Game of Thrones Discussion — S6E8: The Name of the Game Is Death

What will parents do to protect their children? In an episode whose opening words are “my son,” we are reminded that the givers of life will bring destruction on others — and dishonor upon themselves — to save their children.

Further, can you escape your nature? And avoid your fate? “No One” seems to suggest that you may be able to seize control of the narrative of your life, but may not be able to change your destiny.

As Game of Thrones in many ways circles back to its first seasons, the paths of Sandor, Arya, Jaime, and Cersei bring those questions into high relief.

For an added bonus, at the end of this discussion, Laura reflects on the way Arya’s journey upends typical high fantasy tropes; Rosalyn wonders if the Freys’ fashion choices may say something about their military capabilities, and Cheryl makes many fanciful predictions based on some of the terrible jokes and other oddments we’ve seen and heard in the past two episodes.

Join three fans with different perspectives pick their way along this rocky path. Rosalyn Claret, who has read the books yet says she “forgets” how many times; Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; and Cheryl Collins, who does not read. Maester Corrin Bennet-Kill is on hiatus.

Please join the discussion in comments!

Cheryl
We had all three Lannisters in this episode, and we were reminded multiple times that Cersei wants revenge on Tyrion and the “whore” Sansa for killing Joffrey. Hmm.

Laura
To me, the setup with Lady Crane “saved” Arya’s storyline from sucking out loud.

Cheryl
Let’s start at the beginning. The first words we hear this episode are “my son” on a black screen, and then we watch “Cersei” mourn “Joffrey” on stage.

Lady Crane has rewritten the last scene of the play, at Arya’s suggestion from the last episode, to stress Cersei’s anger and desire for revenge.

Just a reminder that certainly Cersei’s — and the departed Catelyn’s — responses to threats to their children have driven much of the plot on Game of Thrones.

Shall we start with the first scene? Rosalyn, I know you are not a big fan of the Lady Crane stuff.

Rosalyn
I came around. I was skeptical at the very first instance of the play, but I like Lady Crane as a character and agree with Laura’s comment that this whole storyline saved Arya’s from being shit.

Laura
I want to talk about how Lady Crane fits into this episode in which we get “fierce mother” references to both Cersei and Catelyn Stark.

Lady Crane is both playing Cersei and serving as a mother to Arya — she’s quite literally a bridge between the two. She represents Arya’s divided mind and two diverging paths.

Rosalyn
Lady Crane’s opening monologue channels Cersei and forces us into Cersei’s perspective, a little bit, with more sympathy than we might have without that level of remove. Then there is the very maternal image of Lady Crane tending to Arya in bed. I don’t think we’ve ever seen Arya being cared for like this.

Cheryl
We follow Lady Crane backstage (literally), where she finds Arya is hiding — behind a gold and blue curtain. She takes Arya back to her room and tends her wounds — and gives her milk of the poppy.

Laura
Lady Crane is also unabashedly violent: she knows how to patch up Arya not because she is a nurse or a mother, but a lover with a temper.

Cheryl
Right. She is not as innocent as we may have believed, and in fact may have had many enemies who wished her dead.

Lady Crane listened to Arya and changed the story. Remember Arya’s admonition: if you don’t like the story, change it? However, Lady Crane could not change her own fate.

Rosalyn
It’s a bit of a twist that in taking Arya’s suggestion about rewriting the part, Lady Crane gets to take more control over her own life, and scores a “point” for Arya’s perspective. Yet the result, of course, only emphasizes Cersei’s quest for vengeance, and even makes it seemed justified.

All Lady Crane’s past violent acts make her all the more like Arya!

Cheryl
Besides with this open with Arya — who is backstage, behind the play sort-of recounting the recent history of the Lannisters and Starks — in this episode we also follow the stories of the three Lannister siblings.

Laura
This episode highlights that Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion are all in different places, dealing with different problems, but all are life and death, and all three are key players.

As much as this season seems to be about the Starks (and I’m including Jon in that), this episode shows the “gold” — Lannister — side of the coin.

Cheryl
The theme of parents and children continues later, when Jaime, in the scene with Edmure, reminds us of what “fierceness” Cersei and Cat Stark had for their children: “they’d do anything to protect their babies. Start a war, burn cities to ash, and free their worst enemies.”

Tyrion’s stupid joke (“a Lannister, a Martell, and a Stark walk into a bar”), plus the play, plus Jaime’s interaction with Edmure, remind us the ways the fates of the Lannisters and Starks and their children are woven together.

Laura
Yes, that joke is no random aside.

And Jaime literally threatens to toss a child to his death — again. Best not doubt that threat, Edmure.

