Did the season’s last episode have you questioning why you had invested so much time and energy on the diversion that is Game of Thrones? Wondering what point George R.R. Martin and the showrunners were trying to make, or even if they had one? And perhaps suspecting, as we suggested a few weeks ago, they are “Lost”?
We try to make sense of it, and offer one big possible hiding-in-plain-sight clue about the fate of Jon Snow that has not been widely discussed.
Join us for a discussion of “Mother’s Mercy” with three fans with different perspectives: Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; Corrin Bennett-Kill, a dedicated fan of the book and TV series (she has read all the books four times!); and Cheryl Collins, who does not read.
Please join the discussion in comments!
Cheryl Collins
Well, I felt drained after last night’s finale. You?
Laura Fletcher
So drained!! Also dubious. Is that an emotion? I felt that.
Corrin Bennett-Kill
I felt drained. Then pissed. Then drained. Then indifferent. Then pissed again.
Corrin
I’d like to rant for a moment if I may, about the season as a whole and this finale as an appropriate end cap.
There was a recap by the AV Club that talked about the trust that an audience places in the producers to care for the material and the trust the show puts in its audience to follow along and willingly take the twists and turns of the show. It feels like this season was a betrayal of that trust (and here’s where perhaps I’ve started taking all of this waaay too seriously).
The capriciousness that I felt as a book reader when reading Book Five [A Dance with Dragons] readily appeared in the series. The horror and chaos and pain that these characters experience and inflict upon one another no longer seems to be for a purpose, but rather serves simply to shock; for example, to recreate the brouhaha of Ned Stark’s beheading or the Red Wedding.
Further, the shocking events have seemed to cut the progress of the story off at its knees. As my husband said last night, who is left for me to care about? Where is this story even going at this point?
Whether the fault lies with GRRM or with the showrunners, I don’t know, but it really felt like they just took a steaming dump on their audience last night.
Cheryl
You knew because you knew Jon would die, right? So what fell dump-y to you?
Corrin
Without getting too far into it, no, I didn’t know Jon would die. That was left well open at the end of the books. He was left dying, but not dead. The possibility always existed that he would recover.
Cheryl
Perhaps that is still true? Melisandre just happens to be hovering …
Corrin
Unless they are trying a massive cover-up, the showrunners and Kit Harington have pretty definitively said dead is dead.
I’m really cheesed off by this finale.
Laura
I have a theory about what the show is doing with Jon, and I doubt he’s off the show entirely, but the show is damned regardless: they either killed off a character definitively in a really ridiculous way, or they pulled a MASSIVE fake-out that will feel cheap and dirty if they do keep him around. As Corrin says, it’s back to trust. I don’t trust them to make the right decision here.
Cheryl
So many of Jon’s twists and turns, so much of his drama — all now vaporized. Why invest in the characters’ growth and change? Unless GRRM is making a point about History versus the small motes that we are as we try to affect it.
Laura
Without going into a laundry list of what book readers knew/expected and what happened, the show basically took every liberty to turn maybes into definites, and most of those had to do with deaths.
Cheryl
To me this was always the problem: how to keep book readers engaged. They had to shake things up a bit.
Besides the massive disappointment, it was quite beautiful, the way he “died” in the snow.
Laura
I’m tired of the cutesy excuse for a “twist” that we don’t see someone die onscreen. I don’t need, or want, to see more blood and gore onscreen, and I don’t need the showrunners toying with me every time they spare me that grotesquerie (for example, is Stannis dead? Is Shireen dead? Is Dany being captured or celebrated?).
Cheryl
We come back to the question: why are we watching? We know GRRM likes to kill characters off: that’s what he does. Who else is there to care about now? Davos and Sam and Gilly and Arya and Sansa. Also Tyrion and Varys and Dany. Not enough for me.
Corrin
That’s just it, Cheryl. Those who are left aren’t enough, and the story doesn’t even seem to make sense with just those that remain.
Cheryl
I think Willa Paskin in Slate said it well for me: that GoT does the big set pieces well, but is pretty terrible at filling in the story between the big plot points. To me, because of that thinness, we naturally become more invested in the characters.
