Sascha Kersken

Hi everyone and welcome to the fifth of the weekly episode recaps I’m doing for the new season of my favourite television series, „Game of Thrones“. These recaps contain MASSIVE SPOILERS, so please proceed with caution: DO NOT READ if you haven’t seen the episode yet and intend to do so later.

• Episode 1: „Dragonstone“
• Episode 2: „Stormborn“
• Episode 3: „The Queen’s Justice“
• Episode 4: “The Spoils of War”
• Episode 5: “Eastwatch”
• Episode 6: „Beyond the Wall“
• Episode 7: “The Dragon and the Wolf”

The Battlefield

Bronn emerges from the river at the opposite bank of the battle, and he pulls Jaime out behind him, the latter still wearing his full armour and golden hand. The sellsword makes clear that he won’t let Jaime die until he gets what he wants (a castle). Jaime is quite worried about Dany’s dragons: “That was only one of them. She has two more. If she decides to […] really use them…” – “you’re fucked”, Bronn completes.

Meanwhile, Tyrion sorrowfully walks the charred battlefield while the Dothraki round up the surviving remains of the defeated Lannister army. Daenerys gives them a speech in which she once again expresses her will to destroy “the wheel”, the inevitable cycle of ruling families that “rolls over rich and poor to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of this world”. She offers them to either switch sides or to die. Many of them bend the knee, and almost all of them after Drogon roars.
The only prominent ones who do not kneel are Randyll Tarly and his son Dickon. Randyll explains that he did in fact make a hard choice in betraying Olenna for Cersei, but that he will not support a foreign invader, her patricidal advisor and her “army of savages”. He also denies Tyrion’s suggestion to be sent to the Wall, claiming that he doesn’t accept Dany as his Queen. This leaves her no choice but to execute him. When Dickon weighs in that she will have to kill him as well, his father tries to save him by convincing him to bend the knee, but Dickon will have none of it. And so father and son die hand in hand — to Tyrion’s demise not by beheading, but burned alive by Drogon’s fire.

Kings Landing

Jaime comes home to talk to Cersei. She informs him about her plan to hire mercenaries in order to make up for their lost army. He’s not convinced because he has seen both the Dothraki and just one of three dragons in battle. Cersei asks him what to do instead: sue for peace or even have Tyrion intervene on their behalf, after he murdered both their father and son? Jaime then brings her the news that their brother had nothing to do with Joffrey’s death, and he is convinced that Olenna told the truth because Tommen was so much easier to influence than his monster brother, so if it all had played out to Olenna’s plans, she would have been the true ruler of the Seven Kingdoms through her granddaughter Margaery and her husband, the King. “So we fight and die or we submit and die. I know my choice. A soldier should know his”, Cersei concludes.

Later, Tyrion and Davos arrive at the shores of the capital so that Tyrion can secretly meet with Jaime. Meanwhile, Davos goes to Flea Bottom on his “own business”. Jaime is taken down to the basement of the Red Keep by Bronn who pretends that he will give him a round of sword training. But instead of some clumsy fighting with the wrong hand, Jaime is surprised to find his brother there. He’s still quite angry that Tyrion murdered their father, but he listens anyway. Tyrion tells him that Daenerys doesn’t even want Cersei to bend the knee for now, but that she has a more important request instead.
Meanwhile, Davos has arrived at a blacksmith’s workshop at Flea Bottom and finds Gendry! The showrunners must have noticed the hundreds of Internet memes because Davos says: “Thought you might still be rowing.” The young blacksmith found out that “the safest place is right under the Queen’s nose”. He immediately agrees to come with the old smuggler — and he will bring his weapon of choice: just like his father, King Robert Baratheon, he will be using a massive war-hammer instead of a sword.
When they’re about to embark onto the boat, Davos advises him not to mention to anyone that he’s Robert’s son. They’re surprised by two guards, and Davos is shocked to learn that the bribery rates have skyrocketed since his smuggling days: they now demand fifteen Gold Dragons per person instead of five in total. Just when they’re about to leave, Tyrion comes back, and so Gendry is forced to swing that hammer twice.

Jaime tells Cersei about his meeting with Tyrion — that Daenerys wants an armistice to fight the army of the dead first. The Queen thinks about agreeing because it might be easier to defeat Dany by plotting than by openly fighting. “Whatever will stand in our way, we will defeat it”, she echoes Jaime’s words from last season — and reveals to him that she’s pregnant. She will even openly acknowledge Jaime as the father because “the Lion does not concern himself with the opinion of the sheep”.

Dragonstone

Jon Snow is standing on the rocks in front of the castle when Dany lands, sitting on Drogon’s back. The dragon slowly approaches Jon who takes off his glove to pet the great beast’s snout, and Drogon obviously enjoys it. Daenerys watches in amazement — if Drogon approves of someone that much, he must be a good guy because “they’re not beasts to me […] they’re my children”. She tells him about the battle that she now has fewer enemies than before. She also asks Jon about that “knife in the heart” Davos talked about when they first arrived. “Ser Davos gets carried away”, the King in the North brushes it off. Before they can elaborate on it, Jorah Mormont arrives, cured from greyscale and ready to once again serve his Queen. They greet each other quite affectionately.

Still shocked about the way in which the Tarlys died, Varys is talking to Tyrion who tries to defend Daenerys’s action. He is appalled enough to drink wine, something he usually doesn’t do. It reminds him too much of Dany’s father who used to burn people alive as well, albeit without the help of dragons, making the process much slower and more painful. “I’m not the one doing it”, he used to tell himself when he was forced to watch what the Mad King did to his (alleged) enemies. He agrees that Daenerys is not her father, but that Tyrion has to severely intensify his counselling to make sure she will never be.
Jon receives a message from Bran about the Night King’s army that is slowly marching toward the Wall. He decides that he has to go home to fight them, and use just the few men he has unless Dany joins him. In order to make Cersei believe that the White Walkers are real so that even her armies join the final battle for civilisation (thus allowing Dany’s to do the same), Tyrion suggests to capture a wight and to bring him to Kings Landing. In turn, he needs to talk to Jaime first to make sure that Cersei would even allow them into the city without murdering them at first sight. Davos agrees to smuggle him in so that he can meet his brother. Meanwhile, both Jon and Jorah will lead the raid beyond the Wall. In what looks more like worry than like a command, Dany points out that she hasn’t given Jon permission to leave, which he claims he doesn’t need since he’s a King himself. He trusted her, a stranger, because he felt it would be the best chance they would have, and asks her to do the same — she reluctantly agrees.