Rosalyn
Watching Edmure cut down Jaime was pretty amazing, mostly because I don’t know that Jaime truly disagrees with anything Edmure says.

Cheryl
I think it may be the first time Jaime publicly avowed his love for Cersei. But he appeals to the paternal and familial devotion of Edmure to force him to disarm the men inside Riverrun.

Laura
I think Edmure gained the upper hand in that conversation with Jaime more than either man realized. Edmure pushed Jaime’s buttons, especially the raw one about whether he’s a good man, brought up afresh as he confronts Brienne and the sword he gave her.

Rosalyn
As the Kingslayer, Jaime has spent years contemplating what his “honor” and the “greater good” might mean to him and having it thrown in his face. This is fresh in his mind from his latest interaction with Brienne.

Cheryl
While Edmure ripped Jaime apart as immoral, Jaime’s larger goal was noble. He was trying to resolve the siege peacefully, which was Brienne’s suggestion, by the by.

Rosalyn
“How do you live with yourself?” and “How do you sleep at night?” could be throwaway, generic taunts. But Edmure means them. And Jaime hears them.

Cheryl
Jaime threatened to throw Edmure’s baby over the walls and kill all the Tullys, which did not sound like an idle threat. Remember what Jaime said last episode about idle threats.

Jaime’s actions were terrible means to serve honorable ends. He succeeds where Brienne fails.

Laura
When Jaime professed his love for Cersei above all else, just as he’d said to her before leaving for Riverrun, I wondered if it was all hot air. I think Jaime doth protest too much. That love has become hollow, but at the same time, she really is the only thing he has left — made even more obvious by Tommen’s loss to the High Sparrow-Septon.

Rosalyn
In the end, Edmure and Jaime make the exact same decision. Edmure tosses his family honor and the castle away to save the life of his child. Jaime threatens these horrible acts in order to save his love for Cersei, to get back to her.

Edmure comes off worse because he’s an eternal disappointment, and now a traitor to his house and family in the worst way, letting the Lannisters through the gates of Riverrun, this last holdout. He’ll never know peace in his life, not from the way the other Tully men looked at him.

Cheryl
The last time we saw Edmure, he was not exactly someone you hold in high respect — he seemed a blowhard and an incompetent fool. Here he seemed quite different.

Laura
Edmure confronted him and basically asked, why should I believe anything you say? Contrast with Brienne, who genuinely takes Jaime’s word that if the Blackfish surrenders the castle, he’ll be able to march out peacefully.

Rosalyn
As I think has been pointed out before elsewhere, Brienne always asks the best of Jaime. Cersei asks the worst of him.

Laura
Jaime can’t change into a better man anymore. No one would believe it — illustrated by Edmure. So he reverts to bloodthirsty, Bran-tossing Jaime. He can’t find that middle road to walk — though he did take the castle peacefully (except for the Blackfish … maybe).

Rosalyn
Poor Edmure. His crime is really just mediocrity. He’s not really evil, not really foolish, not really horribly incompetent. Just not heroic.

Cheryl
Edmure looked like a mirror image of Jaime when he was a Stark captive in Season 1. Remember when he was tied to a pole and Cat frees him in exchange for the promise to find and protect Arya and Sansa, who were still in King’s Landing? (Which brought the wrath of Robb and sowed discord in the Stark coalition.)

Rosalyn
Jaime’s discussion of the similarities between Catelyn and Cersei was meaningful on a character level, because I think it’s true for Jaime — it’s something he noticed and responded to — but it also has a point: to remind Edmure about people who do anything to save their children, right before threatening him. It’s manipulative.

Swearing to do anything for Cersei’s love, even committing horrible crimes against children — for me, that was a death blow to Jaime’s personal growth, and it meant abandoning honor, because it literally brings him full circle right to exactly where he began.

Cheryl
Exactly. His next line is “the things we do for love” — which is what he said before he pushed Bran out the window.

Rosalyn
The fact that Jaime and Edmure both made the same choice — for love and family — is pretty ominous in Game of Thrones, because people who make such decisions end up causing devastation on a massive scale.

Laura
This is what made Jaime and Brienne’s parting so bittersweet, and profound: when they waved farewell, Brienne knew that the good-Jaime was gone forever. That’s how I read it. She tried, he tried, but there’s no room for good-Jaime in this world. It was as much an indictment of the world Jaime’s in as of him personally.

Rosalyn
The Blackfish is dead, Riverrun is taken. I don’t think Jaime would have chosen these things without being driven by the desire to get back to Cersei.

