This episode was the first thus far of this season that I am
comfortable categorizing as “excellent,” because so many people reunited and
staged awesome comebacks I could barely contain my “YAS, QUEEN!”s – and I’m not
just talking about Dany.
We begin at The Wall, with Jon getting ready to leave, and
poor Edd sulking about it in the background. As the fates align, we have the Stark
reunion we have been waiting for since Season 2, albeit from two siblings we
never actually saw interact on the show, which made their embrace that much
more compelling: Jon and Sansa. Yay! I for one would have loved to have seen a
Jon/Arya or Jon/Bran reunion because they actually had a positive relationship
growing up, whereas Sansa treated Jon
much like her one-dimensional mother did: with contempt. It’s because of
this that their reunion is most poetic because after all that Jon and Sansa
have suffered through separately, them seeing each other now after 3 or 4 years
is like stumbling on an oasis in a desert. We also find the two in roles
entirely reversed from when they left Winterfell – Jon left a powerless bastard
who had to fight to show his worth, Sansa left an infatuated spoiled brat: now
Jon seeks to relinquish his role as Lord Commander and avoid yet another bloody
conflict, and Sansa is righteous, thirsty for a showdown with Ramsey to oust
the fucker from her ancestral home.
While Jon and Sansa bond, Brienne calls out Melisandre and
Davos (who were already bickering about Melisandre’s new conviction that
Stannis was a false alarm because clearly Jon
is Azor Ahai – tell that to Shireen!) for their support of Stannis Baratheon:
and makes sure they know she was the
one who cut him down. She cast some serious shade at these two, the Red Woman
in particular, and I think she’s entirely justified in her disdain. It’s the
first case of enemies coming together to serve a mutual purpose in this episode:
now they all serve the Starks, so they must table their differences. Shout out
to Tormund, who apparently has a giant-fetish because he wants Brienne and made it pretty obvious in multiple scenes.
Cut to the Vale – where Robin Arryn is gifted a fancy falcon
by Uncle Petyr, making his season debut, all the while threatening Robin’s caretaker
in his own house because he dared to call him out on his shit for marrying
Sansa off to Ramsey. This dude knows Littlefinger’s whole shtick is
backstabbery and coercion and he doesn’t for a second buy that Littlefinger was
forced to let Sansa go, so I don’t know why the Lord is at all surprised when
Baelish implies he should take a trip out the Moondoor, but the take away is – the
armies of the Vale are now poised to rally around Cousin Sansa in the North!
Hell yes! It will be interesting to see which side Baelish comes down on in the
future – presumably whomever wins because he’s played any and all sides to make
sure he comes out alive and on top.
Back in Meereen, Tyrion is cutting deals with the representatives
from the other city-states along Slaver’s Bay to ensure they stop funding the
Sons of the Harpy. You can see that Greyworm and Missandei are a few white-privileged
comments away from hucking Tyrion off a high wall – they respect their Queen’s
choice to appoint him as an advisor, but they can only put up with so much. I
totally get their point – as much as I like Tyrion, he totally is out of his
depth when it comes to slavery: seven years to do away with the practice?! He
was a slave for like 4 days, he should understand that 2555 days is a horrific
compromise. I don’t even think we can come away from the meeting with the
Masters as meaningless lip-service – I think he truly believes he’s being
diplomatic, avoiding war. As Americans we all know: it took a bloody, horrific
war to quash out the practice of slavery – and almost 200 years later the descendants
of slaves still have to face unequal treatment in our society. More on the
possibility of war later….
Back in King’s Landing, the High Sparrow has released
Margaery from her cell, and explains to her through a very drawn out monologue how
he came to be a man of the Gods (mostly what I got out of it was an explanation
as to why he and his followers don’t wear shoes). He then lets her see her
brother, Loras, who is the Reek of Season 6. Loras is ready to crack and
confess to whatever sin they suggest he committed, and to her credit Margaery
is still singing the “FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME” anthem and urges
Loras not to give in, because if they give in the evil Sparrows win. I never
really had a positive or negative opinion of Margaery; she was an obvious
opportunist and someone who clearly was capable of playing mind-games and
excelling at it, but I never really cared about her fate. I’m hoping now that
she hasn’t been broken by her imprisonment and that she stays true to her
conviction that she isn’t a terrible enough person to have to commit a do-over
of Cersei’s Walk of Shame –
- which we find out moments later from Cersei (who, with
Jaime, has intruded on yet another small council meeting) is exactly what the
High Sparrow is planning on doing to her. Cersei informs Kevan and Lady Olenna that
if they don’t jailbreak Margaery soon, she will be forced to walk naked through
the streets to atone – and even Cersei isn’t having it. Not because she cares
about Margaery at all – she makes that clear to Tommen – but because it would destroy
the image of superiority that a Queen should have, and in effect it would
belittle the entire power structure as it stands: and no peasant is going strip
any of these entitled assholes of their stature. No WAY!!! So this group of
enemies makes a pact to kill the High Sparrow and his cult by enlisting the
Tyrell armies to storm the Red Keep. On a serious note: even though the High
Sparrow is essentially trying to pull a Daenerys here and “break the wheel” so
that the everyday people of Westeros can live with dignity and relative
security, and the Lannisters and the Tyrells are basically the Trumps of the
Seven Kingdoms: I still have to condemn the Faith Militant and hope for fate to
come out on the side of Team Lannister/Tyrell because there’s no reasoning with
religious zealotry. Margaery and Tommen, given the chance, might be a fair
Queen and King: better than Cersei and Robert, and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better
than Joffrey. At least until Dany or the White Walkers come to conquer them….