Davos and Gendry come back, and they enter the cave in which Jon and his men are mining dragonglass. Davos once again instructs the young smith not to mention his heritage. Gendry soothes him, walks straight towards Jon — and says: “I’m Robert Baratheon’s son; bastard son”. Their meeting almost mirrors Robert’s and Ned’s at Winterfell, in season 1; they’re even teasing each other: “You’re a lot leaner”, Jon says, and Gendry replies: “You’re a lot shorter.” He decides to go to Eastwatch with them, and so he, Jon, Davos and Jorah say goodbye to Dany.

Winterfell

By way of warging, Bran sends a whole flock of ravens from Winterfell beyond the Wall. They cross at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and soon enough find the massive army of the dead. When the Night King looks at the ravens, he startles Bran and subsequently the birds, too. Snapping out of warging mode, Bran tells Maester Wolkan that they need to send ravens through the realm, telling everyone about the approaching walking dead.

Some of the Northern Lords start to feel unrest about Jon’s prolonged absence, up to the point where some of them think they should have chosen Sansa as their Queen instead. Arya watches in disbelief and anger about what looks like Sansa’s growing sense of entitlement — her sister even moved into their parents’ old chambers. “They were insulting Jon and you sat there and listened”, Arya says. “I sat there and listened to their complaints, which is my responsibility as Lady of Winterfell”, Sansa replies. Arya also accuses her of really wanting to become Queen in the North.

Arya spies on Littlefinger because she is sure that something’s foul with him (and of course that should be the default case with that dangerous man). He thinks that he outsmarts her for the moment: he badly hides a raven message in his room, Arya sneaks into it and finds it (we can be sure that if a man like Baelish doesn’t want you to find something, you won’t be able to). The message is the one Cersei once forced Sansa to write to Robb — that he should come to Kings Landing to bend the knee in order to save his father’s life. Petyr’s intentions are clear enough: he wants Arya to become even more suspicious of her sister.

Oldtown

One of Bran’s messages arrives at the Citadel where the Archmaester and some of his old colleagues talk about it, not too favourably — they put the Three-Eyed Raven and all similar business into the realm of fairy-tales. Samwell comes in with some parchments he just finished copying and weighs in that he knows Bran who survived beyond the Wall for years despite being a cripple, something neither the Nights Watch nor the Wildlings managed to do in recent times. Sam suggests that the Citadel uses all of its authority to advise the Lords of Westeros to send their armies northwards, and that they use all of their own resources to research how to defeat the White Walkers and to end the Long Night. But the Maesters think that it could be a ploy by Daenerys to lure all armies away from the lands that they defend against her, and so they decide to do nothing of what Sam suggests. I also have to revoke my former comparison of the Archmaester to Professor McGonagall — she used to believe Harry, Ron and Hermione what they told her, no matter how strange and unusual it must have seemed to her.

One evening, Sam and Gilly are reading as usual. She reads the journal of High Septon Maynard, who was in office during the reign of King Aerys II. Sam only wants to learn how to defeat the Night King, and so he isn’t particularly interested in how many windows the Great Sept of Baelor used to have or how often the High Septon went to the privy — and so he misses the great moment when the love of his life discovers the most important information in Thrones history: that Rhaegar Targaryen had his marriage to Elia Martell annulled to marry someone else instead, in a secret ceremony in Dorne.
In any case, Sam has had it with sitting around in Oldtown, away from all the action. And so he goes on one final raid into the library, and then he, Gilly and Sam jr. leave the city to go back north.

Eastwatch

Jon’s crew arrives at the eastern end of the Wall to go on their suicide mission. They not only meet Tormund who is the commander of the castle, but also the Hound, Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr who have arrived there to help with the war against the White Walkers. Tormund is keeping them in a cell, but after some banter everyone agrees to go on the raid. Jon makes the most important remark: “We’re all on the same side: we’re all breathing.” And so they set out into a raging blizzard, quite a motley crew, the Magnificent Seven, no, Eight, of the Far North.

Takeaways

• Many people have complained that Daenerys’s burning of the Tarlys was just as bad as what her father used to do. But let’s face it: if Alys Karstark or Ned Umber had refused to bend the knee to Jon, he would have been forced to execute them, too. He would have beheaded or hung them for want of a Dragon (who really seems to like him, doesn’t he?), and the method of execution is a mere technicality.
• Speaking of Jon and Dany: they’re growing closer to each other by the hour; at some point, Jon was even shocked when he caught himself staring at her once again.
• So Cersei is pregnant? Until now, the prophecy was right in everything, and it said that she would only have three children. So there are three possibilities: she lied to keep Jaime going, she will have a miscarriage or she won’t survive the next nine months.
• Gilly’s discovery means that Jon Snow is a) not a bastard, but the true born son of Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark, and b) the rightful heir to the Iron Throne in the original Targaryen line of succession. Of course Ned, who must have known that, took the secret to the grave with him because his innocent nephew’s life was of course much more important to him than the defenceless baby’s theoretical claim to the throne. Besides, with the Mad King’s death, the Targaryen reign was over for him — he accepted and supported his old friend Robert as the new King.
• I sincerely hope Littlefinger has underestimated Arya and will meet his end soon. Playing the Stark sisters against each other, he’s a serious threat to the North’s safety.
• Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Jon and his merry men. The other interesting question is: if they really catch a White Walker or a mere wight, will Cersei really listen, or will she think that there’s some trickery at work? Maybe Qyburn can be useful for once and figure out how to defeat those guys more easily by studying a living, pardon, dead specimen.