Cheryl
Jaime says that mothers like Cat and Cersei will “start a war, burn cities to ash, and free their worst enemies.” We’ve seen two of those three (the war Cat started after Bran was injured, and Cat freed Jaime). Will we see the third?

Laura
It all goes back to that Kingslayer moment: Jaime did the right thing, and he never lived it down.

Cheryl
This whole Riverrun detour felt empty and a bit pointless — much sturm und drang — for what? Why all the effort on these scenes?

Let’s talk about Brienne here. Because we were deprived of Jaime and Brienne’s first moments of reunion. Tricky showrunners!

Rosalyn
The Brienne–Jaime interaction really colors the entire scene with Edmure, for me. These considerations are fresh in Jaime’s mind.

When Brienne asks him if he thinks the Red Wedding truly makes Riverrun a Frey holding, and the Tullys rebels, you can see that he doesn’t. It’s another instance of Jaime trapped by his family name, cornered by his father’s actions. He can never outrun them. He wasn’t at the Red Wedding, didn’t plan it, might not have condoned it; he didn’t kill Elia’s children; but people will always throw it in his face.

Cheryl
Everyone has been throwing the word “kingslayer” at him of late — it follows him like a bad smell.

Laura
Brienne holds up that uncomfortable mirror to Jaime, as she’s always done. She’s like a therapist, in some ways. Not really offering much new information or opinions, just repeating facts and making him stew in them.

Cheryl
It certainly seems like he is sick of fighting.

Rosalyn
I don’t know that he’d listen seriously to talk about honor from anyone but Brienne. She makes him really consider it. (Kind of like Ray and the Hound.) They have similarities, as knights, that make him think twice when she says it; she represents ideals he may have held once.

Cheryl
She sees the best in him — and he tries to rise to it.

She loves him! And he loves her.

Rosalyn
I noticed that Brienne doesn’t speak that way to anyone else — there’s a tone in her voice, before she reverts back to formality and duty, that is more comfortable and freer than with anyone else. Jaime doesn’t speak that way to anyone else, either.

Cheryl
When he says “I’m proud of you,” she nearly cracked.

Laura
It’s love, but not really romantic love. It’s some kind of complex BFF thing. I really like that, and think Bronn’s stupid sex joke in the last episode actually made it even more poignant for me.

Rosalyn
It was a stupid sex joke, but I think it actually worked to add another undercurrent to their confrontation/reunion, when we finally see it.

It might be romantic love, but it would never have a chance to develop into that.

“We shouldn’t argue about politics,” he says, lamely. I think he wants to agree with her that the entire situation is shit, but can’t. And he doesn’t want to be “fighting,” either. It’s self-defense and a copout but also a funny comment coming from him. He’d rather they could be a united front, I think.

Laura
Brienne and Jaime want to be each other. It’s like they are each other’s better half. Sex and romance are one way to express that kind of love, though not the only way. Certainly I suspect it’s how Jaime would try to do it. It’s like Greek tragedy to me, somehow.

Cheryl
Some would say that is what love is — when you project on to another all of the things you wish you had yourself.

It seems Jaime just not want to be there — it’s all BS and he knows it, doesn’t care.

Rosalyn
I wonder how long it’s been since either of them really found another person to admire. Not to idolize, but to admire.

Cheryl
In the last scene at Riverrun, in which Jaime watches Brienne sail away from the ramparts, he is no longer in Lannister red and gold, but bathed in blues — Brienne blue.

Laura
One last romantic bit: when Brienne tries to return Jaime’s sword, it almost felt like someone returning an engagement ring.

Cheryl
It keeps them connected together.

Rosalyn
It’s complicated for Brienne because she has a pretty straightforward view of honor and service. The sword is a symbol that things are more complicated than that. She always gets called out for that sword — it’s always undermining her mission in a way — but it means so very much to her personally. If she were practical-minded she might get rid of it or have the hilt changed. But she persists in carrying out her mission even with this symbol of the enemy.

Cheryl
In this picture, she is in blue framed by Lannister red. Like twin souls, really.

When have you seen Jaime let down his guard in the way he waves to her — with hesitation almost? And fear of rejection, sadness.

Laura
And letting go.

Rosalyn
There are people behind the banners and causes and epithets (“kingslayer”) even when these things are also driving you and giving you purpose.

I loved seeing Jaime in this episode, watching him struggle with these things, with feelings for Brienne (of one way or another), but was again disappointed/confounded that he’s still in a place where he’ll give it all up for Cersei. His character has progressed in a different way from the books, and I can’t see how they’ll bring it around to that point.

