The first three episodes focused on Ice. Tonight we saw the return of Fire. Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones season 6 episode 4 was quite possibly the most uplifting we’ve seen in the show in years. It was all well and good to see Jon Snow resurrected this season, but I never doubted that would happen to begin with.
But watching Sansa ride into the courtyard of Castle Black, and seeing the look on Jon’s face when he sees his sister once again, after years apart, was a moment of true joy. The Starks have been scattered. Ned, Catelyn, and Robb are dead. Arya has disappeared. And Rickon, alas, is in Ramsay Bolton’s dungeon.
Yet here, finally, two of the Starks are reunited, and not a moment too soon. Jon Snow has all but given up his will to fight, but Sansa is all steel and determination. She wants to fight. She wants to take back what belongs to them, and free the North from the Boltons. She wants to go home, and dammit all I agree with her.
Jon is less certain. It isn’t until a letter from Ramsay himself shows up that Jon finally relents. This is a version of a letter sent to Jon by Ramsay in the very, very different story told in Martin’s books. Let’s go into a book spoiler very briefly here.
Begin book spoiler
In the books, it isn’t Sansa married to Ramsay. It’s Arya—only it isn’t truly Arya. It’s Jeyne Poole, a childhood friend of the Starks. Ramsay sends his letter to Jon, but its contents are quite different. Here’s how it reads:
Your false king is dead, bastard. He and all his host were smashed in seven days of battle. I have his magic sword. Tell his red whore.
Your false king’s friends are dead. Their heads upon the walls of Winterfell. Come see them, bastard. Your false king lied, and so did you. You told the world you burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall. Instead you sent him to Winterfell to steal my bride from me.
I will have my bride back. If you want Mance Rayder back, come and get him. I have him in a cage for all the north to see, proof of your lies. The cage is cold, but I have made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell.
I want my bride back. I want the false king’s queen. I want his daughter and his red witch. I want this wildling princess. I want his little prince, the wildling babe. And I want my Reek. Send them to me, bastard, and I will not trouble you or your black crows. Keep them from me, and I will cut out your bastard’s heart and eat it.
Ramsay Bolton, Trueborn Lord of Winterfell.
This letter reaches Jon, and he rallies the Night’s Watch to go and help take down Ramsay, and then he’s stabbed to death by his brothers. It’s a lot more intense the way that all shakes out in the books than it was in the show. You’re as incensed and ready to kick Ramsay’s ass as Jon is and then…daggers in the dark.
You can see the other changes in the ink of Ramsay’s letter. Ramsay says Stannis is dead, though in the books he isn’t (or at least we aren’t ever shown his death) and the Princess Shireen is alive. Mance Rader is alive. And it’s fake Arya/Jeyne Poole who has escaped with Theon/Reek. They’re not saved by Brienne, since she’s far away, and none of the Starks have reunited. While many of these changes I dislike immensely I can’t help but grin and be happy when Sansa and Jon embrace.
End book spoilers
Getting back to the show, I really do like how vicious Ramsay’s letter is, how much more urgent Sansa’s mission becomes once they discover Rickon is there captive. Tormund, only moments earlier making eyes at Lady Brienne is ready to fight as well, since more than ever it appears the survival of the Wildlings depends on Ramsay’s ouster. And Sansa rightly points out that there are still loyalists in the North who can be rallied, if only they make the effort. Regardless, as she points out, so long as the Boltons remain in power, the Starks will never be safe.
The Vale
Here the young Lord Robin has grown a few inches, but still can’t shoot a bow and arrow to save his life. As he takes lessons from Ser Royce, the fast-traveling Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish shows up. In the preview for next week’s episode, Baelish appears to make it all the way to the North from the Vale. So either a great deal of time passes between the two episodes or, as I’ve long suspected, Littlefinger has the power of fast-travel.
Royce confronts Littlefinger about Sansa’s fate, and Baelish uses his influence over the spoiled rotten Robin Arryn to intimidate the old knight. “Should we throw him through the moon door?” Robin asks, when Petyr accuses Royce of conspiring with the Boltons to kidnap Sansa. No, no, Petyr assures the boy. Royce will be a good asset in “the wars to come.”
Then Littlefinger manipulates Robin into lending support to Sansa in her plight up North—likely his plan all along, though who can say with the mysterious Lord Baelish? In any case, it appears the Knights of the Vale will finally “enter the fray” and may give Jon Snow just the soldiers he needs to beat Ramsay. What this gets Littlefinger is a bit harder to say.
Let’s borrow the falcon Littlefinger gave Robin as a gift and fly as fast as we can away from the Vale. Robin is irritating and frightening, and I for one would not like to find myself in a sky cell, or taking a one way trip through a moon door.
