Time, as we know, is wibbly wobbly when viewed from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint. Just shift a little bit to the left. There. Do you see it now?
It’s also something of a bastard (hey, it was in the title last week) when dealing with multiple characters. After all, people just don’t freeze up like statues while someone else acts, but a narrative has trouble following more than one person at a time, especially when you’ve got people scattered around the globe. You either dice the story into tiny slices and try to keep things more or less in order, or you leave chunks out and just get on with it.
Game of Thrones has tried both approaches this season. Sometimes it’s been smooth enough to be all but invisible. Other times, especially when picking up threads of plot lines long left idle, the result has been sudden lurches, apparently instantaneous travel, or characters trapped in glue waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
The lengthy season finale in particular suffered from scenes crammed together that where sometimes separated by weeks or months of in-Westeros time. Some of the scenes between different characters were apparently happening more or less simultaneously. Others were spread out by periods great enough for news, if not characters, to travel the length of a continent. It made some of the sequences seem a little bit … “huh?”
But if you’ve found the “he’s here, no he’s there, wait how did he get over there?” disconcerting this season, take heart. As the number of plot lines decreases, things will get easier to sort. And plot lines are decreasing.
That’s because Game of Thrones has passed maximum-dispersion and is pulling all the characters together as we approach the climax of the series. It’s not because of characters dying, dear person who has not kept up with the episodes and doesn’t know what happened this week. Not at all. I’m sure that neither George or the producers would ever harm the characters that you like.
Are they gone? Okay, come on. Let’s talk about it.
And then Lady Lyanna Mormont showed up, and every person in the kingdom realized that this 10-year-old girl had more moxie, spine, and honor than the rest of them put together, so they all fell on one knee and put an (iron) booster seat in that really uncomfortable looking throne. No? Well, maybe that’s just the way it should have ended. How great is Lady Mormont? Other people might have finished the season being called king or queen, but Lady Mormont? She wins the season. Someone please nominate Bella Ramsey for the Best Supporting Badass Emmy. Thank you.
Opening Credits
I’m noting these for one reason: No flayed man on top of Winterfell. Yes.
King’s Landing
For just a moment there, I thought we’d gotten an unexpected bonus episode of Downton Abbey. Lots of fancy clothes being neatly laid out. Lots of powerful people being helped into snug or overly complex garments. At first it seems like just an effort to be clever and to give us a start to an episode that’s a little different—always difficult, six years in. But actually, there’s quite a lot of information being relayed in how the characters are dressing. Contrite. Humble. Pious. Commanding. It might as well be printed onto these costumes in bright red letters. The expressions on the faces are slightly more subtle—confused, eager, frightened, defiant—but only slightly.
Everyone is off to the Sept to see the big trial of Cersei and Loras. Well, everyone except for Cersei, who is apparently content to wear her new black and gold ensemble in her apartment, and Tommen who has been forcibly detained. It’s the Mountain’s appearance in Tommen’s chamber that gives us the first clear sign that this thing isn’t going to go off according to schedule. Just the hulking appearance of the Mountster is enough to rattle Tommen, and it should. Who is guarding Tommen these days? King’s Guard? Sparrows? In any case, Gregor coming in is probably a good sign that someone is bleeding out in the hallway.
Hopping over to the Sept, things have gotten rolling even without Cersei. Loras gets straight to it. He confesses. What is he confessing to? Sleeping with men. Conspiring with Renly. Whatever you’ve got. Really, at this point the idea of Renly as a traitor seems kind of hilarious. Renly. Those were the days.
In exchange for his confession and appeal to serve the Seven, Loras gets a sentence of losing his spot as heir to House Tyrell. He gives up his right to own land, marry, have a child … none of which seems like something that Queen Margaery would have agreed to in advance. However, the only thing that seems to really upset her is that the Sparrows do some carving on Loras’ forehead. A couple of times in this sequence, when Margaery is speaking with the High Sparrow, you can see that there’s been an advance agreement between them. Margaery not only has a plan, she’s been more open with the High Sparrow than we’ve seen. We’ve always known that to some extent both of them are putting on an act, but under pressure that’s becoming a bit more obvious.
