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| Walking and talking. |
Welcome, my friends, to the 2017 all-Westeros idiot ball championship.
Jon Snow and his band of heroes head north to do what heroes do in
Westeros: Die like chumps. Now, I'll be honest, there are some lovely bits of
manly banter as they make their way towards the approaching army of the dead
(especially Tomund waxing lyrical to the Hound about Brienne of Tarth,) walking and talking like an arctic version of The West Wing, but
this doesn't significantly distract from the fact that what they are doing and
who is doing it is patently ridiculous. The Red Wedding is lauded as the
ultimate skewering of high fantasy tropes in the gritty world of A Song of Ice and Fire, but this is a
fucking quest right here, even if the Hound is too surly to ever admit it, and
the King of the North is undertaking it in
person, presumably because of some gruff wisdom imparted by Neddy Stark
about responsibility and how if a man comes up with a knuckleheaded plan, he
ought to incompetently execute the plan himself.
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| "Well, that's just super, Thoros. Now the zombie bear is on fire." |
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| I'm starting to notice a pattern in Jon Snow's battle strategy... |
And then they get spotted, and it's like there's a wight looking at
them, and they're hogtying their captive, and it's all awkward for a moment
until suddenly there's an army coming at them. Jon sends Gendry to run back to
Eastwatch, without his hammer both so that he can run faster and to continue a trend for people handing weapons to one another this episode, with orders to send a raven to Danaerys for help – because that's going to do
them any good – while everyone else winds up trapped on an island in the middle
of a frozen lake, surrounded by wights and with the Night King and his power
posse watching from a ridge. The advance of the dead is halted for a time as the ice gives way. Someone suggests making an end run to take out the
Night King, but it's not really on the cards given the thousands of wights and the half-frozen lake in the way
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| "A Frey tried to test me once. I ate his liver in a pie with a nice ale." |
Back at Winterfell, Arya confronts Sansa for apparently cosying up to
the Lannisters and her 'beloved Joffrey' after their father was arrested. She's either mad about Ned's death or Sansa's handwriting. There's a lot that is unclear. Littlefinger drops some hints about
Brienne being unreliable as she is sworn to both sisters, and seemingly in response to this possibility - or becuase she'll be damned before she walks into a room where Cersei is simultaneously present and breathing - Sansa sends her
knight to King's Landing on her behalf. Sansa then searches Arya's room and
finds her bag of faces, which is some seriously serial killer shit(2), backed
up by Arya discussing how she could be Lady of Winterfell if she took Sansa's
face, before handing her the plot dagger and leaving the room.
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| Seriously. No-one at any point is even surprised that people be setting their swords on fire. |
Gendry collapses at the gates of Eastwatch(3) and the garrison sends a
raven to Dragonstone, and damn me, but they must have sent the good one. Whereas Castle
Black failed to get word to Winterfell ahead of Bran and Meera, Wattoo Wattoo Super Bird is on Dragonstone before anyone but Thoros of Myr has died of exposure – and slow-onset
undead bear mauling – on their frozen islet of death. Tyrion counsels caution, pointing out in diplomatic terms that this was a stupid fucking idea at best and sending the queen and figurehead of their opposition to Cersei and three weapons of mass destruction into an icy hellholeis throwing good stupid after bad, but Danaerys scathingly reminds him that his advice has not served her well so
far(4). So, she jumps on Drogon and flies north, heading for an island in a
lake in the unmapped far north without as much as a postcode to go on.
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| So, apart from the Night Kng, are these all Craster boys? Also, why don't the dragons just flame the command ridge on their first pass. |
Back on the island, the Hound throws rocks at the dead, inadvertently alerting
them to the fact that the ice has refrozen. The band fights a last, desperate
resistance, with Tormund almost dragged into the icy water before the Hound appears
to rescue him(5). I'd say that I hope to see Tormund having his frostbitten legs amputated, but honestly if any of these heroes have a toe left they'll be lucky.
Then the dragons show up and start napalming the dead, with
Drogon making a landing to pick up the survivors while his brothers provide covering fire, by which I mean they cover everything in fire. Jon fights off the wights to
allow the others to board, but then the Night King kills Viserion with a giant fucking ice javelin. Danaerys is understandably a bit upset, forcing Jon to cover her for longer, although this doesn't explain why he keeps advancing so that he can't
get back to the dragon and has to be left behind.
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| "Well, that's a bad fucking sign right there." |
Now, I'm not so heartless as to feel glad that a dragon died, but you
know what? After all the shit people have pulled this season, I am glad to
finally see an actual logical
consequence to someone's stupid decisions. I'd say the same about Jon falling
into the water and drowning, but like Jaime Lannister he crawls out after the
remaining dragons have cheesed it, and – managing somehow not to freeze to
death – is rescued not by the intercession of Rhaegon(6), but by the sacrifice
of mostly-dead Uncle Benjen, who holds off the army while Jon rides back to
Eastwatch and takes ship to a conference of Kings which cannot possibly go well,
swearing sexy shirtless fealty to Danaerys on the way.
Finally, the Night King raises Viserion as a zombie, as many have
predicted.
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| "I'm blue baba-dee baba-doo." |
'Beyond the Wall' is brotastic to the max, with the band of frenemies
bonding and battling to a larger understanding of one another. Unfortunately,
it is not so up on sisterhood, although with one episode still to watch, I'm
holding onto the hope that Sansa and Arya are working together to try to goad
Littlefinger into an open enough play that they can get shot of him without
sacrificing the Vale as allies, largely because Sansa has explicitly said that the reason she can't get rid of Littlefinger is that they need the Vale so they can't act unless they have some sort of evidence.
Anyway, season finale next week (by which I mean it was on yesterday - the day before in the States - and I hope to watch it today,) so I guess some questions will be answered,
others raised, and given the relatively low mortality rate of the last couple
of episodes, a whole mess of folk be either killed or presumed dead.
(1) Which at one point Jon tries to return to Jorah, because apparently
we needed to be reminded what a stand-up bloke Jon is.
(2) Although as has been noted, so far Arya has been more about the
spree killing.
(3) Which is in itself remarkable. In Season one he would have been
eaten by foxes or randomly jacked by bandits and then repeatedly slagged off
for deserting for the rest of the year.
(4) Probably because Tyrion is very much advising for Season 5 or
points backwards, before all this hero shit became de rigeur.
(5) And when Sandor Clegane has decided that it's hero time, you know the
show is starting to lose its gritty edge.
(6) I was totally expecting that, I must admit, not least because it
would have offered some explanation as to how he managed not to freeze.
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