It’s another season finale! Let’s track the body count again.

Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

Kings Landing: The day dawns bright and clear – the day of Cersei and Loras’s trials. The High Sparrow assembles a group of seven priests in the High Sept, seated in plain wooden chairs at the corners of the seven-pointed star on the floor representing the Seven Gods. Gathered to watch are Margaery, her father, and a crowd of people filling the space around the central chamber.

Cersei looks across King’s Landing from her window in the Red Keep, and dresses formally in black. Tommen dresses and puts on his crown. He prepares to leave his room to go over to the Sept, when his way is blocked by Gregor “The Six Million Dollar Mountain” Clegane. And it looks like Cersei isn’t leaving for the Sept either. All of this so far is accompanied by sombre string music and no dialogue. It’s a very different episode opening, as we have to follow events with visuals only.

Grand Maester Pycelle is in his room when a servant knocks on the door. Pycelle has been enjoying the company of a naked young lady, who he shoos away, saying he’ll pay her later. The messenger asks Pycelle to come see Qyburn. He reluctantly goes to visit the wannabe Maester, demanding to now what’s going on. Qyburn merely watches as a group of his street urchin spies emerge from the shadows, armed with knives… Uh oh. Pycelle meets his demise.

Body count: 1. As I was watching it, I felt this was a little bit of an odd time for this move by Qyburn. But things became clearer pretty quickly.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

Meereen: Daenerys and Tyrion take some time to discuss plans before they launch into battle to save the city from the bombardment of the Slave Masters’ fleet. This seems like a bit of a waste of time when urgent action is required, and feels like a stupidly slow start to the episode. I’d expected it to open with Daenerys riding Drogon through the air and blasting the ships with fire. But instead here we have them disagreeing with one another while the city burns around them.

Underscoring this, a window of the Pyramid throne room is shattered by a catapult blast, which finally spurs them into action!

Or does it? No, it spurs them to call for a meeting with the Slave Masters. Yawn…. what an anticlimax.

Three slave masters face off with Daenerys, Tyrion, Grey Worm, and Missandei on a neutral space, backed up by their respective guards. Daenerys says she wants to discuss terms of surrender. Very well, say the Masters, if you surrender Meereen to us, and all your servants, we’ll sell Grey Worm and Missandei to the highest bidders and let you go back to Westeros. Daenerys says, oh no… I’m here to discuss the terms of your surrender.

Hah ha! The Masters start laughing. They stop pretty quickly when Drogon appears, flying over them and landing behind Daenerys. She climbs on his back and takes off. Drogon’s calls spur the other two dragons to emerge from their underground cell and take to the air too. The three of them set about burning the slaver fleet.

Back at the parley area, the Masters are shocked. Grey Worm says to the Masters’ guards, “If you leave Meereen now, you can go home.” They immediately drop their weapons and run away. Missandei tells the Masters that Daenerys has ordered that one of them is to be executed, and that they are to choose which one. The Masters start cowering and looking at one another. One pushes another one forward and says kill him, he’s a foreigner anyway. The foreigner collapses to his knees, blubbering and pleading. Grey Worm walk up… and does an awesome double strike with his knife, cutting the throats of the two standing Masters. Tyrion walks up to the cowering Master and says, “Go home. Tell everyone what you’ve seen here today. Tell the other Masters this is what happens if you defy Daenerys.”

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

Random foresty place: Sandor “The Hound” Clegane tracks down a group of four men, sitting around a campfire. He lops the head off one with his axe, then makes short work of the others as well. I guess these are the ones who slaughtered the group he was working with.

A bit later on he comes across a group of the Brotherhood Without Banners, who have captured the leader of the slaughtering force and a couple of other men. They tell Sandor that these men were rebels and will now be hanged – in fact they’re just about to do it. One of the group is Beric, who we last saw back in Season 3. He and Sandor recognise one another. Sandor says the men killed his friends, and he claims the right to execute them. Beric says he can have one, but ups it to two when Sandor complains. Sandor wants to use his axe on them, but Beric insists they be hanged, not butchered. Sandor knocks the logs out from under two of the men and Beric’s men do the other.

