Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 7: Finale

            

        
   

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that I got that off my chest, I’m going to AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH some more, so I can start employing rational thoughts. ALL THE FUCKING FEELS, PEOPLE! Season 7’s finale, which clocked in at and hour and 25 mins was only ever disappointing for roughly 5-6 minutes – everything else was thrilling for both satisfying and horrifying reasons.

We open on Greyworm and the Unsullied, who have successfully marched across Westeros to menace the walls of King’s Landing in time for the armistice meeting. Bronn and Jaime have a candid conversation about what the mercenaries could possibly be fighting for if they have no cocks. "Family," Jaime suggests. “Not without a cock!” It’s standard Bronn, but it does show that with no hope for a family, these men fighting for Dany stand for something else – existential freedom, perhaps? They have an actual cause, unlike the Lannisters – who only fight to keep their wealth and power and other Lannisters safe. The Dothraki pour in behind the Unsullied, and we pan out to the armada in Blackwater Bay so we get a better view of where the force resides on the Lannister side of things. Then we see a few teeny ships sailing in, which carry Jon and Tyrion and everyone else on Team Living, except for Dany.

Jon, worrying about the numbers of recruitment for the Night King, asks Tyrion how many people live in King’s Landing. This is Jon’s very first trip to the capital and to a city period – he doesn’t know. Tyrion guesses a million – which for the size of KL seems like a lot to me, but whatever, I accept dragons and resurrection on this program, so why not? Like any country boy Jon is aghast – how do they stand being all squished up against each other? Tyrion’s answer boils down to: brothels. Tyrion and Bronn – peas in a pod.

Up in the Red Keep, Cersei complains to Jaime that Dany didn’t arrive with her compatriots, so she must assume the Dragon Queen will be making a statement entrance later. She instructs the Mountain to kill Dany first if negotiations go south, and then Tyrion and Jon.

Meanwhile, the others make their way to the Dragon Pit, which is where the Targaryens kept their dragons to keep the populace safe once they conquered Westeros – and where the armistice meeting will take place. It seems a statement from Cersei – 'I mean to tame the dragon here.' Tyrion mentions that when Balerion (whose skull Qyburn impaled in the dungeons) lived there, it was the most dangerous place in the world. Davos quips predictably: “Still is.”

Bronn greets the group – and a full twenty minute sequence of reunions kicks off. Brienne arrived in Sansa’s stead early, so she’s behind Bronn. Pod and Tyrion have a sweet exchange, but by far the best moment is the Hound meeting up with Brienne. “I thought you were dead?” she says. Not for her lack of trying, obviously. She reveals Arya is alive at Winterfell, and that she doesn’t need Brienne’s protection at all – Arya could kill anyone who gets in her way. The Hound smiles wistfully: “Won’t be me.” They walk in together in contented silence. Bronn and Tyrion banter, and though they've chosen different sides for different reasons, they're both glad to see the other. THE FEELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone reports to their side under the awnings Cersei has set up in the middle of the decrepit arena. Because the actor who plays Bronn and the actress who plays Cersei used to be romantically involved and fucking hate each other in real life and it’s no joke in their contracts that they don’t have to have scenes together, Bronn and Pod leave the area so the big guns can duke it out – and so Pod can bless a few more prostitutes with his magic penis.

The following scene was excellent – clearly an homage to the Western, where gunslingers are meeting up to cut a deal but are all obviously wary and suspicious of everyone else. They're all giving everyone else shifty eyes waiting for Cersei and her entourage to show up, wondering if she’s going to pull a Sept of Baelor on them. The Hound is particularly twitchy; he fled KL because he didn’t want to die there. He grumbles to Tyrion: “Am I going to die here?” He then scoffs this whole idiot plan was Tyrion’s idea, and that every bad idea there’s been some Lannister cunt been behind it. “With a Clegane there to help carry it out,” Tryion snips back as Cersei, Jaime, the Mountain and company arrive and filter into their seats.

The Hound wastes zero time – once Cersei’s ass is in her chair he confronts his zombified brother. “Remember me?” he sneers into the Mountain’s blue face. “I’m coming for you, bitch.” Then he leaves – to get the wight in the crate, of course, but to everyone else it looks like he just dropped a mic. CLEGANEBOWL CONFIRMED SEASON 8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m fucken STOKED.

They all sit and fidget for a few minutes, and then Dany rides in on Drogon, Rheagal soaring overhead. Drogon does some roaring and does an intimidating crawl into the pit to drop off his Mom – Team Cersei recoils, except Cersei herself, who had been bracing for this. She does a great job of seeming unimpressed. Once Dany is seated, Cersei drips with disdain like an asshole manager at a company meeting: “We’ve all been waiting for quite a while.” Dany: “My apologies.”

Euron spots Theon and creates his own opportunity to show off, taunting that he still has Yara and if Theon doesn’t come forth and submit to him ASAP he’ll kill her. Tyrion intervenes and the obligatory imp jokes are made, which Tyrion and Theon brush off as weak and unoriginal. “You never explain [the joke]” Tyrion rolls his eyes. Jaime has no patience so he tells Euron to sit the fuck down, so then Cersei seems pissed at being upstaged;  tells Euron if he doesn’t obey she’ll sick the Mountain on him. He complies. Ick, what a douchebag.

Tyrion continues: We don’t like each other. We’ve conspired against and killed each other’s families. But legit: we have to table these beefs because the threat is real. Jon’s turn to toss in his catchphrase: “It’s about living, period.” Because, as Tyrion puts it, “no conversation will erase the past fifty years” it’s best to just show Cersei the danger.

The Hound returns with the crate, and carefully opens it. When nothing happens, he unsheathes his sword and kicks over the box – and the wight goes nuts; takes off like a shot right at Cersei, which definitely does disturb her. Lena Headey’s acting is superb here. There’s a chain on the wight so it doesn’t reach her before the Hound yanks on it – he cuts the wight in half, but it’s still moving. You can practically see Qyburn getting a boner at the death magic he’s witnessing – he picks up the hand of the wight which skidded away, fingers still moving, staring in wonder. He passes it off to Jon, who demonstrates that the wights can be killed with fire or dragonglass (he stabs the top half of the wight in the head with a dragonglass blade).

Jaime is horrified – Dany confesses she didn’t believe it until she witnessed the Army of the Dead herself. He asks how many strong they are – she says 100,000 at least. Euron is squirming too – he asks: can they swim? Dany says no – little does Team Living know about the mer-wights who must have sunk to the bottom of the lake beyond the wall to dredge up her dead baby.