So what was the purpose of this Riverrun storyline? To bring back the Tullys, perhaps, but really just to reunite Jaime and Brienne, for what I think is the last time. One of them seems destined to bite the dust before season’s end, which is terrifying to me.

Cheryl
Will the Tully forces join Sansa and Jon? Hard to believe, but Brienne suggested it.

So let’s bring it around to the last scene with Cersei at court.

Laura
Oh yes, Cersei and her “I choose violence” line that was in all the Season 6 trailers!

Rosalyn
I think Cersei’s gonna be the next one on the GRRM hit list, and what does it mean for show-Jaime if he hasn’t let go of her yet by the time she gets offed? Hmm.

Cheryl
This is what I sense: Cersei will loosen wildfire, it will engulf Tommen (among others), and she will then go mad. All of this is a mirror image of what happened to Catelyn Stark.

Laura
Like Cat and of course like the Mad King — which also helps explain why we bothered to shoot scenes of King Aerys and wildfire just for Bran’s visions.

My Cersei “rumor” theory is, sadly, Dorne-related. The “rumor” is that Doran was killed. The Martells are after all the sworn enemies of the Lannisters, but if Cersei wants to get her son back (and her power, perhaps), she’ll help Dorne take King’s Landing.

We had Jaime tee that idea up — that Cersei like Cat will free and ally with her worst enemy.

Cheryl
Makes total sense. I wish I could care more about Dorne to get revved about it. However, Dorne exists for a reason in this storyline. I guess.

As we have said numerous times now, this season has a lot of “strange bedfellows.”

Or could it be — that Varys and Qyburn have been communicating, and that might have something to do with Varys’s top secret mission?

Rosalyn
Can you see Cersei and Ellaria tolerating an alliance?!

Laura
No! I can’t! Which is why my theory is shit. Cersei would have to talk to Ellaria through an intermediary and hide who was really behind it.

Cheryl
Cersei tried to ally with Olenna and it didn’t work. But in desperation, Cersei could turn to Tyrion — because as Olenna says, she has no other allies now.

In this scenario, the underscored reminder in this episode of how much Cersei hates Tyrion and wants revenge could be misdirection — because she is ready to ally with him.

Rosalyn
On Qyburn’s “old rumor,” my mind went to Meereen. Daenerys had been brought up in the small council meetings ages ago [in Season 1]. Of course, plenty of people have been keeping closer tabs on her, but I don’t think Cersei was one of them.

Laura
Olenna, who did actually kill her son. Let’s not dismiss that Cersei is a horrible judge of character. She’s frequently right that people are her enemies, but it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy as she makes enemies without trying.

“How to Make Enemies and Influence People.”

Rosalyn
I thought that perhaps she’d either heard that Tyrion had been found (although there’s no reason for Qyburn to bring that up at that exact moment) or that she was thinking somehow of throwing in with the Targaryen cause.

Laura
I also wondered about the Greyjoys.

I love the idea of Cersei reaching out to Tyrion via a Qyburn-Varys summit.

Cheryl
Remember the letter we see Tywin writing in the Red Keep while he talks to Tyrion [in Season 3], which we later find out is sent to set up the Red Wedding (which put the Boltons in Winterfell)? Maybe now we are at the reverse image of all that: Sansa allying with the Lannisters to take back Winterfell.

In this scenario, the Lannister armies, led by Jaime, wipe out the hapless Freys and help ensure that Winterfell is returned to the Starks.

Laura
Hmm, a Lannister-Stark alliance seems like a stretch for some reason. Maybe I’m having trouble seeing how Cersei would get anything out of it. How it would get Tommen out of hot water, or unseat the High Sparrow?

Rosalyn
Should we talk about Cersei and Tommen? And the zombie Mountain and Lancel and the Faith Militant?

Did you wonder if perhaps Cersei had not been invited to the proclamation as a kindness, not a slight? To spare her all the public scrutiny as she heard about the trial?

And, of course, in grand Cersei tradition, she busted in because her pride was wounded, and of course has been riding high on zombie-Mountain’s invincibility.

And did you catch that the trial is supposed to happen on the first day of THE FEAST OF THE MOTHER?

Cheryl
Aha! To me, it felt like Kevan is keeping her away.

What I wonder, why is Tommen keeping away from his mother? Tommen has such shame that it’s hard for him to look at Cersei. Why? Is he truly a convert?

Laura
One quick note: I think the High Sparrow — now High Septon — was going to tell Cersei this at their Sept of Baelor tête-à-tête. I don’t think she was in mortal peril.

But her pride was wounded, and she was upset she hadn’t gotten a chance to use the Mountain (and hurt some Faith Militant) yet, so she overreacted and screwed her chances entirely.

