content: 
  ====General====
  On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the episode has an approval rating of 49% based on 107 reviews, and an average rating of 6.32/10, with the critical consensus stating, "Death, destruction, and the deterioration of Daenerys' sanity make 'The Bells' an episode for the ages; but too much plot in too little time muddles the story and may leave some viewers feeling its conclusions are unearned." It is the second lowest-rated episode on Rotten Tomatoes, behind "The Iron Throne."
  Lenika Cruz of ''The Atlantic'' wrote that although she found the special effects stunning and the acting spectacular, this was "the worst ''Game of Thrones'' episode ever" because the plot was either too obvious or illogical, with the massacre seeming "an unearned negation of the identity Daenerys had spent years building for herself". Emily VanDerWerff of ''Vox'' found the episode grim and absent of sense, but credited director Miguel Sapochnik for "the gorgeous visuals that extended beyond the battle scenes." VanDerWerff praised the acting of the cast such as Maisie Williams, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, and Emilia Clarke; the latter two made their characters' actions believable even when they were illogical. Alex McLevy of ''The A.V. Club'' wrote that the episode successfully demonstrated that "the chaos of war makes villains and victims of us all", with the "progression from exhilarating hope to tragic denouement being skillfully executed by director Miguel Sapochnik" with better large-scale choreography than in the "The Long Night".
  Hugh Montgomery of BBC Culture wrote that characters such as Tyrion, Jaime, Daenerys, and Cersei were "definitively sacrificed to the show's scrambled plotting", and that ''Game of Thrones'' was previously "a show that intelligently delineated a senseless world", but that it was now nonsense. VanDerWerff stated that Cersei and Jaime's deaths were not given much thought by the writers and were instead simply something to check off a list. Kelly Lawler of ''USA Today'', saying that the episode lacked substance and was an "absolute disaster", argued that Grey Worm, Daenerys and Varys took actions which were wildly out of character.
  Alan Sepinwall of ''Rolling Stone'' wrote that the episode's "technical genius" and "the visual clarity only made it easier to see how muddled the show has been, from both a narrative and character standpoint, in this home stretch", with the scorpions turning from accurate to useless, Euron surviving Drogon to have a "pointless fight with Jaime", the setting of Cleganebowl being invulnerable while the castle fell, Jaime easily entering the gated Red Keep, and the appearance of "seemingly hundreds of Dothraki" despite most of them apparently dying in 'The Long Night'. Lawler also said that the writers "threw out their own rule book (suddenly the scorpions don't work and Drogon can burn everything?) to pursue gross spectacle".
  Several critics criticized the pacing of events; Lawler wrote that the pacing started off rushed, while Spencer Kornhaber of ''The Atlantic'' said that the show was "sprinting through plot check marks". Will Bedingfield of ''Wired'' also felt that the show rushed storylines, seeing the death of Varys as being without the climactic buildup previous seasons had. Sarah Hughes of ''The Guardian'' attributed season eight's pacing problems to season seven having had pacing issues that ensured that the rest of the series would feel "breathless and rushed."