King's Landing
Here the High Sparrow says one thing and then does another. He tells a wonderful anecdote about giving up our worldly possessions, about the stink of sin, and then we find Ser Loras Tyrell rotting in a prison cell because he’s gay. Loras has lost his will to live.
It’s this conversation between Margaery Tyrell from which we derive the episode’s title: “Book of the Stranger.” The Stranger is one of the pantheon of gods that comprise the Faith of the people of Westeros. There are seven: the Father, the Mother, the Maiden, the Crone, the Warrior, the Smith, and the Stranger. The last is a symbol of death, a god rarely spoken of, who is generally the least popular of the seven. That he’s barely discussed in an episode with his name in it suggests, to me at least, that death is being hinted at. Something bad is coming, and it’s not winter.
In any case, the High Sparrow is charismatic and you can’t help but like him as he speaks. He’s sensible and humble and wise and seems like a kind old grandfather. He even lets Margaery speak to Loras.
This is the second sibling reunion of the night. And it’s the juxtaposition of this wise old man who can crack jokes about his stern nuns with the reality of Loras’ plight that tells us the truth about the High Sparrow. For all his charisma and all his righteousness, he’s still a monster and a religious zealot.
This is why Cersei and Jaime feel the need to team up with the Queen of Thorns, and why she doesn’t see it as such a bad idea. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is an adage that goes quite nicely with “when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.” And old Olenna Tyrell means to win.
The problem is, I fear the High Sparrow is once again outwitting his rivals. They learn that Margaery is going to be forced to walk the same walk of shame as Cersei. But they learn of it through poor, naive King Tommen, who was explicitly told by the High Sparrow to keep it a secret.
I suspect he told Tommen this knowing full well that the teenage boy would confide in someone—likely Cersei—and that some plan would be hatched to prevent the walk from happening. The High Sparrow is laying a trap for his enemies, and they’re about to charge right into it. Soon, King’s Landing will be bathed in blood.
Slaver’s Bay
I’m a little disappointed in the Meereen storyline. Tyrion is still being mostly wasted here, minus some great lines and equally wonderful acting. It’s just…hard to care about Meereen, especially when it seems so secondary to the larger story. Perhaps if it were a little closer to the books, and Meereen were under siege by the armies of the other Slave cities, it would be a more gripping plot.
As it stands, watching Tyrion wheel and deal with the Great Masters is no fun at all. I think we’re supposed to root for Tyrion here. We’re supposed to see where he’s coming from and agree that striking a peace with these awful men is better than having to keep fighting a well-funded terrorist organization like the Sons of the Harpy.
But I don’t. I think it’s absurd, quite frankly. I think Tyrion should say one thing and then do another, just like the slavers will no doubt do. And maybe he is! Maybe he’s lulling them into believing they have more time than they do, giving himself breathing room to set up some grand scheme to take them all down. I hope so because if not, Tyrion has seriously lost his edge.
Missandei and Grey Worm seem pretty unhappy with Tyrion’s plan, and even Varys looked a bit stunned, too, so I’m going to just assume Tyrion has a card up his sleeve and is playing a long con. While he plays, we can fly over the Grass Sea, far away from Slaver’s Bay, to…
Vaes Dothrak
Here, Jorah Mormon and Daario Naharis have tracked down Daenerys. Daario is talking serious crap to Jorah, calling him an old man, saying straight to his face that he couldn’t handle Dany in bed, and just generally being an ass. I have very little fondness for Jorah, but I wanted him to knock Daario over the head hard.
Of course, later it’s Daario who saves Jorah from a big Dothraki, so I guess that evens things up. They’ve snuck into the vast Dothraki camp it’s a city, sure, but a city for a nomadic people—to rescue Dany, but have very little in the way of a plan to actually extract her from Vaes Dothrak when they find her.
Fortunately, Dany has a plan. It involves her rare advantage of being able to withstand the heat of an inferno. As the Khals of the Dothraki people bicker over what to do with her—and Khal Moro is actually pretty reasonable until she makes him angry and he says some really nasty, rapey things to her—Dany looks on with a confident smile. When they threaten her with rape and death for her insolence, for the gall it takes to suggest they serve her, she replies: “You’re not going to serve me. You’re going to die.”
Then she burns the place down, with all the Khals locked inside. I’m not sure if she made it more flammable or if it just burned really easily, but future Khals may want to reconsider meeting indoors with lots of easily toppled open flames. Dany isn’t touched by the fire, but all her enemies are consumed. A huge crowd gathers outside, and watches as a very naked Khaleesi walks out surrounded by flames. And they all bow. Finally something really interesting has happened again in Dany’s storyline! Hooray!
0 comments:
Post a Comment