Game of Thrones - 'The Dragon and the Wolf'

Apparently there are six thousand Dothraki in those trees back there.

Let's bring this on home.

Having bagged their wight, the newly unified Team Danaerys rock up to King's Landing for a meeting in the sombre atmosphere of the ruined Dragon Arena, where the Targareans' once-great beasts of mass destruction devolved into the draconic equivalent of scabby battery hens with atrophied wings and club feet(1). The Unsullied and the Dothraki rock up to look impressive, the former having apparently had shit all trouble crossing from Casterley Rock. There's some reunioning between Tyrion and Bronn and Podrick. Cersei sweeps in all imperious, gives Brienne the stink-eye when she catches her exchanging looks with Jaime, and even manages to maintain her sang froid when Dany rocks up with her dragons. Smasher tries to grandstand by demanding Theon surrender to him, but basically everyone including Cersei turns round and says 'shut the fuck up, Smasher; the grown-ups are talking.' The Hound eyeballs the Mountain and then kicks the wight out of its box towards the Lannister party, and if anything is scarier than a zombie getting all up in your face, it's the look on Qyburn's face as he examines its twitching, severed hand.

"Well, this looks nothing like anywhere people have tried to murder us
before."

Smasher Greyjoy asks if the dead can swim and, learning that they can't, drops the mic and heads back to his fleet. Cersei agrees to a ceasefire, but only if the King in the North agrees to remain neutral between Team Dany and Team Cersei. Being the master of intrigue and subtle diplomacy that he is, Jon announces his ironclad allegiance to Danaerys and the whole conference goes south in a real hurry. Tyrion takes a risk to try and talk Cersei back to the table and weathers both death threats and a belly-full of Cersei's self-righteous blame deflecting(2), but seemingly to good effect as she magnificently announces that she will send her troops north to fight the Army of the Dead, and they can get back to killing each other afterwards.

And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to Dragonstone you might be interested in buying.

If chaos is a ladder, you just landed on a snake.

In the north, Littlefinger creepily persuades Sansa that she must take action to eliminate the danger presented by Arya. Arya is summoned before the court, but Sansa pulls a bait and switch, putting Littlefinger on what I will, for the sake of argument, call trial. She accuses him of all manner of wrongdoing, and it's a fair cop from start to finish. He claims there's not proof of anything, but Bran presents Greensighted evidence of his betrayal of Ned Stark (inadmissable, but his face,) and Sansa quietly rescinds her evidence acquitting him of Lyssa Arran's death so that the knights of the Vale won't help him. Presumably if pressed she would have claimed 'I was a child, I was scared,' and laughed at him while everyone swooned at her awesome turn of strength. Then Arya cut his throat. It's a big hurrah moment, because it means all that petty sibling rivalry bullshit was a pose – Arya later admits to Sansa that despite all she's been through, she doesn't think she would have survived what Sansa did – and because the audience knows that it's a fair cop, but as trials go it's a bit... swift. Tyrion was less railroaded.

I actually think Theon winning a fight may be one of the signs of the coming
of the Long Night.

On Dragonstone, Team Dany prepare to move out, with Jorah raising the point that travelling through the North might be risky for Danaerys given that the North has a fine tradition of being flame-throwered by conquering Targareans. Jon suggests that travelling together would send a better message, and Dany agrees with him, since he's done such sterling PR work to date. Theon and Jon make their peace, with Jon declaring Theon to be a Greyjoy and a Stark, and then Theon rallies the Ironborn to go after Yara by weathering a beatdown and finally coming back strong when his opponent essentially wears himself out fruitlessly attempting to knee Theon in the balls. It's good to see an Ironborn rallying scene which doesn't end with the defiant one concussed and a smash-cut to everyone else being flayed.