That’s all Euron needed to hear to change his mind, apparently – he says that of all the shit he’s seen on the seas this is the only thing that scares him so he’s OUT – deuces! He leers at Dany that he’ll be going back to his island and she should return to hers, and after the Dead overrun the continent they’ll be the only rulers left alive (to repopulate the planet, is the implication). He takes off – and I was glad to see him go, but I suspect he’s full of shit, because Euron isn’t the “ooooh I’m scared” type, and Cersei isn’t the type of controlling bitch who would just let her armada sail off with no complaint. This is fishy (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Cersei says she accepts the truce, seeing that they aren’t lying, on one condition: Jon must remain north, and remain NEUTRAL in the battle that will determine who the Queen of Westeros will be once the Dead are defeated. She says she trusts the word of Ned Stark’s son, but would never trust Team Dany.

This puts Jon in a very uncomfortable position – he already bent the knee to Dany, not that either of them told anyone else because it was a really intimate moment. But Jon can’t help it – Ned may not actually be Jon’s father, but he was his daddy: so Jon full on Ned Starks the situation to remain truthful and confesses he cannot serve two Queens, he’s already pledged to Dany. Cersei flips the figurative table and tells them they’re shit out of luck and storms out.

Couldn't resist...

 

Everyone is wincing and staring at Jon like he just bitch slapped Cersei – because he did just royally fuck the plan. Brienne dashes after Jaime and argues with him – talk to her! “To say what?” Jaime snivels, because WHIPPED. They glare at each other as Jaime loyally trails his sister-girlfriend, even though he knows she’s in the wrong. Dany scolds Jon – she knows he was just being earnest but his admission blew up their plans. Tyrion says lying is sometimes necessary to get things done, but Jon progressively sticks up for truth in principle because when words have no meaning, nothing can be relied upon. Oh, politics – if only Jon knew about Bernie Sanders: being honorable doesn’t get you far when lying fuckers run the game.

Tyrion decides the only way to save the planet is to throw himself in the lion’s den – he goes to face off against Cersei. Tyrion and Jaime tentatively say farewell outside of her private quarters because this may be Tyrion’s last hurrah – and then brother and sister face off in a flurry of bitter and hateful dialogue. This fight has been 3 seasons in the making, and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s also quite sad – Cersei concedes that Tyrion may not have killed Joffrey, but she still holds him responsible for Tywin, Myrcella, and Tommen. This is bullshit, of course: the only death he’s truly responsible for here is Tywin. I put Tommen squarely on Cersei – and Myrcella was all Ellaria Sand, who is still probably wasting away in the dungeon beneath their feet.  Tyrion is pained by the deaths of the children, and is in fact very remorseful about killing their dad – but Tywin meant to sacrifice Tyrion and had mistreated him his whole life, so he wasn’t that sorry. They share some wine – or at least, Tyrion pours Cersei and himself a glass, she doesn’t imbibe. HINT. She hates him for destroying the future of their house, and he asks if there is no future – why is he still here? There was a showdown in which Cersei very badly wanted to give the Mountain the go-ahead to kill Tyrion and he played chicken along with her – and she controlled herself for strategic reasons; but she could have slaughtered him then and didn't. She manipulates Tyrion during a monologue about not giving a flying fuck about making the world a better place – which is the very reason Tyrion says he’s thrown his lot in with Daenerys – she only cares about her family. She says this while clutching her belly – which Tyrion deduces quickly as: Cersei is pregnant. Cersei is no feminist icon – she’s a scheming selfish bitch who admits she doesn’t care if the world burns down around her so long as she and the few people she cares about are ok, and she uses her fetus to play her sympathetic brother like a fiddle to sell her next con. I don’t doubt she is pregnant, by the way – I guarantee she’ll miscarry sometime next season, because as per the prophecy Cersei will only have three kids, and all three were born and have died already. I am no feminist icon either – I’ll smile when it happens too. #sorrynotsorry.

While this is happening, Dany and Jon sift through the small dragon fossils littering the arena. She tells him that the construction of this pit was the beginning of the end for the Targaryens – for their unknown shared lineage. “A dragon is not a slave” – but that’s what happened to the dragons the Targaryens caged here for the safety of the city. This practice made the dragons ever smaller – and the political influence of her ancestors smaller too. She says in plain words that she cannot have children. Jon asks how she could possibly know that? Dany: “The witch who murdered my husband told me.” Jon: “….don’t you think the witch may have been biased?” Either way, Jon admits his political error: “We’re fucked.”

But wait! Tyrion is back, and in once piece! And Cersei and company are behind him! Can I also just say, if you put Cersei’s getup on a runway model in 2017 I wouldn’t have blinked an eye – she looks thoroughly 21^st Century badbitch. Kudos. Cersei says she will send the Lannister army North with Team Living with no conditions – remember I did ya’ll a solid when this is over, k? My face:

 

Back in Winterfell, Littlefinger is pitting Arya against Sansa as they discuss Jon’s letter, which informs her he bent the knee to Dany. Littlefinger says Jon’s motivation is quite simple – he is a young king, and Dany is a young beautiful Queen – it’s a logical alliance. He stops implying she should overthrow Jon and says it blatantly – you can un-king him. Sansa is worried that Arya would kill her for such a transgression – she used to be a Faceless Man, dontchaknow? I will confess – having not seen Arya and Littlefinger in the same room at the same time in a couple episodes, I was unsure if this was actually Baelish, or Arya wearing his face. He teaches Sansa his own mind game – what’s the worst thing an enemy could want? As in: what’s the worst thing Arya could do to Sansa? Sansa thinks: kill me, for betraying my family. Baelish continues: how believable is her motivation for killing you? What would she gain? Sansa deduces: if I am dead, she becomes the Lady of Winterfell. Sansa seems mad paranoid now – but the scales have tipped and I know Sansa won’t be fooled by Littlefinger any longer. Arya told Sansa herself – she never wanted to be a lady. She doesn’t want Sansa’s job – she wants Sansa to be loyal to her family (Jon).

On Dragonstone (because KL and DS are like, four miles away from each other I guess), Jorah is worried Dany will get picked off by an angry northerner en route to Winterfell – he pleads with her to fly north. But his place is the friendzone, so Dany goes along with Jon’s plan, which is the better one – we should travel together to be seen as equals and allies, by boat to White Harbor in the North, at least. Look at Jon, lining up a chance to hook up! Poor Jorah….

A completely unnecessary exchange occurs between Theon and Jon. This was totally wasted airtime, IMHO – who gives any fucks about Theon anymore? Anyone? Anyone? NO ONE CARES! I wanna know what the fuck happened to Gendry because he’s absent again – more Gendry, less Theon! It was mostly a chance to show Jon is very much Ned’s successor because even though they’re really uncle and nephew, they are the same in their honor and willingness to turn the other cheek. Jon forgives Theon for the transgressions against his family, and tells him to get the hell out of dodge to save his sister, and then Theon comically retakes the few men still loyal to Yara by not being defeated by a few kicks to the crotch (MOTHERFUCKER – I GOT NO JUNK). I don’t care at all if Yara is saved or not, but I guess Theon should be given a chance to redeem himself since there’s no way Euron is gone from the final season of the show.

