Photo: Miya Mizuno/HBO
When Elena Vernham emerges from a trap door and sets foot on an arid field outside the palace at the beginning of this season finale, she might as well be an extraterrestrial, taking her first steps on some distant planet. She has no familiarity with the country she’s been governing, no sense of how the people who supposedly “love” her actually live. And so she throws a tantrum: “I can’t,” she screams to Zubak. “I can’t be in that state of being or not being like I’m just some person surviving….