So what did they agree to? There’s an eagerness in the High Sparrow’s actions that suggests that he both likes the pain that’s being inflicted on Loras and likes that Margaery is unable to enforce any agreement between them. He’s practically bouncing on his toes. Oozing self-satisfaction.
But Cersei’s ongoing absence … that begins to niggle at Margaery. Always both fast and shrewd, you can see the pieces tumbling through the queen’s mind as she sorts the possible reasons for Tommen’s mom skipping out on this event. Cersei might rightly be afraid of the outcome, but cowering in her room without the chance to speak in her defense, that’s not Cersei If she’s not there, and Tommen’s not there, it’s because something’s in the works. Which makes not being in the Sept suddenly seem like a good idea.
And it is. It’s been a while since it was first mentioned, back before Battle of the Blackwater days, so a couple of weeks ago we got a wink-wink-nudge-nudge to remind us that, yes indeed, the basement of the Sept is full of the green nitro-napalm hybrid that is “wildfire,” and that Cersei along with Not-A-Maester Qyburn and the Little-Birds-Formerly-Belonging-To-Varys have both set a simple time bomb and used a spare moment to slice up Was-A-Maester Pycelle. Who knew the Little Birds had claws? Was that something Varys taught them, or some new instruction since Qyburn took charge?
And … back upstairs everyone has a chance to at least get a few steps away, but the High Sparrow is enjoying all this smug power and torture way too much. He not only doesn’t run for it, he blocks the doors to keep anyone else from running for it. For this he gets blown up about one-quarter second before everyone else when the wildfire blows, taking out the sept and a block or so all around it.
From across the city, Tommen watches the Sept blow. Margaery, the High Sparow, Loras, Cousin Lancel, Uncle Kevan, the rest of the Sparrows, and just about everybody who was anybody in King’s Landing is dead. Tommen turns away from the window, walks just far enough to toss off his crown, then comes back to the window, steps calmly onto the sill, and throws himself from the very high heights of the Red Keep. Make the count three up, three down for Jaime and Cersei’s children.
Tommen’s managed to sit on the throne a bit longer than Joffrey, and he did at least get to enjoy a few nights with Margeary (which were apparently enjoyable enough to sideline Tommen’s old friend, Ser Pounce). But his arc really only runs from rather timid, naive child under the control of his mother, to rather timid, naive young man enthralled with Margaery. If there’s more to Tommen than doing what he’s told, we don’t see it. Killing himself seems like the first independent action of Tommen’s life.
With Tommen gone, Mother/Father/Warrior et. al. knows what the actual line of succession for the Iron Throne might be. It doesn’t matter. After rather coldly ordering that Tommen’s body be burned, Cersei walks the ominously darkened throne room in her gold-chased black clothing and seats herself on the throne. Qybrun declares her Cersei Lannister, Queen of the Andals and all that jazz. First of her name. It’s interesting that she’s not being steated as Cersei Baratheon. She’s taking the throne as Robert’s widow or even Tommen’s mother. She’s just taking the throne.
It’s not until she’s actually advancing on the Iron Throne that it becomes clear that this is what Cersei was dressing for to start with. This is her Sitting On the Iron Throne suit. This is where she expected to end her day. If Tommen had not taken himself out the window, his best option might have been Tyrion’s old cell. He was very unlikely to be standing by when mommy usurped the kingdom. Queendom. Remember last week, when Tommen didn’t bother to talk to mom as he cut off her last good option to defend herself without, say, blowing everyone up? Uh huh.
