Winter is Coming (GoT is back)

[Mr. Morden]

Dany's fireproof but not concussion-proof.  What if when she burned down that building, the walls collapsed in on her and killed her?  That would have been a heck of a way for the show to kill off the character. 

[Mr. Morden]

Between the trailer for the next episode, and the promo picture that HBO released for it:

http://winteriscoming.net/2016/05/16/image-from-the-door-hints-at-a-very-interesting-vision-for-bran/

it looks like maybe...just maybe...the next episode will give us some of the backstory on the Children of the Forest and/or the White Walkers, told via Bran's visions.

It's about time.  That should have been the first question Bran and Meera asked those dudes when they arrived at the tree.  ""There's a war coming", huh?  Well, let's sit down and discuss what it's all about.  There's no reason for you to be so cryptic about it."

[Mr. Morden]

Apparently, tomorrow's episode was accidentally released early on HBO Nordic.  If you have an account there and live in one of those Scandinavian countries (or use a VPN to pretend you do) you can watch it now.

[Mr. Morden]

Apparently, tomorrow's episode was accidentally released early on HBO Nordic.  If you have an account there and live in one of those Scandinavian countries (or use a VPN to pretend you do) you can watch it now.

And now people are saying that they've pulled it from HBO Nordic, so it's not available anymore.  Maybe it'll show up on a streaming site soon though.

[Mr. Morden]

OK, yeah.  The episode is now all over all the piracy websites.  Beware of spoilers out there.  E.g., everyone's talking about it on the various GoT forums.

[Mr. Morden]

2) are Brienne and Sansa never going to tell Jon that Arya is alive and in the Riverlands AFATK

Wouldn't it be the Vale rather than the Riverlands?

[Mr. Morden]

Bold prediction: When they do the Season 6 DVD release, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and Isaac Hempstead Wright will do the commentary for this episode.  They’ve done commentaries together in the past, and they all had a decent amount of screentime in this ep.

The end of Max Von Sydow reminded me of this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6beF9u5-5Ko

You have the Obi-Wan Kenobi figure being struck down by the bad guys, while he says goodbye to the hero in a shared vision that involves the hero’s father.

Anyway, this episode is a great example of why, while the show is a fun thrill ride, it’s also rather frustrating, and that I keep feeling like we’re getting a cliff notes version of the real story, where important details and character motivations are being left out.  We’re propelled from one event to the next, but it usually doesn’t feel like a logical sequence of events like in the first season.  Instead it feels like the writers are making up the rules as they go, in order to make the story work.

E.g., the WWs couldn’t enter the cave until they could because Bran got touched.  Just go with it.  Max Von Sydow and the Children seem to explain so very little of what’s really going on to Bran and Meera, for no apparent reason.  OK, we get the origin story for the White Walkers.  But what is their current motivation?  Is their goal simply to take over all of Westeros, or is there more to it than that?  What can Bran (or anyone) do to stop them?

I thought Bran was going to be doing Jedi training, but we didn’t see him using any new powers except for vision-questing, which is only so useful when you’re fighting a war.  And those visions focused heavily on Stark family history.  Why?  Why didn’t they just sit Bran and Meera down and explain everything to them about the White Walkers and what they’re supposed to do to stop them?

And then when it was time to leave, they send Bran on one last journey into the past, to see his young father again?  What was the goal there?  They don’t really explain it.  At the end, we’re left with Hodor being taken down by zombies, giving Meera about a 100 foot head start in a big snowstorm, with her carrying Bran’s sled by herself.  Realistically, wouldn’t they catch up to her in no time?  Maybe the writers should have scaled back the size of the zombie army, so that by the time the fighting is over, it’s just like 3 or 4 of them left vs. Hodor, to make it a little more realistic that he could fend them off long enough for Meera to get a good head start.  Instead it seems like dozens (or more) are left, and so once the door comes down, Meera’s toast.

[Mr. Morden]

On another topic, that play in Braavos got me thinking about what the people in Essos know about the Lannisters.  Tyrion doesn't seem to be doing anything to disguise his identity.  In the last episode, he openly told those slavers that he grew up richer than they did.  So I don't think it's a big secret that Tyrion Lannister is in a position of power in Meereen, and that info could spread back to Westeros.  Cersei's got much more pressing matters to tend to, but it would be fun to have a scene of her learning about Tyrion advising Dany.

[Mr. Morden]

The next three episodes are titled:

Oathbreaker
Book of the Stranger
The Door

I know they like to use titles that have multiple meanings, but I’m going to guess right now that one of the meanings for “The Door” will be the door between the 3-eyed raven’s cave and the outside world.

