Pardon my long absence this weekend. I’ve been recovering from a marvelous birthday bender. Speaking of debauchery, GoT is on tonight.
Strategically, it looks like Dany holds all the cards. She has three dragons, a huge army, and the best advisors. Unlike the Northerners, she isn’t pre-occupied with a zombie invasion (yet) and unlike Cersei, she hasn’t alienated absolutely everybody. Obviously, that’s going to have to change if there’s going to be any tension or drama this season. Watching her spend each episode effortlessly “liberating” Westeros with her three dragons would be dull, honestly.
Nonetheless, she has all of the initiative coming into this episode. Cersei’s forces are in disarray. Jon is dealing with the White Walkers.
A prediction that I’m making now is that all of the real drama is going to revolve around the Number 2’s in each faction. Whatever Euron is going to bring Cersei as a gift just might be important enough to win her over (*cough*dragon*cough*). That’s going to leave Jaime sidelined and I absolutely cannot predict what he might do. He has nowhere to go. Everyone wants him dead in the North and it’s hard to imagine that Dany would welcome the guy who killed her dad. If he is going to stay with Cersei to the end, he’ll assuredly be the greatest tragic hero in the entire story.
Jon should watch Sansa closely. She clearly has her own ideas about how things should be done and she just happens to be one of the few characters who has spent a lot of time around all of the series’s worst villains and learned a lot from them. I think people are going to hate her by the time this ends, but we’ll see.
Then there’s Tyrion. He’s intimately connected to the Number 2’s in both of the other factions. One is his brother and the other is his ex-wife. I have a hard time imagining that he’ll stand aside and let Dany kill Jaime, especially since Jaime saved his life. “Something something, pays his debts”. On the plus side, when Jon and/or Sansa come to Dany for dragonglass or some other assistance against the White Walkers, Tyrion should be able to help with those negotiations, since he’s on great terms with both of them.
And then there are the two wild cards: Arya and Littlefinger. We might see Arya kill Cersei while wearing Jaime’s face. Or maybe her time spent with the soldiers and listening to them tell stories about the families they miss will send her back to Winterfell.
As for Littlefinger, no Stark should trust him, of course. Sansa isn’t going to marry him, so I think he’ll set his sights on marrying Dany. But what does he have to offer her? That’s the only thing I can’t figure out. It wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up as the King when all is said and done, sorry to say.
Discuss the episode and any other theories in the comments. Spoilers welcome.
9 comments
Well, it looks like we know what Euron’s gift is: Myrcella’s killers.
I was a bit bewildered by the last scene. Everything moved so fast, with burning embers floating everywhere in the scene that it wasn’t clear to me who died and who didn’t. Did all the snakes die? What was Ellaria’s fate? Near as I can tell, the snakes are dead, while Ellaria and Asha are gifts to the bitch queen (with Reek….I mean Theon left floating…..maybe he’ll wash up on Dragonstone??).
Regardless, I think the ship fighting scene was terrible. Asha is supposedly a seasoned fleet leader but she got the jump on her while attempting to get lady-jumped? The action was very difficult for me to follow and reminded me of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
I was also surprised at Arya’s scene with Hot Pie. The dialogue seemed stilted and I’m not sure if that’s how it was supposed to be played or what….it was awkward.
Littlefinger’s little dialogue with John was pretty ridiculous too. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish with that, but it was poorly executed, and not like his brilliant conniving character. I wonder what is next for LF–is he going to push hard to hook up with Sansa, or will he betray her and take Winterfell for himself?
Also, the eunuch sex scene was almost entirely unnecessary and very awkward. I mark it as the scene that meets HBO’s sex/nudity quota. The idea that a virgin eunuch would immediately go down so……ahem…..knowingly, seems pretty ridiculous. The match between Grey Worm and Missandei just seems too forced.
One of the Snakes lived (bad pussy). My prediction is she’ll be taken back to Kings Landing and maybe rescued by Bronn.
Theon will probably get picked up by Gendry. They need a good Smith to make those dragon glass weapons.
And yes, the dialogue is awful. We’re starting to see GRRM’s absence manifest itself.
Littlefinger is coming across as the kind of guy who’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Jon Snow’s reaction was therefore not quite as satisfying as it might have been in earlier seasons.
Jon is in a bad position. It is a risk to leave Winterfell with Sansa given that LF skulks around backed by the Vale army. He HAS to go though because he needs 1) dragonglass and 2) dragons to defeat the Night’s King. The problem is, Dany is powertripping and will insist he bend the knee. Jon may do so because he doesn’t really give a fuck about being KITN, but he may alientate his newly minted bannermen. I think he is right to go, but it may cost him.
I too was confused by the Greyjoy battle, but I agree zoom, Asha and Ellaria are Cersei’s gifts. A lot of the Internet thought the “gift” would be Tyrion, but I don’t see how he gets ahold of him. Myrcella’s killer should do nicely.
Jon should have finished off LF right there in the crypts. I used to like that character but it is hard to see where he goes after selling Sansa to the Boltons to be raped and tortured.
I hope we haven’t seen a return of Reek and that Theon made a calculated decision that saved Asha and himself for a future rescue. Ramsey is dead.
I don’t mind the Greyworm/Missandei scene so much given their screen charisma, but I agree that he needed too little guidance from her. I turned to Dave and said “he can do more for her than she for him” but, yea one line from her to the effect that “you have other ways to please me” would have made some sense given his lack of experience.
Question – is Sansa still married to Tyrion now that he has resurfaced and is not, in fact, dead? This is a logical alliance and I would assume that Sansa should now be mature enough to capitalize on it should Jon try to do something with it. Jon is not trained in politics like his siblings and he should be thinking about how to treat her. Tyrion may not be interested. I don’t remeber coming across the concept of divorce in the books.
I am confused by Melissandre’s now considering Dany the Prince(ss) that was promised. It isn’t Jon? She seems to have developed very situational interpretation of prophecy since the debacle with Stannis. I wonder what happens when Jon and Davos tells Dany that she burned a little girl alive.
I had largely forgotten about Sansa and Tyrion’s marriage! I hope the writers didn’t either because that is an interesting wrinkle in all of this!
Jon can’t kill LF. He needs the men of the Vail. Only thing worse than having LF on your side is NEEDING him to be on your side.
I’m shaky on my Westerosi family law, but I want to say that Sansa’s marriage to Tyrion was annulled since it was never consumated and he was then presumed dead after being declared a traitor. Also, she got married by a Septon, which isn’t even her religion being a Northerner.
I guess it’s possible that Dany could “encourage” them to get back together to develop a tie between her kingdom and Jon’s, but I don’t think Tyrion can do a single thing to compel her.
LF is smart enough, as good a player of the game as Varys. Difference between Varys and LF though is that the former doesn’t get his judgment clouded by passion. LF is too emotionally invested in Sansa and he’s going to wreck himself over her.
Really, if you look at every POV male character in GoT, every single one of them either gets himself destroyed over or is controlled by women. Most of the other major ones do too. LF doesn’t see this and that’s why he’s fucked.
The War of the Sexes in this series is more fascinating than the actual wars.
Oh, as for Theon…
I think the fandom is being way too hard on him. There wasn’t anything he could do to save his sister and you can hardly blame him for not wanting to get captured by yet another demented sadist.
All he can do now is make his way back to Dany, though he isn’t of much use to her without ships.
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