaime and Dany was pretty remarkable -- not just because of the impressive power of Drogon and the Dothraki in open combat, but because this is the first time we've really seen two of our favorite lead characters facing off.

Sure, Cersei has been trying to kill Tyrion for years, but the show has always positioned her as an antagonist, rather than a conflicted antihero, as Jaime has become.

But Dany/Tyrion vs. Jaime/Bronn? We don't want to lose any of them, so who the heck are we supposed to root for? As executive producer Dan Weiss pointed out in this week's Inside the Episode video, "It's impossible to really want any one of them to win, and it's impossible to want any one of them to lose."

Shakman shared his own inspiration for the battle with Mashable: "I approached it first by trying to understand filmatically what I wanted to do and whose point of view I wanted to focus on. And I settled on Jaime and Bronn and this idea of what it's like to be on the ground with soldiers when war changes forever: when napalm is introduced, or the atom bomb," he said. "And all of a sudden their traditional warfare -- where they're vastly outnumbered, but they still stand a chance because of their training -- just goes completely out the window when this dragon comes on the scene. And what it's like to be on the ground when something horrific like that happens."

If nothing else, this episode proves that Bronn really deserves that castle he's been angling for -- not only did he save Jaime from certain doom, he also struck a serious blow to Drogon, which might keep the dragon out of commission for Dany's next attack. In fact, considering how many times Bronn has saved both Jaime and Tyrion at this point, one of the Lannisters really ought to repay that debt, before someone else makes Bronn an offer he can't refuse.

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Topics Game Of Thrones