Conclusion

The season just keeps getting better and more suspenseful. This episode was even better than last week’s, and it once again deserves five out of five Gold Dragons (the new unit since the faith of the seven was denounced as the official religion of the realm when Cersei blew up its central sanctuary).

Hi everyone and welcome to the fourth of the weekly episode recaps I’m doing for the new season of my favourite television series, „Game of Thrones“. These recaps contain MASSIVE SPOILERS, so please proceed with caution: DO NOT READ if you haven’t seen the episode yet and intend to do so later.

• Episode 1: „Dragonstone“
• Episode 2: „Stormborn“
• Episode 3: „The Queen’s Justice“
• Episode 4: “The Spoils of War”
• Episode 5: “Eastwatch”
• Episode 6: „Beyond the Wall“
• Episode 7: “The Dragon and the Wolf”

Highgarden

A very long line of Lannister soldiers is marching back from Highgarden to Kings Landing, bringing home the Tyrells’ gold to pay the Lannister’s debts to the Iron Bank, as well as supplies they took as tribute from the local farmers. Jaime opens the carriage that is full of gold and hands a big bag of gold to Bronn who can’t help but notice that Jaime looks somewhat gloomy. Of course he doesn’t know that Jaime was just reminded of Joffrey’s death in the most unpleasant way possible, but inadvertently, he almost guesses right: “The Queen of Thorns gave you one last prick in the balls before saying goodbye?” Besides, he thinks that all the gold doesn’t really pay for his service; he’s still after a castle. Jaime reminds him that “the more you own, the more it weighs you down” (and as a son of Westeros’s richest family he should know what it feels like to own a lot).

Kings Landing

Tycho Nestorys is surprised how Cersei is actually managing to pay all the debts at once (which is in fact pretty easy when you just went full Rains of Castamere on Westeros’s second richest family). Tycho isn’t too pleased, though, because the full payback actually causes his institution to lose a lot of interest payments, and of course he offers a followup loan. Cersei could indeed use that since she asked Qyburn to make “overtures” to the Golden Company, an elite mercenary company over in Essos.

The North

Littlefinger has a very interesting gift for Bran: the Valyrian Steel dagger that the assassin used when he tried to kill the unconscious Bran in Season 1, stopped by Catelyn and then by Bran’s now deceased direwolf, Summer. Baelish also claims that he will always be their to protect the Stark children since he wasn’t able to save their mother whom he used to be in love with. He tells Bran that the question whom the dagger belonged to started the War of the Five Kings, and bemoans all the “chaos in the world”. Bran loses no time and throws Petyr’s own words from the great monologue in the Season 3 finale back at him: “Chaos is a ladder.” Littlefinger tries — a little too hard — not to twitch.
Next up, Meera Reed comes to say goodbye to Bran. She finds his rather emotionless “thank you” a bit weak: “My brother died for you. Hodor and Summer died for you. I almost died for you.” So he tells her his secret: “I’m not really [Bran] any more.” Meera concludes: “You died in that cave” and leaves in tears.
Then we see Winterfell from afar, in the Snow. Arya is on her horse, looking at her home. Next up, she’s at the gate, and the guards don’t believe a word of what she says (much like the guards of the Red Keep in Season 1), especially because she doesn’t have current information; she cannot know that both Rodrik Cassel and Maester Luwin are dead. They have a nice bit of back and forth until Arya has had enough: “I’m getting into this castle one way or another. If I’m not who I say I am, I won’t last long, but if I am and Sansa finds out you turned me away…” She doesn’t have to finish the sentence; the guards let her into the courtyard. Of course, while they quarrel over who will stay and watch her and who will go tell Sansa, Arya is gone. So they both go to Sansa and promise her to find the “intruder”. She just smiles and replies that she knows where Arya is.
And so, after all those years, the two sisters meet in the crypts. “You shouldn’t have run from the guards”, Sansa says after their hug. “I didn’t run”, Arya replies, “you need better guards.” She also complains about their father’s statue in the crypts: “It should have been carved by someone who knew his face.” Besides, she says she was angry when she heard that someone else got the chance to kill Joffrey: “No matter how long my list grows, he was always first.” Sansa is somewhat bewildered when she learns that her sister has that kill list, and at first she tries to shrug it off as a joke.
Even though Bran claims that he isn’t himself any more, he does hug Arya back, and he checked in on her as he seems to do with all family members: “I saw you at the crossroads.” He suspected that she might go to Kings Landing (which was in fact what she had planned before she had learned that Winterfell was taken back by its rightful resident family) because “Cersei is on her list of names”. Now even Sansa has to admit that said list is in fact real. Arya and Sansa notice the dagger Littlefinger gave to Bran. “He’s not a generous man”, Sansa says, “he wouldn’t give you anything unless he thought he would get something back”. Which doesn’t matter, according to Bran, because it’s of no use to him, and so he gives it to Arya.

A few days later, Arya sees Brienne training Podrick at swordplay in the courtyard. Arya wants a round of her own since the Master-at-Arms didn’t beat the Hound, unlike Brienne. Soon enough, a very fine swordplay sequence ensues, ending in a draw. “Who taught you how to do that?” Brienne asks quite surprised. “No one”, Arya answers. The subsequent exchange of stares between Arya and Littlefinger, who has watched from the balustrade with Sansa, is quite interesting — Arya clearly looks threatening while he cannot fully hide a bit of fear.