Jaime starts making arrangements to move the Lannister armies north and Cersei cusses him out for a chump. He talks about his word and she counters with 'family' in a way that finally opens his eyes to the fact that Cersei has become a complete monomaniac who would let the entire world burn if she got to raise her last child atop the ash heap. She assures him that they're sorted, because as much as pretty much everyone on the world hates them, they still have Smasher, who has actually gone to fetch the Golden Company to fight for them, thanks to the Iron Bank's money. She has also clocked the meaning of Viserion's absence. Despite this, Jaime leaves, mirroring Tyrion in basically daring her to set the Mountain on her, and rides off alone, sans even the company of Bronn (whom everyone is now worried about, since Cersei certainly wouldn't hesitate to set the Mountain on him if he decides to leave.)

 

"Are you crazy? Is that your problem?"

Sam rocks up at Winterfell and pops in to see Bran. As often happens with Sam, his perpetual state of bafflement leaves him entirely unflapped by the revelation that Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven. Bran tells Sam that Jon is the son of Rhaegar Targarean and Lyanna Stark, and that being born in Dorn means he's a Sand not a Snow, but Sam gets to drop a truth bomb on Mr Sees Everything(3) by revealing that Rhaegar's marriage to Ellia Martell was annulled to allow him to be secretly wed to Lyanna, which means that OMG, Jon is Aegon Targarean, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. He is also, at that moment, up to his bobbing arse in his aunt, because that turns out to be a side benefit of travelling together, in deference to the lack of other sex scenes in Season 7, and in continuing defiance of a total lack of visible screen chemistry.

Tyrion apparently spots Jon going into Dany's room and looks unhappy about it, I hope for sane political reasons, rather than because he's subscribed to Jorah's newsletter.

So, a couple of episodes after falling into a James Bond credit sequence, Jaime is heading for a crossroads rendezvous with Bruce Banner, Richard Kimble and the Littlest Hobo, Jon/Aegon inadvisably and somewhat unconvincingly boffs his aunt, Theon finally gets some iron in his spine, and the South is going to all kinds of shit. Anything else?

Right. That.

Season 8 is set to be where it all comes to an end, with the living versus the dead and the final resolution of the battle for the Iron Throne (which I actually hope to see melted to a puddle before the curtain falls.) Based on simple progression, I'm expecting every episode to be leaked before it is shot, and every major plot point to be a meme on Facebook well before the episode airs. Watching in the UK would have been frustrating enough even without the extra delay required by my life as a parent and partner to a shift-working midwife, because as soon as an episode finishes in the States the Facebook explodes with reviews, comments on reviews (which are much, much harder to spoilerproof,) links to YouTube videos discussing 'the six things everyone missed in that episode except me because I'm better than you'(4) or asking 'has Game of Thrones hinted at this thing that might be in its ending?' and memes depicting key plot points with a screen shot and a sassy commentary.

For 'The Dragon and the Wolf' I avoided most spoilers, but was aware going in that 1) Littlefinger was going to be killed, based in part on evidence from Bran's greensight, 2) Jaime was going to leave Cersei, and 3) the Wall was coming down.

 

"I'm sensing a subtle hint that there are still barriers to our rapprochement."

The problem, I suspect(5), is that Game of Thrones has gone from a geek property to the mainest of the mainstream. As a result, the original geeks who 'made' the show with their devotion and miniscule contribution to the viewing figures(6) are circling the wagons and feeling a desperate need to prove that they are more into the show, understand more about the show, and are all told just way, way more into it than any of these Johnny-come-latelys who only like it because it's popular.

Anyway, I suppose I ought to make my predictions for Season 8:

