As the season goes by a lot of revelations and death are coming and it seems that plot is getting better and better also. Game of thrones season 6 officially has our undivided attention thanks to ongoing helpings of black magic, time travel and infanticide. But could the show maintain its breakneck momentum going into the third episode? After last week's double bill of baby killing and necromancy you probably haven't heard but apparently minor character Jon Snow walks among us again there were surely grounds for worrying “Oathbreaker” might add up to one magnificently damp squib.
Yet fears of anti-climax proved largely unfounded as show-runners David Benioff and DB Weiss delivered a generally satisfying dispatch. We flashed back to a young Ned Stark tangling with the Targaryens and witnessed further Church vs State tensions at King's Landing, the delicate ecumenical stand-off complicated by Lannister secret weapon Ser Robert Killbot.
In Jon Snow news, the Lord Commander was coming to terms with being suddenly, gloriously alive again. Here, the big shock is that he has officially unambiguously quit Castle Black. "My watch is ended." he told second -in-command Edd as he stomped away.
You could tell Snow was serious because, in the evening's final scene, he ditched his official Lord Commander Shoulder Pads of Doom before striding down a long dark tunnel and towards a destiny as yet unmapped. It was a gripping ending, delivering the catharsis viewers had waited for, apparently in vain, from the opening credits.
How then to follow what has already taken its place as one of Game of Thrones iconic scenes? This was the conundrum at the Wall, where the Night's Watch was absorbing the re-emergence of a beloved leader last seen being used for Piñata-practice by Ser Alliser and his co-conspirators.
In the event, the handling of his comeback verged on perfunctory. Jon was shocked, Ser Davos was shocked, Melisandre was shocked - and also convinced that it was Snow, not her dead master Stannis, who was destined for greatness. And yet, the denizens of Castle Black came across spectacularly blase; Wildling boss Tormund Giantsbane spoke for many when he used the event as an opportunity for a joke about Snow's manhood.
This was not the seismic reckoning fans will have anticipated and you wonder why Benioff and Weiss went to such efforts drawing a veil of secrecy around the Snow's death and rebirth in the first place.
Granted, Harington was persuasively grim-faced as he sat bolt upright and stark naked on the resurrection slab - but that same enigmatic grumpiness has been his default setting from the very beginning. He certainly did not convey any of the awe and terror you would expect of someone who had stepped into the beyond and back. It is entirely possible he was not asked to. Game of Thrones seemed to want done with the entire death storyline as quickly as possible.
If there was a payoff it was watching Alliser and the other traitors held to account for their attack on their Lord Commander. The execution scene was Game of Thrones at its most swaggeringly nasty, with teenager Olly among the turncoats sent from the gallows. Yes, the four corpses dancing as they dangled was horrible. But, let's be honest if gratuitous grisliness was a deal-breaker we'd have give up on this show a long time ago.
You remember Rickon, yes ? Sweet, curly-mopped lad? Easily mistaken for a charred shepherd boy? Youngest child of a family of prominent land owners whose members have since embarked on a range of interesting careers? The missing-presumed-forgotten Stark princeling made a shock return.Alas, he can't have been very pleased to be in the frame again as he was gifted to the Boltons as a gesture of fealty by oikish House Umber.
Ignored for three seasons, now a humiliated bargaining chip. Even in obscurity, the Starks can't catch a break. Can we take this opportunity to praise the show-runners for reneging on their initial pledge to never jump around in the time line?
The earlier death of Myrcella was given an added poignancy by the season five flashback to Maggy the Frog's prophesy to a young Cersei that her children would all wear golden shrouds.
Now, peeking over the shoulder of Timelord Bran, we whooshed back to young Ned Stark and the Tower of Joy. Held captive within was Ned's sister Lyanna and what a thrill it was watching the Warden of the North storm the battlements.
There have been broad hints that the Tower of Joy would solve the mystery of Jon Snow's parentage it's generally accepted Lyanna was Snow's mother. But tonight we made do with Ned tackling Targaryen super-swordsman Ser Arthur Dayne in breathlessly choreographed combat.
Robert Aramayo made for a convincing young Sean Bean and it was fun reconnecting with Westeros's one, true unsullied hero, in those halcyon days when his head was still attached to his shoulders. Oh noble Ned, whatever you do in the future, don't trust those Lannisters.
Daenerys is one of Game of Thrones most engaging characters, a mix of contradictions that somehow adds up to a compelling and plausible protagonist. It's just as well she is so fascinating because, since acquiring her dragons in season one's Dothraki death barbecue, the show has wasted her on an interminable road trip across Essos, aka the continent where nothing important ever happens.
How our hearts soared as the Sons of the Harpy finally forced her storyline up a gear last year. But now, imprisoned in the Dothraki widow colony and due to stand trial for flouting tribal laws, she is bogged down once more.
Daenerys we adore you - but please come to Westeros so you can impact on meaningfully on the wider plot. What fun it is has been witnessing twins-with-benefits Cersei and Jaime plot their bloody revenge against the Sparrows, Sand Snakes, Tyrells and anyone else who has ever thrown them an iffy glance across the mead hall.
But the preliminary scheming has gone on a bit and decisive action is overdue. Cersei, to her credit, was lip-smackingly menacing as she and Jaime gatecrashed the Small Council. But her thirst for vengeance requires follow-through, with the novelty of the Queen Mother stomping about in her cropped "peeved Cersei" haircut dimming rapidly.
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