Dragonstone

Daenerys and Missandei are walking down the long staircase from the castle to the beach. The Queen’s trusted advisor is worried about Grey Worm who hasn’t returned from Casterly Rock yet. Daenerys tries to soothe her and also asks about the relationship her and the eunuch officer: “What happened?” Missandei just replies: “Many things.”
At the bottom of the stairs, they meet Jon Snow who has been waiting for them. He leads them into the cave where they’re mining for dragonglass. Walking on with the Queen alone, he shows her ancient carvings made by the Children of the Forest. The pictures tell the story of how they were in that very cave together with the First Men, overcoming their differences and bonding against their common enemy: the White Walkers. Interestingly we know from one of Bran’s visions that the Night King himself was created by the Children who pierced a mortal man’s heart with dragonglass in order to fight the First Men. It looks like they weren’t able to control him in a kind of “the spirits that I called” fashion and had to ask their former enemies for help. “We need to do the same if we’re gonna survive”, Jon tells Dany. “I will fight for you”, she decides, but of course she keeps insisting that he bends the knee. It will be interesting to see who of them falters first, especially as it looks like they’re slowly warming up to each other.
Right when they come out of the cave, Tyrion and Varys are there and inform them that the Unsullied have conquered Casterly Rock. What sounds like good news is in fact just Jaime’s trap they ran into, and so Dany soon is furious: “All my allies are gone!” Tyrion tries to convince her that besieging Kings Landing is still the right plan, but she’s had it. “Enough with the clever plans”, she declares, looking at her dragons who are circling over the sea. She wants to fly to the Red Keep and to confront Cersei herself, but first she asks Jon for his council. He says that by hatching dragons, she made something impossible happen, and that people may hope for her to make other impossible things happen, especially to build a better world “than the shit one they’ve known.” By burning cities and castles, however, she would only prove that she is no better but just more of the same.

When Daenerys is gone, Davos asks Jon what he thinks of the Queen. “She has a good heart”, the King in the North replies, which makes his Hand joke: “I’ve noticed you staring at her good heart”. Missandei asks Jon whether his alleged father and he don’t share a last name. When learning why, she explains that they don’t have marriage in Naath, which makes the concept of bastards unknown to them. She also makes clear that everyone who followed Dany from Essos did so out of their own free will, choosing her as their Queen because they believe in her.
While they’re all standing at the shore, a Greyjoy ship arrives. It’s the one that saved Theon. The confrontation between the latter and Jon is not too friendly because the King cannot simply forgive what Theon did to his family. The only reason he doesn’t kill him right away is that he saved Sansa from Ramsay. Theon has come to tell the Queen that his sister Yara was taken prisoner by their uncle Euron. Jon replies that “the Queen is gone”.

The scene switches to the Lannister Army, most of whom have already crossed the Blackwater — we learn that especially the gold has made it through the gates of the Red Keep. Randyll Tarly suggests flogging stragglers to speed up the rest of the process, but Jaime proves once again to be the better man by suggesting to “give them fair warning first”. Bronn has his “Bronn moment” when he laughs about Dickon Tarly’s first name (and the latter doesn’t even go full Draco Malfoy about it). The latter didn’t expect war to smell that bad, but of course Bronn tells him that “men shit themselves when they die”.

All of a sudden, a horde of Dothraki on horseback can be heard, and soon also be seen all over the horizon. The remaining Lannister force hastily forms a line of defence. But they have no chance against the mightiest weapon that also approaches: Daenerys on Drogon’s back. The large dragon has been compared to a fighter jet attacking a medieval army by many commenters — he quickly burns an opening into the line of defence so that the Dothraki can easily overrun their opponents. One must admit that the Lannister army fights bravely, but they don’t really stand a chance against the superior numbers.
Meanwhile, Dany makes Drogon burn down the long trek of supplies — this will probably make the siege on Kings Landing much quicker.
Finally, Jaime decides to use the scorpion device Qyburn has built to shoot the Targaryen Air Force out of the sky. With his one hand, he cannot use it himself, and so Bronn gets his chance at being Bard the Bowman. Before he even gets there, he loses both his horse and his bag of gold.
Tyrion is standing on a hill with several Dothraki. One of them says in his mother tongue: “Your people don’t know how to fight”. We don’t know whether Tyrion understands it; his sullen look may well be due to the horror of the battle he has to witness.
Bronn’s second shooting attempt succeeds. Drogon doesn’t die, but he’s forced to perform an emergency landing and destroys the scorpion once he has done so. When Dany tries to pull the scorpion bolt out of her child’s hide, Jaime gets desperate and charges at her with a spear. He must truly be afraid that she will burn the city to the ground, just like her father whom he once killed to prevent just that. “Flee, you idiot”, Tyrion mutters under his breath, watching his brother on that suicide mission. Drogon turns around and breathes fire, but in the very last moment, someone (probably Bronn) arrives on another horse, shoves Jaime off his, and they both fall into the water. The episode ends with Jaime slowly sinking to the ground due to the weight of his armour and his golden hand.

Takeaways

• So Cersei wants to hire the Golden Company. In the books, they were founded by Blackfyre (a bastard branch of House Targaryen) loyalists who had fled to Essos after a failed coup d’état. They have never broken a contract before we meet them, but now they do because they support a young boy called Aegon. That boy, who posed as the son of exiled knight Jon Connington, is believed by some to be the elder son of Rhaegar Targaryen (who was switched with a peasant boy before the Mountain killed Aegon’s sister and said boy). Many readers, myself included, believe that he isn’t really Aegon VI Targaryen, but a Blackfyre because that would be the only reason for the Golden Company to break a contract for him. (He might be the son of Illyrio Mopatis and his deceased wife, Serra, whose description fits with the features of a Targaryen or Blackfyre.) Now, I don’t think that they will introduce Aegon, fake or not, at the eleventh hour of the show. In the show, the Golden Company might willingly fight for Cersei out of their contempt towards Targaryens in general and the current one, Dany, in particular. I have a crazy idea who might have ended up among their ranks: Gendry! He could have rowed from Dragonstone to Essos, joined them as a blacksmith and kept a low profile for a few years. Maybe they even support his claim for the throne as Robert’s last living heir (and stick the finger to Cersei), but in any case I think we’re going to meet him among them.
• Jaime will probably survive, or at least I hope so. The Internet is speculating about the person who saved him. I’m pretty sure it was Bronn, but some think it was Dickon Tarly or even Tyrion (which is ridiculous because the person was way too tall).
• Did the Tarlys survive the battle? And is that of any consequence anyway?
• And of course: is Littlefinger finally out of tricks, or will he pull something new and unexpected out of his sleeve?

