On this week's episode of Game of Thrones, Jaime takes a stand against the Faith Militant and a familiar face returns to the show. My thoughts on the episode are after the jump.
Despite everything getting more fast paced and heated, this was a relatively easy going week on Game of Thrones. It gave us a break from the tears and the horror and reassembled some pieces for the second half of the season. We know the battles are coming. We know the reveals will blow our minds, so it was actually sort of nice to stretch out and figure out what everyone is up to now that more information is available to us. But leave it to GoT to still have some amazing and incredibly important plot developments, even during one of its mellower episodes.
Like BENJEN'S RETURN! It turns out that everyone was right about the mystery of Benjen. He not only returned, but he also died! This is an incredibly interesting development. We saw that the Night King was created by having dragon glass shoved into what seemed to be his heart by the Children of the Forest. Now we know that Benjen was indeed killed by the White Walkers that he had suspected were up to no good, but was brought back in similar fashion by the Children of the Forest by having dragon glass placed inside his heart to cease the complete wight transformation. I am not quite sure what this will mean in regards to how the inevitable battle against the White Walkers will go, but it provides additional details into the very mysterious magical elements of the show and it is getting more and more exciting with every new piece of back story. Suffice to say, we can all agree that Benjen learned a lot about the Three-Eyed Raven and the Night King and that he most likely left the little package of dragon glass and a horn for Samwell to find.
Remember this junk? well, it eventually turned out to not be junk and it has helped our favorite Night's Watch men survive a few frosty encounters. Hopefully Benjen, or "Coldhands" as book readers have long suspected he had become in the text, will shed some more light on dragon glass and Valyrian steel in the coming weeks and why they seem to counter and expel darker magic.
Speaking of Valyrian steel, Jon is not the only one who has an awesome sword to kill White Walkers with. Now Samwell Tarley has one! And thus, Jon and Sam have reached total bro status. It is interesting to note that both these swords were meant to be passed on by the family patriarchs who owned them to their first born sons, but neither one accomplished that. Jon received the sword instead of Jorah Mormont, who had brought shame to his family. Samwell did get what was meant to be his, but he had to steal it from the yet another contender for the "worst dad in Westeros" award. Man, Father Tarley is a buttface. We heard that he was cruel and the stories were not exaggerated. What a senseless and closed off brute of a man. He is stuck in a wartime frame of mind that rejects any thought that could suggest that intellectualism could be just as important, if not more, as skills in battle. When wartime is over, you need the Samwell Tarleys of the world to help lead people politically so the world can be united, not broken apart. It is men like Sam's father who are responsible for making Westeros the broken moral toilet that it is.
Also a candidate for "worst dad in Westeros" is Walder Frey, who makes his first series appearance since the aftermath of the horror that was the "Red Wedding". In fact, when we meet him again he is still going on about how great of a victory it was for him. (You do realize you broke sacred cultural vows to do so, right? What a scumbag.) Am I the only one who was actually wondering about what had happened to Robb's cousin Edmure Tulley after he was put in prison by the Freys? He was getting laid while his whole family was slaughtered and then he was promptly thrown in a cell. Well, we got to catch up with him and he looks pretty rough. (I like the running theme of seeing once absent characters show up again after time in a cell to humble them and beat them to their core.) Walder's plan to combat Blackfish after his conquering of Riverrun is to send Edmure back there for some reason. I could only imagine the horror of what is going to happen to that poor guy. I am getting some serious Ramsay and Theon vibes going on here.