Corrin
There are BIG chunks of motivation and possibly game-changing characters that haven’t even been hinted at that need to arrive, develop, and find some way for the audience to engage with them before the story regains any momentum. It seemed like that was happening in episode 9, but then it got blown to hell.
Laura
Exactly. There are significant other players and plots yet unintroduced. Some will doubtless be excised, but not all of them. If they are, as we’ve noted, there aren’t enough characters left!
Cheryl
I guess the issue is that GRRM seems to be looking at events from a multigenerational perspective, but we as readers and viewers of course experience those events through various characters, whom we become invested in. Life sucks, people die. But … is the big story he is trying to tell enough for me? I’m not sure. To me, the characters are in the foreground, for him, the background.
Corrin
That’s a great point, Cheryl. But that’s no way to run a TV show!
Cheryl
Are we ready to head back to the top, with what seems to bode well for Stannis: the thaw? The sacrifice of Shireen seems to have worked, and Melisandre is feeling cocky.
But then Stannis — looking miserable — shrugs her off and is quickly besieged by a series of problems. Yet his Hand is gone. Half the men have deserted, his wife has hung herself, and then Melisandre herself flees. He is alone. Yet onward he marches.
Corrin
He must. He is Stannis. We should have all seen it coming several episodes ago. There is no going back. There is only going forward. Doomed cause or not. It is his tragedy.
Cheryl
So my question is: was Melisandre wrong all along? What of her prophecy? Is she just a whack job?
Corrin
As we are well past any spoilers, yes, she has been wrong about Stannis all along. She believed so blindly that he was Azor Ahai, “the Prince who was promised,” and by the “miracles” she was able to perform on his behalf, she believed she had the right of it. The funny thing is that she just applied the right signs to the wrong person.
Cheryl
Do you know yet who the right person is?
Corrin
According to GRRM, Azor Ahai HAS been reborn. It just wasn’t Stannis. I’m not even sure they are going to use that plot point.
It is important that the whole series is called a Song of Ice and Fire. The fire god is going to have, presumably, a pretty big role.
Cheryl
So the point is something about fanatical devotion to beliefs — and check the number of people who die as a result.
Laura
Melisandre is practicing magic that works. That much we’ve seen. However, I think it’s important to note that some of the results, as Corrin insinuated, may have worked for different reasons. Perhaps it’s enough that Shireen had king’s blood as far as her relation to Robert Baratheon. Not necessarily Stannis. The leeches, after all, worked because they had Robert’s bastard son’s blood in them (Gendry).
Cheryl
Perhaps thinking one perfectly understands the will of the gods is, you know, nuts.
I’m actually relieved we missed the battle scene. We don’t need another one of those, we’ve seen plenty at this point.
So Brienne finally is able to do something she is supposed to do: avenge Renly.
But Brienne again just misses the sight of Sansa’s candle. Now I see a connection with Arya: they both went off script, as it were, and sought revenge that took them away from their sworn duties.
Corrin
There is an argument to be made that her oath to Renly superseded her oath to Catelyn Stark. It is also confirmation that Brienne was indeed the one who sent the candle message to Sansa.
Laura
Which is a problem, right? So many oaths, they were bound to contradict each other at some point.
Cheryl
Brienne has not been superefficient at ticking off tasks on her Oath list.
So many oaths, so little time.
Corrin
The name of Brienne’s sword becomes ever more ironic: Oathkeeper.
Cheryl
But Sansa uses the corkscrew that Laura spotted a few episodes ago and frees herself from her cell … to face the psycho girlfriend of Ramsay.
And Theon is back!! Yay! GoT was playing with us again, reminding us how much Sansa hates Theon … but they leap into the unknown together, holding hands. That was my favorite shot of the night.
Laura
I assume they’re not dead, but their landing certainly happened off-screen.
Cheryl
Right. We do not know if they both survived that huge fall. That’s what end-of-season cliffhangers are for, I suppose. Perhaps only one survives.
Corrin
That at least was something of the payoff we were all looking for from the Theon/Sansa/Ramsay mess. That Ramsay is still alive and killing is something of a letdown though. The payoff seemed too little. Ramsay should have had his grape squashed like a melon dropped from a height, not his girlfriend.
