I posted this over on the io9 review written by the extremely talented Charlie Jane Andrews... I figured I'd put it up here as well for posterity :)
Here we go...
I look at this episode from an architectural perspective - at the end of last season, we saw the completion of a massive, beautiful cathedral that was the House of Lannister. We then saw it burned to the ground in a single, swift stroke.
This felt very much like the foundations were being laid for the next several seasons worth of plots … and while watching foundations being forged isn’t as exciting as, say, the Hound and Brienne having the swordfight of the century - or watching the battle of the Blackwater - it makes all the difference in the end. Let’s dive right in, spoilers ahead...
The opening credits reveal the new shape of the Seven Kingdoms. The new players have emerged, and their influence have shifted the centers of power. The Eyrie, the domain of Little Finger, takes prominence.
The House of Bolton rules Winterfell… the wolf crest of the Starks is thrown down, cracked in two on the ground below.
The Realm is splintered, the forces that once upheld honor, and justice, and truth, have been cast aside for more vicious, blood-soaked alliances. The foundations of the next several seasons of alliances and storylines are laid out right on the map.
A pair of dirty children’s feet plod through the mud. One is scared, the other bold. The young Cersei is much like the mature and seasoned Queen that the audience has come to know. “Don’t be afraid of my father…” She reassures her friend. Be afraid of ME … say her eyes.
They find the hut, and within, a sleeping crone. Cersei demands to be told her fortune, and threatens the woman with blinding or worse if she disobeys. The witch demands a blood sacrifice for the answers she desires, and drinks the blood of the girl … and tells her the awful truth of her own fate. The crone cannot help but cackle in glee at the events she predicts - the stunning tale surprising even her.
In the present, Cersei arrives at the High Sept. We have seen a glimpse into her childhood, her paranoia suddenly makes more sense. She also reveals that she has been dabbling in things that are forbidden, maybe even things most people would consider unnatural, for a very long time. And that she is willing to do whatever it takes - threats, bribes, even her own blood sacrifices, to achieve her own goals.
She makes the crowds wait outside, even though some have been traveling for days. She walks past a younger, more b… within, is the body of her father. His name was both her weapon and her shield, for her entire life. Now he is dead before her, stretched out on a slab.
So is Jaime. Jaime tries to warn her about the surrounding lords, the nobles waiting outside, and how they will descend on their very legacy once they see Tywin’s body for themselves.
She has nothing but wrath for him, she blames Tyrion entirely for her father’s death. Her hatred for him clouds her vision of the present. She won’t hear the warnings, she refuses to see ... and she lets Jaime know that she holds him responsible for their brother’s escape, and Tywin’s subsequent murder. A that their father would, too.
Later, as Cercie sips her wine, as she listens to the shrill compliments of her once betrothed. She walks away, only to meet her shorn, newly monk-like former lover and cousin lancel. His father is ashamed of his newfound asceticism. Her uncle laments that while Tywin was alive.
Cousin Lancel finds her while she stands alone … he wants to apologize, and beg forgiveness. For him being a former ‘unnatural’ lover .. and for killing the former king. He sounds vaguely threatening … why does he sound like he’s menacing her with his odd talk of mercy and justice?
It’s interesting to see the Lioness circling in paranoia, eyes darting from one target to the next, never settled.
Next we see a ship, a hole in a crate, a bustling harbor town somewhere distant.
Varys pries open the box … the Imp spills upon the ground, then stands up… straightening for the first time in weeks. His beard and sailed clothes show how long he’s been boxed up. Tyrion demands to know if Varys understands how demeaning shoving your own shit through a hole … Varys responds that he didn’t know, he only knows about picking up a boxed man’s shit and tossing it overboard.
Tyrion wants nothing to do with any more plots, or betrays. He wants to drink himself to death. Slowly or quickly, it doesn’t seem to matter.
“Westeros needs to be saved from itself… ” Varys pleads. “We must think of the future.”
After murdering his own father, killing the woman he loved with his bare hands, and fleeing his home country in a box, Tyrion sums up his feelings on the matter: “The Future is shit, just like the past.”
He vomits on the ground… and then refills his cup with more wine. Absolute gold.
But Varyss truly believes Tyrion is special, has talent and will be needed in ‘the war to come.’ Special enough to risk his own life to help the small man escape. He makes the fallen Lion an offer that his pride cannot refuse. What more noble mission is there, even for a drunken lecherous murderer, than meeting the savior of the world?