I will now accept my accolades.

[Mr. Morden]

Apparently, a couple years ago, George RR Martin gave the details of the last 2 books to the showrunners so they could start planning the show, and there 3 were specific "holy sh**t" moments"
1. Stannis sacrificing Shireen
2. Hodor's origin story
3. TBA

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin_us_57449e29e4b0aad87c8baeac

That's actually pretty disappointing that we have about 20 episodes remaining before the series wraps up, and we've only got one big surprise on par with Shireen and Hodor left to go.

[Mr. Morden]

I highly doubt that will be case.

True. GRRM has basically drawn a line and said "no further" at seven books, but I doubt HBO wants to end their biggest production at this point.

They'll end it at eight seasons, I meant that there will be more than one other holy sh!t moment.  People just have a tendency to talk in threes. 

Right, there'll be more holy s*%t moments, but how many of them will be TV universe only as opposed to coming from GRRM?  I'm still a little uncertain as to how much detail the showrunners have from GRRM on the story of the unfinished books.  I understand that he's given them the basics of the ending, but the question of how much detail they have with regards to how you get from here to there remains a bit fuzzy.

[Mr. Morden]

Incidentally, on the subject of where Jorah should go looking for the cure for greyscale, I suggest going back to Qarth, since this woman was telling him about "protection" in Old Valyria back then, foreshadowing the greyscale he'd be getting three seasons later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZqh-qw_0M

[Mr. Morden]

Incidentally, on the subject of where Jorah should go looking for the cure for greyscale, I suggest going back to Qarth, since this woman was telling him about "protection" in Old Valyria back then, foreshadowing the greyscale he'd be getting three seasons later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZqh-qw_0M

Didn't she tell Dany to go to Asshai? It'd be great if we finally got to see Asshai.

I don't know.  I also heard someone suggest that Jorah might go to Oldtown, since last season when Sam mentioned all the knowledge there, he said that there was knowledge about healing.

Wherever Jorah goes, he'd better hope that he can do a better job of hiding his greyscale.  If people see him as a carrier of a dangerous plague, they'll probably just want to kill him.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I thought it was rather clear that Bran had to be sent back to that moment because the Three-Eyed Raven knew that Hodor needed to become debilitated. Like he said, "the ink is dry". Bran was always meant to cause Wyllis to become Hodor and without that occurring none of the present would be possible; without Hodor Bran would have never survived to begin with and the war would be lost.
[/quote]

I thought there was something else going on in that scene.  You see Ned’s father saying goodbye to him before he goes off to be fostered in the Vale.  I thought this was meant to parallel the 3-Eyed Raven sending Bran out into the world, but it wasn’t explained very well.

As for the suggestion that they only went back to that moment because “that’s what always happened” in the timeline…if that’s what the writers were intending, then that seems like lazy writing.

If you’re going to play by the “there is only one timeline and it is immutable” time travel rules, then the way to handle it is to do something like 12 Monkeys (the movie, not the TV show which I haven’t seen).  The characters are aware of the rules of time travel, and it constrains the options available to them in the past, but they don’t purposely set out to complete a particular action simply because “that’s the way it always was in the timeline”.  Yes, what they do in the past was always part of history.  But their particular motives for doing this or that are their own, not to “fulfill destiny”.  (Which seems kind of dumb as a motivation anyway.  If the past is already written, then you don’t have to specifically set out to fulfill it.  It’ll end up happening even if you’re not specifically trying to make it happen.)

So if the only reason that the 3ER had for going back to that particular moment in time was to make sure that Bran scrambled Hodor’s brain according to the history he’d already seen, then that’s dumb.

[Mr. Morden]

Do you think Tommen and Margery are truly converted over to the High Sparrow's side, or just faking it for now?

Marg is faking it, but I’m not clear on whether she has a specific plan that’s still unfolding, or if she’s just winging it, and did what she had to in order to get out of jail and avoid the Walk of Shame, and will now (perhaps in consultation with Olenna) work out her next move.

In the scene between Marg and Tommen, it seemed like Marg was trying to test out Tommen to see if he was dumb enough to buy into all the High Sparrow’s nonsense, only to realize that yes, he was that dumb, and sensed no insincerity in her words.