Conclusion

At just 47 minutes, this was thee shortest episode not only of the current season, but of the series as such. And it was quite intense, especially the dragon action battle at its end. Once again, I have to give it the full five out of five seven-pointed stars. Besides, I may have to find a new unit. As Jaime and Bronn correctly pointed out at the beginning of the episode, there is no more High Septon – and even the window of the throne room in the Red Keep now sports a Lannister Lion instead of the ancient symbol of the faith.

Hi everyone and welcome to the third of the weekly episode recaps I’m doing for the new season of my favourite television series, „Game of Thrones“. These recaps contain MASSIVE SPOILERS, so please proceed with caution: DO NOT READ if you haven’t seen the episode yet and intend to do so later.

• Episode 1: “Dragonstone”
• Episode 2: “Stormborn”
• Episode 3: “The Queen’s Justice”
• Episode 4: “The Spoils of War”
• Episode 5: “Eastwatch”
• Episode 6: „Beyond the Wall“
• Episode 7: “The Dragon and the Wolf”

Dragonstone

Jon and Davos arrive at Dragonstone. At the shore, they are greeted by Tyrion, Missandei and several Dothraki whom they reluctantly hand their weapons upon Missandei’s request. On the long ascent, Tyrion and Jon talk about the former’s sham marriage to Sansa. “She’s much smarter than she lets on”, Tyrion remarks, to which Jon replies: “She’s starting to let on”. The Hand of the Queen also says that he would have advised Jon not to come if he were his Hand because “Stark Men don’t fare well when they travel south”. Right after saying he isn’t a Stark (but of course unaware who he really is), Jon ducks quickly because one of the dragons is flying closely over him. So, just like in the books, there is no automatic “I’m a Targaryen, I like them and they like me” notion.
Meanwhile, Melisandre says goodbye to Varys; she is about to travel to Volantis and will not meet Jon and Davos again, which would be very awkward anyway, given their last parting. She’s also convinced that she has done her part in bringing “ice and fire together”, unaware that Jon himself already is both. She reveals to Varys that she will be back because they both will have to die in the “strange land” of Westeros.
When Jon enters Dany’s throne room, Missandei enumerates the Queen’s various titles, to which Davos rather awkwardly replies: “This is Jon Snow… he’s King in the North”. In the following direct conversation between Jon and Daenerys, both stand their ground — the Queen insists that he bends the knee to become Warden of the North like his ancestors, while he insists that the old order was cancelled by her father, Mad King Aerys, when he burned Jon’s grandfather and uncle alive. From that low point, the conversation does get a little better. Jon isn’t here to play games of thrones but to convince the new Queen to fight the real enemy with him: the Army of the Dead. Even Tyrion has a hard time to believe a word of it, but he must admit that he doesn’t take Jon for a liar or a madman.
Dany descends from her throne to look him in the eye, and she tells him how she survived numerous assassination attempts and all kinds of dishonour: “Faith – not in any gods, or myths, or legends, but in myself”. To which Davos replies that the King in the North is being believed in by those who named him King, just like the men of the Nights Watch chose him as their leader before. He argues that Jon fought the things Dany doesn’t believe in for the good of his people, but he stops at “he took a knife to his heart for his people, he gave his own l…”, realising too late what he said. Dany concludes that by declaring himself King in the North, he’s in open rebellion to her, the “rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms”.
Before she can elaborate on a conclusion to that, Varys comes in and whispers something in her ear. We can assume that it’s the bad news of Yara’s sunken fleet and of her uncle Euron capturing her and the Dornish Ladies. The composure Dany shows is royal as always; she will never admit any weakness in front of strangers. Instead, she offers them baths and meals before she excuses herself. “Am I your prisoner?”, Jon asks the leaving Queen, to which she replies: “Not yet.”

Later, Jon and Tyrion meet at the shore, where Tyrion tells the King in the North that he does in fact believe him about the White Walkers: “I trust the eyes of an honest man more than I trust what everybody knows”. Tyrion has no idea how to convince Dany to help Jon fight an enemy she has never seen and probably doesn’t believe in. He’s full of self doubt anyway because he was unable to predict the Greyjoy attack. But being a good advisor, he still wants to make the unlikely deal between his Queen and Jon Snow happen, seeking common ground (“She protects people from monsters, just like you”) and asking Jon whether there’s something he can do, something that’s in his power. Well, there is in fact something: Tyrion is next seen trying to convince Dany of allowing Jon to mine the cache of dragon glass under the castle. This turns out difficult because the Queen seems to question his advice more than she used to. She even sees through his usual “a wise man once said” quotes (in this case: “You should never believe a thing just because you want to believe it”), thinking he’s masking his own words as historic wisdom. His answer is true Tyrion again: “I would never do that… to you”.
In her next scene with Jon, Daenerys behaves a bit more diplomatic than before, seeking common ground with him, like dead brothers. There’s also that little gem of an exchange in which Jon says that Tyrion “enjoys talking”, to which Dany replies: “We all enjoy what we’re good at”. Jon disagrees: “I don’t”. (He said he was done fighting after his resurrection, and yet he has hardly spent a week without continuing to do so.) Daenerys has also decided that she will allow him to mine dragon glass.

