Originally Posted by
number8
The Cersei scene is one of those scenes that, the longer it went on, the more compelling it became for me. When it began, I started laughing because I was thinking of the shaming scene in What We Do in the Shadows, and then I rolled my eyes because of the prolonged attention on her humiliation, but the scene just would not stop, long enough for me to reconsider its purpose and realize that the point of the scene isn't Cersei's shame and her suffering a low point, but an opportunity to show her intense endurance. In hindsight, I think it's necessary to allow that to come across, because what was previously presented in the episode was her yielding (partly) to her torture. It allows a villainous character to end the season on a completely in-character survivalist note, rather than one that's read as a sadistic "Cersei finally gets hers" fanservice.
And I thought Headey was so good that she didn't let the computer-generated nudity pull the focus away from her performance.