On another topic, regarding what’s going on in Braavos…

There were so many layers in that Arya sequence.  She laughs at Joffrey’s death in the stage play, but then, once Lady Crane does the Cersei monologue, it’s no longer funny.  But it seems like there’s some ambiguity on one point: Is Arya simply empathizing with Lady Crane as an individual, or does the fact that she sees a dramatization of her nemesis, Cersei, mourning her son trigger something deeper in her?  Is this the beginning of self-awareness in her, that her enemies are people too, even the wicked cry over their children, and her entire project of trying to deliver vengeance to the people who’ve wronged her is misguided?  In the backstage conversation, she says:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As she says this, she appears to have a revelation, like the words have far more meaning than Lady Crane is intended to pick up.  But is it just that she realizes that if she kills Lady Crane, she’ll be taking someone away from Crane’s loved ones, and perhaps beginning a whole new cycle of revenge?  Or is it also that she’s realizing that applies to anyone else Arya would kill, including the Lannisters, meaning that she now sees her enemies more as real people?  Or is she deconstructing her own motivations—understanding why she herself is driven to revenge, and now questioning it?  Does she now think that maybe she could be the play’s version of Tyrion in someone else’s story…now having gone across the Narrow Sea to become a villain again?

All of this raises a bigger question about the meta-story of Game of Thrones.  Are many/all of the characters who will survive until the end of the series on a character arc that involves moral progress for the next generation of leaders in Westeros?  That is, is the story like Babylon 5, where the epic conflagration at the center of the story ends up leading our heroes to create a better world at the end than the one that existed at the start of the story, even though millions of people have died in the interim?

[Mr. Morden]

A few thoughts:

-In the trailer for next time, Sansa says something like “I did what I had to do to survive.”  Will the Northern lords criticize her only for marrying Ramsay, or is they actually going to critique even her actions in King’s Landing, when she was with the Lannisters (as if she had a choice then)?  E.g., she wrote a letter to Robb way back in Season 1.

-Will Varys leave Meereen before Dany arrives?  If not, is there going to be any awkwardness surrounding the fact that he was Jorah’s spymaster when he was spying on her?  (though I guess he should have already thought about that when he and Tyrion first left for Meereen in early Season 5)

-Even if Arya kills the Waif, will she still have a target on her back from the Faceless Men for the rest of her life?  That is, is it FM policy that someone who fails the training and turns their back on the FM has to be offed, or is Jaqen just granting Arya’s life to the Waif as a favor?  (I still think there’s a slim chance that Jaqen is actually testing the Waif in some way, to see if she’s let her passions overcome her “No One”-ness, though that’s probably a longshot.)

[Mr. Morden]

Unless Arya is the Waif.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/game-of-thrones-theory-arya_us_57541ae4e4b0ed593f14ab46

You know, after this last episode, I’m not sure I’d be that surprised if the answer is something crazy like this.

Or something here is an illusion.  Not sure if the Waif herself is an illusion, but maybe Arya’s wounds?  (because how else is she going to survive that?)

Next episode is titled “No One”, and it would be interesting if we end up discovering that the Faceless Men have been pulling some kind of giant con on either Arya, the Waif, or both.  Or at least, it would be interesting to learn that their motivations are different from what we’ve been led to believe.

[Mr. Morden]

How is it that everyone knows who the Night King is now?  He was mentioned by Bran and Benjen (presumably told by the Children offscreen).  But now in this episode, he gets mentioned by Tormund, and Davos mentions him to Lyanna Mormont as if she’s supposed to understand what he’s talking about.  Do the people of Westeros know more about the White Walker leadership structure than we’ve been led to believe?

Are we in the audience supposed to understand the relationship between the Night King and the other White Walkers beyond just the fact that he’s their leader?  Because if so, then I’m confused.

[Mr. Morden]

Unless Arya is the Waif.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/game-of-thrones-theory-arya_us_57541ae4e4b0ed593f14ab46

You know, after this last episode, I’m not sure I’d be that surprised if the answer is something crazy like this.

Or something here is an illusion.  Not sure if the Waif herself is an illusion, but maybe Arya’s wounds?  (because how else is she going to survive that?)

Next episode is titled “No One”, and it would be interesting if we end up discovering that the Faceless Men have been pulling some kind of giant con on either Arya, the Waif, or both.  Or at least, it would be interesting to learn that their motivations are different from what we’ve been led to believe.

Plot armor

But what is the "in story" explanation?

It would be funny if we find out that the reason people were just kind of staring at her at the end there was because she isn't really hurt or dripping blood.  It's all some kind of illusion.

Is that more likely than not?  No.  But it wouldn't surprise me.

[Mr. Morden]

How is it that everyone knows who the Night King is now?  He was mentioned by Bran and Benjen (presumably told by the Children offscreen).  But now in this episode, he gets mentioned by Tormund, and Davos mentions him to Lyanna Mormont as if she’s supposed to understand what he’s talking about.  Do the people of Westeros know more about the White Walker leadership structure than we’ve been led to believe?