Rosalyn
Good catch that he is officially High Septon, and “sparrow” is just kind of a slang term.

On the annulment of the trial by combat: I was pleased by the twist. I know everyone wants Cleganebowl, but another trial by combat seemed honestly kind of boring and anticlimactic. This is more interesting, though I know tons of people will disagree. It’s more complex.

It makes the High Septon even more of a threatening power player. This is his move.

Cheryl
You just have the sense that Cersei want to stand near, be close to, touch, her son. I keep wondering if Tommen is in on all this.

Rosalyn
Cersei tries to ascend the steps to the throne, as she’s done billions of times, but is sent away. But Queen Margaery should have a rightful place on that dais. Where is she? And what is she up to, more to the point?

Cheryl
On to the Hound. And the “real” Brotherhood Without Banners.

Rosalyn
I felt relieved that we saw Beric, Thoros et al. preparing to execute the rogue brotherhood members, if only because I suppose at this point any hint of narrative coherence is a damn relief. They were rogue members and the “real” Brotherhood’s aims are still notionally the same.

Cheryl
Beric is alive and going North to face down the White Walkers, it seems. The Hound is going too. Maybe he will meet Arya along the way. (Now that I think of it, they are another pair, who parallel Jaime and Brienne.)

Rosalyn
It’s interesting that what made the Hound consider joining them was that appeal to a higher purpose. That maybe what they were fighting for was bigger than all the other big causes.

Cheryl
Thoros’s statements to Sandor completely mirror Ray’s, of course: “there is a larger purpose,” the Lord of Light brought back Beric because he has a plan for him, yada yada yada.

Laura
And Sandor is part of that larger plan, moreover.

Rosalyn
They mirror Ray’s sentiments but also offer a different way, a more realistic way, maybe? Beric asks the Hound: you tried to walk away from fighting. How’d that go? Well, not very well, and Beric knows it.

This also answers some of our questions from the last episode. You may not be able to just walk away. Here he is offering Sandor a way to fight, but with purpose, or to have a purpose, but not to be a defenseless sacrifice for that purpose.

As the Hound points out, “Lots of horrible shit gets done for something larger than ourselves,” and it’s on them to make a case about why their big thing is even bigger.

Cheryl
Beric says something like “you were born a fighter.” Fighting is his true nature and he cannot walk away from it. As we discussed last week, it seemed that he was trying to figure out what his new identity would be — and this new cause appeals. Fighting for a cause.

I feel like we passed through a mirror with this episode: we are now traveling back to the beginnings of Game of Thrones, in reverse.

Laura
Unlikely bedfellows, again — Sandor would rather fight anywhere than next to a guy with a flaming sword.

Rosalyn
My last note on this scene is a) a lot of Sandor’s lines were really funny, way funnier than the lousy Tyrion scene, and b) I loooooove what they are doing with the Hound. It is so much more interesting and complex than I could have anticipated at the start of the show or from anything in the books. He is one of the best characters, in my opinion.

Cheryl
He is much more complex that we imagined he could be. A killing machine that has developed — or rediscovered — a conscience.

I did think the scene went on too long and was badly directed. Why a shot of his urine stream hitting the lake, for example?

Laura
And then we have Arya, a girl with a strong conscience, who has developed some killing machine skills.

Rosalyn
I would be way more psyched by this “rousing conclusion” to her time in Braavos if it, y’know, made any sense.

Cheryl
I wrote after I watched the final chase sequence: “the most surreal Game of Thrones ever.”

It did not feel like a straightforward chase (and that’s why I wondered if this was all a dream): it felt off balance, off kilter. Certainly the Waif felt supernatural.

Did either of you feel like the Waif was like that character in Terminator? Who never stops and is superhuman?

Laura
If we want to give the show some realistic benefit of the doubt, we could say that perhaps Arya was tougher than nails during the chase because the milk of the poppy hadn’t entirely worn off.

Cheryl
We TV-only watchers have really no idea what that shit is supposed to do, except alleviate pain. Arya seems afraid of it — and to me, it sent her to a near-death state.

I posit: everything after was a milk of the poppy–induced dream sequence.

Rosalyn
I really like y’all’s dream sequence theory, but I’m afraid I cannot give the show that much faith, to pull off something like that. After all, everyone had a problem with Arya’s obliviousness last episode, and it turned out to be exactly what it appeared to be on the surface. The show is going literal with all of this.

Laura
I don’t know if the dream sequence is literally possible, but it’s odd that the story left that door so wide open, you know?

So much can — and should — be read into Jaqen’s expression when Arya takes back her identity? What was his perspective? Did he know it would end this way, and did he even hope it would?