Sansa meanwhile sits watching the tiny, weak Lord Arryn. She catches Littlefinger receiving a message, then they depart together … leaving the little lord behind. Littlefinger tells lord Royce they’re headed to the Fingers, but by now Sansa is not as naive as she once was, and immediately recognizes that they are in fact headed somewhere else, somewhere far away.
Pod and Brienne can do no wrong, they are pillars of justice and light in an unjust and uncaring world. The not-quite-a-lady-knight has tried time and time again to uphold her vows, but at every turn she has been thwarted and refused. Pod wants them to continue on, she doesn’t want a squire - she deosn’t want anyone following her at all.
“All I ever wanted was to fight for a lord I believed in … all the good lords are dead, the rest are monsters. Pod and Brienne should have their own show.
In Mereen, the golden Harpy is being toppled from the highest pyramid onto the ground far below. As it tumbles, we see a massive wooden construction, fitted haphazardly onto the side of a the huge, elegant and ancient pyramid. This is a construction made for the sole purpose of casting down the golden idol.
The statue falls. We see it bent, broken, twisted in the dust, at the feet of the mighty pyramid that now houses an occupying Queen.
What better metaphor for the reign of Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of [no] Dragons.
A muscly unsullied visits a local prostitute, who undresses him to the waist. Instead of straddling him, she spoons him and strokes his head, humming softly to him as she cradles his head. His throat is slit. The sons of the harpy reveal themselves, the golden god has indeed fallen, but it has not died. It has only changed it’s face.
Daenerys wants to antagonize them with a public funeral for the dead unsullied. “An angry snake lashes out, which makes cutting of their heads that much easier.”
Dynerres says it herself, “I am not a politician, I am a queen.” This once again shows her slipping further and further backward into the throng of people waiting to swallow her. She has steadfastly refused to recognized local traditions, local cultures and customs as having any value. She wants to rule by fear, and through respect. But without her Dragons, which she now fears, and admits to her lover and last confidante she cannot control. She is no mother of dragons at all.
She is the queen of nothing but a fallen idol.
Missandre visits Grey Worm, and wants to know why an unsullied would visit a brothel … he looks embarrassed, but has no answer, and leaves. We can see how much she is trying to convey in these scene, and how she is pleading with him to open up to her, just a little bit more. Grey Worm, for whatever reason, cannot. This seems to be setting up a plot thread that might come later (if both of them survive).
Jon snow slugs on the new recruits. He’s firm, demanding, aggressive … but compassionate. He looks and acts the part of a leader now, while Thorne shambles about muttering and cursing beneath his breath.
Melisandre reveals herself, the king wants a word with Jon.
The lady wants to know if he’s a virgin. He is not, and this pleases the red woman. Maybe she wants some of HIS blood for WHATEVER reason… you know, just for… whatever.
Stannis meets Jon on top of the wall. He wants Jon Snow to join his cause, to help him re-take his childhood home in Winterfell. But Jon tells him he cannot take part, because he is needed on the Wall and has duties there to attend to. But what Stannis truly needs, more than Jon, are soldiers. He wants the wildlings to swear loyalty to him, and he’ll reward them with citizenship and land to live on. But he knows that Mance will never agree, so he tells Jon to convince him. Otherwise Mance will be burned alive. Stannis seems to know that this is all a foregone conclusion, but he makes the offer all the same.
Stannis Baratheon: Lawful Neutral.
Jon is, of course, unable to shift the opinions of the stalwart King Beyond the Wall. He is resolute, even in the face of his own fear. Being burned alive is a bad way to go, Manse knows it … but he also knows that if he ever bent his knee to another king, all the alliances, all the friendships and partnerships he forged to bring the True North together would splinter in an instant. No wildling would ever serve a southern lord. That is all they ever wanted in the first place, the freedom to make their own mistakes.
Jon spares his final humiliation with an arrow through the heart, in spite of Stannis wanting him burned alive. Oddly, Stannis doesn’t seem upset by this. He might even be developing a grudging respect for these northern people, and Jon and Manse especially. He seems to take no pleasure in putting the man to death.
I’m excited to see where the season goes from here. The lines are plotted out and the cement is poured - seems like we’re all looking forward to see what the final structure looks like. But until then, the plans have been laid out, it’s just a matter of connecting the correct lines :)
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