Laura
At least with Ramsay still alive, and Sansa probably alive (I can see Theon sacrificing himself there, by accident or on purpose), there’s a chance for justice against Ramsay. Then again, we’ve seen what bloody justice can look like, and for Arya that didn’t turn out so well. I may be in the minority here, but other than the horrific gore of that murder sequence, I loved Arya’s season ending.
Cheryl
Who saw it coming? Not I. Arya was focused on revenge, not justice per se.
Laura
She took justice into her own hands. Like Brienne. That’s more on the theme of real magic and the consequences when misused.
The special effects when Jaqen died and the faces peeled off was stunning.
Corrin
The many-faced god metes out a harder kind of justice than I think Arya was expecting.
Cheryl
Also, the notion of poison was introduced (in a way I did not understand the mechanics of, but oh well), and that segued over to Ellaria and Myrcella.
Arya assumed she knew what was best. She is still running on the fuel of hate; it does not matter how deserving that pedophile sadist was of his death. She was too wrapped up in the bloodlust of it.
I’m guessing there is an antidote, as Ellaria’s story line reminds us exist.
Corrin
Arya has been seeking vengeance for such a long time that it was pretty freaking awesome to see her exact her revenge, even knowing that there would likely be consequences. As to her fate, well, they didn’t kick her out. Jaqen said that she wasn’t ready and she would receive punishment.
Cheryl
It felt like punishment but not banishment. And that other chick [the Waif] took a little too much glee in Arya’s suffering.
Laura
And what symbolic punishment it was: now she literally cannot see faces.
Corrin
I took it as a condemnation of what she did to Meryn Trant. The first thing she did was blind him with her oyster knife. Pretty brutal.
Cheryl
I agree. Remember what Bronn said at the start of this season: “mean people get what’s coming to them” (to paraphrase). The karmic wheel turns. You cannot use the tools of god for the purposes of your own ego and desire.
Corrin
Ooooo … that’s also applicable to our red friend, Melisandre. Simply put, Lady M used the gifts of her god for her own purposes, ignoring the signs of her god in favor of her own interpretations, and she is now reaping the consequences.
Laura
Yes, and we’re back to the reality of magic and who should wield it and how. This also brings to mind Dany and her fireproof, dragon-taming talents. Maybe even the White Walkers, too.
Cheryl
And how magic can be manipulated. But what are Melisandre’s own purposes, I found myself asking last night. What does she want? The thought bubble above her head as she rides into Castle Black is “Never mind.”
Corrin
I think she wants to serve her god. I don’t think she’s simply out to fulfill her own vision. But rather than seek clarity, she just assumes her own interpretations of visions and signs are the right ones. She has too much confidence in her own will.
Laura
And that overconfidence led her further and further from her religion, which she said repeatedly was about listening to the Lord of Light. Shireen, goddammit, was her idea of what must need be done as she saw the Boltons’ banners burning in her vision. She filled in the blanks herself. Bad, bad Melisandre!!!
Cheryl
We all do that, no? See what we wish?
Now onto someone who hath no dearth of ego: Cersei.
It’s fascinating that the huge central set piece of this season ender was not a battle or filled with swordplay: it was Cersei’s humiliation.
Corrin
That lasted a looooong time.
Cheryl
Seen from every angle. It was like the stations of the cross. To me it felt like they were trying to pull us in, make us complicit in her humiliation, with all that nudity we were forced to observe. Who could not feel sympathy for Cersei?
Corrin
I understand what it was supposed to represent, the long journey back to the Red Keep, but damn.
Laura
That long, long scene seemed to play two roles, one of which was really important:
1) Let the audience wallow in Cersei’s humiliation then, as she broke down, even the biggest Cersei-hater had to feel some sort of sympathy.
2) Sexploitation, or basically what Cheryl just said. Ugh.
Corrin
I honestly didn’t read it as exploitive. It was really uncomfortable to watch though. That’s what I took from it. Her pain, her fear, her guilt. I don’t think that the High Sparrow was seeking to exploit her, not really. This was just atonement for her sins.
Cheryl
This was Cersei’s atonement, and Theon gained his by saving Sansa.