• Beric Dondarion and Tormund will have survived to at least get an onscreen death.
• Jon and Dany will have a huge bust-up when his heritage is revealed and she starts seeing him as a rival.
• Sansa will give Jon an earful for sleeping with Dany. Jon will look like a kicked puppy.
• Cersei's surprise forces will be intercepted by Theon, whom I suspect will give his life to save Yara.
• Jon will ride Rhaegal at some point, possibly in desperate, mortal combat against the Night King. I'm not convinced that Rhaegal will do well out of this.
• Alternatively, Jon will wrest control of Viserion, destroy the Night King and become a White Walker himself in the process.
• Bran will continue to be omniscient, and yet kind of useless.
• Cleganebowl was teased this episode, so it probably has to happen. Part of me hopes to see Sandor get a little religious, overcome his primal fears, and bring a flaming sword to that grudge match. I predict victory on points to the Hound and both end up dead.
• Cersei's pregnancy will turn out to be phantom and she will go completely off the rails.
• Qyburn will make something that murderously turns on him.
• After a series of battles which leaves almost everyone dead, Cersei will either be assassinated by Arya or mauled to death by Nymeria.
• Danaerys will take over what remains of the Seven Kingdoms, move her capital to Dragonstone and attempt to institute a more fair system of government.
• Dorn will either go independent or be colonised by the Dothraki, leading to a horrible apartheid system.
• Sansa will become the Queen in the North.
• Jon will become the immortal King in the Really North.
• Bronn will get his castle; he might even live to enjoy it.
• In ten years' time we'll get a follow-up series called The Westeros Wing, in which Tyrion walks and talks a lot while trying to wrangle the mad idea of Westerosi democracy, while dealing with sanctions against the Dothraki because of their systemic abuse of ethnic Dornish, and the complex arrangements needed to adequately climate control the Really Northern embassy.
• Either that or Direwolves will inherit Westeros.

Right or wrong, I'll see you all for Season 8 next year (or in 2019,) to find out.

(1) Wow; that's a miserable image to start out with.

(2) Seriously, the Dornish didn't murder Mircela because Tywin's death left you vulnerable, they did it because your family routinely employed an enforcer who was barely less than a monster before he was the undead and because your scheming has always been more vicious than well-thought-out. And because the Dorn plot went a bit cray-cray.

(3) A moment which would only be more satisfying if he'd given Gilly props for catching the annulment, but I guess she was just reading aloud to give the audience a head's up.

(4) Yes, I have issues with this style of analysis.

(5) Or a problem, perhaps.

(6) Or a subset of the larger body, at least.

Game of Thrones - 'Beyond the Wall'

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.

 

"Well, that's just super, Thoros. Now the zombie bear is on fire."

The party first gets fucked up by a zombie bear (zombear?) which, apparently ranging ahead of the main army on the off-chance, mortally wounds Thoros of Myr – he of the evident drunkenness and informed badassery – as well as taking out a few Wildlings whose fate was so staggeringly obvious they should have been showing off their fancy new red shirts before they left. Eventually they find a party of wights and run at them yelling, because intimidation is a big part of combat against ice-blooded revenants. To nobody's great surprise except theirs, a band of half-frozen fighters with four effective anti-wight weapons between them – Longclaw(1), a pair of dragonglass daggers being wielded by Jorah, and Thoros and Beric's flaming swords which, at this point, no-one bats an eye at – are quickly in hella trouble, at least until Jon takes out the leading White Walker. This causes all of the wights to shatter save one, which is doubly lucky since they needed to bring one back.

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

"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.

 

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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.”

Game of Thrones – 'The Queen's Justice'

"An impressive start."

In the words of Shang Tsung, IT HAS BEGUN!

Jon and Davos reach Dragonstone. Melisandre declines to meet with them, despite proclaiming that she has brought Ice and Fire together, instead leaving for the East after telling Varys that she will return, as she needs to die in this land, as does he. 

The visitors are none-too-subtly taken into not-quite-custody to be escorted - via a very choreographed dragon fly-by - into the presence of the title-rich Danaerys. Davos introduces Jon, only remembering after a stumble that he is King in the North. Jon and Dany spar over whether Jon is breaking faith by ignoring ye olde Starke's oath of perpetual fealty, or whether the Targaryan's already did that when the mad king set fire to all those Starks. Dany leans heavily on being the 'rightful' Queen, because that's always been such a clincher, and Jon learns the advantage of letting Davos talk you up, Fleabottom accent and all. No-one gets executed, which is a plus, but possibly only because the last Ironborn ships limp in to report the ambush from last episode.

 

"Your soul is mine."