Are we in the audience supposed to understand the relationship between the Night King and the other White Walkers beyond just the fact that he’s their leader?  Because if so, then I’m confused.

The Night King is an old fairy tale in the North.

Maybe that is established in the books, but it is not mentioned in the show.  For the first 54 episodes of the show, everyone talked about the White Walkers, but there was no indication that people knew about the White Walker leadership.  Now all of a sudden, everyone's talking about it for some reason.

[Mr. Morden]

Jon saw him.

Only people who have talked to Jon, or Bran/Meera/Coldhands, have talked about him.

But how did Jon know that was the leader of all White Walkers, or that he went by the name "Night King"?  And why did Davos mention the name to Lyanna Mormont, as if she'd know what he was talking about?

[Mr. Morden]

Jon saw him.

Only people who have talked to Jon, or Bran/Meera/Coldhands, have talked about him.

But how did Jon know that was the leader of all White Walkers, or that he went by the name "Night King"?  And why did Davos mention the name to Lyanna Mormont, as if she'd know what he was talking about?

He doesn't go by any name. He's the Night's King because that's what Jon and the 3-Eyed Raven decided to call him, after the infamous "fairy tales".

Right, what I'm saying is that there's no reference to such fairy tales in the TV show.  The TV show mentions that the White Walkers were in fairy tales, but it wasn't until this season that we had any idea that regular people in the realm knew anything about the WW leadership.  It seems to be a retcon.

[Mr. Morden]

I really enjoyed the Arya storyline last episode (FINALLY! after months of marking time)... and then here we go with this implausible getting stabbed in the vital organs 8 million times, falling off a bridge and almost drowning and walking a quarter mile and somehow miraculously not dying.  Bullsh**t, and this show early on knew better.

Also, there's no way the waif would have just let her stay under water for a few seconds without coming back to check on her/finish the job.  Way too amateur of a move.

As I said on the last page: The scene is in some ways so ridiculous that it leaves me to wonder if the FM are pulling some kind of illusion here, for reasons that'll be revealed in the next ep.

[Mr. Morden]

Why did King Tommen refer to his mother as 'Cersei Lannister'?  Wouldn't she be 'Cersei Baratheon' just as he is 'Tommen Baratheon'?  Was that intentional or just a mistake by the writers?

No, I feel like they've always referred to her as Cersei Lannister on the show.

In the books too. In general there doesn't seem to be a consistent rule about whether women use married names in Westeros.

Indeed, Catelyn and Lysa are referred both as Tully and as their married names of Stark or Arryn, Selyse tends to go as Selyse Baratheon, and women like Margaery Tyrell and Elia Martell go by their original names. So some take their married names, but it doesn't seem to be a truly widespread custom.

It seems like the ones who are identified in the story first and foremost by their original family are given that name, whereas those who are more with the family they married into go by their married names.  We first see Cat in Winterfell, and identify her with the Stark clan there, and only later get into the Tully connection.  Similarly, Selyse's role in the story is as Stannis's wife, and we don't really care much about her life before she got married.  Cersei is shown with her husband from the get go, sure, but she's also strongly identified with the Lannister family early on.  And then women like Marg and Sansa who get married partway through the story don't change their name.

Doesn't make much sense in universe, but I guess that's the real life explanation.  Incidentally, there also seems to be a weird thing in the story where almost every significant family has more boys than girls (I think this is even more true in the books, since they cut out a couple of Tyrell boys for the show):

Starks: Robb, Bran, and Rickon outnumber Sansa and Arya...I think Ned's generation is also more male than female?

Baratheons: Robert, Stannis, and Renly...do they have any sisters?; Stannis at least produces a daughter with no sons.

Tullys: Well, OK, I guess Cat's generation is two girls and one boy?  So that's an exception.  But both Cat and Lysa have more boys than girls.

Lannisters: Tyrion and Jaime outnumber Cersei.  Jaime and Cersei's offspring are two boys and one girl.

Greyjoys: Does Balon have any sisters?

Tyrells: Marg and Loras is one each, but I guess there are another couple of brothers in the books.

Targaryens: The mad king had two sons and one daughter.

Martells: Doran and Oberyn: Did they have any sisters?  Doran has one son in the show.  I guess he has more kids in the books, but the boys still outnumber the girls?  Oberyn at least has managed to father a bunch of daughters.

I guess the thing is that it's a patriarchal society, so in general more males than females are going to be powerful political figures.  Which means GRRM could have invented more female characters, but it wouldn't be realistic for just as many female characters as male characters to be power players in the story, so many of them would just be in the background.  I guess he just skips over that by creating a world in which the male:female ratio in the important houses is markedly higher than 1:1.  