Beric then asks Sandor where he’s going now, and suggests they join forces to go north and fight White Walkers. Beric seems to think the two of them are fated to work together, following their previous encounter. Okay, so Sandor now has a story ahead of him. It doesn’t seem too interesting yet, but no doubt it’ll intersect some other characters at some point.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

Random grassy place: Unusually, the episode opens with a pre-credits scene. A group of people are building a structure from wooden logs. We see close ups of the sawing, hammering, pegging logs, and applying tar for waterproofing. Before the camera pulls back to show the surroundings, I think maybe they’re building a ship, and this is a scene from the Iron Islands, but later shots show that it could be the beginnings of a church, or a small tower of some sort, in an otherwise empty area of of a grassy valley fringed with rocky hills. No sea in sight. We see one man in particular, chopping the wood with a huge axe, showing close-ups of his hands, arms, legs, body… then the camera pans up and we see his face. It’s Sandor “The Hound” Clegane! Not dead as we thought! Roll opening credits…

The group building the structure seem to have a leader, an oldish man. He talks to Sandor as they take a breather from the construction work. We learn that he found Sandor, on the verge of death (after Arya left him to die, following his loss in the fight against Brienne), and nursed him back to health. The old man seems to be a priest or holy leader of the group of people. He tells Sandor it wasn’t his time to die, the gods were looking out for him. Sandor is cynical, saying he committed many crimes and if there were any gods they’d have struck him down by now. The old man takes this philosophically and tells Sandor that they must still have plans for him. Sandor is bemused, but his manner seems somewhat repentant – perhaps his brush with death has caused him to reflect on his life and change his outlook. The old man says it must have been some man who could best him in combat; Sandor says, “that man was a woman.”

Later, three riders approach and ask what the group are doing here. The old man says they’re just minding their own business. The riders ask if they have horses, the old man says no. Weapons? No. They ask for money, he says they have none. Frustrated, the riders leave. Sandor warns the man that they are from the Brotherhood Without Banners, and they will return to take whatever they want. But the old man is not concerned, saying they have nothing they could want.

Later, Sandor is off in the woods, chopping logs. He walks back to the construction site, to find everyone slaughtered. People are stabbed and dead all over the place, and the old man is hanging from the partially constructed tower. A look of grim determination comes over Sandor’s face, he picks up his huge axe, and stalks off.

Well, with Benjen and Edmure last episode, that’s three people we thought were dead returning. I suppose with so many characters killed, that’s not a resource we’ll run out of any time soon. It seems Sandor’s experiences have changed him, but the rage is still within him, and I expect he will exact horrible revenge on the men who slaughtered his new friends. Where he goes from there, who can say? Except that no doubt if he’s back in the story, he’ll have some significant role to play later. As the gods will.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

North of The Wall: Meera flees into the snow, dragging Bran on the sled. Hodor’s sacrifice in the last episode couldn’t keep the horde of undead from chasing them for long, and they’re much faster. Bran is still observing visions, and flashes through several scenes in quick succession. I see him falling from the tower after Jaime Lannister pushed him (back in the very first episode), his father Ned getting beheaded, and a scene which looks like it must be the Mad King in the Sept or Throne Room of King’s Landing, yelling something about “Burn them all!”, and then Jaime killing him. We’ve never seen this before, but it’s been described enough that I think I recognise the scene.

The white walkers are about to surround Meera and Bran, and the end must be near, when suddenly a cloaked man on a horse appears, brandishing a chained weapon with a wicked hook and a brazier of fire and not coals. He swings and sets fire to several of the undead, fending them off, as he pulls Meera and Bran onto his horse, before riding off into the forest.

In a place of relative safety, the rider lets them off, and Bran, now awake from his visions, asks who he is. The rider removes his cloak… it’s Benjen! Ned’s brother and Bran’s uncle, formerly of the Night’s Watch at Castle Black, who we’d been told was killed north of the Wall. Turned out he’s not as dead as we thought. He says the dryads saved him from being turned into a white walker. He also tells Bran that he – Bran – has to become the next Three-eyed Raven.(!)

Okay, what does that mean? Does Bran have to sit in a tree for the rest of his life, unable to move, like the previous Raven? Where is Benjen going to take them? Bran has lost Jojen and now Hodor as traveling companions. Meera wasn’t up to pulling Bran on his sled very far, so now they have a new companion who can take them further and faster. Bran’s position is nowhere near as perilous now as it seemed at the end of the previous episode, which is good.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

Mereen: Tyrion and Varys have a discussion with Grey Worm and Missandei. Tyrion asks how many people have died since they struck the deal with the masters of Astapor and Yunkai (last episode). Only two, and those on the same day, not long after the deal was made. Since then (several days ago, judging by their conversation), there has been no violence in Meereen. Tyrion declares his plan a success. But Grey Worm and Missandei are nervous, and someone suggests they need more support to reinforce the peace. Tyrion asks to meet one of the local priestesses.