As Cersei settles herself into the chair, she’s as sharply beautiful as always. But there’s also an androgynous aspect to her look. The dark clothing is as much armor as dress. With her golden hair still cropped short, she looks disturbingly like Tommen. Or Joffrey. She’s replaced her own sons on the throne, and not by accident. Back at the very beginning of the series, Cersei decried the limitations of her gender. Now she seems to have surpassed them.
She’s also passed the limitation of sanity. Whether that happened before, during, or after her shame walk, she’s in new territory now.
Cersei’s whole story arc this season had been one of declining respect. Not only had the death of her father put the Lannister fortunes in reverse, Cersei’s attempts to manipulate the Faith backfired. Her straightforward, undisguised “just kill them” actions seemed blunt against Margaery’s more subtle approach, or Olenna’s clockwork scheming, or the High Sparrow’s untouchable certainty. Cersei, who in the first season of the show was a central force, had been diminished every season since. Even after the horror of her shame walk, everyone was treating her as laughable.
Yeah. She who laughs last, etc.
Jaime arrives back from his stint in the Riverlands just in time to see twin sis climb into the driver’s seat. In a very real way, Jaime sacrificed his honor to stop the Mad King when he screamed “Burn them all.” Now Cersei has burned them, using the same weapon that Aerys meant to employ.
Does Jaime add Queenslayer to his titles? It seems likely. Which could make it unlikely. But … eh, season 7.
Oh yeah, and in case you were thinking Cersei might not be completely mad at this point. She’s keeping the shame, shame, shame septa in the dungeon for torture sessions. Oh, and the Mountain takes his helmet off, but only the Septa gets a good look. Probably for the best.
Far side of the Wall
Up in the snow, half-dead Uncle Benjen delivers Bran and Meera Reed to the Wall with a notice that He Shall Not Pass. It’s tough for him that he can’t go through, but can’t he at least leave them a horse. A cart? Pair of skis?
Benjen turns away and trots off, leaving Meera to try and manage Bran with no help at all. But fortunately, they don’t have to go far this week.
Bran lays his hands on a weirwood tree and plugs back into the past. Finally, we’re getting an answer to the Tower of Joy question. Bran’s visit doesn’t seem to screw up the past, which we can all be glad about, and when we follow young Ned (are we sure this guy isn’t related to Sean Bean?) to the top of the tower, we find that Lyanna is indeed expiring not from torture, but following a difficult birth. Maddeningly, she whispers something into Ned’s ear that we still can’t make out, but she gets out the phrase “promise me, Ned”— which is repeated in the book no less than 800 times—and if you have any doubt about the identity of the baby she hands to Ned, those doubts are relieved when the camera fades to Jon Snow standing at the top of ...
Winterfell
Jon walks around the hall, noting the place where the Real Starks used to sit while he was seated with the servants (but hey, with the better grade of servants). Melisandre gives him a few words of comfort, but her speech doesn’t carry on for long before Davos confronts the Red Woman over the horrible death of poor Princess Shireen. Other people have been killed to power Melisandre’s plots, but Shireen died for a short break in the weather, which seems particularly awful.
Jon takes the middle ground between keeping the priestess around to help and stringing her up. He exiles her. Davos makes a quick threat as she’s departing. Which doesn’t seem clever. Both Jon and Davos give the Red Woman a “if we see you again, you’re dead,” but considering the abilities of her necklace, you have to wonder if they saw her again, would they know it?
Up on top of the walls of Winterfell, Jon and Sansa bond a bit over being the last Starks in town. Sansa is much more inclined to treat Jon as a genuine brother than in the past, while Jon is ready to give Sansa all the credit for the recent victory. Which, yeah, she deserves. What with the saving his life, home, and everything Jon is pretty forgiving of Sansa’s failure to tell him about Littlefinger, though Sansa still doesn’t provide a very good reason for staying closemouthed.