On the ramparts at Winterfell, Sansa sends for Arya – who enters a great hall lined with the Knights of the Vale, with Sansa and Bran at the head table, Littlefinger snickering off to the side. Arya sizes up the room and basically tells Sansa that whatever shit she’s about to pull she better get on with it – she gives no fucks. I was a little nervous until Sansa read the charges – murder and treason. Arya's murders are unknown to Sansa (but probably not to Bran) – whose murder would she be charged with? Sansa cares very little for Walder Frey because of the Red Wedding – fuck him, right? Turns out the charges are actually for LITTLEFINGER!!! When I say I was literally screaming and cheering and dancing in my living room at the pure schadenfreude-ism of it all, you can ask my 3 year old and he’ll tell you I scared him with my reaction. Sansa’s take down was glorious – Baelish pushed Lysa Arryn through the moondoor – does he deny it? He gave Lysa the poison that killed her husband Jon Arryn – does he deny it? He also plotted to kill Brandon Stark and blamed the assassination attempt on Tyrion, kicking off the whole War of the Five Kings – does he deny it? Bran chimes in at one point when Ned comes up – “You held a knife to his throat and told him he shouldn't have trusted you!” He pitted Lysa and Catelyn against each other, just as he tried to do with Sansa and Arya – fucking try to deny it, bitch! She tosses it out there that despite his claims to have loved her mother and loved her, he sold her to the Boltons. She then turns his own words on him and thanks him for his many lessons – Sansa is a slow learner, you see, but she finally learned. He grovels like the worm he is at the Lords of the Vale, but they turn on him – they’re loyal to Robyn Arryn, of course, who is Sansa’s kin, and Sansa’s not a lying scheming criminal so fuck Baelish. Sansa sums up by reminding him that the world is an unjust place – but she’s making justice, and passing judgment on his ass. She gives Arya the go ahead, and while Littlefinger is on his knees she slits his throat with the very blade that started this whole mess. He keels over and the attitude in the hall is simply ‘meh.’

I don’t give a rat’s ass about sports – but this in this moment I fully experienced the elation and glory of a win that didn’t belong to me. GOT is my spectator sport. DING DONG: THE DICK IS DEAD. Later, Sansa and Arya are shown to be peacefully coexisting, content with their familial roles, even if Arya is “strange and annoying,” by Sansa’s standards. How quaint! I still don’t like Sansa – but I do finally respect her.

From that high we come down to Jaime Lannister talking over the logistics of marching north with his generals, whom Cersei dismisses to berate Jamie for his naivety. “You always were the stupidest Lannister,” she sneers at him, yelling that there’s no way she’s sending a single person to help Team Living – she lied. Jaime is floored – you can see in his face how surreal the moment is, because he gets it – their personal bullshit is meaningless if human life is in danger of extinction! Cersei wants to let the Army of the Dead slaughter their enemies so that whoever wins will be weaker by the time they make it back down south, and Jaime rightly throws up his hand(s) and screams “If the Dead win, we’ll all be dead!”

She brushes the threat off, saying that even if the Dead win, the Crown has MONEY! Because money can buy the Golden Company and surely they can defeat the DEAD! In fact – Euron is off picking them up now, his performance at the armistice was a clever ruse to justify the disappearance of his fleet! Jaime looks about ready to backhand her, and I really wish he would have – he’s destroyed that she plotted to undermine the truce without consulting him, with Euron of all fuckboys. He says he’s leaving if she’s committed to this folly, and she tells him he’s expendable because she has their baby to live for – she even tells the Mountain to weapon up to cut Jaime down. I honestly was scared Jaime was about to bite it – Cersei has gone complete darkside. “No one walks away from me,” she threatens like an abusive monster husband in a cheesy Lifetime Original movie. But that’s what she lets him do – Jaime leaves King’s Landing in plainclothes, hiding his golden hand under a glove as snow starts to fall on the city. He’s headed north, likely to warn Tyrion about Cersei’s treachery. I was so relieved  - Jaime and Sansa are both slow learners, perhaps – but they’ve both acknowledged their shitty relationships with backstabby-people and resolved to fix the mess they’ve made as individuals.

Tying up one last loose end (since we don’t get to see Gendry at all L) – guess who comes rolling into Winterfell? It’s our friendly neighborhood Tarly, Sam, who seeks an immediate audience with Bran. The exchange is mostly humorous:

• Sam: I dunno if you remember me, Bran, but –
• Bran: I remember everything. I’m the Three-Eyed Raven.
• Sam:…. I have no idea what that means.
• Bran: I can see the past, and present, but because I’m lazy – what are you doing here? (notice he left out the future)
• Sam: I came to help Jon!
• Bran: Oh, good – he’s on the way with Daenerys the Dragon Queen.
• Sam: Woah, you can see that happening right now?
• Bran: (holds up note) Naw, man – he sent a raven.

Bran does bring up the fact that they have to tell Jon the truth about his origins – that he’s not a Snow bastard, but a Sand bastard, because he was born to Lyanna Stark in the South, sired by Rhaegar Targaryen. BUT WAIT – Sam gushes – HE’S NOT A ‘SAND’ – he’s a full blown TARGARYEN, because Sam translated a High Septon’s diary back in the Citadel that said Rhaegar annulled his marriage to his first wife and married Lyanna  - which Bran promptly goes back to witness through greensight now that he knows what to look for. He also goes back to see that Jon’s true name – whispered by Lyanna into Ned’s ear at the Tower of Joy- is Aegon Targaryen – because Rhaegar was the sort of fucking asshole that would give both of his sons the same exact name. What the fuck, dude? Just because you just disinherited the first kid doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist!!! Also: Sam, you better worship the fucking ground Gilly walks on because you KNOW you didn’t make that discovery, but you damn sure took credit for it!

Bran states the obvious through voiceover that Robert’s Rebellion, then, was based on a lie –Jon is the true heir to the Iron Throne through a legitimate marriage of Dany’s oldest brother– just as Jon and Dany finally get it on on the ship to White Harbor. #BOATCEST didn’t bother me at all –it got me a full shot of Kit Harrington’s backside, SO IT WAS WORTH THE GROSS DRAMATIC IRONY. Yep – Dany just boinked her nephew. Tyrion knows what's what (not the incest part obvi)– he sulks down the hallway from Dany’s room were the Dragon is getting it on with the ‘Wolf.’ Perhaps he’s concerned about the possibility of complications that could arise should Dany’s infertility turn out to be a cruel lie… Bran is determined to reveal Jon’s true heritage to him – but I honestly feel like when Jon finds out, it’s not going to become public knowledge. He’ll probably tell Dany so she can choose whether or not she wants to be with him despite the incestuous nature of their potential relationship, and then he’ll ignore his birthright and side with the Stark side of his family – because Jon only wants to lead to serve the people of the North; he’s the least megalomaniacal regent on this show – unlike his historical namesake, the Targaryen who conquered Westeros. After the war is won, if he survives to the end (*fingers crossed*) – he’ll likely give up the title of King and make Sansa the official ruler of the North. UNLESS Dany winds up with a bun in the oven – the prophecy the witch made could be a Macbeth-level fake out, which seems ever more likely to me.  What will they do if she does wind up preggers – the heir issue from the previous episode comes to mind – that’s why I think it’s going to be a plot point next season.