Smasher Greyjoy rocks up to a triumphal welcome in King's Landing and hands over his Dornish captives in exchange for a somewhat equivocal promise of marriage once the war is won. Cersei poisons the last Sand Snake just as Myrcella was poisoned, and leaves her chained to a wall opposite her mother. Now, Cersei is definitely way too into lording it over the helpless, but given that the daughter – I'm sorry, the Sand Snakes have never really been in the show enough or interesting enough for me to learn their names – was complicit in the assassination of Myrcella, I really struggle to give a shit about her fate, however much the actresses play it up.

Hyped, Cersei decides that she no longer cares who knows she and Jamie are doing it, and rounds off a good day by persuading the Iron Bank's representative that she's still the smart money.

Flawless victory.

To put the icing on Cersei's justice cake(1), Smasher sails north to take out Dany's remaining fleet, after letting the Unsullied take an all-but abandoned Casterley Rock from a skeleton garrison. The bulk of the Lannister army marches on Highgarden, and in the space of two episodes Dany has gone from odds on favourite to an outside bet. Captured, Olenna Tyrell warns Jaime that Cersei is a monster who will be the end of him. She accepts a merciful death by poison, chugging her medicine before telling Jaime that she poisoned Joffrey by way of a final mic drop.

While Tyrion's military plans fall through hard, he does manage to persuade Jon and Dany to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and Jon is permitted to mine dragonglass on the island for the war in the north.

"That's enough!"

At the Citadel, Ser Jorah makes a full recovery and heads off to rejoin the Danaerys Targaryan Testosterone Brigade. Sam gets mad props from the Archmaester for his excellent work, and is tasked with copying out a massive stack of mite-ridden texts for disobedience, because the Archmaester is a fucking boss.

And in the North, Sansa is large and in charge – and getting more creepy advice from Littlefinger about basically running through every possible scenario in your head all the time – when Bran arrives(2) to tell her he's the Three-Eyed Raven, and rather eerily imply that he Greensaw the events of her wedding night.

So, that was one hell of an episode, turning the assumed balance of power on its head. The Unsullied have Casterley Rock, but are essentially trapped there with no food and no support. Smasher Greyjoy keeps popping up like a bad penny wherever he'll be most devastating, which makes a bit of a mockery of Team Dany's concerns about the difficulties of finding his fleet with her dragons. The dragons, meanwhile, have yet to either see use or be pitted against Qyburn's windlance. Hopefully Bran will be able to pull things more usefully together, assuming he isn't murdered by Littlefinger for having a claim to Winterfell.

I assume that things will start going a little wonky for Cersei next week, if only because, if they don't, then what was all the flap about for the last six seasons?

(1) The title clearly refers to Cersei's justice, not Dany's.
(2) And remember, Jon has also made it to Dragonstone in the time it's taken him to cart down from the Wall.

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.

Game of Thrones - 'Dragonstone'

'Sup.

Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy season.

Spoilers ahoy

We're going back to Westeros, and winter is here as we begin the first episode of seven in Season 7 of Game of Thrones with what I think is only the second cold open in the show's history. The last revealed that the Hound was still alive; this one that Walder Frey is surprisingly vertical and upbeat, gathering his leather-capped kinfolk for a feast to thank them for the murder of the Starks at the Red Wedding with a rousing toast and a generous cup of hemlock before ripping off his face a la the late Martin Landau to reveal the cherubic features and sinister smile of my daughter's namesake: Arya Stark. Leaving a message with a Frey woman (daughter, wife; it's hard to tell with Walder's household) that 'the North remembers,' she then heads south, where she runs into singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.

Now, this cameo has aroused considerable ire, presumably from people who dislike Sheeran on principle, because while nothing especially noteworthy, it isn't inherently offensive to my eyes, as someone whose life has yet to be impacted by the artiste's music. He's an okay actor, and mostly is required to sing(1) a song about ladies and hands of gold in a scene which seems intended to open Arya's eyes to the possibility that the Lannister troops may not be her enemies, even if Cersei is. She tells them she's going to King's Landing – which they describe basically as 'worse than Detroit' – to kill the Queen. They all have a good laugh, none of them try to rape her and no-one gets murdered. It's all rather sweet and it's perhaps disturbing that we've reached the point that I'm kind of moved that no-one commits a major felony over dinner.