A woman looking very similar to Melisandre, also dressed in red, appears before Tyrion and Varys in the audience chamber of the pyramid. Tyrion asks her for assistance in maintaining the current peace, and she kind of agrees. Varys doesn’t seem to trust her, but she looks at him and starts recounting graphically the scene when he was castrated as a boy. Varys is clearly unnerved by this display of clairvoyance. The priestess smugly leaves.

Okay, so Melisandre isn’t a one-off then. There must be some entire cult of priestesses of the Lord of Light who all dress in red and speak in cryptic riddles and vaguely threaten people. And it seems they all have their own agenda, so it remains to be seen if she’ll really help Tyrion and the others maintain their hold on Meereen.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

I always watch the opening credits sequence with interest. I like the music, and I noticed a big difference going from watching episodes on my iPad (via Foxtel Go, their on-demand app – which I could not find any easy way to stream to a TV) to watching on a TV from DVDs. The bass sound is of course much fuller from my home sound system, complete with subwoofer, than from iPad speakers. It really makes watching these episodes more of an experience.

Also, while watching the opening credits, I look with interest to see the various geographical places featured. I noticed Pyke, in the Iron Islands, appearing for this episode. And then I noticed a very odd thing. Normally, in my memory, the map looks flattish, or perhaps curved convexly like a globe, as it should. But in this episode I noticed quite forcefully that the map appeared to be concave, as if the world had been turned inside-out. I wonder if this is merely my memory and eyes playing tricks on me, or if this was indeed done deliberately, to sort of symbolically represent a change in the world order, and perhaps a significant redirection of the flow of events.

Castle Black: Oh. It looks like Jon didn’t simply walk out of the gates of Castle Black, never to return. In the opening shot we see a sword handle, and I think I recognise it as Jon’s sword, sitting on a table in a dim room. Someone comes up to the sword and picks it up carefully. For a moment I think Jon has also left his sword behind in Castle Black, and reflect on what a stupid idea that is – walking off into the snow without his sword. And indeed, as the camera backs away, we see that it is Edd holding the sword. Jon, you idiot!

But then the camera turns and we see Jon is there in the room as well. Either he’s changed his mind, or or walked off into the snow and then suddenly remembered he forgot to take his sword and came back for it. Dialogue clears things up, as Ed begs Jon to stay, saying they were at Hardhome together and saw the White Walkers, and they know they’re coming, and how can Jon leave them now? He swore an oath, to devote his life to the Night’s Watch. Jon points out that he already gave his life once for the night’s Watch. Now he’s back, and he feels no obligation to do it again.

Suddenly there’s a commotion and a call to open the fort gates. Outside are Sansa, Brienne, and Podrick! They walk in, through blowing snow. Jon emerges to see what’s happening, and he and Sansa recognise one another. After a moment of disbelief, he races down to hug her. The scene cuts to Sansa and Jon having some hot soup inside, presumably after they’ve told each other their stories of what’s happened over the intervening years. Sansa asks what Jon will do now, and he says he doesn’t know. Sansa has an idea! They can go retake Winterfell from the Boltons! Jon is reluctant, saying he’s been fighting ever since he left Winterfell and he’s sick of it. Sansa, showing a surprising amount of backbone, declares she’ll take Winterfell with or without Jon’s help.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

North of The Wall: Bran and the Three-eyed Raven are once again in a visit to the past sequence. They see some young men approach a small tower, guarded by two formidable looking men in armour. The approaching group is led by a young Ned Stark, who Bran recognises as his father. The Raven says the man at his side is Lord Reed, father of Meera (and the late Jojen). Okay, that’s interesting. The guards don helmets and prepare for a fight as the group approaches, wielding two swords each.

Ned walks up and exchanges some words with the guards. He says something about the Mad King being defeated, and asks why the guards were not present at the battle. They respond that they were ordered to guard this tower. Ned asks where his sister (Lyanna, who we saw last episode) is. Rather than answer, the guards start to fight. The presumption must be that she is being held in the tower, but for what reason is not clear.

In the fight, pretty much everyone is wounded and falls, leaving Ned facing one of the guards. Bran comments to the Raven that he heard his father tell this story a hundred times, of how he defeated this swordsman at the tower. But Bran is puzzled, because he can see that the guard is a far superior swordsman to his father at this age, and he wonders how his father can possibly win. Indeed, the guard disarms Ned, and is about to strike a killing blow… when the wounded Lord Reed stands up and stabs the guard in the back with a dagger, taking him down. Ned stands with relief as he is surrounded by the dead and dying. Bran is shocked – he realises his father has lied, and that the great foe he bragged about defeating in combat was actually stabbed in the back by Reed.

