Spoilers ahead!
In what may be the fastest 'slow' episode in the show's history, we got everything everyone loves about Game of Thrones. Sex, violence, gore, nudity, political intrigue and a
whole lot of human drama in what was surely one of the finest episodes of all three seasons.
Keeping to a relatively small cluster of characters, each sequence echoed earlier moments and signalled major things to come. While the Westeros world has grown this season, the episode actually managed to make it feel a little smaller, with superb character moments and some great transition editing.
We open with The Hound going head to head with Beric Dondarrion in the Brotherhood without banners secret lair. This was a great fight scene. The whole sequence exuded a palpable sense of danger, more like a cage fight, with the fighters natural skill impeded by the uneven surroundings. Of course, Dondarrion had a slight advantage over the Hound by using a sword of flames. It does seem a mite unfair to fight a man with a fear of fire with the
very thing he can't stand. It's like fighting Ned Stark with a knife made of deceit or battling Joffrey with a crossbow of being-put-in-your-place.
Despite the flames, The Hound still manages to best Dondarrion with a masterful slash through the torso. Thoros of Myr runs to his aide, babbling prayers to the Lord of Light. And to the surprise of all the newcomers, manages to resurrect him. Whuuuuuut?!
Add this to the growing list of
Things that Turn People Off Game of Thrones Because They Didn't Expect this Fantasy Show to Include Actual Fantasy:
- Actual Magic
- Actual Dragons
- Actual Giants
- Actual resurrection of the dead (other than zombies)
Lessons learned: The Lord of Light has some serious chops. And he's cool with The Hound.
Cut to: How to Survive Beyond The Wall Without Really Trying with Jon Snow and the gang. He's grilled by his new bros about the defences along the wall only be accused of lying when he outlines what he knows. Inevitably this leads to a bit of masculine threat-making. All this stand-offishness is enough to excite Ygritte who, in a bravura act of wildling flirting, steals Jon's sword with the aim of sheathing Jon's sword (Rim shot!). They hang out in a comfortable hot spring sauna that is, despite the obvious unpleasant conditions outside, completely empty of all other wildlings. Perhaps they have a booking system?
The worse-for-wear Jaime and Brienne are presented to Lord Bolton, who, despite subtle jabs at Jaime's sexual proclivities, appears to be a reasonable kind of guy. After Jaime undergoes a bout of excruciating stump surgery to save the rest of his arm from the 'corruption', the unlikely duo share a revealing bath together. In what ends up being one of the very best scenes this season, Jaime gets a superb, enthralling monologue revealing the true origins of his nickname the Kingslayer. It's the kind of scene a lesser show would cut to flashback for. What we get is a beautifully lensed, wonderfully played, subtle shot-reverse-shot sequence that retrains an stunning amount of power. It's really great stuff.
Tyrion meets with Lady Olenna, and for the first time seems truly outmatched in sparring terms (other than when his father's wailing on him). Rather than play games, Lady Olenna relents and agrees to foot half the bill for the royal wedding. Since this was pretty much what Tyrion was after, chalk this meeting up as a success for the new Master of the Coin!
Arya, still hurting from seeing The Hound released, reaches out and tries to forge a familial connection with Gendry, but in a heartbreaking moment of rejection, Gendry declares that his place is with the Brotherhood. Mulling over her situation and running through her considerable list of people she wants vengeance upon, she joins Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr for a refreshingly casual but sobering discussion
with Arya about the ups and downs of being brought back from the dead. It doesn't exactly cheer her up.
Over at Riverrun, it's all melodrama, all the time, as Lord Kanstark leads a raid on the cells of the young Lannister boy hostages, killing the guards and then the boys as revenge for his own dead kin. That was sudden! But it also gave some context to that scene a few episodes ago when Talisa made nice with the young boys as she treated their wounds. Game of Thrones wants you to
know who's getting killed so you can
feel it.
Robb is understandably furious that his authority has been undermined and that two young boys have been murdered on his watch. As a result he gets to yell and scream, throw goblets of wine, make portentous statements as thunder rumbles in the background, and finally lop off Kanstark's head and skulk away in the rain very seriously. It all pays off though, when Robb stumbles upon a new plan of attack in his war with the Lannisters, but it sounds like it might get a little awkward as he needs to appeal to the father of his formally betrothed.
Stannis Baratheon's been licking his wounds and wondering where it all went wrong for him. His transgressions seem to be weighing on him so he goes to confess to his crazy wife in the attic, Selyse, who, it turns out, is a more zealot Lord of the Lighter than Stannis himself. She speaks warmly of the fact that the Red Woman managed to give her husband a living son, but presumably she's not aware that that baby boy was less a thumb-sucking infant than a ghostly demon assassin that was alive for, what, 5 minutes?
If it's legacy you want, Stannis, you should probably look elsewhere. Like maybe your neglected young daughter?
A young daughter, who, like her mother, appears to be locked in a room, but seemingly has no trouble getting out of it, as we see later when she secretly visits the Onion Knight (has he been called that before?), Ser Davos, in the dungeon. The young princess seems to have a scaly birth mark (?) on her face which I presume is the reason she's kept out of sight? (So many questions!) But she's a bright, compassionate young thing and makes it her new mission to help Davos learn how to read while he's locked in the dungeon. Awwww. New favourite character!
I forgot that the only person Littlefinger cares about is himself, so I was way off on the possibility that Baelish would lose his cool when he discovered the plot to keep Sansa from him. He merely took it quietly in his stead, employed a hot young hustler to get the goss from Loras himself and then passed the info back to Cersei, who is still trying her best to impress Daddy.
So at the end of this episode, Tywin takes this news as another strategic opportunity, and drops a couple of bombs:
Tyrion will marry and 'put a baby inside' Sansa to help secure the north.
BOOM.
And Cersei will marry Loras, effectively becoming a 'broodmare'.
KA-BOOM.
Mic drop.
Tywin
out.
The
'proper lover' Jon Snow and Ygritte prepare for an epic sequence
climbing the wall. This, I realised, is one of the most prolonged action
scenes yet in this series (discounting the Battle of Blackwater
whole-episode-action-sequence). Due to budgetary restraints the show
often only depicts smaller skirmishes and instances of personal violence
rather than big battle scenes. This was a chance for the show to
stretch its legs a little with a series of scenes over the course of the
episode that followed Jon and the gang ascending the wall. It felt
properly epic in a way that the show has sometimes struggled to convey.
Arya's
talent for striking at the 'face, tits and balls' (a solid set of principles in any discipline) of her straw men prompts a
little advice from Anguy the archer, but she's clearly coming along.
Her growing list of people she'd like to kill gets a new addition when
the Red Woman turns up in the middle of the forest wanting to trade some
gold for Gendry, the true heir to the throne and vessel for Baratheon
blood. Two things sure to make life hard for you in Westeros: being the
heir to anything, and being the heir of anyone.
Checking
in on poor young Theon, who is nothing if not the one true King of Rude
Awakenings, who has another terrible morning having his fingers flayed by
his oblique torturer. 
We're
robbed of what would surely be an hilarious scene of Tyrion fumbling
his way through explaining how Sansa is now his bethrothed, right in
front of his lover, Shae. I'm wondering whether this decision was based on the fact that the switch in tone from a wacky case of
misunderstandings to the tragic St Sebastian-esque corpse of Ros would have been too difficult to pull off.