In the war council, Dany decides to go after Euron’s fleet with her dragons, but her advisors do not approve it. They talk about the attack on Casterly Rock, which is shown during Tyrion’s speech about it. However, it proves far easier than Tyrion thinks from afar, even though he built a secret entrance while Tywin had made him overseer of the castle’s sewers. The Unsullied take the Rock easily because there aren’t nearly as many men as Tyrion expected. And as soon as the Unsullied have taken the castle, their fleet is burnt down. Grey Worm asks a dying Lannister soldier where the main force is.

Instead of an answer, we see Jaime, Bronn and the traitor Randyll Tarly lead a massive army to Highgarden, which falls and will provide the Queen with the means to pay back the debt to the Iron Bank. Lady Olenna calmly watches the whole affair from her tower chamber. When the Lannister army has won, Jaime enters her chamber alone. They talk about Joffrey (“He really was a cunt, wasn’t he?”, Olenna says) and about his dear mother who is “a monster, you know that”. She even goes as far as concluding: “She’s a disease. I regret my role in spreading it. You will, too”. He is decent enough to allow her to drink poison instead of having Cersei find new and creative ways to torture her. After drinking the whole glass of poisoned wine, she reveals the final, painful truth to Jaime: that it was her who poisoned his son (her words; she knows exactly who Joffrey’s father was). The episode ends with Olenna saying “Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me”, Jaime blinking away tears and leaving the room, and “The Rains of Castamere” playing.

Kings Landing

In the aftermath of Euron’s attack, Theon is fished out of the sea by the crew of a ship, one of the very few of his sister’s ships that survived the sea battle. He tells them that Yara was taken alive. Next we can see Euron parade her, Ellaria and her daughter through the streets of Kings Landing. The people enjoy the show, cheering him on and throwing stuff and insults at the captured women. He rides into the Red Keep’s throne room on horseback, just like Tywin way back in season 3 (his horse doesn’t shit into the aisle like Tywin’s though). So the gift he has for Cersei are Ellaria and the surviving Sand Snake. Cersei is impressed and promises him what his heart desires (her hand in marriage) “when the war is won”. Of course, the crazy pirate can’t miss yet another chance to insult Jaime, asking him for sex advice about his lover and twin sister. At this point, Cersei’s and Jaime’s special relationship must be the worst kept secret of the Seven Kingdoms.
Next up, Cersei is in the dungeons to dish out punishment, or rather revenge, to Ellaria. She has decided to give the temporary ruler of Dorne a taste of her own medicine by poisoning her daughter, just like Ellaria murdered hers. Mother and daughter are tied to opposite walls, just out of reach of each other, and the mother will be forced to watch her daughter’s agonising death.
In the following scene, we can see how much of a Mad Queen in the image of Aerys II Targaryen Cersei has become: it is said about the Mad King that burning people alive used to sexually arouse him. Likewise, Cersei walks straight into Jaime’s chambers after punishing Ellaria and the Sand Snake. In a reversal of roles from the scene in the Sept in season 4, it’s Jaime who says no, which Cersei ignores. Later, she opens the door to her knocking handmaiden because “I’m the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and I do as I please”. Since said handmaiden has been in her service for years (but adopted the Queen’s new hairstyle), we can assume that she doesn’t gossip too much, but at this point, Cersei doesn’t really care either way.
Tycho Nestorys, everyone’s favourite clerk of the Iron Bank of Braavos (portrayed by Mark Gatiss) is back, reminding Cersei of the crown’s considerable debt to his institution. After some back and forth, she assures him that the debt will be paid off in a fortnight because she is very sure of something that we will learn later in this episode.

The North

At Winterfell, Sansa proves to be a very capable leader, making sure that everyone will remain fed and warm during the upcoming long winter. She has also stopped to listen to Littlefinger, even though not all of his advice is bad. He encourages her to “fight every battle always, everywhere in your mind”, but we can see that she has started to do so some time ago — against him, among other people. He also allows insight into how his own mind works: “Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every single possible series of events is happening, all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you”.
Bran and Meera arrive at Winterfell. Sansa notices quickly that he is emotionally distant, which makes sense because his mind is overloaded with an endless supply of events, past and present. He truly is the Three-Eyed Raven but he hasn’t fully adapted to it yet. And of course he “can never be Lord of anything”, refusing his rightful place as Lord of Winterfell. He gives her a glimpse into how much he can see by reminding her of the most horrible experience of her life: her wedding to Ramsay Bolton.

Oldtown

The Archmaester examines Jorah and finds out that the greyscale has disappeared. He seemingly plays along with Jorah’s version that it must have been “the rest and the climate” that cured him, but of course he doesn’t believe it for a single moment and asks Sam to come to his study in the evening. Jorah and Samwell bid each other a warm farewell.
Next, the Archmaester scolds Sam for trying to cure Jorah, and at the same time he commends him for achieving it. Then he goes on to assign the equivalent of writing “I must listen to the Archmaester” a hundred times or more often to him, in the form of old, rotting manuscripts that need to be copied. If he resembles any teacher figure from fiction, it would be Minerva McGonagall. (And maybe the manuscripts are even interesting or useful, and the Archmaester is really doing Sam a favour while making it look like punishment.)

Takeaways

• Will Dany and her three children warm up to Jon’s northern charms? So far, their conversations have been a little chilly, but it’s interesting to see how proud they both are and how they have been standing their ground.
• We can look forward to seeing some dragon battle action soon enough — it’s the only way Daenerys can hope to turn the tide in the war. So far she’s looking like the loser; all of the great plans she made in last week’s episode have failed, except for taking Casterly Rock, but the Lannisters managed to turn even that into a pyrrhic victory.
• Where was Arya in this episode? She’s on her way to Winterfell now, so we can hope for an even greater Stark reunion next episode.
• The good people of Kings Landing seem to enjoy whatever show is offered to them. It makes no difference to them whether it’s a naked Cersei walking through the city by the command of religious fanatics, or three women being paraded through the streets by a pirate.
• Jaime must be near the point of snapping — first that impertinent pirate Euron Greyjoy is threatening to take Cersei away from him in the most unsubtle manner imaginable, and then Olenna reveals to him how his son Joffrey really died.
• The final exchange between Jaime and Olenna may be one of the greatest in Thrones history; the incredible Diana Rigg and the equally fantastic Nikolaj Coster-Waldau deliver the performance of their lifetimes.