In the yard, Sansa leans against the huge weirwood tree. She gets approached by Littlefinger, who has gotten a little grey at the temples over this season, and also continued to grow his accent. You have to hand one thing to Littlefinger: This is probably the most honest he’s ever been with anyone. But you also have to say that “all I think about is sitting on the Iron Throne, and next to that I want to have sex with you” is not the most romantic thing anyone has said. It’s not even the most romantic thing Littlefinger has said.
Considering that Lord Baelish has at his disposal the only fighting force worth fighting anywhere around, it takes quite some gumption on Sansa’s part to shove him away. But considering what she’s been through by this point, and that Littlefinger is literally her father’s age, Sansa seems pretty close to the “I’d rather just die” point.
Later, there’s a gathering of the clans Northern Houses in the great hall of Winterfell as all those folks who couldn’t spare a declawed cat for the Starks last week queue up to re-swear their very low-value oaths. Honestly, I expected at least a couple of these people (ahem, House Glover?) to be decorating the You Don’t Talk to Sansa Like That pikes on the outer walls. The Starks. How the hell did they get a reputation for being hard enough to rule the North?
A few minutes into this get together, Lady Lyanna Mormont rises and gives the “I know only one king, the King in the North” speech, with a nod to Jon Snow. It doesn’t take very long before the rest of the houses are lining up to join in. Because … Lyanna Mormont. Who wouldn’t be afraid to be against her?
But even as Jon is being awarded the title last hung around Robb, there are a helluva lot of questions. Everyone is still saying Jon Snow. Is he the bastard king? Can he be both not a true Stark and the Lord of Winterfell? Or is Sansa the Lady of Winterfell, and Jon something else? How is this going to work between them?
And hey, does Jon deserve this? Sure, he’s a nice guy, and one-on-one he seems almost as good with a sword as people keep saying he is. He’s very impressive when it comes to cutting, kicking, riding, and/or punching things. He also seems to have a decent sense of good moral decisions. It’s just that so far we’ve not seen him be particularly effective on a battlefield. That was certainly true last week, when Jon’s rashness in rushing out to try and save Rickon damn near got everyone killed.
Sansa is the real Stark and the real hero of the day. Why not the Queen in the North?
If Sansa is upset by Jon’s sudden elevation, she seems to take it in stride. Not so Littlefinger, who was clearly counting on his claims on Sansa as yet another step toward his “get the throne and oh, yeah, also sleep with the girl” plan. He’s the one person in the hall not joining the huzzahs.
The Twins
There are two visitors to the Twins this week. First Jaime and company stop by, fresh from retaking Riverrun. Walder Frey takes some satisfaction in getting to repeat the lines that Roose Bolton delivered at the Red Wedding. Like the High Sparrow, Walder Frey is feeling pretty happy with himself. But then, Walder Frey always feels pretty happy with himself.
When you’re not burdened by empathy, guilt, or any sense of honor, that’s probably pretty easy.
Walder is still feeling pretty good when Jaime questions his martial abilities. Lord Frey feels pretty pleased that he’s been able to get other men to do the fighting all his life, while he’s collected on the wealth, land, good food, and a long line of nubile brides.
However, his good mood is dampened when Jaime reminds Walder that the purpose of having Lord this-and-that isn’t so that they can call up the crown when they need help. The lords are supposed to hold the land and collect the taxes for the King. No matter how cagey old Walder may be with wedding guests, if his forces are so incompetent they can’t hold onto their own lands—and they’re that incompetent—then maybe it’s time the crown brought in some new talent.
Meanwhile Jaime has his choice of several women, but doesn’t seem interested. Is he thinking about getting back to Cersei, or is he thinking about … someone taller?
After the Lannister crew departs, the Lord of the Crossing is still digesting Jaime’s not-so-veiled threat when a serving girl arrives with pie. He digs in, and then start complaining that two of his sons (or maybe a son and a grandson? There are so many Walders it’s hard to keep track) are supposed to be there. The girl assures him that they are.
There’s a bit of back and forth, but by the time Arya peels back her replacement face, everyone has a pretty good handle on what’s happened. Arya has killed the two missing Walders and baked them into a pie, served to the elder Frey. She then goes on to kill Walder Frey, who would be mourned by exactly no one.
