Game of Thrones - 'Spoils of War' and 'Eastwatch'

A double bill review, as I was a bit too busy last week to get ‘The Spoils of War’ done.

This reunion is only going downhill from here.

Arya comes home to Winterfell and ducks the dim guards to see Sansa, and then is all ‘list of people to kill,’ and Sansa is all haha, but Bran is all creepy and then Arya fights Brienne to a standstill and Sansa is all ‘well fuck,’ especially since Littlefinger is getting a scheming look beyond his resting schemey face and pulling the whole ‘I loved your mother and I’m trying to get into your sister’s pants(1)’ bit on Arya. He also gives Bran the Valyrian steel dagger that basically started all of this, which Bran passes on to Arya. Meera meanwhile heads out for home, somewhat pissed that Bran has gone all distant chessmaster after all they’ve been through, although he explains that he isn’t really Bran anymore, which is why he isn’t claiming Winterfell. She feels that Bran died in the cave, rather than being transformed.

Danaerys Targaryan, not an axe-crazy burninator.

Jon finds his mountain of dragon glass, surrounded by pictograms showing coexistence between the First Men and the Children of the Forest, but the mood on Dragonstone is down because Cersei has pulled off quite a coup. Danaerys is pretty down on Tyrion, despite the fact that his plan was only flawed in not realising that Smasher Greyjoy just spawns randomly at the worst possible moment(2). Consequently, she decides against the blockade plan, and instead opts for a more executive course of action. Despite this, Missandei assures Jon and Davos that Dany isn’t some sort of axe-crazy burninator. Theon also makes it back, and Jon punches him.

Cersei has a more cordial meeting with the Iron Banker, who is impressed by her successes and willing now to speculate more on the Lannisters, since the Tyrells’ gold will cover their existing debts.

 

Cue Shirley Bassey.

Jaime and Bron saddle up with the loot, although the latter is a little stung that he still doesn’t have his promised castle. Reaching the shores of the Blackwater Rush, Jamie sends the gold across the river, but his force and its wagons of requisitioned grain are still on the banks when a Dothraki Horde comes over the hill. The Lannisters line up to weather the charge, but then suddenly there’s a dragon and it all goes seriously to shit(3). The dragon fucks up the Lannister shield line, allowing the Dothraki to get in among the infantry, and Drogon weathers a hit from Qyburn’s windlance and incinerates it in response. Jamie tries to run down Dany when she lands to pull a bolt out of Drogon’s wing. The dragon tries to torch him, but Bron knocks him into the Rush and apparently into a James Bond credit sequence.

"'Sup."

In ‘Eastwatch’, Bron pulls Jamie out of the far side of the river(4) while Dany gives the surviving Lannister and Tarly troops the option of submission or death. Randyll Tarly refuses to bend the knee, as does his son Dickon, who is… well, basically he’s a loveable lunk here to make us feel something, and it works. Tarly senior may be a jerk, but it’s hard to feel that Dickon deserved incineration. Still, that’s what he gets, because the show is apparently still determined to show us that Dany is a terrible person, even as her posse assure all and sundry that she’s the actual shit. Tyrion at least is not happy with this, and reflects with Varys on the latter’s regret that he never took a stand when he served the Mad King. Meanwhile, Jon pets the dragon(5).

  

At Winterfell, Bran spies out the army of the dead in a flock of ravens, seeing them heading for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea before the Night King sees him. the Lords of the North start to wonder if Sansa wouldn’t be a better ruler than Jon the Perpetually Absent, which stirs dissent between Arya and Sansa. Interestingly, Arya pushes for a bit of decapitatory management, while Sansa argues for hearts and minds, where just a few weeks ago she was in favour of dispossessing the prepubescent lords of Umber and Kar-Stark of land and limb. Littlefinger jumps on the scheme train and allows Arya to think she is following him undetected as he gets the new Maester to bring him the raven message Sansa sent, asking Robb to bend the knee in order to save their father.

"No-one knows who I am."

At the Citadel, the Maesters refuse to treat Bran’s warning as an incontrovertible threat, spurring Sam to nick a bunch of texts and head out. He also manages to ignore Gilly reading out a section of text which basically names Jon the rightful king of Westeros. No-one tells him his father and brother have been incinerated (which I think reflects somewhat a conversation he had with Maester Aemon, because fucking everything is reflecting something else by this point, to the degree that the entire script is basically callbacks.)

Jorah turns up and agrees to join in Jon Snow’s latest ‘brilliant strategem’. Tyrion goes to King’s Landing to set up a meeting with Jaime, the idea being that they want to rock up with a wight as proof of the danger in the North. Qyburn tells Cersei about the meeting, and she gets all grumpy at Jaime for not killing him, despite Olenna’s truth bomb. She also tells him she’s in the family way, and intends to name him as the father this time, because what’s sauce for the dragon and all that.

"Are we nearly there yet?"

To bring the meeting off, Jon is planning to go north of the Wall to capture a wight. He travels to Eastwatch to do this, taking Jorah with him, and also Gendry, whom Davos collects from Fleabottom, along with his oh-so-subtle homage to his father, a warhammer with antlers on(6). They meet up with Tormund and also the Brotherhood, in a scene that could be subtitled ‘it’s a small world after all.’ Together, this dirty half dozen (plus one and some extras) set out into the north, which has never looked as frozen.

It’s been commented that Game of Thrones has lost its edge, with Jaime being dragged out of the water and Littlefinger and Arya’s rank failure to murder one another, but I suspect that this is because they’ve churned through so many (seemingly) main characters that they can’t kill off anyone more important than the Tarlys (who were totally included so that someone with a name could bite the big one) without derailing their main plots. Mind you, speaking of names…

Cersei reminds Jaime of their father’s attitude to the poor(7), and his insistence that ‘the Lion does not concern himself with the opinions of the sheep.’ While easily the most affecting scene this season has been Thoros helping the Hound to bury the poor couple he once robbed, it’s still a story of posh nobs occasionally being moved by the plight of the smallfolk, and it seems like death by mob would be a far more apt ending to Cersei’s story than murder by brother. Ser Davos is basically the voice of the common folk, and as per Tywin Lannister’s favourite saw, no-one gives a shit what he thinks. It’s starting to wear on him too.

“Nobody mind me. All I've ever done is lived to a ripe old age.”

No small achievement in Westeros. I suspect he will die for pathos reasons somewhere late next season, but part of me wants to see him on the Iron Throne, running the Seven Kingdoms with common sense practicality and disabling his enemies with liberal applications of fermented crab.

(1) I’m paraphrasing.

(2) In fairness, you could probably see a fleet heading out of Dragonstone from King’s Landing, although conversely Smasher’s fleet should have had to sail visibly past Chez Dany every time he’s been in and out.

(3) There has been much said about the tactics here, but the frontal charge makes a lot of sense if the goal is to make the Lannisters form up into a tight and easily dragonable formation.

(4) Establishing him as at least a gold award lifesaver, since it must have involved dragging Jaime out of deep water in full armour.

(5) Drogon lets him pet his head, rather than this being a euphemism for the most disturbingly anticipated aunt-on-nephew action in television history.

(6) Which he puts to use mortally clobbering a couple of guards, and he’s the nice one.

(7) “What was it he used to say about the needy? He had a phrase for them…”

“A shower of bastards.”