I did not feel it exploitive. I wrote one word: EXCRUCIATING.
At the end of her long, long humiliation, Cersei’s eyes glowed with rage, and it set up what I can only assume will be a scorched-earth campaign against all whom she felt wronged her; namely, the populace of King’s Landing as well as the small council (Pycelle especially), the High Sparrow and the Septa (“Shame!”).
Laura
We should talk about her newest guard! Clearly the Frankenstein monster.
Corrin
I loved the look in Cersei’s eye when he picked her up. “Vengeance is mine sayeth Cersei!”
Cheryl
Mountain-stein.
Laura
And how creepy were those purple eyes? Reminded me of Joffrey’s purple death mask.
Cheryl
And green skin. Blech.
Corrin
Well he was dead. And poisoned. Can’t be good for a body.
Laura
Interesting link I just thought of: Mountain-stein has taken a “vow of silence” (is he even able to speak?), and Arya has been blinded, at least temporarily. Both are connected with poison.
Cheryl
I think he served another purpose as well. The writers/showrunners seem to like to introduce ideas in pairs. Stannis mentions mutiny to open the show and says that nothing is worse, then Jon suffers at the hands of a mutiny at the end. Myrcella is poisoned, so is Arya. The Mountain is resurrected, and the next scene was with Jon … which seems to tell me they are suggesting that resurrection for Jon in some form is possible (maybe a new improved version).
Laura
Ooh, good catch indeed!
I absolutely don’t think the show has gotten rid of Jon. That isn’t to excuse the stupid choice of killing him.
Cheryl
And both Lannister kids have been poisoned. And bled from the nose — and didn’t Cersei poison Robert Arryn, the old hand of the king, to open the show in the first episode of Season 1?
Corrin
“Poison is a woman’s weapon”. Who said that?
Cheryl
Ned Stark. I thought of Ned’s words during this episode.
Now, on to Dorne.
Corrin
I don’t think we spent enough time with Jaime to make Dorne the “thing” it was supposed to be this season.
I think that was the plan. “Send Jaime. Have him connect with his daughter.” Yeah. That’ll make people care about Dorne. Instead we didn’t spend enough time with Jaime to really give a shit what happens to him and Myrcella.
Cheryl
Or even get to know Myrcella!
Laura
The show dipped its toes too briefly in Dornish waters to make anything feel meaningful, let alone intriguing. The best we got was Jaime’s golden hand as a makeshift shield.
Having Myrcella tell Jaime she knows he’s her dad didn’t feel that … moving? Important? Believable? It just pissed me off that she died right after, since she seems like the most reasonable Baratheon/Lannister child. OH WELL.
Corrin
Again, felt just like some of the bullshit moves GRRM pulled in the book.
Laura
Myrcella’s death felt particularly obvious — we saw it coming after that kiss — and also Monty Python-esque in its dark comedic timing.
Corrin
Dangle dangle dangle. Whoops! Not so fast.
Cheryl
She was too reasonable and level-headed to last long.
Laura
I think it’s clear that Ellaria and the Sand Snakes planned Myrcella’s murder without Prince Doran (after the show clubbed us over the head with the ring-kissing as well as tea party scene), but I don’t care.
Corrin
No caring to be had. Apparently a war with Dorne will be important because that’s the only damned reason to kill Myrcella.
Cheryl
Talk about a wasted character this season: Bronn.
So Dany is grounded by a very tired and recovering Drogon and is quickly surrounded by a horde of Dothraki.
The bird with clipped wings was finally able to take flight … and then was unable to take off again. Oops! And Jorah and Daario go off in search of her, and Daario decides he’s in charge enough to order Tyrion to rule Meereen.
Corrin
The scene with Dany and the Dothraki did not read well in the book. I was annoyed and annoyed at it. “What do you mean he dropped her in the middle of a prairie? What the fuck?”
Laura
They seemed excited to see her, but then again the Dothraki get excited before murder, too.
In the show, it seemed like Drogon had been living in that prairie for a while, judging by the bones.
Corrin
The point was that Dany didn’t do what a Dothraki Khaleesi was supposed to do. She was supposed to retire to live with the crones in Vaes Dothrak just like all the other Kahleesis without Khals.