In King's Landing, Cersei is redecorating, but her floor map mostly proves that she's short on actual kingdoms under her rule. Surrounded by foes, she nevertheless intends to overcome through sheer spite, and dismisses Tommen's suicide as a betrayal. Even Jaime seems to be working out that she is batshit insane at this point. Nonetheless, she is able to hold her own in negotiations with Euron Greyjoy, who offers her his part of the Iron Fleet in exchange for marriage. When she refuses, on the grounds that he's a dodgy bastard, he offers to return with a great gift, and I'm thinking he's planning to kidnap Tyrion.

Conscience.

In the North, the Brotherhood – still accompanied by the Hound – stop at an abandoned farmhouse, where the owner and his daughter have died. Of course, this is the family that Sandor Clegane robbed while travelling with Arya, but now his pragmatic douchebaggery seems to be crumbling under the weight of guilt and fire-born revelations of the approaching Army of the Dead, and Thoros finds him digging a grave for the family in the bitter cold of the night.

Jon decides that women are going to train to fight the White Walkers – with a storming endorsement from Lady Lyanna 'Don't Fuck with Me' Mormont – and then once more defies Sansa's advice and restores the Umbers and the Karstarks to their castles under the command of their spotty, teenaged lords. Sansa is livid that he doesn't use those lands to pay off loyal northerners, and I think that Jon missed a trick in not pointing out to her that, in addition to not winding up the houses with more executions – which is what got Robb betrayed – he's placing them back in control of, as they have just discussed, ground zero of an impending White Walker invasion. He receives a raven from Cersei telling him to come to King's Landing and bend the knee or face destruction, but his eyes are on the north. Sansa is watching his back so far, and giving Littlefinger the coldest shoulder she feels she can get away with, delivering a sick burn that you couldn't have imagined from the Sansa of even a couple of seasons ago when she tells him not to bother trying to get the last word. "I'll just assume it was something clever."

Up at the Wall, Meera Reed brings Bran to the gates, where they are admitted after Bran is all uncanny at Jon's buddies. Further north still, the army of the dead – now including giant wights, because that was necessary – advances.

In Oldtown, Sam is doing drudgework, mostly involving shit, and damn little Sam is growing fast. Sam asks his Archmaester – Jim Broadbent getting his Dumbledore on – for access to the Library's restricted section. The Archmaester believes that he has seen the Army of the Dead, and explains that the Maesters of the Citadel are the memory of the Seven Kingdoms; the wisdom and the foresight that keeps men from acting like animals. He assures Sam that the Wall will always stand, but maybe it's just me, but I'm sure that talk about foresight was a kind of nod for Sam to do what he does, which is to break into the restricted section and make a few withdrawals. Back at his lodgings, Gilly finds reference to the mountain of dragon glass on Dragonstone which Stannis mentioned, and he sends word to Jon. Then he is accosted by Jorah Mormont, currently resident in a leper cell in the Citadel, who asks if the Queen has come yet.

In Westeros, black - or at least dark - is the new black.

Down at Dragonstone, the Queen indeed arrives, sweeping into the abandoned fortress of Stannis Baratheon to reclaim her birthplace and ask her advisers rhetorically: "Shall we begin?"

Yes. Let us begin, if not the beginning, then the beginning of the end. It feels as if the dummies are played out now, and the real players all revealed. Cersei, Jon and Danaerys; Sansa, Littlefinger and Tyrion; Euron and Yara; the Mountain and the Hound. Events are moving towards a conclusion, even if not a definite one, although I am trying to brace myself for some devastating reversal in episode 7.7 where everyone dies but a few babies and Season 8 is Little Sam and Lady Mormont in Game of Thrones: The Next Generation.

Next week(2): plans, plots, girl-on-girl action and the return of the direwolf in 'Stormborn'.

(1) Perhaps in a slightly modern style.

(2) By the short preview.