Cheryl
Excellent question. Or was he just “proud” of her because he really did not want her to die?

Laura
Did the student surpass the teacher? I’d like to think so.

Rosalyn
I’m so annoyed. It SHOULD be AWESOME and even poetic that Arya snuffs out that candle because she knows that she might be able to best the Waif without sight. It finally gives purpose to all those fighting scenes and to her time as a beggar. But that Jaqen is just cool with it at the end? And is not going to be ceaselessly hunting her down forever more? That makes no sense.

Cheryl
She outwitted them all.

Rosalyn
I did not get that at all. If I could think of Jaqen as a normal character, maybe that would all read, to me. But he represents this crazy cult mythology we have laboriously been introduced to through entire seasons.

Cheryl
I was very confused when she just strode out of there — with no grimace, no limp, no scars, no bleeding. That is superhuman. Or she is dead. Or it was a dream.

Laura
I think Arya tapped into something supernatural. Fighting in the dark is more than a “skill” she got from being blind. Recall again (though this is likely just a red herring) that Melisandre met Arya briefly way back when and said she was special.

Cheryl
I hate to keep saying, “oh, it’s magical” when stuff happens that does not make sense. But no doubt you are right.

Rosalyn
And in the book, Arya’s ability to fight blind was definitely enhanced by whatever latent Starkish magic might be in her.

Laura
I’m rooting for all of this to mean something, and the reason Jaqen put a hit out on Arya, then let her go, is that he realizes she’s more than just “a Girl.” It happens rarely, I’d wager, but he sees her evolution as honorable somehow.

Rosalyn
I think that could make sense, Laura. It just felt like the House of Black and White did not really find closure. Arya gets to stride off into the sunset, but I still don’t understand what Jaqen’s endgame was.

Cheryl
On to Meereen. What about Tyrion, Missandei, and Grey Worm?

Rosalyn
The one part I liked about that scene was watching Grey Worm watching Missandei laugh.

Cheryl
He smiled, maybe for the first time. But the writing of that scene was blecchh.

Laura
These scenes are painful to watch, but I think in retrospect we can say that it’s about Tyrion’s crass diplomacy seeming to win, so much so that Grey Worm and Missandei almost relax as they sip drinks with him and attempt to tell jokes, but then we realize it’s all for naught — the Masters have gone against their word. They’ve come to re-enslave Meereen while the dragon queen is away.

Cheryl
And Tyrion is all so full of himself for having “solved” the problems of Meereen. Hubris, Tyrion: beware!

Rosalyn
Then Dany gets back and instead of finding her peaceful thriving city she finds the pyramid under siege and the harbor burning.

The Lannister-Martell-Stark joke was kiiiiiiiiinda funny.

Cheryl
When Grey Worm said the wine tasted off, Tyrion replied: “Fermentation.” What is fermentation but the transmutation of one substance into another — taking grapes and making something sublime?

Transformation and transfiguration, is what I took that as a reference to. Tyrion also said that Meereen was “like a man reborn”

Laura
Fermentation, which can create vinegar or wine, depending on how you do it.

Cheryl
And here Tyrion thought he had made something sublime but had made vinegar (in that he had thought he had made peace with the Masters)! I LOVED that Grey Worm told him he was no longer making decisions and that he had been wrong, wrong, wrong. He is so used to being the smartest person in the room.

Rosalyn
Grey Worm knows about battle. He’s back in charge, rightly so.

Laura
Didn’t Grey Worm basically say “no more talking” to Tyrion?

Cheryl
I really disliked the directing of the scene when Dany shows up. Her return was so underwhelming. When she walked into the room, I did not care at all and certainly was not surprised.

Rosalyn
Me neither. It was, as they say, hella meh.

Laura
Personally, I freaked out when I saw Drogon flying away. “Wait, hold up,” I literally said to my TV.

A little Drogon-fire would toast the Masters’ fleets, is all I’m saying. Goodbye, convenient deus ex machina dragon. Hello, another drawn-out siege!

Arya’s Journey

Laura
English major nerd moment: is Arya’s journey to Braavos best explained/excused by calling it a bildungsroman [coming-of-age story] within Game of Thrones? If so, what lesson has she learned?

My guess is that she rules out both straight-up revenge (her list) and the blind justice of the Faceless Men and realizes that her demons are her family’s demons (that’s what the theater troupe and Lady Crane were for), so back to Westeros she must go.

And what does it mean to include a bildungsroman of a young girl within high fantasy, specifically within a show that seems to be doing its darnedest to upend all high fantasy tropes?  Game of Thrones has done this by making the world nearly apocalyptic and hopeless, but somehow it still feels worth fighting for.

