Game of Thrones is back in fighting shape after a one-week lull last Sunday. Tonight’s episode was great—another character-driven episode but, unlike last week’s episode, not a dull moment to be found.
It struck me during the very first scene between Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane just how perfectly cast both characters were.
Rory McCann plays the Hound almost exactly how I imagined him. You can see the good man beneath the burns, beneath the brutality that’s defined most of his life.
Maisie Williams gets every bit of Arya right, from her pigheadedness to her quick wit. I’m happy to see this storyline take shape at last, though Arya’s scenes last season with Tywin Lannister are still my favorite of hers.
This was an aptly titled episode: Second Sons.
On the one hand, that’s the name of the sellsword company Dany treats with on the outskirts of Yunkai.
Less obviously, it’s a reference to the many sons we encountered in the episode: Tyrion, the younger brother of Jaime; Samwell Tarly, the first son made second son by his cruel father; Sandor Clegane, whose elder brother, Gregor, gave him his burned face and terrible fear of flame; Stannis, the lawful-neutral younger brother of Robert Baratheon, dropping leeches filled with Gendry’s blood into the flame, guilt and ambition and a frightening commitment to doing the right thing flickering in his eyes.
Speaking of Stannis, we finally have another Davos episode, and better still it’s one in which he’s finally freed from the dungeon. Davos is one of the few truly good people in Martin’s stories, though he’s often left impotent in the wake of Stannis’s stern utilitarianism and Melisandre’s creepy Lord of Light rituals.
We get a sense of the darkness she’s always on about at the end of Sunday night’s episode, but even the sight of a White Walker doesn’t do enough to chill me into thinking her methods are just. This is where Stannis becomes such a dissonant character for me. If I had to define what drives him, it would be a commitment to justice. He doesn’t care to be king but he believes it is his right and his duty and the only shape justice can take is a crown on his skull.
It doesn’t matter if Renly is his own brother, or if Robb Stark is the son of a man he respected. (Ned Stark was equally committed to justice, though his justice was driven by compassion rather than an abstract sense of order and law.)
Stannis will burn each and every one of his enemies down and broker no peace. Because honor.
Another man would have joined forces with Robb by now, or would have made a deal with Renly. Not Stannis. I suspect it’s both his greatest weakness and his greatest strength. Winter is coming. Maybe half measures have no place in this world.
But Stannis only believes in justice when it doesn’t foil his belief in destiny.
He says he’s seen a great battle in the snow while peering into Melisandre’s flames. He’s spied some glimpse of the world plunged into a terrifying darkness and only he can prevent it,because he’s the Chosen One. Or at least that’s what Melisandre says. I’m not sure Stannis himself believes it, though he may have no choice now.
What’s justice in the face of this horrible need? What’s another royal bastard burned at the stake?
Meanwhile, in King’s Landing….
…we have a wedding.
Joyous occasion!
This was the major event of the evening. The sad, awkward joining of Tyrion Lannister and young Sansa Stark.
She may be distraught at the prospect of bedding a dwarf (and a Lannister) but I hope she realizes how enormously lucky she was to get hitched to this particular Lannister and not…well, any of the others (save our reformed Jaime perhaps.)
So a wedding. The first of many.
Part of me thinks Martin’s book shouldn’t have been called A Storm of Swords—Four Weddings and Some Funerals might have been more appropriate.
This was the least auspicious of the three major weddings in the book (there are four important weddings in all, but only three I’d count as “events.”) It’s also the least deadly of the weddings, though the great, tense scene between a drunken Tyrion and a sniveling, miserable Joffrey, fresh on the heels of terrorizing Sansa, felt as if it might end in blood. Or ought to end in blood.
A part of me hoped they’d break with the books and just have Tyrion leap from the table and stick his dinner knife right into Joffrey’s eye. The look on Tywin’s face would have been worth it. Or Cersei’s. Or Joffrey’s for that matter.
Wishes are for fishes. Let’s sail East.
In Slaver’s Bay we have Dany meet an important character: Daario Naharis, a man who looks as if he’s stepped directly off the set of an early 90′s MTV music video.
I admit that I find most of the Dany stuff in both the show and the books a bit on the boring side. But I’ve been enjoying Dany more this season, and she really does have a good supporting cast. Daario should spice things up a bit, especially with Jorah, whose jealousy is almost certainly about to get the better of him.
As usual, not a great deal happens here in the east, though we get a new character and more nudity. And one really disgusting mercenary loses his head, which was gratifying.
Weddings and second sons and then, finally, north…beyond the Wall to where Samwell the coward and his wildling companion discuss what to name her baby. Lots of names, but a few in particular with a sour taste. The names of fathers.
Outside, the sounds of crows in the trees builds. Their hovel is stranded beneath the weird, watchful eyes of the pale weirwood trees. Crows fill the branches until their raucous cacophony is too much to ignore.
This is one of the best moments in the books. Sam find his courage and he discovers something even more important: the purpose of dragon glass. Obsidian. The secret weapon.
Poor Sam, rushing to his death, toward a foe nobody has been able to kill, toward a myth that just shattered Sam’s sword with its bare hands. And Sam wins, miraculously, driving his little obsidian dagger into the creature. What a glorious moment in a story so often about things going horribly, horribly wrong.
If only I wasn’t so annoyed at how the White Walkers look in HBO’s show. Perhaps more than any other quibble, the ice zombie thing really bugs me. All the mystery and menace is lost.
Grateful dead....
A brief side note: We’ve been seeing the chess pieces of Westerosi politics move hither and thither for most of the show so far. We’re starting to see a bit more of the epic forces that make this clash of kings look rather petty and trivial. Even five books into Martin’s saga, we’ve only really seen bits and pieces of this struggle. But the players here are important to note.
Dany is more than a conqueror. She’s the Mother of Dargons—dragons who breathe fire. What role will she play in fending off the darkness north of the Wall?
Melisandre, and Thoros to a lesser extent, are priests of the Lord of Light, a force we’re led to believe might be able to fend off the doom of the White Walkers. What role does Stannis play in all of this? What is the Lord of Light’s angle?
Nor should we forget the Old Gods, and Bran heading north after his dream crow, or the weirwood trees and the old legends of the north. Magic is old and deep and dark in the north. But it’s where this legendary evil was stopped thousands of years ago.
Where does salvation lie? In which men, and which gods?
by Erik Kain