Ned and Reed start running into the tower. The Raven tells Bran it’s time to leave the vision, but Bran is defiant and calls out to his father – and Ned turns around, apparently having heard his voice, but sees nothing. The Raven grabs Bran and pulls him back to the cave under the tree. Bran complains and says his father heard him. Raven says it was just a coincidence, he probably heard a bird or something. Bran says he wants to see what was in the tower. The Raven goes into Mr Miyagi cryptic mode, and says, “Do you think I enjoyed sitting here and letting this tree grow over me for a thousand years?” Bran asks him why he did it than. The Raven tells Bran that he was waiting – for him! – and that before he can see more visions he must learn more things. Bran asks what things, and the Raven replies, “Everything.”

At least that seemed to be the gist of it. The Raven keeps warning Bran that spending too long in these visions of the past is risky, and he might end up not being able to return. And that he can’t change the past; it’s a story that’s already written and “the ink is dry”. This may be ominous foreshadowing of a time when Bran is tempted to stay in a vision for too long and may end up trapped, at least for a while. The fact that Ned seemed to react to Bran’s shout may also be foreshadowing that the Raven is wrong – maybe Bran can change the past. And what is in the tower? Logically, it should by Ned’s sister Lyanna, but in what state? She’s not present in the story at the beginning of season 1, so presumably she met some ill fate. Comments on my previous write-up pointed out that Lyanna was mentioned in passing near the beginning of season 1 – references which I didn’t note as being very important at the time. I guess more of this story will come out soon. And it sounds like the Raven is preparing Bran for a fateful future in which he will play a large part (a bit like Arya). The kids growing up to continue the story of their father.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

I’ve now sourced a set of DVDs for both season 6 and 7, so I’m ready to continue with the episode commentaries!

North of The Wall: We open with Bran and the Three-eyed Raven sitting amongst the roots of the underground cave where they are sheltering from the snow, with eyes glazed over, apparently in a trance. The scene changes, to Winterfell, and Bran is standing on a balcony, watching some kids practising swordplay with wooden weapons and shields. It could be a scene from Bran’s own life, just before he was crippled, practising with other boys of the town – and at first that’s exactly what I think it is.

But no, someone calls the boys Ned and Benjen. We’re seeing a young Eddard Stark and his brother Benjen, in a flashback to before Bran was even born. A slightly older girl rides up on a horse, named Lyanna (the girl is named Lyanna, not the horse – I didn’t catch the horse’s name). It’s not clear, but this seems to be an older sister of the other two – I don’t recall ever hearing about a sister of Eddard Stark before. So maybe this is the first time we’ve really heard of her? She says something about heading off to the Eyrie. I’m just trying to integrate this into what I can remember… I’m guessing Lyanna was sent to marry a noble over at The Eyrie as part of an alliance. We know Lysa was there, Catelyn Stark’s sister (so Eddard’s sister-in-law). Hmmm… and Lyanna and Lysa would be roughly the same age. So what happened to Lyanna? I’m guessing we’re going to find out some more about her later.

Also joining the scene is a large stable boy, who the boys encourage to start fighting. They call him Wylis, but Bran instantly recognises him as a young Hodor. Wylis speaks, being reluctant to join the noble boys in sparring, but they say that with his size he’d be a great fighter. Wylis’s mother appears and ushers him back to the stables, saying there’s no way she’ll let her son learn how to fight. Bran is astonished that Hodor used to be able to speak properly.

The Raven tells Bran it’s time to leave the vision, but Bran wants to stay. The Raven grabs Bran and pulls him back to reality. Bran wakes up and protests, but the Raven says that too much time spent in a vision will lead to “drowning”. Bran looks at Hodor and tells hi he saw him when he was younger, and he could speak. “What happened, Hodor?” Bran asks, but Hodor merely replies, “Hodor.” This exchange makes me think that Hodor is perhaps the name of the thing that so shocked him that it removed his ability to say anything else. Also, I think we’re going to learn more about Hodor’s background in the future. At least I hope so, because before it was just a low level thing that you didn’t think about, but now it’s become a tantalising mystery. Setting it up like this and then failing to deliver more information would be terrible story-telling.

Outside in the snow, Meera Reed stares into the distance. She is sullen and fed up. The dryad-like figure talks to her. Meera questions what they are doing here, how pointless it all is. Dryad tells her that soon Bran will need her help. Hodor carries Bran out and he speaks briefly with Meera before going back into the cave. Meera returns to her watch.

Well it’s good to see something about Bran again, after so long. And it looks like his story is about to ramp up again. We’ve added three mysteries to be expounded upon in the future: Lyanna, Wylis, and what he’s going to do that Meera will be needed to assist with. Let’s hope we get to them soon, rather than not seeing Bran for another season.

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