[Mr. Morden]

A few thoughts:

-The King’s Landing plot continues to confuse me somewhat.  Last episode, didn’t Margaery say to Olenna that Loras would be able to atone for his sins if he confesses and offers penance, or something like that?  I don’t remember the details, but it sounded like if he confessed, then he’d be able to get out on parole, and that the punishment for his sins wouldn’t be as steep as eternal imprisonment or death.  So I figured that that’s what her plan was.  To make a deal with the High Sparrow that got her out of the dungeon, and then got Loras out of the dungeon too.  Now I’m a bit confused, as it sounds like Loras is going to have a trial, and it’s not just a simple matter of confessing and taking your licks?

And I’m still confused about Kevan’s motivations.  I understand that he hates Cersei, but I’m kind of confused about what he thinks about the Sparrows, the Tyrells, etc.  How does he feel about Tommen’s alliance with the HS?  I’m not really sure.  Would be good if we had gotten a scene with him either this week or last week or the week before, to flesh that out.

-Edmure says that he’s been imprisoned for “years”.  So I guess that definitively establishes that it’s been at least two years since “The Rains of Castamere”?  So Gilly’s baby is more than two years old, huh?  Maybe one of these days, he’ll learn how to walk and talk?  Or at least crawl?  For some of the storylines, I guess you can make it work for the past three seasons to have covered two years.  But for many of them, it’s quite a reach.  And I’m not sure how to make it work.  Oh well.

-So regarding Meereen: Has Dany’s entire posse made it back to the city, or did Drogon fly ahead with her, while the rest are still a few days away?

I guess for the story it made sense to have the Masters attack, so that by defeating them on the battlefield, Dany create a longer lasting solution for Meereen, allowing her to then leave for Westeros.  I assume she’ll take some combination of captures ships from the Masters, plus Greyjoy ships offered by Yara.  But who’ll go with her?  Everyone?  Presumably at least Tyrion and Daario, plus many of her soldiers (including Dothraki).  But what about Greyworm and Missandei?  Do one or both of them stay behind to rule Meereen?

[Mr. Morden]

A couple more thoughts…

-Am I misremembering this, or did Daniel Portman previously put on something resembling an English accent when he was doing Podrick in earlier seasons?  He’s Scottish in real life, but I thought he used an English accent for this role?  In this episode, he sounded 100% Scottish.

-On Arya….she says she’s going “home”, but I don’t know that that means Winterfell.  Could just mean Westeros in general.  It seems unclear to me whether she’s at all up to speed on events in Westeros post-Tywin’s death.

Okay, so maybe that last sentence won't happen, but d*** it, ShowArya killing ShowWalder has been my pet theory since mid-season four and since the latter is clearly gonna die this season, I'm not giving up on it yet.  My guess would be she poisons him in episode ten since we got that shot of her making poisons in Oathbreaker.  Regardless, the important thing is #AryaKillsWalder2016  Actually, if that clip of Walder Frey raising a goblet from the season trailer doesn't appear in this episode, I'd bet money that she kills him in episode ten.  

I was thinking about this.  OK, let’s say Arya arrives in the Twins in Episode 10, and kills Walder Frey at the celebration.  Who else is there for that event?  Does Jaime stop by the Twins to take part in the celebration, before his return to KL?  Does he run into Arya there?  Does Brienne cross paths with either Arya or Jaime there?  It does kind of seem like a waste to have diverted Brienne for this sidetrip to the Riverlands, if she’s not going to do anything else there before returning to the North.  She could also run into the Hound and the BwB.

Or better yet, Jaime, Bronn, Arya, the Hound, Beric, Thoros, Brienne, Pod, Walder Frey, and Edmure are all in same scene for Red Wedding II: The Revenge.

Are there any characters who we’re already done with for Season 6?  They sometimes have some of the smaller storylines in a season wrap up as early as episode 8.  (E.g., Sansa’s last episode in Season 4 was Episode 8.)

This time though, there’s a good chance we’ll check in with just about everyone at some point in the last two eps.  Even Sam and Gilly.  Surely we’ll check in with them in Ep. 10 if only to see that they made it to Oldtown?  Jorah’s the most significant character who might wait until next year.  Maybe we’ll check in with him in the finale, but maybe not.  Euron’s also a question mark, as are Ellaria and the Sand Snakes.  Oh, and Olenna.  I assume we’ll get another Bran/Meera/Benjen scene before the end.  When we last saw them, it sounded like they were going back to the Wall, but does that mean Castle Black in particular?  If so, I guess we’ll see Edd and the Night’s Watch.  If not, then maybe not.