In typical high fantasy, the hero generally has a mentor as well as a nemesis. I posit that in Arya’s story, Jaqen H’ghar was both to her. When Arya found Jaqen, he reminded her of Syrio Forel, but of course he was much more than that.

Cheryl
That’s a great point, because his nature was so ambivalent.

We viewers had always “liked” Jaqen and thought he was a good guy, then this season he turned into what seemed like your basic assassin who dressed up his beliefs in hi-fallutin’ finery, but at the very end he seemed more supportive of Arya and acted as though he were in on it the whole time.

It might all be hopeless, but in the end you come back to your identity and family. That’s what her experience taught her — her core identity as a Stark.

Laura
Then we’re reminded that Game of Thrones also shamelessly pulls in zombie apocalypse tropes, too! It’s all about forging alliances at the end of the world.

Rosalyn
I think when Arya found Jaqen, she was more motivated by naked revenge, and he had power. I don’t know that at that time she saw him as a mentor, but she was also quite desperate.

Laura
Jaqen was powerful, and he was from Braavos like Syrio (her hero, clearly), so why not hitch a ride on the coin that the creepy powerful guy gave her?

Cheryl
And Jaqen helped her — remember, he killed for her. Which all feels quite different now, in retrospect.

Laura
Think about how lightly Arya took those deaths, and how Jaqen looked a little surprised but still cold as ice. That wouldn’t be the case anymore.

Cheryl
Arya’s “honor” — that Stark obsession — would not allow her to kill Lady Crane. That jolted her back to her core.

Do you see a parallel here between her experience and Jon’s? They both left “societies” that you are initiated into and for which you commit acts you don’t wish to.

Laura
The Stark identity is so key. There’s a reason that her final victory over the Waif, whatever it looked like (and I think that really doesn’t matter), turned on Needle slicing the flame off that candle.

Needle is her Stark-ness, right? She hid it when first becoming a Faceless Man, because Jaqen knew it represented her identity.

Rosalyn
I come up against a brick wall with Jaqen’s reaction, though. I don’t get it. I didn’t get the feeling that he felt enough human connection with her to approve of her breaking the rules and forging her own path and bailing out of training.

Cheryl
Remember his response when he ordered her death: “pity, the girl had many talents”? And she did save his life once upon a time.

Laura
I think that once Arya bested the Waif, Jaqen had a whole new level of respect for Arya. He assumed she did it by applying his/the Faceless Men’s teachings, but it was actually a merging of that knowledge with her true Stark self.

When she asserted her identity, he realized that she’d basically become a hybrid, something “no one” had done before her. She’s a new type of hero, or antihero, or whatever she is now.

Rosalyn
That makes more sense. She became MORE than should could have otherwise by embracing her true self instead of negating it, and maybe he had to confront that truth by seeing her survival.

Cheryl
That’s the thing with the House of Black and White — the world outside is grey.

Laura
Braavos, even if a city founded by former slaves and peasants, is now the seat of banking and wealth for the known world! I mean, shit ain’t clearly black and white, Jaqen.

Cheryl
So she escapes and by episode’s end knows she wants to head back to Westeros — HOME.

Rosalyn
In a way, that victory though gave shape to it all, made it seem like there was a point to their endless matchups and Arya’s various trials. I just didn’t feel like it put it all back together with whatever the Faceless Man training process really is.

Frey Fashion Choices as Destiny

Rosalyn
Do you think the Frey’s headgear is their pitiful excuse for helmets? None of the Freys are wearing plate, just craptastical leather jerkin things and those head coverings.

They look like shit, and it kind of goes with the whole Frey situation. The Freys are powerful because of geography and position, and maybe could have been wealthy except for being so divided between so many family members.

The costuming almost certainly had a point other than “make them look like goofballs.”

Cheryl
And the Lannister army was bristling with plate. They made a point of showing all of the Lannister armament, and the sound of the tight, disciplined formations marching — it was a huge counterpoint to the Freys.

Rosalyn
Right! They just looked so silly and Monty Python-esque.

Cheryl
“Undefended.”

Laura
The Frey stronghold never really required armor, right? They just hole up there and attack from on high. They are not warriors, certainly.

Cheryl
They allowed Jaime’s army to march right up to their position. Foreshadowing?

Cheryl’s’ Predictions Based on Bad Jokes

It seems to me we are circling back to the first seasons of Game of Thrones — and we may have a mirror image of the Red Wedding in the offing soon. How might it come to pass?

