One of the dangers of serialized storytelling is that big moments often require a build-up to land as important, but too much build-up can feel like stalling. Dany's stay in Mereen has infamously (even in George R. R. Martin's opinion) felt like stalling for her inevitable invasion of Westeros.
Let's talk about tonight's episode after the spoiler break.
Episode 6.2 cuts to the chase in a couple ways, bookending (somewhat) with the events at the Wall.
Rather than have an entire season of a tyrannical (or at least wrongheaded and traitorous) Alliser Thorne as Acting Lord Commander, the moment that Thorne's men are about to break through and slaughter Davos and the nameless Nights Watchmen who are defending Jon's body, the magnificent Wun War Wun Weg Dun (I hope I have that name right) smashes the gate of Castle Black, with Dolorous Edd and Tormund Giantsbane leading their forces to the rescue.
Of course, most of the Nights Watch isn't really cool with Thorne's mutiny, and so they eagerly throw down their weapons (especially after one crossbowman is quite swiftly brained against the castle walls) and Thorne along with his conspirators are thrown in the cells (along with Olly, who, let's remember, was part of said conspiracy. This heartbreak ain't going to end anytime soon.)
While perhaps jarringly swift (and, for Game of Thrones at least, not so gruesome, other than the aforementioned braining,) I'm really in favor of the way that both major developments at the Wall were handled. We'll touch on that other one eventually.
We actually begin with a welcome return to Bran's story and the glorious debut of Max Von Sydow as the Three-Eyed Raven (Brynden Waters, I think? Blood raven. You know the guy.) Sydow (Von Sydow?) is one of those actors I just basically always like to see in anything. I was pissed that they made the Blades kind of jerks in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim because I would have loved to just sit next to his character and hear him speak for hours upon hours (I haven't seen anything of Lars Von Trier's Europa except the very beginning, in which Von Sydow hypnotizes the audience, but I could listen to that over and over, he has such an amazing voice.) And the guy made some of the great classics of cinema with Ingmar Bergman, so I definitely nerd out whenever he's around.
Anyway, Bran will allow us to get lots of flashbacks without technically cheating (like they did at the beginning of last season.) Today was mostly set-up, but I strongly suspect that next week we're going to get confirmation on R+L=J (at least as far as the show is concerned) with the Tower of Joy fight. But that's next week.
In Mereen, Tyrion has a pretty tense moment where he unshackles Rhaegon and Viseron, but thankfully the dragons seem to be chill around him. So, you may or may not be aware of a popular fan theory that Tyrion is in fact Mad King Aerys' bastard son, making him a Targaryen. I've always thought it would make more sense timing-wise if, in fact, this were true of Cersei and Jaime. Particularly it would further explain their inclination toward incest and also madness, but most importantly it would create this fantastic irony that of Tywin's children, Tyrion, the one he hated and wished he could renounce, was his one and only child.
But the T=T theorists got a little bit of evidence in their favor, given how well he handled those dragons. I was very worried that things were going to turn out for him as they did for Quentyn Martell in the books, especially when, having seemingly soothed one dragon, he turns around to see the other staring right at him. But no, Tyrion does fine, and it looks like the chiller two dragons are ok with him.
Arya gets a little bit of progress in her crazy martial arts training, denying her identity and thus proving herself to another Faceless Man who is wearing the Jaqen H'Gar face (to be clear, none of these people, I think, are actually Jaqen H'gar, and even the original that she met wasn't really Jaqen H'gar.)
The Winterfell plot today has a pretty surprising twist, but honestly not a very satisfying one. Walda Bolton (née Frey) gives birth to a baby boy - a boy that could threaten Ramsay Bolton's (né Snow) legitimacy as Roose's heir.
Now my impression from the books and indeed much of the show has always been that Roose is actually just as sadistic and awful as Ramsay, but he's better at hiding it. He never trusts Ramsay, but knows that he's useful to have around.
So it was a bit disappointing when Roose tells Ramsay that yes, he's got a new son, but Ramsay's still his firstborn, and then Ramsay ends their familial embrace by stabbing his dad in the heart, then feeding his step-mom and newborn half-brother to his dogs. Ramsay's in danger of having what I think of as House of Cards syndrome, where he gets to win by being evil and his setbacks are momentary at best, because his comeuppance is being saved for a later date. Ramsay's a monster, and we don't need to exactly humanize him, but there's no cage for him to be thrown in anymore, and his plots aren't likely to go anywhere until he's needed to kill another important character or finally get killed by someone (who deserves to kill him? Theon? Sansa? Jon Snow? Ice Zombies?)
Sansa and Theon (and Brienne and Podrick) don't do a ton - we basically just find out that Theon's intending to go home to Pyke to throw himself on the mercy of his family (a mercy that might involve giving him a nice clean drowning death befitting an Ironborn.)
Now, on Pyke, things are finally, finally starting to catch up with the books. Though in the books he was the first of Melisandre's leech-magic targets to die, here it has taken quite a while (too long, of course, given that Stannis is dead.) But while the official story - that Balon merely fell off a bridge in the storm - always hid an implication that someone had actually murdered him, here we see that Euron Greyjoy is there on the bridge with him, and while you could argue maybe for self-defense, Euron definitely throws Balon to his death, starting off the whole Kingsmoot plot line about two or three seasons later than expected.
Now it's pretty interesting that Melisandre's blood spell to kill the other kings has now taken effect, because after Tormund, Edd, and Wun Wun come save the day, Melisandre is still in her shaken-faith slump. Davos, of all people, asks her for some kind of magic to bring Jon back (this actually might be a little cheaty, given the antipathy between the two of them.) She reluctantly agrees to try.
Her casting of the spell is done quite well. She does many rituals - cleaning Jon's body, cutting his hair and burning the cuttings in a fire. She speaks incantations in Valyrian, but it really doesn't seem to be working. But after all of this, she says under her breath "Please."
That, I think, is actually the effective part of the spell. Given our experience of Thoros of Myr and Beric Danderrion, Thoros was not a terribly good priest, but he desperately wanted Beric not to be dead. It was that desperation - to see his friend brought back to life - that really called upon the Lord of Light. And I think that all that ritual stuff Melisandre was trying was meaningless because that was all it was. Her sad, defeated "Please" is what I think really pulled it off. A devoted follower of R'hollor, having served him for who knows how many hundreds of years, having just the tiniest scrap of faith left to ask, believing it to be futile, for this miracle.
It doesn't work. Tormund, practical and probably more positioned than anyone to reject this foreign religion, leaves first. Shortly thereafter, the only one left is Ghost.
But then, of course, Jon's eyes snap open. He's alive again.
This is not a terribly shocking twist - it's something we all knew had to happen, even if it had the structure of a twist. For one thing, Kit Harrington had to lie on a table for a lot of shots. It would be weird to have this rising star of an actor literally just lie still for his entire season on the show. I've also often contended that if Martin had really meant to kill off Jon for real, he would have had scenes that came after the mutiny that dealt with the aftermath, just as had done for first Ned and then later Robb and Catelyn.
But I'm really happy they didn't try to drag this out any more than they did. We all knew it was going to happen. Now they have to tell more story than the stuff we've already figured out on our own.
Season Off-the-Rails is feeling pretty good.
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