Game of Thrones – 'Stormborn'

#teamtargaryan

We open in the cold, grey halls of Dragonstone, where Danaerys is conferring with her commanders and allies. She confronts Viserys with the fact that he has betrayed, like, all of the kings he has previously worked for, and he tells her that this is true, and he will absolutely do the same to her if she becomes a tyrant. This seems to be the right answer.

Melisande turns up, having now settled on Danaerys as her Prince that was Promised(1) on account of all the rest of her options falling through. Dany then talks strategy with her commanders and allies, most of whom are all for a direct assault on King's Landing. Tyrion counsels against this - also dropping some sass on Ellaria by telling her that they 'don't poison little girls' - and Dany agrees that she doesn't want to be 'queen of the ashes', which she will inevitably become once she lets the dragons off the chain over a major population centre. Instead, she determines to follow the Tyrion plan of besieging King's Landing with Dornish and Highgarden troops, while the Unsullied and Dothraki fuck up the Lannister seat of Casterly Rock.

Olenna warns her against being too kindly. Margaery was more beloved than any Queen in history, and she got imprisoned, tortured and incinerated for her efforts. "The nobles are sheep," she tells Dany, "but you are a dragon. Be a dragon."

 

"It's this or Luke Evans."

Before he leaves, Missande comes to Grey Worm and they get all sexy, but this scene raises so many questions. Mostly, if these characters have come to freezing, storm-tossed Dragonstone from the sweltering heat of Essos, why aren't they wearing more layers? It is much speculated that this encounter will also spell doom for Grey Worm.

In King's Landing, Cersei paints a picture of Dany as a marauding psychopath to the nobles – including Tyrell's bannermen – to persuade them to support her. You'd think Cersei might have learned a lesson or two about glass houses after the whole Sparrow debacle, but anyway. Jaime makes an impassioned plea to Sam's dad not to back Olenna's vengeance, and Qyburn explains to Cersei that the only thing that can kill a dragon is a black arrow from a windlance (I guess because he's seen the movie of The Hobbit, but not read the book.) Fortunately, he's had one built, and demonstrates it on the largest skull in the catacombs.

She's not a tame wolf.

In the North, Jon gets an invitation from Tyrion to parlay with Danaerys – omitting her demand that he bend the knee – and is inclined to go. Fire kills wights, dragons make fire; he's done the maths and the solution is a happy face. The nobles of the North are not keen, but when Sam sends word of the dragonglass mountain, Jon is determined and he and Ser Davos head south, after roughing up Littlefinger for being a creeper. I can't imagine that leaving a disgruntled Littlefinger in Winterfell is going to go well, but I still hope that Sansa is going to come good and either push him off a wall or sic Arya on him, because after learning from Hotpie – still working at the Pig and Plot Drop – that the Starks are in charge of Winterfell, she's heading north again. Well, she was until she ran into Nymeria and her wolf pack. He former pet turns her back on Arya, but doesn't eat her, so that's not nothing, right(2)?

Sam determines to cure Ser Jorah's greyscale, since he couldn't save Jeor Mormont. This is... icky, and flies in the face of the advice of the Archmaester, who points out that the maester who described the cure for greyscale died... of greyscale.

This man looks like he should be breaking kneecaps in a Mockney thriller and
reveling in the nickname 'Smasher'(4).

Yara transports Ellaria and the Sand Snakes back to Dorn to muster their troops, but is ambushed en route by Euron's fleet (apparently his gift to Cersei is to be her daughter's killer.) Yara and Theon get to be pretty badass, but Euron is some sort of indestructible monster(3), capturing Yara, Ellaria and one of the Snakes, and killing two others. He taunts Theon to come at him, but Theon jumps in the water instead.

'Stormborn' is a troubled episode. The Missande/Grey Worm scene feels like padding, adorable as they are, and Ellaria and Yara have a moment of pure fanservice right before Smasher's fleet – which... I don't know where that came from, in any sense, considering that Yara and Theon are supposed to have nicked all the good ships in the Iron Fleet, and they were in the middle of the ocean so apparently Euron was guided by plot (or, charitably, a traitor in the fleet) - pops out of nowhere like an iceberg at the Titanic. Smasher manages to be even more pointlessly nasty than Ramsey, and the deaths of the Sand Snakes lack punch because I never really cared about them, whereas I'm obviously supposed to since the final image of the episode is their corpses on the prow of the burning ship. Overall, it's an episode with a lot of sexy filler, which tends to reflect a lack of significant plot or character development (we knew Missande and Grey Worm were into each other, and we knew that Yara and Ellaria would shag anything that didn't run fast enough.)

We cut from this to the Pig and Plot Drop, thus doing for pies what Ramsey
Bolton did for sausages.

Also, the weird spatio-temporal nature of Westeros strikes again, with Jon receiving word from Tyrion a mere cut scene after Dany tells him to send it, but not getting the message from Sam - sent last week - until some time after. And never mind how long it's taking word to reach him that Bran has come over the Wall, or indeed for Bran to reach him. Is Castle Black out of ravens after all those messages for people to send help?

(1) Missande points out that, punchy as the translation is, the noun is actually ungendered in High Valyrian, so should be read as 'prince or princess.'

(2) It has been point out that Arya's response to this 'That's not you,' mirrors her statement when offered a future of marriage and family 'That's not me.' If Nymeria would come to her paired Stark like a lapdog, she wouldn't be paired with Arya.

(3) Straight up, I swear he is all over cuts from the Sand Snakes, but completely untroubled.

(4) I think I'll call him 'Smasher' Greyjoy from here out.