Survival is tenuous for them all – the episode ends with Tormund and Beric on the lookout at Eastwatch, where their worst nightmare comes to life – the Army of the Dead is at the gate, and White-Viserion swoops in and BURNS A MOTHERFUCKING WHOLE IN THE MOTHERFUCKING WALL. This implies that dragonfire in and of itself contains magic or is able to undo magic because good ol’ Uncle Coldhands once told us that the Wall may be a massive feat of labor but it’s been effective for 8000 years thanks to magic that was woven into it’s base by the Children of the Forest. It would seem the Night King’s ploy at the lake was a trap to get his hands on a dragon after all – the dragonfire was exactly what he needed to blast his way through – Viserion halves a chunk of the Wall, causing it all to collapse in on itself into the sea, leaving enough space for the Dead to amble slowly south into Westeros, unchecked. I was beside myself worried that Tormund was a goner (“take Beric instead!!!!!!!!!!!!”), but he survives the attack – hopefully he and the others can run along the length of remaining Wall to get out the word. It ends on a major bummer – shit just got extra real.

This also gives more credence to the fan theory that the Night King is Bran Stark, through some sort of  closed loop greenseeing time continuum gimmick. How else would the Night King know where to be at the right place at the right time EVERYTIME, why else would he have let Jon live when he could have killed him at least twice before now, if Bran is correct that greenseers can’t reliably see into the future, how else would the Night King have known where to lay a trap for a dragon? I think the theory makes too much sense – but it would take a lot of Back To The Futuresque exposition to explain away why/how Bran becomes evil. If that’s not the case, then the Night King must also be a greenseer himself, or perhaps a kind of god? – but the question of why he’s waited so long to dominate the world when he knows so much goes unanswered there. We’ll have to just wait and see.

I don’t know about you all, but I don’t know what to do with myself for another year waiting for the final season – aside from rewatch everything obsessively during the months in between (especially the Jon’s bare ass scene). Thanks for reading my poorly-written, stream-of-conscious reactions, and please do read again next year. Valar Morghulis.

Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 6

 

Not very much happened in terms of forward momentum in this episode, but the bickering and banter made the action that much more suspenseful. Like the penultimate episodes that have preceeded it, “Beyond the Wall” put our favorite characters in a really dangerous situation, only to have them all rescued via deux es machina. Season 5 saw Dany rescued by Drogon after an attempt on her life in the fighting pits of Meereen, Season 6’s was the Battle of the Bastards in which the Knights of the Vale showed up just as Jon was about to suffocate under a mass of dead bodies, and Season 7 pitted the Fellowship of the Wight against the Army of the Dead, and Dany saved the day with her dragons. RIP Viserion – we hardly knew ye.

The Magnificent Seven plus a few redshirt Wildlings are trekking across the barren wasteland of the Land of Always Winter, and the boys are chit-chatting to pass the time and stave off the cold. Gendry, poor summer child, admits he’s never even seen snow before, let alone been exposed to the Arctic temps of the Far North. He asks Tormund how the Wildings managed to stay warm, and the first in a long series of gems is uttered:

 

It is also revealed that Gendry is still reasonably pissed at Beric and Thoros for selling him to Melisandre, but his description of what she inflicted on him sounded like a snippet from Fifty Shades of Grey, so the Hound basically tells him he’s being a little whiny bitch about being molested by a hot woman, using Beric’s six deaths as a model for “not whinging.”

Jon and Jorah speak about their fathers; Jon obviously still reveres Jeor, and Jorah admits Ned wanted to cut off Jorah’s head for his crimes, and he would have been justified in doing it. Jon feels guilty that he’s still carrying Longclaw, which was the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of the Mormont house that Jeor repurposed for him, so he tries to give it back to Jorah. Jorah refuses to accept it and tells Jon he should keep it for his children – because he’s a King now, so he’ll have to make heirs, dontcha know? This is the first time the topic of succession is brought up by one of Dany’s advisors, put a pin in that.

We head South of the Wall to Winterfell, where Arya decides to use a nice vignette about when Ned caught her shooting arrows in the courtyard and meerly clapped in approval to reveal to Sansa that she knows about her letter to Robb from so long ago, begging the Starks to make peace with the Lannisters and bend the knee for Joffrey. This was Littlefinger’s desired outcome, of course: because Arya and Sansa lay out all of their sibling grievances with bitter precision.  Arya insists that Sansa had a hand in getting Ned killed, she betrayed her family to side with the Lannisters and did nothing but watch Ned get his head chopped off – she knows because she was in the crowd and saw it happen. From a feminist standpoint this isn’t wholly defensible- we know Sansa was terrorized into writing the letter, and that the day Ned died she thought Joffrey would be pardoning Ned, which is why she clapped back: saying that she was coerced to write the note and they lied to her about what would happen, and Arya didn’t run in to the rescue either. She sneers that Arya would never have survived what she survived (YOU FUCKING IGNORANT BITCH –tirade on this to come), implying Arya was off at Springbreak in Cancun or something while Sansa was pushed around like a pawn in King’s Landing. Arya went for the low blow bringing Lyanna Mormont into the argument, dismissing Sansa’s “I was a child” excuse as bullshit because Lyanna is younger now than Sansa was then and she would have died, like Arya, before she would betray her House in such a way. This unveils Sansa’s true face, finally: she snaps that Arya wouldn’t even be in Winterfell if it weren’t for Sansa, because Jon lost the Battle of the Bastards and the Knights of the Vale saved the day because of her!