Up in the North, Ramsey very unsurprisingly kills Osha
amidst her attempt to seduce him long enough to cut his throat. It almost seems
as though the writers are making feminist commentary with this death – using
sex to achieve your goals is soooooo Seasons 1-5 – you best use your head or
else you’re going to wind up dead! RIP Osha, thanks for keeping Rickon safe so
far, hope to see you in a flashback! I’d really like to see her come back as a
White Walker and fuck Ramsey’s shit up, but I digress…
At The Wall, a Bolton bannerman rides to give Jon Snow (“I’m
not the Lord Commander anymore,” he says sheepishly) correspondence from mad
dog Ramsey, who in a letter-that-will-launch-a-thousand-memes details all the
fucked up shit he’s going to do to him, Sansa, and Rickon. Sansa doesn’t shy
away from the words – she snatches the letter from Jon and reads for the room
about the rape and carnage that awaits the Starks and Castle Black. She gets
Jon and Tormond to agree that the army of Wildings will have to march to meet
Ramsey at Winterfell – how could you deny her when she drops a line like this: "A monster has taken our home and our
brother. We have to go back to Winterfell and save them both." To Jon and
company this sounds like suicide, but to us it sounds like a recipe for a
MOTHER FUCKING BATTLE OF THE BASTARDS because we know that Littlefinger is
leading an army of men from the Vale to sack Winterfell for Sansa! Yeah,
boi!!!!!!!!!!!! Hold on to your body parts, Rickon – Jon and Sansa are coming!
From that high note we plummet to the Iron Islands, where
Theon has returned home to his unenthused sister, who berates him for refusing
to come with her when she tried to rescue him from Ramsey a few seasons ago.
She assumes he has delusions of becoming King, since he arrived home just in
time for the Kingsmoot – but all Theon wants is a place to stay where he won’t
have to run from vicious dogs or witness horrific rape or be tortured, so he
offers to support Yara in her bid to become Queen. Theon Greyjoy serving a
woman!? How the tides have turned – it’s the best possible place for him to be,
joking aside. I still don’t care at all about this storyline so I’m glad we
only had 4 mins of it to sit through.
Earlier we suffered through a brief glimpse in Vaes Dothrak,
where Lord Friendzone and Fuckboy plot to rescue Dany from the Dothraki (and
Daario finds out about Jorah’s greyscale and is surprisingly cool with it).
Under cover of darkness, they bungle an attempt to go undetected and had to
cave in some dude’s skull. Do we care? This is Game of Thrones – so no.
Dany is treated well by
the Head Dosh Khaleen, who says she hopes that the Khals let her live and that
she will be a welcome addition. Dany attempts to seem glad to be alive to sit
through another lecture but clearly can’t muster the energy – she goes to pee
and takes a very young Khal widow as her bathroom chaperone, and makes small
talk with her, only to be ambushed by Jorah and Daario. Dany puts these
chuckleheads in their place – there’s no
way they’re escaping alive – so she asks the girl to not betray her and
goes off to meet her fate in the temple, where the Khals are assembled.
Just when you’ve counted Daenerys out – when her arrogance
and her self-absorption leaves you numb to her troubles – this bitch BURNS A
CITY TO THE GROUND and punches the witnesses in the face with feminism. In a
hallelujah moment harking back to the ends of season one and season three, Dany
shows the Khals that they’re small potatoes and she is a goddamn fry cook by
setting fire to the temple they are all in – which Daario and Jorah have
barricaded shut. Turns out Dany didn’t need to be saved – she just needed an
opportunity to showcase what she excels at – using fire to wipe the slate clean
and emerge victorious. As the temple burns, Dany walks out naked and unscathed
like a boss – and all of the Dothraki
kneel in awe.
Presumably, Dany has an army formidable enough to retake
Meereen and the rest of Slaver’s Bay in the entire assembled population of
Dothraki – so hopefully Tyrion’s shitty seven year compromise won’t ever have
to take effect. Let’s ride high on this triumph and hope for good things for
the common people/slaves of Essos.
Next Episode: Looks like a start to the Kingsmoot *snore*,
but Bran gets a visit from the freaking King of the White Walkers! Hope that’s
just a greenseeing vision and not the real thing!
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