Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Game of Thrones airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night and on Foxtel in Australia on Monday. Do not read unless you have watched season seven, episode six, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 2am and 9pm, and is repeated in Australia on Showcase on Monday at 7.30pm AEST.
Game of Thrones has always been a show at war with itself. On one hand, this is a series that not only loves a showy set piece but that has consistently been able to deliver them. On the other, it is also a drama about deception, manipulation and quiet trades that happen in dark corridors. The main problem David Benioff and DB Weiss have had with this truncated season is maintaining the balance between these two strands even as both the final battle with the Night’s King’s forces and the end of the Great Game draw closer. This penultimate episode suggests that, for now at least, spectacle has the upper hand – and with that comes a host of problems. For while the stand-off with the Night’s King’s forces, Dany’s ride to the rescue and the dragging of Viserion from the icy deep were fun to watch (who wouldn’t gasp at the possibility of a zombie ice dragon?) the script was almost unbearably clunky.
Thus, in the frozen North the Westerosi equivalent of the Magnificent Seven traded quips, exchanged swear words and swung their dicks around. Some conversations were genuinely interesting – Beric’s discussion about death with Jon gave us a man’s entire philosophy in a handful of words – some were arguably necessary (it would have been odd if Gendry hadn’t mentioned his treatment by the Brotherhood) and some, such as Tormund and the Hound’s brief chat, were straight out of a bad buddy movie. Where once this show gave us interesting pairings whose discussions surprised us, now it seems more keen on big bangs and in-jokes. Even the big bangs felt contrived. Alfred Hitchcock famously coined the idea of the “ice box scene” – that moment when you’re raiding the fridge at 2am and you suddenly stop and think: “Wait, why did that happen?” Here, the entire central mission is one big ice box scene. Fun to watch? Yes, but then Game of Thrones, even at its most bombastic, always is. Is it entertaining to watch the Hound throw a snowball at an ice zombie? Of course. Did Benjen riding to Jon’s rescue with his Thurible of Fire make me cheer? Absolutely. But once the episode ended I found myself thinking: wait, who thought capturing a Wight to take to Cersei was a smart or even coherent idea?
It makes no sense. Tyrion himself tells Daenerys-Not-Dany that Cersei won’t give a damn about her ice zombie present. Sure, there’s a lot of waffle about how you need to see the undead to truly understand – but where every other big penultimate battle has risen organically out of the series’ events, this felt like a contrivance created solely so everyone could converge on King’s Landing next week for what looks increasingly like it’ll be the mother of all cliffhangers.
Meanwhile Sansa and Arya were having a Mexican stand-off of their own at Winterfell. I know not everyone has been happy with how the Stark sisters’ reunion has played out, but this was the one part of the episode I thought really worked. For this is increasingly a show about the complexity of sibling relationships. Thus as Sansa possibly plots to kill Arya and vice versa, Theon scrabbles to save the sister he failed and Tyrion prepares for his own reckoning with the sister who hates him and the brother caught in between. In Game of Thrones, family reunions never play out how you might think.
Besides, both Sansa and Arya are traumatised. Sansa performs the duties of the Lady of Winterfell clinging to her home as a place of safety while Arya, for all her murderous skill, is still that little girl caught in a crowd as her father is executed. It would be easy to write the Stark sisters a warm reunion in which the pack sticks together, but these are two girls who parted on poor terms and have since had terrible experiences and their scenes rightly reflected that. As Arya said, one is driven by fear and the other by anger.
Could they still come together? I wouldn’t rule it out despite the creepy moment with the dagger, not least because I find it hard to believe that Sansa trusts or believes Littlefinger. It seems more likely that sending Brienne away is part of her own game plan. The question remains, how much of that plan does Arya actually know?
The most inevitable moment came with Jon and Daenerys making cow eyes at each other after he overcame his pride and agreed to kneel and she threw aside her prejudice and agreed the Night’s King exists. Some will huff about this obvious romance between fire and ice, but I’d argue that Jon and Daenerys getting together makes sense. Both have saviour complexes; both are incurable sentimentalists who agonise over whether or not they’re doing the right thing. Plus Daenerys loves heroic men of action (however much she doth protest otherwise), while Jon loves being a heroic man of action (however much he doth protest otherwise).
Admittedly she’ll have to adjust to his brooding and he might need to convince her not to set fire to everyone she disagrees with but otherwise, they’re just a young, glamorous. closely related couple falling in love in a dark and dangerous world. I’m sure they’ll be fine.
Is Tyrion a particularly good hand? The plans aren’t stacking up. The speech between Jorah and Jon about Longclaw was nicely done, as were Jorah and Thoros’s battle reminiscences. I was surprised by how few of the Seven Samurai died. Personally, I felt Tormund’s time should have come and was shocked Beric made it back home. Poor old Gendry. Now that he’s completed two legs of the Westerosi marathon triathlon, should we expect some sadist to make him swim the length of the Blackwater? I’m glad Brienne took the time to confirm that Pod is now “a competent swordsman”. Daenerys has now mentioned so often that she can’t have children I’m beginning to fear a subplot where Jon’s resurrected sperm are somehow magical enough to impregnate her.
One attack from an ice bear resulting in the burning of the bear and the sad death of Thoros of Myr, the drunkard’s drunkard. The killing of a white walker and deaths of all those he had turned. Several Wights burned, stabbed and slaughtered in an epic battle that had surprisingly few casualties for the away side. The saving of Jon Snow by his fire-wielding uncle. The death of Viserion and his subsequent terrifying resurrection as an ice dragon zombie. Fire meets ice indeed.
With no new characters this week let’s raise a hip flask instead to Paul Kaye, who made the most of his brief time as Thoros of Myr. May the Lord of Light guide you my friend. So what did you think? Excellent adventure or crazy contrivance? Will Sansa and Arya forget the pack stands together or is Littlefinger facing a shock of his own? And how unimpressed do you think Cersei will be when everyone rocks up to King’s Landing with a twitching ice zombie in tow? As ever all speculation and no spoilers welcome below …