Conclusion

This was the best episode of the new season so far. Finally, after more than six seasons, Jon and Dany have met, and it’s interesting to see these two we have known individually for such a long time interact. This episode deserves the full 5 out of 5 seven-pointed stars, even though I’m sure that there will be even greater things coming up.

Hi everyone and welcome to the second of the weekly episode recaps I’m doing for the new season of my favourite television series, „Game of Thrones“. These recaps contain MASSIVE SPOILERS, so please proceed with caution: DO NOT READ if you haven’t seen the episode yet and intend to do so later.

• Episode 1, “Dragonstone”
• Episode 2, “Stormborn”
• Episode 3, “The Queen’s Justice”
• Episode 4: “The Spoils of War”
• Episode 5: “Eastwatch”
• Episode 6: „Beyond the Wall“
• Episode 7: “The Dragon and the Wolf”

Dragonstone

Tyrion, who famously remained silent in last week’s episode, the first time to do so since he appeared on the show, has one of the first important lines, discouraging Daenerys from taking the direct approach: “Conquering Westeros would be easy for you, but you’re not here to be Queen of the Ashes.” Varys puts in a history lesson about her father and Robert Baratheon after Dany questions his loyalty: “There have been few rulers in history as cruel as the Mad King. Robert was neither mad nor cruel; he simply had no interest in being King.” He assures Daenerys that he will be the best advisor she can ever hope to have: “The one the Realm needs. Incompetence should not be rewarded with blind loyalty.” Melisandre arrives at Dragonstone, discussing the possibility that Dany might be “The Prince that was promised” from the prophecy (Missandei points out that the Valyrian word has no gender; it can easily mean both Prince or Princess). Both Melisandre and Tyrion advise the Queen to ally with Jon Snow. Dany agrees. “Send a raven north”, she says to Tyrion. “Tell Jon Snow that his Queen invites him to come to Dragonstone – and bend the knee.”

In a war council, Yara Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand try to convince Daenerys to attack Kings Landing at once with their joint fleets and the dragons. Tyrion dislikes the proposal, claiming tens of thousands of innocents would die. When Ellaria counters that “it’s called war”, he reminds her how she poisoned his innocent niece Myrcella. “She was a Lannister. There are no innocent Lannisters”, she says to Tyrion, still grief-stricken about her lover Oberyn’s death as Tyrion’s champion in the trial by combat. Dany reminds her, however, that he’s also Hand of the Queen and has to be treated with respect. She will not attack Kings Landing because she’s “not here to be Queen of the Ashes.” Instead, she decided to follow Tyrion’s plan to lay siege to the capital – without Dothraki and Unsullied (because Cersei could use that to appeal on Westerosi patriotism), but with the combined Tyrell and Martell armies; the latter will be shipped to the capital by Yara’s fleet. Meanwhile, the Unsullied will conquer the Lannisters’ ancestral seat, Casterly Rock. All three Ladies – Yara Greyjoy, Ellaria Sand and Olenna Tyrell – eventually agree to the plan.

In a private conversation afterwards, Olenna tells her that she outlived many clever men by ignoring them. “The Lords of Westeros are sheep. Are you a sheep? No, you’re a Dragon. Be a Dragon.”

Missandei and Grey Worm say goodbye to each other because he will sail off to Casterly Rock the next day. He declares his love for her by saying that she is his weakness – unlike any other Unsullied (who are subjected to brutal “therapies” to either overcome their fears or die in the process) he never was afraid of anything until he met her. In the first intimate scene of the new season, they act upon their mutual love despite the fact that Grey Worm was castrated at a young age, like all Unsullied. But the very tasteful scene shows that true love knows more than one way.

When Yara’s fleet has sailed off, she can be seen drinking and then making out with Ellaria. They don’t get anywhere before their fleet is being attacked by Uncle Euron’s. The first real battle of the new season breaks loose, and for the first time, we’re getting a taste of the crazy pirate who was promised. He slaughters sailor after sailor while laughing happily, and also kills two of the three Sand Snakes. The third one and Ellaria are captured alive by his men. We also witness live how Euron cuts someone’s tongue out, something he has allegedly done to all of his crew (who never talk, in line with that claim). When he finally captures Yara herself and holds a knife to her throat, her brother Theon snaps back into Reek mode, with the fearful look upon his face. He cannot hope to help Yara, and so he jumps over board, followed by his uncle’s maniacal and very amused laughter. The episode ends with him in the water, looking at the burning remains of the sunken fleet and Euron sailing off.

The North

Tyrion’s message arrives (and is nothing like the one Dany asked him to write). Jon, Sansa and Davos consider the options: should Jon go and meet the new Queen, or should they stay at Winterfell?

Then a raven arrives from the Citadel with a message by Samwell, telling Jon about the mountain of dragon glass under Dragonstone. This convinces him to go there for real with Davos, to mine the dragon glass and to ask Dany for assistance in the war against the White Walkers. For once, even Lady Lyanna Mormont agrees with the other Lords; they all think he shouldn’t go there because they think it’s a trap, “a Targaryen can’t be trusted”. Lyanna adds that they need the King in the North to stay in the actual North. Sansa, too, isn’t too fond of the idea, until Jon assures her that he’s going to leave Winterfell in good hands: hers. This earns another smirk from Littlefinger, who is subsequently down in the crypts with Jon. He tries to assure the King that he is not one of his “many enemies”. But when he says that he loves “Sansa as I loved her mother”, Jon confronts him, almost exactly mirroring Ned’s “You’re a funny man” moment from way back in the first season. “Touch my sister, and I’ll kill you myself”, he swears.