Arya’s actions mirror a story told by Bran several seasons ago, except that in that story the gods punished the character not because he baked people, but because he violated guest privileges, which Walder Frey certainly did at the Red Wedding. Doubtless, Arya was serving up just deserts with her pie.
Many times in these reviews I’ve stated that I not only expected the whole series to end with “and then Arya killed them all,” I was actually looking forward to it. But now that Arya is out there getting her hands bloody, I’m not enjoying it as much as expected.
That’s because Arya’s being treated too much as a magical creature, and we’re not getting to see enough of how the trick was done. How did she get into the castle? Where did the spare face come from? Did she bring it from the House of Black and White? Does she have several? Or did she swipe it from someone she met? Does she know the trick of making a new face? Did she kill some poor girl to get this face? We need to know that answer, because it’s more important than being surprised.
I’m going to go ahead and assume there was more to Arya’s survival in Braavos than we saw, because otherwise she should be back there dying of sepsis. But even if there was, they need to show us more of Arya’s planning. More of Arya’s thinking.
Otherwise it’s like a caper movie that’s been edited down to the end. Yeah! They got the diamond from the vault. Wait. How did they do that?
Assassinations are capers. Capers aren’t exciting unless you see the planning and execution. Surprise! It’s Arya! Is not a good treatment for either the character or the plot. In this kind of plot, it’s not magic unless you show how the trick was done.
So stop doing the Arya-in-a-box before the new season comes round. Please.
Dorne
The biggest surprise of the episode? We’re in Dorne. And what do you know, the whole Dorne plot line wasn’t pointless after all. That’s a relief. Maybe Euron will turn out to be worth something, too, though that may be hoping for too much.
Anyway, it’s clearly been some time since Cersei blew up the Sept, because Queen of Thornes Olenna Tyrell has had time to pop over from Highgarden and is plotting with Elaria and the Sand Snakes.
They all hate Cersei. I get that. But frankly, I can’t stop looking at Indira Varma’s neck. Look at the length of it. Look at that graceful, swan-like curve. Do the rest of us just have our heads mounted on ball-bearings or something, because that there’s a neck. Olenna is being clever with the Sand Snakes but still … look … at … that … neck. Maybe there’s some Transylvanian in my ancestry.
Oh! This is where Varys was going. Good save of a plot line. So it looks like Dorne and the Reach are going to serve as Dany’s Normandy. Not the most direct route, but okay. It’ll work. And it gives me hope that other dangling plot threads will not be left dangling forever.
Oldtown
Sam has finished the longest journey in Westeros history. The guy at the Citadel front desk may be wrong about the status of things up at the Wall, but Sam has been so long in transit that he’s just about as wrong. He’s a death, resurrection, two battles, and another Lord Commander change behind. In fact, this trip has been so long shouldn’t they just enroll Little Sam and have Sam the elder go retire with Gilly someplace?
Really, it’s just been ridiculously long. There’s slow, and then there’s trapped-in-amber slow. How is Sam going to have time to do much more than pass Maester 101 before the show is over? Forget getting all the links in a chain. He’ll be lucky to have a bracelet made from pull tabs.
Sam marches Gilly & son through the grand lobby, then leaves them parked without so much as a bench to sit own while he checks out Harry Potter’s library. They use mirrors. That’s cool.
Emotional payoff value: $0.27.
Meereen
Daario Naharis gets both dumped and assigned the task of keeping Meereen and the whole of the renamed Bay of Dragons free and working smoothly. Dany seems mostly intent on getting out of the room, but the next time she’s choosing a successor, she might want to think about not picking the guy who just gave an impassioned speech proclaiming how much he doesn’t care about the place.
During their talk, Dany rubs Daario’s face in the idea that she might need to get married. Giving us a who, oh who, will Daenerys go for? Someone we just found out was related to her, perhaps?