Corrin
So, that’s one of the reasons the Dothraki are pissed. I seem to remember the new Khal being afraid that she would try to take the khalasar as well. Something along those lines.
Cheryl
They may not have seen the dragon yet.
Corrin
But the scene was shot beautifully. That was super cool. Hooray effects budgets!
[Know-it-all editor’s note: the Dothraki are horse-mounted nomadic people. It is probably more appropriate to say they live on the steppe, not prairie.]
Cheryl
Let’s just get out of Meereen, for goodness’ sake.
Perhaps the big point is that Dany is now out of that small room at the top of the pyramid, and Tyrion is in charge it seems in Meereen. With Missandei and Grey Worm, of course.
Corrin
As for Tyrion, new Hand of the Queen, I don’t disagree that he’s well-suited to the job, and yay Varys for returning to help, but the whole setup was TERRIBLE.
Laura
They spend a good two minutes reintroducing Missandei and Grey Worm, which they could have easily cut out. We know them! Please trust us, show runners!
Corrin
Yeah, all that exposition by Daario was bad. Bad bad bad.
Cheryl
The dialogue was terrible. It would have been so much better to have some bitching, sniping, back and forthing, etc.
Corrin
It’s like one of the writers had his 16-year-old write those parts of the script on bring-your-kids-to-work day.
Laura
Varys just showing up next to Tyrion was classic Varys, though.
Corrin
It was. I squeed
Laura
Varys always reminds me of Littlefinger, who is MIA right now. Wonder what he’s going to do now that Cersei is, well, whatever she is (certainly vengeful) and about to get more so when she learns of Myrcella’s murder.
Cheryl
One of many characters who disappeared. Along with Tommen, Margaery, Littlefinger, Roose…
Laura
And Loras. Plus Yara Greyjoy, but who knows if she’ll ever be back.
Cheryl
And of course Bran, Rickon, Osha.
Corrin
So here’s what I have to say about Jon and his betrayal: Fie on the show runners for teasing Benjen Stark in the “previously on” at the beginning of the show. I literally shouted out loud “NO WAY!” because I thought that they were going to either find out what happened to him or bring in Coldhands, who it has been posited was Benjen Stark.
So it was doubly a gut shot when we saw the sign “traitor.” They had not only tricked Jon, but teased and tricked us. Fuckers.
Laura
I was super mad about that, too. Benjen was catnip for book readers who hoped this would really happen. Catnip turned ragweed.
Corrin
Second, it was almost as if Jon wasn’t very surprised. His look at Olly was just so sad and loving. I think that Jon had been expecting something like this from the moment his decision to retrieve the wildlings was made.
Cheryl
They knew he would rush without thinking — and without sword — to find out about Benjen. As would we, who were just as unprepared as Jon was. Armorless. Or at least, I was!
Corrin
Jon has always been a hinge on which this story, and how much we care about it, has hung. Killing him off, I mean really killing him off, was the straw that broke many camels’ backs Sunday night.
Cheryl
I agree. He was a hero in all senses, the good guy doing what he could in miserable circumstances, fighting the good fight. All the twists and turns we took with him. And then after it’s over, you wonder… why did I bother?
Remember the long, long slog of season 3 — when Jon was north of the Wall, and all the action that season seemed pointless and off-focus. We stuck around because we cared about the characters, and above all Jon.
I’ve been thinking about “Star Trek: Next Generation.” What made that show great was not the crazy planets or races or enemies they faced, but how the characters bounced off and reacted to each other. How they grew and changed, or did not.
GoT upends this model. There not a lot of interaction between characters, it’s mostly jumping from plot point to plot point. The repartee between the characters when it happens is the highlight: think Tywin and Arya, Tyrion and Varys, Theon and Sansa, or Tyrion and Dany, for example. These show characters at work.
Corrin
It’s the trouble that has always existed with adapting novels that have their narrative technique as alternating first-person perspectives. You just cannot provide the kind of context and connection with characters on a television screen as you do in a novel without giving them fuel (read: other great characters) off which to feed.
Cheryl
Great point. There are opportunities, but character development seems so low down on their priority list. Kind of George Lucas/Star wars-like.