Walder better hutty though, because Dany seems to be buckling down on finally invading Westeros with her dragons and new Dothraki army. I felt that this scene was incredibly convenient. I think it would have been a better move to allow us an audience to follow Dany as she found Drogon so we could see why exactly she thought he was there and how she managed to find him while no one else saw him, but it was definitely awesome to see Dany finally mount Drogon in full power and confidence to lead her new enthusiastic army. What are her next steps going to be? She still needs to get some control back in the cities she has already conquered or else her plans to invade Westeros could be thwarted or backfire in the process. She also needs some ships, which the Sons of the Harpy have burned to ashes. From what the series has set up already, I have a feeling that Theon, Yara, and their fleet are going to arrive at Meereen soon while Dany and Tyrion get a handle of things before their departure. That way, they can team up and use what they have to go take over the Iron Islands and dispose of Euron. We can only handle so many father murdering psychopaths in Westeros after all. That would be an incredibly smart move by Daenerys. She wouldn't be jumping right into the deep water by taking on King's Landing right away. Instead, she can start with an isolated, easy place like the Iron Islands, take the ships that they are definitely building right now, gain an early alliance with Yara and Theon by recaliming their home, and have a base of operations before taking on teh main land with full force. If the show does not go in that direction, I am not sure what would be better. This makes sense to me and it promises some awesome Dany-riding-dragon action in the near future as she finally makes her presence known to the silly squabbling Westeronians. Not sure where the White Walkers are going to factor in, but it will be chaos for sure.
Speaking of those squabbling Westeronians, King's Landing is still the least interesting thing going on right now. However, when we say "least interesting" when we refer to GoT, it is still infinitely more interesting than nearly every other show on TV right now. It seemed like we were going to get a giant Faith Militant battle, but the show pulled a 180 on us by giving the High Sparrow his victory early. He was able to form an alliance with the Crown by seducing the very young and not-kingly King Tommen to "come to the light". This effectively killed the uprising that the Tyrells and the Lannisters were putting together. It also resulted in separating our favorite TV twincest by sending Jaime to Riverrun to reclaim it. Things are about to get nasty. We currently have Blackfish Tully occupying the castle, we have Wlader Frey beginning some sort of offensive to reclaim it, we have Brienne (and Pod most likely) going on a mission to bargain with Blackfish, we have Jaime heading over there now stripped of the King's Guard titles, and we also have Ramsay Bolton, who is probably busy eating the corpse of his lover from the premiere episode while planning to take both Riverrun and Castle Black. We already know Jon and Ramsay are going to lock horns, but there are even more variables heading into Riverrun. I haven't even mentioned a book-reader favorite character who has not made an appearance on the show yet who could be introduced very soon after years of taunting and waiting. I did hear Walder Frey mentioning that the Brotherhood Without Banners are up to some sort of shenanigans, which should peak the interest of the people who are waiting for this character to show up possibly. Every single character heading to Riverrun has some sort of ties to this character, so I could easily imagine a big mind-blowing reveal coming our way. Honestly, with what I am picturing in my head right now of how it could go down, this could be even more of a shock than it was in the books. But regardless of these hypotheticals, I think we can all agree that some bloodshed is going down in Riverrun very very soon.
Last but not least by any means, I want to mention Arya, the second least interesting plot of the show currently. And now it is incredibly exciting! Arya decided to not become "no one" after all. After seeing the goofy play that depicted the loss of her family, keeping with the title of the episode that puts emphasis on the different family elements circling around this week, she took up Needle once again. I am nervous as to what her next plan of action will be though, because we now know that Jaqen and his cruel little assistant who likes to beat children with sticks are going to come after her and they are not going to let her live. Arya has a fight coming her way and it can only end in death. I really hope the show gets right back into this soon, because this could become really thrilling, especially after being relatively small scale so far this season save for the awesome zombie sequence last week. (RIP Hodor, uh I mean Wyllis.) What if Arya was able to defeat the "Faceless" and transcend them? She could take everything they have and become something they could not aspire to be. That would put Arya in a very awesome position of world-changing power that could finally justify the time we have been spending in Braavos for two seasons now. Imagine the surprise the remaining Starks would have if all of a sudden Arya showed back up in Westeros to fight with them with some ungodly amount of power. That would be incredible. Get on this showrunners! I'm typing you gold right now!
This was an incredibly solid episode. As you can see by the lengthy post I just wrote, even the slower episodes give us a ton of food for thought to consider. We did not even see Castle Black, Winterfell, or Theon/Yara this week, yet we have so much to talk about. Whatever theories or thoughts you have, feel free to start a conversation in the comments below or on the post itself on Reddit! I would love to chat with you guys. We now have four episodes left of Game of Thrones this season (it's going away too soon!) so buckle your seat belts. It is going to get a little frosty up in here.
Grade: B+.
Game of Thrones airs every Sunday night on HBO.
How about you hold the door for me and check out my review of last week's episode if you missed it by following the link!
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