We're back again for another week. Is Jon Snow still dead? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
What'chu Talkin' 'bout, Hodor?
The Three-Eyed Raven has spent the past year teaching Bran how to use his powers, which apparently include the ability to see into the past. As it turns out, Hodor was a stable boy named Willis, although it's probably spelled Wylys or something like that. Meera's a bit bored, but the weird child of the forest girl tells her they won't be hanging out under the tree forever and Bran will need her help when they leave.
The Adventures of Grumpy Dwarf and Baldy No Balls
The dragons in the dungeon are refusing to eat, so Tyrion unchains them.
Temporary Blindness
The girl comes back to whoop Arya's ass some more. Afterwards, a man who is not Jaqen H'ghar makes Arya three increasingly enticing offers if she'll tell him her name. She refuses, and he takes her off the street for more training. Could the next week feature a montage? I sure hope so.
Worst Kingsguard Ever
A drunk man makes some lewd comments about Cersei, so Ser Frankenmountain tracks him down and smashes his head like a grape against a wall. Later, Tommen and Jaime view Myrcella's body in the great sept. The High Sparrow shows up to jaw a bit, and Jaime sends Tommen to talk to his mother while he has a chat with the old man. He's fully willing to chop his head off, but the twenty or so members of the Faith Militant who show up to intimidate him prevent that.
Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Podrick tries to start a fire. Theon says goodbye to Sansa, then takes a horse and rides home.
Hey, remember the Ironborn?
Yara informs her father that the Ironborn have lost their last foothold on the mainland. He wants to invade some more towns, but she doesn't think it's a good idea. He's the king, though, so he doesn't have to listen to her, and he storms off... into a storm. While crossing a rope bridge, he runs into his brother Euron, newly returned from somewhere. After a brief, unkind conversation, Euron tosses his brother over the edge, thus bringing an end to The War of the Five Kings. Time for a kingsmoot.
Ramsay, Shitlord of Winterfell
Walda gives birth to a son, so Ramsay gives his father a big, congratulatory hug, then shanks him while Lord Karstark looks on. Ramsay then summons his stepmother and baby brother, leads them to the kennel and has the dogs tear them apart.
Jon is Dead, Jon is Dead, I am the Walrus
It's night, and with Davos and the loyalists refusing to surrender, Ser Alliser orders a brother to break down the door to the room holding Jon's body. Before they break through, someone bigger smashes down an even bigger door. Wun Wun charges through the gate of Castle Black, followed by Edd, Tormund, and enough wildlings to slaughter what's left of the Night's Watch. A few of the brothers want to fight, but when one of them shoots an arrow into the giant's shoulder, Wun Wun smashes him against the wall, and they quickly lose the will to fight. Edd has the conspirators locked up in the cells beneath the castle.
Afterwards, Davos asks Melisandre if she has the power to resurrect Jon. She met Thoros of Myr a few seasons back, so she knows it's technically possible, but she's never done it before. Davos convinces her to try, so she gives Jon a haircut while she chants over him. It doesn't seem to work, so everyone leaves the room a little bummed out. But, then Jon pops back to life as soon as he's alone.
What I Liked
-They only spent two episodes beating up Arya on the street. It would've gotten really old if they'd pushed it any further than that.
-Wun Wun smash! It's a very enjoyable moment.
What I Hated
-Tyrion confirms that the dragons know Missandei and consider her a friend, then doesn't take her with him when he goes to unchain them. What the hell was the point of that?
-The long, drawn out murder of Walda and the baby. That was a completely unnecessary scene. Immediately after he kills Roose, Ramsay says "Send for Lady Walda and the baby." We already know what he's going to do, and not showing it would save us three minutes of us waiting to see how he does it.
-Tormund doesn't kill Olly when he charges at him with a sword. Seriously, fuck Olly.
-Roose Bolton, evil genius, lets his son stab him to death. There's no particular reason why he would let his psychotic son hug him. Nor does there seem to be any reason why the Karstarks would support a sadistic killer over his more level-headed father. But the plot demands it, so Roose is dead.
Final Thoughts
The child of the forest's makeup has changed so much that I'm honestly not sure it's the same character. At the end of season four, she barely looked non-human, but now her skin seems to be a different colour.
I thought they were going to completely ignore all the stuff from the books related to the Greyjoys, but I guess they need some way to get Daenerys over to Westeros, and she's certainly not using the boats she had docked in Meereen.
There's no particular reason why Harald Karstark shouldn't immediately betray Ramsay and kill him. Almost everyone hates the Boltons, and most of their men follow Ramsay out of fear, not respect. There's no living heir, nor is there any way to produce one while Sansa is missing, and the Lannisters will march up and wipe them out as soon as winter ends. Granted, that could be several years, but spring will come eventually. And without any Starks around, the Karstarks have a pretty good claim to being the legitimate lords of Winterfell, anyway. A quick knife to Ramsay's back would get Harald a lot of goodwill, and a decent chunk of land. Which, of course, means that it won't happen. For whatever reason, the writers have decided that Ramsay is more or less completely invincible, even going so far as two of the greatest tacticians in Westeros (Stannis and Roose) into complete morons so he can defeat them. Everyone will believe his story about his father and stepmother being poisoned, and no one will rat him out to the Freys, even though it would be relatively easy to do without getting caught.
Ser Davos asking Melisandre to resurrect Jon doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. While he's seen her perform some pretty amazing magic in the past, he has no reason to believe that she has the power to bring someone back from the dead. He asks her because the plot needs Jon to come back, and the writers decided she wouldn't make the attempt of her own volition.
A lot of the stuff that goes against character or makes no sense seems to be happening because the writers know where they're trying to go, but they don't know how they're supposed to get there. Now that they diverged from and overtaken the books, the paths they need to take aren't spelled out for them, so they're moving the plot along in a really ham-handed way.
Petyr Baelish, brilliant mastermind, and proximate cause of a great deal of the current strife south of the Wall is still missing. He's probably hanging out with Gendry.
It doesn't matter how much walking around in his underwear he does in the next episode, Jon Snow is still dead to me, dammit.
Now that I've gone back over it, it doesn't seem like a whole heck of a lot happened in this episode, either. Everything just moves really slowly and eats up a lot of time. Tyrion telling a story while he unchains the dragons is a nice character moment, but it doesn't really advance the plot all that much. Saying goodbye to Theon eats up a couple minutes, killing Walda takes three minutes, and resurrecting Jon takes five. Again, interesting character bits, but there's a lot to cover if the show's going to have any kind of satisfying conclusion. It was somewhat less stupid than the previous episode, though, and didn't include anything Dorne-related, so it's definitely a bit of an improvement. Plus it gets a bonus for Wun Wun smashing that guy against the wall.
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