We just gave one — the clan left behind in Meereen. Their interaction just did not feel human. The fabulous production values, as well as Jon and Tyrion, and Sansa and Arya, may have seduced us.
There may be nothing behind Door Number 3. Meaning, there will be no payoff or satisfying conclusion or culmination of this show.
Corrin
To date there hasn’t been anything behind Door Number 3.
The Winds of Winter is the next book in the series. If the series continues to go off-book in the ways it has, then it will become such a thoroughly different entity than the show that they might as well not be related anymore.
Cheryl
There will be at least one more season and possibly two. What can they wrap up in one season? I just don’t see it. Dany coming back to King’s Landing and Westeros. It’s not enough any more. White Walkers descend. Hilarity ensues.
Corrin
Well, they’ve done the big reveal. The real menace attacked Hardhome. We all now know the big endgame. So other than letting that menace build, there isn’t really a reason to let the rest of the nonsense continue.
I don’t think that Dany is going to get to Westeros before the White Walkers cross the wall. So you have her potentially arriving as savior rather than conqueror.
Cheryl
Who knows? Maybe the White Walkers will become more sympathetic as we get to know them.
I wondered about that as I looked at that image of the Night’s King raising his hands as he and Jon stare at each other across the water — besides reanimating the dead (now important!), the raised hands seemed to say “join us.”
But as of now, I feel kind of like I did toward the end of “Lost”: you keep watching because you want to see what happens. It doesn’t make sense, but you are just pushing through to get to the end.
Squawks
Laura
Some of the minor characters of Dorne, whom they did bother to include (such as Areo Hotah, the guard of “Prince Bashir”), were so underdeveloped as to be insulting, beyond disappointing. Areo Hotaho is one of the VERY FEW Black characters in GoT. But all he does is that doofusy fight scene with Jaime and Bronn. At least he will get to use that poleaxe. Hashtag silver lining.
Even if Melisandre resurrects Jon, will he also/first be a Wight? And what are the geographic boundaries of which dead people become Wights? So far it doesn’t happen in Winterfell, or to the townsfolk near the Wall, but it does happen at the Wall. Also, will Zombie Jon ride Ghost in a creepy manner? ACTION FIGURES ZOMBIE JON AND GHOST. [Editor’s note: each sold separately.]
Cheryl
The theme of imprisonment — with cloistered cells and small rooms, all with a single window — has been at play all season. But now, Sansa emerged from her prison and took flight (literally flying), Cersei is “free” (trading one cell for another: the Red Keep), Tyrion is free (in the last shot he is on the balcony looking over the city; he started the season in a crate, and end up now with a massive vantage point); Jaime is stuck in that crate-like ship’s cabin with his dying daughter.
OK, here’s that possibly very obvious clue about Jon’s fate that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere: remember when in “Hardhome,” Jon had taken off to try to enlist the wildings, and Sam and Olly were having a chat? Sam told Olly that sometimes you must do things that seem wrong in the moment but serve the long-term good (oops! Bet Sam regrets that conversation now). Sam says to Olly (to paraphrase): “Don’t worry about Jon. I’ve been worrying about him for years. But he always comes back.”
Get it? “Come back” As in, return? To me, this is a MAJOR hint about what lies in store for Jon — and a back-handed effort to reassure the audience.
Further, as mentioned in the discussion, the showrunners like to pair situations to contrast and compare. So the Mountain has been resurrected by Qyburn, the disgraced Maester. So who will “resurrect” Jon?
It seems to me clear: Sam. After digging around in all those books in Oldtown, the proto-Maester will figure it out.
An article in the New York Times on Monday discussed how GoT was devolving into the Lost of this decade. We were way ahead of you on that one, NYT!
Corrin, Laura, Cheryl
Cheryl
Was “bad pussy” one of the things the silly Sand Snake said to Bronn?
Corrin
It was.
Laura
Grrrr.
Corrin
I rolled my eyes so hard at that that I sprained something.
Cheryl
Gratuitous adolescent boy-speak. Again.
Please join us in comments! But no spoilers, please!!
Thanks to all for joining us this season!