This is why I have always hated Sansa Stark. Despite Arya having grown into a mass-murdering sociopath, she’s still a more morally courageous person than Sansa. To be clear – I didn’t wish Sansa’s sexual brutalization and manipulation and abuse on her, nor would I on anyone. She survived a ton of shit, and she’s still functioning – this is admirable. But Sansa was a shitty person before she was married off to two different enemies of her house, and remains a petulant entitled bitch. She is right in that without her call for aid, the Stark/Wilding alliance would have failed and Ramsey would still be Lord of Winterfell. She is indeed the Lady of Winterfell, since Bran abdicated his claim to the title. But she suffers from the same delusions of grandeur as Cersei Lannister – she may have been oppressed and belittled and not taken seriously because she's a girl, but this doesn’t mean every idea and policy she adapts as an 'adult' is correct or valid. The real reason the Northmen rallied around Jon is because he’s a honorable leader with opinions that aren’t necessarily popular but prove to be successful more often than not – he’s kind hearted, and was raised from the dead so has a GOD on his side. Is it fair that Jon is so much more revered, given we know he isn’t even Ned’s bastard? I say yes –his respect is earned, despite his mistakes. Sansa may have survived much and is holding down the fort well enough – but she’s a jealous elitist at heart. Arya threw off her entire identity – literally once she got to Braavos – to make her dream of completing her Kill List and avenging her family a reality. She lived in squalor, in abject physical danger for years. She survived being blinded for hubris, and later a stabbing – and triumphed. Sansa never saved herself. Whether it was Littlefinger or Theon, some guy was necessary for her rescue. I don't mean Sansa is not capable of saving herself - SHE HERSELF HAS NEVER SAVED HERSELF - SHE LACKS AGENCY. Sansa chose to listen to Littlefinger before he sold her to Ramsey fucking Bolton when Brienne tried to save her, and she still confides in him like he’s a friend – she fucking runs right to him after her clash with Arya! She frets about Arya exposing her to the bannermen, whose allegiance is verifiably fickle (“they’re bloody weather vanes” she mutters). Littlefinger reassures her that Arya is a Stark and wouldn’t endanger Sansa even if she doesn’t like her. He recommends that Brienne be brought in to mediate since she is honorbound to serve both girls. This idea seems to bring Sansa some peace of mind; I am unsure why because later Sansa receives a summons from CERSEI of all people asking her to come South, and Sansa’s immediate reaction is to send Brienne away in her stead. Brienne almost refuses to go – she says it’s too dangerous to leave Sansa alone in the North; Littlefinger has likely been whispering in all the bannermen’s ears so he and they can’t be trusted. Sansa lashes out like another privilged twat (*cough cough* Joffrey *cough cough*), complaining that she doesn’t need to be be watched and minded because she is the Lady of Winterfell and she is home. She won’t go down South herself because she suspects the Lannisters want to take her hostage, so she kicks Brienne out without any room for discussion, destination King’s Landing. So why, considering that she seemed comforted by the idea that Brienne would be an effective buffer between herself and Arya, does she send Brienne away? She could very easily have ignored Cersei’s letter – which she promptly burns, if you didn’t notice, so Arya wouldn’t have some other physical evidence of yet another one of her misdeeds. I think Sansa sent Brienne away because she’s becoming increasingly paranoid; perhaps Brienne would side with Arya, given that Arya could kill Brienne if she really wanted to. Whatever her flawed logic – there really is no one left to “save” Sansa now, in her eyes, except for Littlefinger – so she’s fallen right in the trap he set. Sorry for the tirade – I’m just sick of reading whiny feminist blog headlines like “What Does Sansa Have To Do Before She Will Be Taken Seriously/Be Liked?” She could grow the fuck up, have Littlefinger executed, be loyal to Jon until a new arrangement has been made, and admit her youthful idiocy so she can overcome it, to name a few.

Dany and Tyrion are doing their own bickering back at Dragonstone. Dany is irked that all the dudes have gone off to play hero – she rattles off a list of heroic men who are fools for glory: Drogo, Jorah, Daario… ‘and this Jon Snow.’ Tyrion points out that it’s funny she just named all the dudes who have been (and some who still are) in love with her. “Jon Snow isn’t in love with me” “Naw, he just stares longingly at you because he wants a military alliance” “He’s too little for me” “…” “Fuck, I just made a height joke to a dwarf.” Tyrion uses this time to work on Varys’ request that he reign Dany in a little, bringing up her BBQ of Randyll and Dickon Tarly; he sticks to his guns that it was the wrong call because it was a move her ancestors would have made – and she seeks to remake the world paradigm, so she should try mercy. This is some of Tyrion’s toughest love – he says all Cersei and Aegon (the first Targaryen conquerer) had as far as leadership goes is fear; Dany wants to break the wheel Aegon himself built, which is a task that could take more than her lifetime – which brings up the question of how best to keep the wheel broken: ie “what do we do about succession since you say you can’t have human babies?” This was Dany’s limit – she snarls that she won’t discuss her successor until after she wears the crown. I agree- let’s not count the proverbial eggs before they’re hatched, Tyrion, even though what you’re implying is that Dany should install some kind of democracy, which will bring Westeros into an Enlightenment period, so kudos.

I skipped some of the journey North, which was pretty humorous and it broke up the heaviness of the Winterfell/Dragonstone storylines nicely. FINALLY we have some interaction between Tormund and the Hound; Tormund taunts Clegane as having been “kissed by fire” just like gingers, and pines for the large blonde woman at Winterfell, which the Hound quickly deduces is the woman who felled him, Brienne of Tarth.

 

It’s fucking adorable. “I’ve met her.”  Clegane points out the arrowhead-shaped mountain he saw in his vision, so they know they’re getting close. Fun fact – the very ground they stand on in this scene was the sight of a stone circle back when the Children of the Forest ruled the land millenia before they fucked up and created the Night King.

 

The group later faces off against a zombie polar bear, which results in the death of a red shirt and Thoros gets bitten before the monster is neutralized. Beric cauterizes the wound with his flaming sword and they press on. Eventually, they come upon a White Walker and a platoon of wights, and manage to kill the Walker – taking out all of the weights EXCEPT ONE. It’s like an old vampire myth; if you kill the Alpha vamp, the ones he turned will be cured. Mental gynmastics are required for this – the remaining wight must have been created by a different Walker than the one Jon killed. But the skeleton’s screeching alerts the MOTHERFUCKING STORM – our heroes don’t get very far before they’re surrounded, fleeing to a rocky outcrop in the middle of a frozen lake. They send Gendry off on foot (#stillrunning) back to Eastwatch to get out word to Dany – and boy does he pull a Forrest Gump because he collapses just outside the gates for Davos to find. In the mean time, the rest of the Fellowship is trapped, protected by the precarious barrier of the frozen lake; the Army of the Dead patiently waiting for the lake to freeze back up so they can cross it and kill them all. Jon says ominously that the only hope they have now is that Dany will come save them with her dragons….

….WHICH SHE IS DETERMINED TO DO, despite Tyrion’s pleas not to. She takes off with all of her dragon babies for the Far North wearing a tres glamorous coat.

Daaaamn Mom - you look good!

