Game of Thrones - 'Oathbreaker'

"We're here. Really, we're just establishing that."

So, how do the Iron Islands respond to last week's upsets? Maybe we'll find out next episodes, but there's naff all on that one here.

In King's Landing, Jamie and Cersei, backed by Qyburn's co-opting of Varys' underage spy network and the revenant abomination of Ser Gregor Clegane, decide they're going to start throwing their weight around by showing up at the Small Council meeting, only for the Small Council to walk out on them. Meanwhile, Tommen meets with the High Sparrow, who assures him that you can't do better than having the gods on your side, although I can't honestly say I expect that policy to end well for him (unless he does end up pointing and laughing at them all from heaven.)

"It's only a model."

Bran has another vision flashback, watching the young Ned Stark and Papa Reed fight two Kingsguard to get to Ned's sister, Lyanna, in the Tower of Joy. Bran is somewhat disappointed to see that his father's celebrated duel with the master swordsman Ser Arthur Dayne ends with Howland Reed stabbing Dayne in the back, and more so that the Three-Eyed Raven calls a halt before he can see inside the tower Dayne was guarding, apparently because Bran called out to his father and Eddard heard him.

At Winterfell, the new Lord Bolton receives Lord Smalljon Umber, whose family were tight with Robb Stark. Umber refuses to bend the knee to Bolton, but offers conditional support in exchange for Bolton's aid against the Wildlings, offering as proof of good faith Rickon Stark - who has grown some since we last saw him - Osha the Wildling and the head of Shaggydog.

"What was I drinking last night?"

At Castle Black, Jon recovers something of his wits and executes the traitors, including Olly. Despite Davos's pep talk and the Red Woman's insistence that he might be the Prince Who Was Promised, he then leaves Castle Black to walk the Earth. I suspect this is a result of the apparent internal anti-homing sense which won't allow Starks to reunite once separated.

In Braavos, Arya montages her way to blind fu excellence and is offered a drink from the poison pool which restores her sight without killing her even a little bit. In Mereen, Tyrion and Varys discover that the Masters of the other cities of Slavers' Bay are backing the Sons of the Harpy, and set in motion some shenanigans. And in Vaes Dothrak, Daenaerys is welcomed to a life of sitting around and watching telenovelas, as is the lot of a Khal's widow.

Which is a whole lot of not very much to happen in the course of an hour. The skirmish at the Tower of Joy is a nice bit of action in an otherwise fairly plodding episode which moves lots of plots forward fractionally; in most cases, a matter of a handful of scenes in a single day, which does make me wonder if everything after Arya's montage was supposed to be going on weeks or months after everything before, because no way she got that good in however many hours are in a Westerosi day.

On the plus side, no babies were killed, and aside from Olly the worst that happened to any children was that they started working for Qyburn. On the downside, we've apparently lost another direwolf off screen.