A few characters we thought were gone forever return, and for the first time all season, no one important dies on this week's episode of Game of Thrones.
The Three-Eyed Stark
Hodor's a fine doorstop, but even he can't hold back an onslaught of World War Z style zombies forever. Meera drags Bran as far as she can, but the wights are soon upon them, and all seems lost. Until a masked man on a horse arrives and burninates the zombies with a censer. When the immediate threat gone, Meera and Bran hop on the horse (well, they don't really show how Bran gets up there) and they ride away. It turns out the dude is Benjen Stark. He was stabbed by a White Walker and left for dead, but the Children stuck a piece of dragon glass in his heart and he's been roaming around north of the Wall ever since. Bran worries that he's not ready to take over as the Three-Eyed Raven, but Benjen gives him some rabbit's blood to drink and tells him that he'll be fine.
Montage Assassin
After watching the acting troupe perform the second act from their ribald play about the recent political intrigue in King's Landing, Arya heads backstage to poison the lead actress. But after having a conversation with her about how bad the script is, she can't bring herself to do it and swats the poisoned rum out of her hands before she can drink it. Unfortunately, a girl was watching her and tells a man that Arya is no longer one. He says she can kill her but asks that he not let Arya suffer. Meanwhile, Arya retrieves Needle and goes to sleep with it beside her.
The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
Tommen has a short conversation with the High Sparrow, who allows him to visit with his wife. Margaery seems well, and has apparently taken the teachings of the ass-whopping septa to heart. Later, Jaime greets Mace Tyrell, who is leading a sizeable platoon of soldiers with the intention of preventing his daughter's walk of atonement. When they arrive, Jaime treats with the Sparrow, who says there's no need for atonement today because Margaery has already atoned by bringing the king into the fold. Tommen appears from the sept, along with a few of his Kingsguard in fancy, new Faith of the Seven armour, and the crowd goes wild. Afterwards, Jaime is booted out of the Kingsguard and sent to pacify the Riverlands. He doesn't want to go, but Cersei reminds him that she'll have the Frankenmountain in her corner for her trial by combat, so there will be some violent retribution in the near future.
Old Man River
Walder Frey is understandably upset at his sons for losing Riverrun. So he sends them to retake the castle with Edmure Tully as a bargaining chip.
Mr. Sam Goes to Oldtown
Sam, Gilly, and Li'l Sam arrive at Horn Hill, which is a big-ass hall and home of House Tarly. Sam's mother and sister are happy to see him and his little family, and they get Gilly all dolled up for dinner. Unfortunately, while they eat, Gilly accidentally lets slip that she's a wildling. Randyll Tarly hates wildlings and severely berates his son for bringing one to his table. Since his wife is a kind woman, he agrees to house Gilly and Li'l Sam, but big Sam is banished from the family home forever. Initially, Sam's fine with that, but then he says fuck it and decides to take his lady and the baby with him when he goes, as well as the family's Valyrian steel sword.
The Widow Drogo
Daario and Daenerys discuss her next move now that she has a massive army. He figures she'll need about 1000 ships to get to Westeros. Then she hears something in the distance and rides off on her own for a bit. When she returns, she's riding on Drogon, which thoroughly impresses the Dothraki.
What I Liked
-The acting troupe performs season 4. Well, just the first couple episodes.
-Walder gives his sons a lesson on what losing is. He has a lot of kids, but they're mostly morons.
What I Hated
-Arya didn't kill the actress. What the hell was the point of having a montage if she wasn't going to use her mediocre skills to save the youth centre?
-Tommen. He's terrible, just terrible. We were poised for either gratuitous violence or gratuitous nudity, and instead we got whining.
-Daenerys is supposed to be leading 100,000 or so Dothraki, but it looks like only about 50 are following her. I know that extras on horses are really expensive, but pad that shit out with some dummies or something.
-Frey exposition. Hey, remember the Brotherhood Without Banners? They're still a thing, even though the producers dropped their plot for three years. Also, remember who was killed at the Red Wedding and whose wedding it was?
Final Thoughts
Another week without anyone so much as mentioning what's happening in Dorne. I hope the trend continues.
Bran drank fresh squeezed rabbit juice like a man. All that time eating whatever squirrels and raccoons they could find has given him an iron stomach.
The whole bit with Daenerys seemed really weird and tacked on to me. They had a brief discussion with no resolution, then she hopped on her dragon and made a not particularly rousing speech that somehow inspired all the Dothraki to keep following her, even if it means abandoning their homeland. I'm not buying it. They haven't given enough time to this plot, so it's just not ringing true. The Dothraki are following Daenerys because the plot says they have to, not because of anything in particular she's done to inspire their loyalty. They're willing to give up their land and their way of life to follow someone who murdered their leaders.
Who the hell made the new armour for the Kingsguard, and how did Jaime not find out about it? There are only seven of them total, and Jaime's their commander, so it's not like they could run off and get new uniforms behind his back.
I was pleasantly surprised that the aborted Tyrell attack on the Faith Militant didn't turn out to be some kind of double-cross. I thought for sure that Cersei would use it as an opportunity to rid herself of the Tyrells and their influence on her son. Instead, however, we got something that came completely out of nowhere: Tommen and Margaery found religion. Which makes me sad because I hate this storyline. The connivers and schemers are allied against the Faith Militant, and yet they find themselves powerless to do anything about them, and were totally blindsided by Tommen becoming a believer. While Qyburn isn't Varys, but keeping tabs on the whereabouts of the king isn't exactly the most difficult job in the world. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but a show still needs to have internal consistency.
This was an okay episode, but I think it spent too much time on what ultimately seems like pointless character development: We know Sam's a wuss, and we know Arya's not an amoral killer. Arya could've changed her mind about killing the actress after a single line, they didn't need to have an extended conversation. Nor did we need to see how big a jackass Sam's dad is if no one was going to wind up staying at Horn Hill, anyway. It's a bit confusing that they would spend so much time on those bits when other plot lines have been moving so quickly.
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