Thoros dies over night, and Beric lights up his sword to burn the body. Why the hell he didn’t light up the sword just to keep the dude warm through the night is beyond me, but whatever. Now that our resident resurrector  is dead and Melisandre is off in Essos, life seems much more final now. To spit in the face of death (and out of boredom) the Hound starts throwing rocks at the wights, going full hobbit, alerting the Army that the lake has frozen over again when a rock skids across uninterrupted. The fight for the end ensues – the rest of the red shirts are torn apart and for a long minute it seemed Tormund was about to be drowned by the undead and I nearly had a seizure screaming “NO NO NO TAKE BERIC.”

Dany swoops in, the dragons burn through the ice and a large swath of the wight army. The dudes scramble to climb atop Drogon and Rheagal with the captive wight, and the Night King takes out Viserion with a single ice spear, spewing blood and guts all over, the great beast dying on the ice before sinking into the lake below.

 

Take note – the sonofabitch actually walks through flame here; so he appears to be fire resistant despite his icy countenence. Jon sees him gearing up to take out Drogon, so he fights off the wights who might make take off more difficult and sacrifices himself so the others can get away. I call full bullshit – this is the damn door/raft fallacy from Titanic all over again! Jon could have hopped on and they could have gotten away in time just the same. The spear chucked at Drogon just misses, and Jorah falls off, rescued by Tormund.

ALL ABOOOOOARD!!!

Jon sinks into what seems a watery grave as the rest of the Fellowship heads back to Eastwatch. He’s not dead, of course – the Lord of Light brought him back for a reason, dammit! But now that he’s on dry/frozen land again, he’s heavily outnumbered, with no hope of – OH WAIT WHAT IT’S UNCLE FUCKING BENJEN STARK TO THE RESCUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ben saved Bran and Meera at the last minute in Season 6, and he’s stuck around to save Jon – which he does, sending him off on his horse while he faced off against the horde. Maybe Bran/3ER sent him? RIP Coldhands – that’s right folks, fucking Benioff and Weiss waited until the character fucking dies to admit that (for the purposes of the show, at least) Benjen was Coldhands, the much beloved mysterious book hero. Anyway, the remaining fellowship is preparing to head south via boat, but Dany won’t leave her perch on the Wall, because she is not-so-subtly holding out hope that Jon made it out. Poor Jorah – for the briefest of moments, it seemed like he may have had a chance to climb up out of the friendzone, and that ladder was swiftly pulled out from under him when Jon shows up on the horse.

COCKBLOCKED

On the ship, Davos has to literally break Jon’s clothes off of him because they’ve frozen solid. In real life, Jon would have died from hypothermia long before he even reached the Wall – but he’s already a zombie Jesus, so why not? As the men work on Jon’s frigid body, Dany sees his scars, and knows that he was being bashful about the fact that he did take a knife to the heart, and was reborn – just like her. He also probalby reminded her of a dying Drogo, who similarly perished of a chest wound.

We return to Winterfell, where Sansa is taking part in the age old ritual of raiding your sister’s bedroom for dirt on her. She finds something very disturbing and weird – a satchel full of severed human faces. Naturally, Arya has snuck up on her because she is a ninja assassin, and she explains to Sansa that while she was away in Braavos, she studied to be a Faceless Man. Part of her studies included a game – The Game of Faces. Won’t you play with me, Sansa? So you can fail to fool me with your lies?

Let's play a game.....

Sansa is scared shitless now and doesn’t want to play any game – so Arya monologues about their childhood dreams. Sansa wanted to be a Queen, to have fancy things and stand beside a handsome King, while Arya wanted to be a Knight and ride off into battle. As women, they didn’t have a choice in what ultimately happened to them – but Arya did come close. This is what the faces are – they are options for Arya to assume someone else's identity and live as another. All Arya would have to do to see what it’s like to live like Sansa and wear pretty dresses and be an entitled bitch is to take her face… and then she hands Sansa the knife she picked up, and walked away. I suspect Arya left the faces where they could easily be found, so she could further terrorize Sansa. Again: I acknowledge that Arya is veering into Hannibal Lecter territory, but I still feel like Sansa needs to check her privilige. I wonder if Sansa will keep quiet about the faces the same way I’m sure Arya will keep private the note. Probably not – Arya made it clear she could kill Snasa and assume her identity. I can hear the pro-Sansa people complaining that this rivalry feels forced, and I’m inclined to say that it does feel a bit fake considering the Fellowship literally saw dudes who were once attemptimg to kill the other in relative harmony – but I think that’s because the season is so short and the tension hasn’t had much time to simmer between the two of them. Also – I don’t have a sister, but I know plenty of women who do, and it is entirely plausible that even after two women survived so much strife and adversity individually they could still harbor plenty of dislike and mistrust between them. That dynamic is very often perpetual, even when everyone else can see the folly in it but those sisters.

The ending to this epsidoe was a on/ two punch of heartswell and horror. Jon wakes up to Dany by his bedside, and his first reaction is to apologize for her loss. They hold hands and she says she isn’t sorry because she saw it was all for real and that they would kill the Night King together. Jon says “Thanks Dany,” and she bristles because in GOT, only one person called her that – her degenerate brother, Viserys. “How about ‘My Queen’ then,” he whispers, because Jon Snow is now a dashing lad in a trashy romance novel. “I’d bend the knee, but I’m half dead still.” She predictably melts at the submission – and then runs away because it’s become too intimate. She says he should get some rest, so he pretends to sleep until after she’s left.

*sigh* No #boatcest

We end back beyond the Wall, where the Night King as somehow gotten ahold of four giant sets of chains to haul Viserion’s carcass out of the lake. The whole concept of this episode was implausible enough – “let’s kidnap a wight, that’ll show Cersei!” but this was too much. Where the fuck did they get that much metal from!? The Wildlings have crude weapons, mostly repurposed from the Night’s Watch rangers they killed during raids. Completely farfetched. Alas - he touches V’s snout and just like that: the dragon wakes up, blue in the eyes. All those years of speculating who the ‘3 heads of the Dragon' were – we know now it’s Dany, Jon, and the Night King.

Next week’s finale will bring together our three intrepid monarchs to discuss the armistice to combat the Dead– I hope to Rhllor it’s not nearly as anticlimatic as I’m picturing in my head. I also hope that the question of whether ZombieViserion will breath ice or like, wightfire? will be answered. I still hold out hope for a possible Cleganebowl, in which the Hound faces off against his zombie brother (Christ, there are so many ressurected people on this show) the Mountain, and slays him.

Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 5

Maybe it’s because we’re used to 6 seasons of GOT stretching for time that this episode, Eastwatch, felt as rushed as it did. Or maybe the writers really are just pushing the fast forward button and completely disregarding the physical realities of velocity, distance and time (HOW THE FUCK DID A WHOLE ARMY OF DOTHRAKKI WIND UP IN THE FIELDS WEST OF KING’S LANDING AND GET BACK AGAIN IF THE GREYJOY FLEET IS DESTROYED, ALL IN A TWO DAY PERIOD!?!?!). Either way – this more than any other episode felt like a soap opera (and at the end a bit like a Super Friends storyline)- didn’t it?

