Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.
And of course after rewatching season 1 of Stranger Things, I had to take more time to watch season 2. Which was awesome. But back to Game of Thrones!
North of The Wall: Mance Rayder leads a force of wildlings towards The Wall, with Jon in their company. We meet a guy with the ability to see through the eyes of animals, like Granny Weatherwax from Discworld, and he uses an eagle to do some scouting for the wildlings. He says he saw the aftermath of a battle at the First of the First Men (where the Watch met the White Walkers). Meanwhile, Samwell is finding the march back to The Wall too tiring, and tells the rest of the Watch to leave him to die, but Commander Mormont has no part of it and orders a guy who was bullying Sam to make sure he makes it to The Wall, otherwise he’ll have hell to pay.
So it seems these groups will eventually meet up at The Wall. There could be a huge battle, or, possibly, they could open some sort of negotiation. I’m laying my money on a battle of some sort, and Jon getting caught up in the middle as people from both sides think he’s betrayed them.
Fleeing Winterfell: Also heading to the Night’s Watch base at The Wall is Bran, Hodor, Rickon, and Osha. It seems The Wall is going to be where it’s all happening. Bran has another dream about the three-eyed raven, trying to shoot it with arrows. But then a boy, a bit older than him, appears in the dream and addresses Bran, telling him he can’t kill the raven, because the raven is himself. Woo-OOO-ooo… cue the creepy significance music.
And then, of course, as the group continues marching, they meet the boy from the dream! Only for real. He says he is Jojen Reed, and he is a seer like Bran. Jojen and his sister (who also appears) have been looking for Bran because apparently he has some big role to play in future events. (Well, duh, we all could have predicted that, but then I guess Jojen doesn’t have the luxury of watching Game of Thrones from the outside. Although he should, if he’s a seer.) Anyway, where this goes will be interesting. I wonder if Jojen will convince Bran that his Destiny lies elsewhere, thus propelling him on a completely different course.
Also fleeing Winterfell, but in a different direction: There’s a brief scene of Theon Greyjoy strung up on wooden poles, being tortured for information by some random people. He tells them all he knows, but they keep questioning and torturing him for no readily apparent reason. I’m not sure what’s going on here, because I thought he was being taken back to the Iron Islands by the disloyal men he led to Winterfell. So I have no idea what they’d be trying to get out of Theon, seeing as they were previously following him. Anyway, after they stop torturing him (by screwing his foot into a horrific looking clamp device), some other guy comes up and tells him that he’ll try to help free him.
Heading to Winterfell: Arya, Gendry, and the fat kid run into a rag-tag group of men, who “escort” them to a tavern. It seems that Arya and Gendry manage to talk their way out of being detained and are in the process of leaving, when who walks in but Sandor “The Hound” Clegane! Arya tries to hide her face, but Sandor recognises her. Uh oh…
Heading to Riverrun: Robb receives news of the fall of Winterfell, and thinks that Bran and Rickon are probably dead. But he also gets news that Cat’s father, the Lord of Riverrun, has died. He decides to go to Riverrun, which is a bit of a weird decision. I’d want to go looking for my brothers, rather than head to a place where you know your grandfather is already definitely dead. Anyway, there is dissent in his ranks, as a guy expresses his displeasure at diverting to Riverrun for a funeral, when they have some good old conquering to do.
Cat talks to Talisa, and tells her a story about how she hated Jon Snow at first when Ned brought him home, but grew to treat him like one of her own. Maybe she’s trying to get into Robb’s good books again through Talisa, or something, I dunno. It seems risky to reveal personal information like this to anyone in Westeros. Talisa seems trustworthy at the moment, but who knows? Or maybe it’s important for us, the viewers, to know that Jon got sick with the pox as a child, so that we understand something significant that happens to him later on?
Heading to King’s Landing: Jaime continues trying to be so annoying that Brienne just gives up and lets him go. Why the heck she doesn’t gag him, I have no idea. Or whack him upside the head whenever he opens his mouth, whatever. They encounter an innocuous looking farmer and Jaime recommends that Brienne kill him, but she doesn’t want to murder innocent peasants. Bad move…
As they cross a bridge, Jaime finally gets so annoying that Brienne is distracted and he grabs one of her swords and cuts his bonds. As they face off, both are surrounded by troops called in by the farmer after he recognised Jaime. It’s not clear who these troops are loyal to, whether they’ll try to return the captive Jaime to Robb, or release him and help him get to King’s Landing without Brienne.
King’s Landing: Oh, Sansa, Sansa, Sansa…
Margaery invites Sansa to a pleasant lunch with her grandmother. This is a lady who you can tell has a devious, calculating brain ticking over with cold logic, a bit like Elsa Schneider from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but in the guise of T’Pau from Star Trek‘s “Amok Time”. She seems nice and pleasant, but anyone except poor naïve Sansa can see the gears ticking over in her head. She asks Sansa about Joffrey, what he will be like as a husband for her Margaery. At first Sansa is appropriately circumspect and continues the facade of saying how wonderful Joffrey is… but after the intense pressure of “tell us more, deary, have another scone” Sansa cracks under the strain and blurts out how horrible Joffrey is and how he eats babies for breakfast and how he’ll probably kill Margaery. Margaery and her grandmother look nonplussed and take this in their stride, which is a really bad sign for Sansa’s future.
Joffrey meanwhile is chewing out tailors for showing him clothes with flowers on them for his wedding. He instead picks a pattern that is suitably full of wolverines eating the heads of babies or something. Margaery comes in and flirts with Joffrey over his new hunting crossbow. He asks her about her previous husband, Renly Baratheon, and she dismisses him, saying he wasn’t into women. Joffrey declares he should make “that sort of perversion” grounds for the death sentence. Which is ironic, because Joffrey has never shown the slightest interest in women either, other than as things to torture and murder. Margaery is playing a risky game, but she seems to know what she’s getting into, so maybe she can be a match for Joffrey.
And finally Tyrion meets Shae in his room, and he warns her about being there, because he doesn’t want Tywin to find her and kill her. She informs him that Petyr Baelish is planning to help Sansa get out of King’s Landing. Hmm. I thought Shae was on Sansa’s side, but now she’s revealing this to Tyrion, who might use the information to his own purposes. Although admittedly he’s been much nicer to Sansa than anyone else in his family. So far.
just a note, the Hound isn’t named Gregor, he is Sandor. Gregor is his brother, the Mountain.
Whoops! Fixed. Although I may have made the same mistake in previous entries…