Kings Landing

Queen Cersei tries to win over more allies, including sworn Tyrell Bannerman Randyll Tarly. He reminds her and all the summoned Lords that Dany has three dragons, “the same as Aegon when he conquered the Seven Kingdoms”. Qyburn assures him and everyone else that they’re working on a solution. Jaime pulls him aside and tries to convince him to be the principal General in the coming war. Randyll is very reluctant because his oath to House Tyrell means something to him as it always has for his family. Jaime tries to depict Daenerys’s army as “foreign savages” and finally appeals on Randyll’s ambition: “When the war is won, the Queen will need a new Warden of the South, and I can think of no better man than Randyll Tarly.” This will be interesting, given the fact that his Liege Lady agreed to helping the other side.

In the dungeons below the Red Keep, Qyburn and Cersei look at the dragon skulls and talk about how to defeat a dragon. Qyburn uncovers a device and asks Cersei to pull a lever. Surprisingly, the spear that is released with full force easily runs through the skull of Balerion the Dread, Aegon’s largest and most dangerous dragon.

Oldtown

The Archmaester is convinced that Jorah’s greyscale is far too progressed to be stopped – and indeed we can see that it now covers half his chest. “You should have cut off your arm before the infection spread”. The next day, he says, a ship will take Jorah to the ruins of Old Valyria to live out the rest of his life with the Stone Men. During the conversation, Sam learns that his last name is Mormont.

Later in the Library, Samwell tells the Archmaester that he may have found a way to cure Jorah in the works of Archmaester Pylos. His modern-day successor is aware of the procedure but also states that it has been forbidden since because it is too dangerous: Pylos himself died of greyscale.

At night, Jorah spends what he thinks of as his last night in civilisation to write a letter to Daenerys, when Sam comes into his room with a trolley full of medical supplies. He makes the knight drink a lot of rum because the procedure will be painful. It consists of removing all of the infected tissue and then applying some ointment. It is incredibly painful, but Jorah must not scream for fear of the forbidden treatment to be discovered. It also looks quite disgusting.

The Riverlands

In a tavern, Arya meets her old friend Hot Pie who is treating her with a very tasty, well, hot pie. She compliments him because it’s much better than the ones she prepared recently (and she doesn’t go into details of their main ingredients). When she learns from him that the Boltons are dead, defeated by Jon who is now King in the North, she postpones her Queen-killing plans and decides to ride north instead. Hot Pie keeps calling her “Arry”, but also concludes: “I can’t believe I took you for a boy — you’re pretty.”

Resting in the woods and shivering by a small campfire, she notices that her horse is growing more and more restless. Soon, they are surrounded by a large pack of wolves. It looks somewhat menacing until the alpha arrives, a huge direwolf: Nymeria! They haven’t met since the season 1, when Arya had to chase her wolf off to avoid her being killed by Cersei (who then had Sansa’s direwolf Lady killed instead). When Nymeria refuses to come with her, Arya decides: “It’s not you.” She sounds somewhat sad when she says that.

Takeaways

• The meeting of Jon and his aunt Daenerys is now well under way, but Jon left Winterfell before Bran arrived there. This means he has no idea they’re related. How will it play out?
• The conflict of interest Randyll Tarly is heading into will be interesting: the Lannisters asked him to switch allegiance (or to support the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms) while his Liege Lady wants his armies to lay siege upon Kings Landing. He doesn’t know the latter yet, but a message will probably wait for him once he arrives back at Horn Hill. Also, in this episode we learned that there’s more to him than the racist asshole we met last season – he’s a loyal bannerman (“I’m a Tarly […] We are no plotters and schemers”) and a competent military leader, too.
• Randyll’s son Samwell has meanwhile proven beyond all doubt that he is one of the bravest people in Westeros: he knows full well that he could be killed by greyscale (“or worse, expelled”, my inner Hermione Granger whispers) if he applies Archmaester Pylos’s cure to Jorah, but he still goes along with it. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he will be rewarded for his bravery and not attract the disease himself.
• Now that Jon has left Winterfell and Sansa is in charge, will Baelish plan his ultimate move on her, in terms of relationship and/or power? And if so, how will she respond? Is she finally fed up with him?
• What will happen if Bran arrives during Jon’s absence and tells Sansa about Jon’s true parentage. He is half a Targaryen, after all, and many Northern Lords believe that this family “cannot be trusted”.
• One of the greatest differences between books and show is finally confirmed: while all Stark children are wargs in the novels, only Bran seems to be one on the television series: Arya cannot really communicate with her former direwolf Nymeria. Or is her wolf simply as stubborn as she is and will make her own decisions?
• When Euron sails away, someone is pierced by a spike on the ship’s bow (Ellaria? The last of the Sand Snakes?) and someone else is hanging from it. I don’t know whether anyone has properly identified them, but it might be important.
• Has Theon switched back into Reek mode for good, or has he made the right decision, knowing that he couldn’t possibly help Yara aboard the ship? Could he plan to get help and be able to do it?
• Will Qyburn’s device shoot a living dragon from the sky? On the one hand, it is strong enough to pierce a dragon’s skull, but on the other hand, a flying dragon is incredibly fast. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this.

Conclusion

More and more wheels are being set in motion for the upcoming wars, and we were treated to the first battle, and it looked fantastic. We also got the first taste of Uncle Euron’s alleged brutality and madness. And finally, there were two very heartwarming but bittersweet reminiscences of season 1: Jon confronting Littlefinger Ned-style, and Arya meeting Nymeria again. This episode has once again earned four out of five seven-pointed stars: all in all it was great, but some parts feel a bit rushed while others take too much time. Extra kudos for the cut from the very graphic greyscale treatment to someone cutting a meat pie in the tavern.