Daenerys then goes down to have a rather nice conversation with Tyrion. Now that Dany is back in town, all the wit and wisdom of Tyrion Lannister seems to have been restored. And when Daenerys names him Hand of the Queen, despite having recently found him engaged in screwing up relations across a whole region, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable choice.
In the course of their chat, Tyrion talks to about Dany joining “the great game,” which distracted me quite a lot. First, because Daenerys has been engaged in conquering people and being a queen for some time now. It seems a little Westeros-centric of Tyrion to assume there’s something intrinsically more difficult about knocking over folks in the Seven Kingdoms than it was picking off the heavily fortified and armed cities around what was then Slaver’s Bay.
It also sent me wool-gathering because in Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, “the great game” is what people called the hidden struggle over Asia between the British Empire and other forces. Later coinage was been picked up in more than a few more recent spy novels as a term for the invisible war between espionage organizations. Its deployment here made me start thinking about whether George Smiley would make a good replacement for either Tyrion or Varys.
Recasting Game of Thrones with other literary characters. There’s an off-season hobby for you.
Anyway, by episode’s end, all of Dany’s toys are packed up on a fleet that includes some ships from Dorne and the Tyrells. Clearly time has passed, or that crafty Olenna has a transporter, because Varys is back and everyone is standing around on decks staring ahead as if they expect to spot Westeros any minute now. Yes, it’s the Narrow Sea, but hopefully someone did at least pack a chair.
Where does all of this leave us for next year?
Okay, I know my Seven Kingdoms has nine hexes. Bear with me. Assuming that Dorne and Highgarden have declared for Dany, and both the North and the Eyrie are officially on Team Stark, that leaves Cersei with the traditional Lannister and Baratheon territory, plus the Riverlands.
Of all the positions, Cersei’s is the most tenuous. Nobody likes her. Her fighting force is limited to whatever Jaime brought back with him, and since some of that force was loyal to the Faith they’d seem like not an altogether trustworthy set of swords. Even if Dany wasn’t coming, Cersei faces the possibility of Littlefinger and the Knights of the Vale coming through the ineffective screen of the Walder-less Freys on the North, while both Dorne and Tyrell hit her from the South.
And honestly, considering the force Daenerys is toting, why doesn’t she just sail straight into King’s Landing, roast the Red Keep, and say “winner?”
Of course, Littlefinger could also turn around and attack Jon Snow while the Sand Snakes make a play for Highgarden. Because really, which of these people can be trusted? And maybe Cersei’s madness, mixed with Qyburn’s cunning, will inspire an actual technological breakthrough for the first time in 11,000 years and come up with something that hurts a dragon.
But hey, as far as progress goes, in this one episode we killed off a lot of people, got a fairly definitive answer to one of the series’ great mysteries (yes, R + L do indeed = J), and got Dany moving. That’s good. In fact, it’s so good that it seems to fit well with those rumors that the upcoming season is going to be significantly shorter.
Winter is here. Officially. White raven and all. Don’t expect this story to last until spring.
Want to get a sense of how much things have changed in Westeros, and how different things are going to be when this settles down, no matter how it finishes? Look at this list and tell me the Starks aren’t getting off lightly.
House Baratheon
Robert
Joffrey
Myrcella
Tommen
- Gendry? (bastard, location unknown)
Stannis
Renly
House Lannister
Tywin
Kevan
House Tully
Hoster
Catlyn
- Edmure (imprisoned)
Bryndan
HoUse Tyrell
Olenna
Loras
Margaery
House Martell
Doran
Trystane
Oberyn
House Bolton
Roose
Ramsay
Roose's unnamed infant son
House Stark
Brandon
Eddard
Robb
- Sansa
- Arya
- Bran
Rickon
Lyanna
House Targaryen
Rhaegar
Viserys
Daenerys
Honestly, who knows where Jon Snow should go on the chart.