Abandon all hope ye who enter here, for if you open The Door you’ll find nothing but sadness, heartache and a Monty Python skit. Hold the door. And he did. Not since the 300 Spartans (give or take 1000 other dudes who makes the last stand less cinematic I guess) that battled at the pass of Thermopylae has such bravery been displayed in the face of such overwhelming odds. Game of Thrones delivered a steel toe capped boot kick to the feelings in this weeks episode as Summer and Hodor succumbed to the horde of ice zombies, and it was entirely Bran’s fault. Fuck you Bran.
I’m starting with all the Beyond the Wall stuff because Thrones managed something incredible last night: making me care for Bran’s story above the others. Never in my time reading the books and watching the show have I been so enraptured by the psychic cripple and his friends. We pick up with Bran in the midst of another of his psychedelic root visions. While on a stroll with Grandpa Raven he comes across one of the great mysteries of Thrones: the origin of the White Walkers. Turns out the Children of the Forest created them to help wage war against the humans that were conquering their lands. It’s a satisfying reveal in that almost nothing in Thrones is without reason, and man brought the Walkers upon themselves as they slaughtered the Children.
Though it was our second visit to Bran’s cave the turned this into one of the most memorable episodes. Bran gets bored while everyone else is asleep and decides to trip without a spotter. It’s during this vision that Brandon encounters the Night’s King. When the ghostly monarch seizes the young Stark boy he awakes shrieking, a cold burn on his arm and death fast approaching. Normally in the case of a character bringing about such destruction on themselves and their comrades I’d be frustrated with the writing, but this is one of the few cases where this succeeds. Bran had no possible idea that the Night’s King could see him in his visions, and we, the audience, were exposed to similar feelings of frustration with the Three Eyed Raven constantly wresting him from his visions before they were completed.
The sequence that follows is the most anxious I’ve ever been watching this series. From the moment Meera takes in the breadth of the army of the undead my stomach wrenched. The wights swarm into the cave like a great sea of locusts, and the panicked fever begins. First to die is Bran’s direwolf Summer in obvious symbolism of the inexorable winter. Initially I was infuriated by the show offing two direwolves in almost as many episodes but in review the death of Summer was tragic yet appropriate. I’m more angered by the inconsequential dispatching of Shaggy Dog off-screen. Yeah Rickon and Osha I could care less about but god dammit that’s a dog you just killed!
But where Summer hurt, it’s the sacrifice of Hodor that shredded me. Maybe it’s the cruelty that Hodor’s entire existence up until this point was to die for Bran, and it’s Brandon’s doing. The kindest character in this twisted yarn, seemingly a lovable joke to provide some levity amidst the usual crushing despair. For him to die in such a way, masterfully spliced with his unexpectedly tragic origin and a touching score, it just crushed me. I can’t recall that I’ve ever been so distraught over the death of a character. Thrones may have the occasional dips in quality but when six seasons of development and attachment can come to such an affecting conclusion it reminds me that it is easily one of the best shows to ever grace our screens.
Whew. Now with my eyes dried I can try to focus on the rest of the episode. At the Kingsmoot at the Iron Isles, Yara Greyjoy made her case to be Queen in front of her potential subjects. There’s never been a Queen of the Iron Isles and the men turn to Theon for his opinion. There’s a tense moment where we’re reminded of the obedience and cowardice that was beaten into Reek by Ramsay, but he strongly affirms that is once again a Greyjoy and throws his support fully behind his sister. But then creepy Uncle Euron shows up, talks about his nephew’s dick a bit and makes everyone super uncomfortable and then he starts going on about this foreign girl he’s going to marry who is half his age. The parliament of hairy sea rapists love this idea and decide he should be their new president.
Euron is drowned, survives and is thus proclaimed the new king of the Iron Isles. His first act as monarch of a group of islands full of murderers is (unsurprisingly) murder. He sets out after Theon and Yara, but they’ve already absconded with a fleet of loyal men. I’m liking the set-up here and the Kingsmoot was a lot of fun and reintroduced us to the political state of the Iron Isles. I did feel the Islanders were pretty quick to decide they all wanted to kill Yara when moment ago they were cheering for her.
In the East, after rescuing his Khaleesi, Jorah finally admitted that he is desperately in love with her and that he has Greyscale. These things are probably incompatible so he dismisses himself from her service so he can presumably find a hole to die in. A teary eyed Dany then orders him to find a cure for his Greyscale and the return to her. A warming little intermediate scene as Dany begins her return to Meereen with a Dothraki horde at her back. Hopefully Jorah gets something interesting to do and doesn’t just ride off into the sunset to die.
Bouncing back to Meereen, Varys and Tyrion continue to try to reign in the city. Tyrion invites the High Priestess of Volantis to help assist them, and Varys gets a bit sassy with her. This might have been the weakest scene in the episode since I understand that Varys has a disdain for Red Priests and sorcerers, but surely he’s smart enough to know that if they need her help berating her about religion isn’t the brightest move? Either way it all works out okay and she agrees to assist them. Interestingly they’ve brought up the concept of the “Prince who was promised” several times over the last few episodes, alternatively referring to Daenerys and Jon. Just something to note.
Sansa met up with Littlefinger who continues to conceal the fact that he must have a teleportation device of some sorts. That guy just appears wherever he wants to be. She’s understandably peeved about being left with Ramsay and threatens to have Brienne chop him up into Little-er fingers. Ultimately she wrings some information from the skeevy git and lets him to weasel another day. Of particular note in what she learns is that her great-uncle “Blackfish” survived the Red Wedding and has mustered Tully forces and retaken Riverrun. This is great news and I sure hope the show doesn’t bring him back for 5 minutes just to kill him off. Please? Either way she delivers this titbit to Jon and after a brief brainstorming session with Team Stark they decide to go door to door to try to drum up support for Jon. I’d also be remiss to not mention he continues his quest to seduce Brienne and create a lineage of super soldier children.
Finally, and perhaps the most bizarre thing to happen in quite a while. Arya continues her assassin training, which at this stage consists solely of being hit with a stick and talking about how she super for reals wants to be a faceless man. That’s getting pretty old so thankfully she’s given another tutorial mission since she botched the last one by mutilating the wrong person. Turns out her mark is part of a the Bravosi version of Saturday Night Live and they’re currently in the middle of their Game of Thrones tour. We don’t often get the common person’s view so it’s definitely interesting to take a step back and see how the peasants perceive the events we are so enthralled by. It also gives the audience some breathing room to relax and enjoy the absurdity of a Monty Python Game of Thrones. Here’s hoping they get John Cleese for Tywin in the next showing.
So that concludes perhaps one of the greatest episodes of Game of Thrones to date. A really good episode throughout with many noteworthy individual segments and one of the biggest gut punch finales of the series to date. Maybe it’s because I’ve read the books so I had time to mentally prepare myself for the Red Wedding and the Mountain vs The Viper, or maybe it’s just because we all had a bit of Hodor inside of us. Rest in Peace you big beautiful bastard. Sssshh now. No more Hodering.
-Brandon Collins