I have a sense — probably way off — now on why certain odd scenes were inserted in the last few episodes: we are being reminded about the value of surprise and misdirection.

For example, in this episode Bronn surprises Pod from behind with an elbow lock, then later, under the guise of teaching him to fight, directs him to look at his feet —so that he can then slap Pod’s face. Surprise and misdirection.

Further, in the scene with those rogue Brotherhood without Banner guys in the woods, one jerk offers to teach the other guy to kiss — so he can stick a finger up his ass. Surprise, misdirection, and a rear assault (yuck).

In Episode 7, Jaime, Bronn and the rest of the Lannister army are able to ride right up to the Frey encampment, and Bronn tells the Frey brothers something like “you should be glad we’re not the enemy or we’d be fucking you in the ass.” Surprise and another rear entry (yes, yuck).

Will a (perhaps Tully) army surprise Ramsay’s forces from behind? As well as the Frey’s? And will Lord Umber reveal himself as the Stark loyalist we all want him to be?

Back in Season 1, Robb defeats the Lannister army by using surprise and misdirection: he tells a Lannister scout the number of men he has, but uses the bulk of his forces elsewhere to win the battle and capture Jaime. Is something like that in the offering at Riverrun?

Further, in this past episode especially, we were reminded over and over about how much Cersei still wants Tyrion and Sansa dead for the death of Joffrey and how she is burning with revenge. Are all of these reference themselves misdirection aimed at us, the viewers? Is a Stark-Lannister alliance in the making?

Through all this, we are reminded that Cat, Jaime, Cersei, Brienne, Sansa, Arya, and Tyrion have a complex history. The writers made sure to make references to all of this in passing in this past episode, especially the connection between Jaime, Brienne, Arya, and Sansa. They even had Bronn reminding us how he liked Tyrion better than Jaime — a reminder that how all three of them are tied together.

I think Littlefinger, who is still technically Warden of the North (as named by Cersei last season — did you forget that too?), will come in with the troops — surprise! — to get rid of Ramsay, whom he now knows is unstable. Apparently he promised to wipe out the Boltons to Cersei last season. And — perhaps — Littlefinger will do so because he feels a touch of remorse over Ramsay’s mistreatment of Sansa.

As mentioned above, Olenna’s letter writing seemed a call back to the letter that Tywin wrote to seal the deal of the Red Wedding (unbeknownst to us viewers at the time) and make Roose Bolton Warden of the North. (In that scene, Tyrion talks with Tywin while he is writing; in this one, it’s Cersei.) We know Olenna will not leave Loras and Margaery to their fates in King’s Landing. Who is she seeking to ally with to make that happen? Littlefinger, perhaps?

Also advancing the notion of this all being set up as a reversal of events of the first seasons, the scene with Edmure in the tent seemed an effort to shoehorn him into the role of Catelyn (his sister). It’s the opposite of events in Season 1, when Cat goes to talk to Jaime when he is tied to a pole while prisoner. Even that ever-present mud and mud-colored tent felt like call-backs to those scenes. Of course, Cat released Jaime to protect Arya and Sansa, against the wishes of Robb and his forces and which sowed discord among his troops; this is very similar to Edmure entering Riverrun to surrender it, seemingly losing the respect of the men there: acts of disloyalty committed on behalf of their children. Cat also dispatched Brienne to accompany him, and in this episode they have come full circle, as he and Brienne have what might be their final meeting.

“The things we do for love” Jaime says again — before threatening to catapult an infant over the walls (as opposed to pushing one through a window): the question is, how much has Jaime evolved since the first time he said this? His journey after with Brienne helped him evolve, and their meeting this episode reminded us of that. Perhaps he has not changed at all? Will he help undo the effects of the war that his act unleashed?

Other stuff: I still cannot believe anything I saw in the last two episodes regarding Arya. It all felt too surreal, too nonsensical: from her wandering the streets with her “tra la la, let’s take in the lovely sunset over Braavos” attitude as the Faceless Men are after her, to her survival from a gut stab by an alleged master assassin (with a close-in shot of the twisting of the knife, to boot), to her superhuman feat of survival after the chase, to the Waif’s Terminator-like abilities. I am wondering if all of this was a drug-induced vision quest, through which she came round to understanding her core identity.

Last, I think the final sequence between Arya and the Waif will presage what happens with Jon and Ramsay. Both Ramsay and the Waif have that same evil smirk thing going! I see a connection being made between the two — two Stark-killers who like knives and are filled with blood lust, who fatefully underestimate their enemies.

How will Ramsay die? Direwolf din-din.

We’ll see.

Please join the discussion in comments! But please, no spoilers!