We pick up right where we left off, with Bronn and Jaime clawing their way back on to dry land. So it was our rogue Bronn who pulled off that deus ex machina! Bronn is sick of being MVP, so he gives it to Jaime for trying to kill Dany with her damn dragon in the way.

 

They must manage to sneak away off camera because the surviving Lannister/Tarley brigade has been rounded up to be presented to the Dragon Queen, yet another epithet Dany has acquired. This scene, so simple, took my breath away –the sight of Drogon stretching his wings on a crag, revving up for another round of scorching deaths was riveting. I’m so happy they broke the bank on the CG dragons this season. Anyway, Tyrion is skittish standing next to Dany during her ultimatum because he just walked the grounds where there is more ash than identifiable bodies. “Bend the knee or die; it’s your choice.” Drogon screams a little to convince the few idiots still standing, but Sam’s dad and older brother won’t budge. People will say they admire Randyll and Dickon for their courage and conviction, but I say they’re just stubborn assholes because when House Tarly is gone – what will become of their family? Sam’s mother and sister were lovely people, if you recall from last season - but they’re not badass females like Arya and Brienne. I’m wondering if Sam will eventually be released from his oath to the Night’s Watch to claim his title and homestead… more on Sam later. Dany sentences them to die despite Tyrion's pleas to show them mercy, but Drogon BBQs them and that’s all she wrote. Their deaths were entirely avoidable from both perspectives.

BEND THE KNEE

Jaime runs back to Cersei in a panic, having just witnessed the full catastrophic power of Daenerys and her dragon. Cersei brushes off the mass casualties; they have the Tyrell gold and are in good standing with the Iron Bank – they can just hire mercenaries. Jaime says no – a mercenary army isn’t going to best the Dothrakki in an open field, and even if that’s embellishing things – it’s pretty hard to fight if you’re being incinerated by dragon fire. He wants to try and work something out with Dany, but Cersei is a despot and won’t cede her power – she’d rather die fighting. Jaime also reveals that it was Olenna who offed Joffrey – not Tryion. Her reaction is only that she should have made Olenna die screaming – no regret at all for her railroading of Tryion.

Jon Snow is brooding on the cliffs on Dragonstone when Dany swoops in on Drogon, fresh off her victory. There is a rather terrifying moment where we see what Jon sees – a giant hulking death beast gets right up in Jon’s face. Again – the graphics on Drogon are excellent. Dany looks on in admiration as Jon pets her dragon on his snout without being eaten/roasted – to her it’s probably a sign that he can be trusted, but to us it’s just beating a dead horse that Jon is also a Targaryen.

Hello, Cousin!

There is a light joke about the swiftness of Dany’s trip: “You weren’t gone long,” Jon says. “I have less enemies today than I did yesterday,” Dany follows. She asks him about the veracity of Ser Davos’ claim that he took a knife to the heart for his people - and he lets her continue to believe it was just a figure of speech. He probably should have copped to his zombie status though – because he’s completely overshadowed by the return of JORAH FRIENDZONE MORMONT – who must have hitched a ride on a Tardis or a Delorean to get to Dragonstone.  Dany hugs Jorah tenderly and welcomes him back into her service, and Jon is noticeably chagrinned.

Reunited and it feels so gooooood

Up in the north, Bran is warging into a flock of ravens that he sent north of the Wall to seek the Army of the Dead. It’s nice to see him using this power again since he leveled up to greenseeing. Unfortunately, he sees the Night King near Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, which is where Jon sent Tormund. Bran has Maester Wolkan send ravens to Jon Snow and to the Citadel to tell of his vision –

-which is where we find Sam, who just happens to walk in on a conversation the head Maesters are having about Bran’s letter. They think visions of the walking dead are likely a load of shit, but Sam speaks up and insists Brandon Stark is legit – how else could a cripple survive north of the wall for so long? And besides, Sam has seen the wights in person – it’s all real. He urges them to tell all of Westeros of the danger because they are this world’s equivalent of ‘scientific experts’ – the lords will believe them and send armies to the north. Poor naïve Sam… The Archmaester admits it might be true – but it’s likely a ploy of the Dragon Queen. Sam leaves in disgust – and the Archmaester reveals to his pals that he knows about the demise of the House of Tarly, but hasn’t had the heart to tell Sam about it yet.

Varys and Tyrion are getting drunk in the throne room. It seemed a bit disingenuous to me that only now are Varys’ sins starting to get to him, but when you consider the fact that he’s read the note Bran sent for Jon (Tyrion and Varys’ banter about having read the private correspondence of the King of the North was adorable in this scene), and the fact that Melisandre told him he was going to die a few episodes ago, it feels less like bullshit. Tyrion clearly feels bad about Randyll and Dickon, but insists he is only Dany’s Hand – he can’t make her decisions for her. Varys rues all of the times he sniffed out people for Dany’s father to barbeque – it must feel like history repeating itself for the ol’ Spider. He tells Tyrion he has to get her in line – but with so many lines having been crossed by the characters in this story, is there proprietary boundary anymore?

 

Jon is given his note and he’s floored – not only does he learn that TWO more of his siblings are alive – but also that Bran is a mystical shaman who saw the march of the Army of the Dead south to Eastwatch. As Marty McFly once said: “This is heavy!” Jon tells Dany he has to go, but she is concerned because he admitted to having too small an army and she won’t be sending hers or else she’ll lose ground to Cersei. Tyrion and Davos spit ball about trying to set up a meeting with Jaime, who is the only person Cersei will listen to. Tyrion thinks if they can smuggle a wight down to King’s Landing so she can see for herself the danger, maybe she’ll press pause on the war. Does this seem fucking stupid to anyone else? Why would Cersei give a fuck even seeing it with her own eyes? She’s a megalomaniac, she’s the sort that would welcome the Night King to obliterate the Northmen and then she’d ineffectively sick her mercenaries on the Dead. Jorah throws himself into the mix, offering to carry out the mission beyond the Wall, but Jon will not be upstaged– this is his territory and if he wants it done right (regardless of the fact that he’s a King and his constituents are getting restless back home – more on this to come), he’ll damn well lead the party himself! Dany’s crush reveals itself: “I didn’t say you could leave,” she warns hollowly. Jon insists he’s a King and will do whatever foolhardy thing he wants, so he sends Davos and Tyrion off to King’s Landing to discuss the plan with Jaime.

