Winter isn't just coming, people. It's here.
In Game of Thrones that doesn't mean Jack Frost nipping at your nose. It doesn't mean friendly snowmen in top hats. It sure doesn't mean picking up a steaming mug of cocoa after a day on the slopes. It means ... Very Bad Things (VBT). Sure, sure, there are VBT in every episode of GOT. Enough VBT that sometimes I've threatened to stop writing about them. But this week GOT did one of those things that makes me stick with it—it moved from the personal to the big picture view and back again—while forcing people to make tough choices and face .... shiver.
Come on in before I feel compelled to create another TLA.
Now that we're deeper into the season, the folks behind Game of Thrones feel less compelled to do lots of scenery hopping. They're trusting us that we know where most of the characters are at the moment, and that we'll hold our horses on some storylines while we spend a bit more time focusing on others. Even so, compared to some weeks where it seems we visited every piece on the board but nothing really moved, this week we got quite a ways around the world of Game of Thrones and boy, was there movement.
Let's start on the other side of the Narrow Sea.
Arya
If I'm starting with Arya, who is still my favorite little revenge-driven sociopath in any realm, you know it's because there's some high scream factor stuff ahead. Arya is making progress in her training with the Faceless Men, enough so that she's shed her raggedy dress for the slightly more stylish get up of Lana who shouts "cockles" and "mussels" but goes right on to "oysters" without an "alive, alive-o." Lana is a role Arya is playing to get all the information needed for her first official hit. One of the other people at the House of Black and White feels Arya might not be up for it. She don't know her very well, do she? The best part of this scene may be the conversation in which a group of assassins justifies itself as the last hope of those seeking justice. How hard is this world? That hard.
Dany and Tyrion
Now that Tyrion has made it to Meereen, this part of the episode becomes a sort of joint interview. Dany wants to see if Tyrion is someone she should hire instead of kill. Tyrion wants to see if Dany is someone he wants to help instead of ... getting killed. The back and forth between the two is not only some of the best dialog we've gotten since Arya and Tywin engaged in carefully disguised sparring back at Harrenhal, it also serves to bring out the best in both characters. The Tyrion who sits with Dany is the Tyrion we admire: smart, charming, willing to risk his own neck in the hope of finding something worthy of his mind. Facing him, Daenerys is forced to draw herself up. You can almost see her becoming the person that Tyrion describes, becoming the queen that it's worth crossing an ocean to find. As the two of them bond over a shared history of horrible fathers and difficult childhoods, Dany seems more capable by the moment. When she finally announces that she's not interested in just stopping the wheel of injustice that has kept the privileged on top and the peasantry underfoot for thousands of years, she wants to break the system utterly, you can feel it. It's strange that someone who has been set on freeing the slaves of half a continent has turned into a character who was seemed so ineffectual, but now Dany seems fully awake and ready to charge into the bigger game. Oh, and Jorah runs off to fight in the pits, but honestly I've kind of forgotten about him already.
Cersei
Prison does not suit Cersei, but then again not even the throne room suits Cersei. Is there anyplace in the world where she's ever really been comfortable or at home? In any case, she spends the episode taking abuse and sneers. She also learns that her uncle, never a member of Team Cersei, has returned to King's Landing to take over the council while her boy Tommen sulks in his rooms. Score no points for Cersei this week.
Sansa
Sansa is still enduring her ongoing nightmare. However, she gets one ray of hope, and it's not a small one. Confronting Theon/Reek about all the terrible things he's done, the broken Theon lets slip that he didn't actually kill Bran and Rickon. So Sansa is not the last Stark. Huzzah! Just so long as both Theon and Sansa can manage to keep that news away from Ramsay. Meanwhile, Roose Bolton instructs his son that they can camp in Winterfell and wait for Stannis to freeze, a defensive posture that doesn't serve Ramsay's need to skin a few more people before Christmas comes. We assume that both Stannis and Brienne are outside Winterfell scraping frost off their armor while Ramsay argues for a chance to charge into the snow, but there's not time to visit them this week, because ...
Jon
Across an ice-choked bay, Jon Snow visits the biggest gathering of the Wildlings remaining above the Wall. Accompanied by Tormond, Jon manages to talk his way past even the death of Mance Rayder (assisted by Tormund's slaying of Rattleshirt, which makes everyone else feel more like talking). In the end, the bulk of the Free Folk agree to trust Jon on his offer to go south. However, the first groups of Wildlings have barely started across the bay when a sound comes from the north.
A cloud of snow roaring up the valley signals the approach of the Army of the Dead, thousands of blue-eyed wights under the control of the enigmatic White Walkers. In a scene that's both figuratively and literally chilling, the Wildlings slam the gates of their makeshift fortress, leaving hundreds stranded outside. There is a moment of fighting and screaming as the wights race in, then ... a horrible, horrible silence. Seconds later the wights begin their assault on the fort, and the remaining humans begin a fighting retreat, trying to get everyone onto the boats while beating back wave after wave of things that range from animated skeletons to those who fell only seconds earlier.
In the midst of the fight, one of the White Walkers takes the field. His icy weapon shatters every blade that comes against him, and while Jon is unable to reach the bag of dragonglass (i.e. obsidian) we do discover why the warm up this week revisited a scene in which Jon was given the sword Longclaw by the previous Lord Commander. Valyrian Steel, as it turns out, can't be shattered and is deadly to the White Walkers.
For a moment it looks as if the humans may have held off the assault, but the leader of the White Walkers demonstrates a ruthless disregard for the bodies of those in his army and sends hundreds of wights plunging over a cliff into the fort. When these creatures rise up, there's no choice but to run for it. Only a fraction of the humans make the boats. There's a final moment of eerie silence as Jon stares back across the water at the White Walker king. With a gesture, the king raises all the fallen humans as new members of his undead army.
It's terrifying, and it's a big reminder that compared to this everything else in Game of Thrones is like a Little League game compared to the World Series. It's winter people. Start noticing.