Back in Winterfell, Sansa is being flattered mercilessly by Lord Glover, who coos that they all should have elected her to be their leader. Arya watches on, pissed at Sansa’s willingness to accept such criticism of Jon. She confronts Sansa in her room – the room that used to be their parents.’  Arya accuses Sansa of being disloyal –that she hopes Jon will die down south; that her soft responses to treasonous speech are so that in the event of Jon’s failure to return, she will be seen as the legitimate heir of Winterfell. This, of course, is absolutely true – Sansa is performing her duty as Lady very well, but the power is going to her head. Sansa is clearly scared of Arya, knowing she’s slightly unhinged and that she could kill Brienne if she wanted – Sansa is a far easier target. She tells Arya that you don’t unite people by chopping off heads; that disciplining the Lords for criticizing Jon would lose Jon his army, and then dismisses her, citing “work to do.” I know this scene was meant to show just how ruthless and cold Arya has become, but I’m like 70% in her corner on this. Sansa is right to maintain the peace, surely – but it’s not out of fealty to her ‘brother:’ it’s for her own benefit.

Bronn lures Jaime into the same dungeon with the dragon skulls that Cersei and Qyburn like to hang out in with a lie about “sparring practice” so that Tyrion can have his audience. This is yet another example of missing time that we’re just supposed to be comfortable with: we saw Tyrion and Davos arrive on a secluded beach, and at least a day must have passed so that Tyrion could pay someone off to get word to Bronn, and then Bronn had to come up with a way to get Jaime to the spot, etc. The erstwhile Bronn takes off, and Jaime is apoplectic, although ultimately likes what he hears about Tyrion’s plan about the armistice.

While this was happening, Davos was scouring Flea Bottom in search of the boy that got away –GENDRY! Davos went full Arrested Development with: “thought you might still be rowing!” My whole brain had to reboot from the meme-induced fangasm I suffered. Gendry is alive and well, working as a blacksmith since his seafaring escape waaaaaay back in Season 3. He doesn’t even care what Davos is selling: he’s already packed to go; he grabs his hammer (a direct reference to his father, Robert Baratheon, whose weapon of choice during the Rebellion was a warhammer) and they take off for the shore, where Davos left his secret boat.

Gendry 2.0

We are treated to Davos’ smuggling showmanship as a couple of guards stumble across them trying to leave, and he very nearly has them fooled, bribed, and on their way when Tryion shows up, fucking up the whole con. Gendry takes out both guards in two shots, and then the trio is back at Dragonstone (the seas must be in cohoots with Team Dany, I know it), where a bastard meet-cute occurs. “You’re leaner [than your father]!” says Jon. “You’re shorter [than your father]!” Faux pass, Gendry – you probably didn’t realize the double entendre of the pseudo insult you just delivered (you know, because Ned’s corpse is a head shorter than he was when he was among the living). But Jon accepts Gendry’s help going forward for his mission north of the Wall, because they’re just two bastards trying to leave the world a better place than they entered it. I suspect Gendry will serve a greater purpose as a blacksmith than a warrior – his former master was Tobho Mott, one of the last men alive who could reforge Valyrian steel. Perhaps Gendry learned that skill and can help make more weapons in the fight against the Dead?

Jaime runs back to Cersei to try and reason with her about what he just heard from Tyrion, and in addition to her shaming him for assuming she didn’t know about Bronn’s scheme (and allowed it to continue), she drops the “I’m pregnant” bomb – because GOT is now a telenovella. Every time Jaime gets close to righting the fucked up ship Cersei is steering, she knocks it off course with a whopper. She also insists that she will proudly tell the truth that the child is his when the time comes; and Jaime knows that that will ruffle the wrong feathers, but he’s just gotten some good news for once and he can’t object. Poor, dumb Jaime: we know from the prophecy of Maggie the Frog that even if Cersei isn’t lying about being pregnant, this kid will never be born because Cersei was destined to bear 3 children – and three kids have been born and died already.

Sam is dealing with his own familial drama in Old Town, where he’s working and Gilly is avidly reading aloud to him the Asperger’s-level observations and doings of the High Septon Maynard. We learn that there are 15,782 steps in the Citadel, there aren’t any more windows in the Sept of Baelor, and that he performed an annulment in Dorne for Prince “Ragger” and married him to a new wife – and then Sam loses his shit because he’s toiling away copying “trivial shit” when there’s important information just sitting on the self in the library that could possibly save them all from the White Walkers. AAAAAAHHHHH OH MY FUCKING GOD we now have proof that Jon is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne because Rhaegar had his marriage to Elia Martel annulled, which means his secret marriage to Lyanna Stark was lawful and Jon is neither a Stark nor a Targaryen bastard at all! We’re off screaming at Sam’s mansplaining failure to acknowledge the information Gilly has just stumbled upon, but poor timing aside he’s decided to jump ship with Gilly and Lil Sam. Sam is just done reading about the accomplishment of great men – he wants to be a great man himself, so they take off with stolen literature, presumably for Winterfell. I hope to hell Gilly smuggled Maynard’s diary too.

 

Winterfell has a ghost – not just the direwolf, who Sansa meta-joked about earlier in the episode (Ghost is waiting around off camera for Jon because they blew the CGI budget on Drogon), but Arya, who is actively stalking Littlefinger, who is paying people off all around the castle for information. She lets herself into his room, where she finds a scroll that she watched the Maester give to him in a very sketchy exchange. The scroll is the letter that Sansa penned ages ago from King’s Landing to Robb Stark about how Ned was in the wrong for trying to overthrow Joffrey – if you’ll recall, Robb read the note to Catelyn back in Season 1 and it was determined that though it was written in Sansa’s hand, the words were Cersei’s. Arya wasn’t around for this, of course, so the content of the note definitely puts her off. It was retrieved and placed to drive the wedge between her and Sansa even deeper – Littlefinger staged that whole thing to trick Arya. I would like to believe that Arya is smarter than this – that she will realize that nothing Littlefinger does can be taken at face value, and that he’s trying to play her against Sansa in a typical ‘divide and conquer’ ploy. But Arya is fairly disgusted with the way things are panning out at home, so she very well may make matters worse.

The end of this episode played like fan fiction – they literally threw together any characters that were north of the Riverlands (who weren’t already at Winterfell) at Eastwatch, where Jon, Davos, Gendry, and Jorah meet with Tormund, who has imprisoned Thoros, Beric, and the Hound in the dungeon at the castle. They all clash, having at one point all been on opposing sides of the political struggle that has plagued Westeros for the past 4 years or so. I’ve created this info graphic to help you keep track:

Jon dismisses their former allegiances and past sins because they’re all on the same side now: #TEAMSTILLBREATHING. They all prep for their journey north of the Wall, where they’ll attempt to kidnap a wight and make it back alive to secure an armistice until the Dead can be defeated. It’s a cartoonish plan, IMHO – but you know next week we’ll get a look at Beric Dondarrion’s flaming sword, so I think it’s worth it. Here’s to hoping the inevitable casualties are Beric and Thoros, and no one else!