“Chaos isn’t a pit,” Littlefinger tells Varys toward the end of Sunday night’s deeply creepy episode of Game of Thrones. “It’s a ladder.”
For Littlefinger, the son of a minor nobleman living ever in the shadow of greater men, a ladder is a fitting symbol.
That Petyr Baelish is preparing for a voyage to the Aerie—a fortress high upon a thin spire of a mountain—only heightens the symbolism.
In “The Climb” we have both Littlefinger’s ambition and the sheer, icy face of The Wall to contend with. Both are terrifying.
But we’ll start at one of the more interesting moments of the night, in the Riverlands, in a surprising scene between Thoros of Myr and Melisandre, both servants of the Lord of Light.
Just as I begin to really enjoy the Brotherhood without Banners the Red Lady, Melisandre, shows up. After a lovely conversation between her and Thoros of Myr in the marvelously crafted High Valarian HBO cobbled together for the show, Thoros takes the priestess to meet Beric Dondarion.
It turns out she’s come for Gendry, Robert’s bastard. Melisandre has been burning Robert’s bastards as offerings to her Lord of Light as fast as the Lannisters can hunt them down and strangle them in their cribs. Too bad Robert sired so many inconvenient children.
For a couple bags of gold and because their God said so, Beric and Thoros sell Gendry down the river.
This never happens in the books. I checked to see if it was even possible that it occurred off-screen, but there’s no way. In book four, A Feast for Crows, Brienne meets Gendry. In fact, Gendry is knighted Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill by Beric Dondarrion in the books.
In some ways it works better this way, at least in terms of Arya’s character. In the books, Arya escapes the Brotherhood but I found her reasoning a bit baffling. Yes, they planned to ransom her to her brother, Robb, but that was the quickest way home. Why leave when she had essentially a free ticket home? The Brotherhood seemed like good enough men. Even her impulsiveness seemed too rash.
Now Arya has a very good reason to run off: Beric and Thoros have betrayed Gendry and she has no reason to trust them.
On a side note, Paul Kaye continues to make Thoros a far more fascinating character in the show than in the books. His has quickly become one of my favorite performances in the show.
Just to the north, at House Tully, we have two of the many Frey offspring setting terms with Robb Stark and Edmure Tully. If Lord Frey is going to lend Robb his men, after Robb broke his vow to the old lord, he wants a formal apology and he wants Edmure to marry his daughter.
Much arguing ensues. The Blackfish threatens his nephew. Robb pleads. Catelyn, remarkably, stays silent.
For those of you who’ve read the books, it’s a painful deliberation to watch. Everything is veering toward disaster and betrayal.
To the south, in Harrenhal, we can glimpse another front in this collapse: Lord Roose Bolton agrees to send Jaime Lannister back to King’s Landing, asking only that he vouches for Bolton to Tywin Lannister. Bolton is either afraid that the Lannisters will pay their debt by placing Bolton’s head on a spike (or chopping off a hand, perhaps) or he wants something more.
I’m glad to see Bolton taking a larger role in the last couple episodes. His calculation and menace is beginning to soak through.
Speaking of menace—and Boltons, for that matter—we ought to fly as the raven flies, north, to a dark torture chamber where poor Theon Greyjoy hangs tied to a cross.
His mysterious tormenter (Ramsay Snow, the bastard of Bolton) is playing a game with the son of the Iron Islands: if Theon can guess where they are, who his tormenter is, he “wins.”
This is one of the more gruesome scenes so far in the show which, I suppose, is fitting given how grim and terrible Theon’s storyline is in book five of Martin’s series. Ramsay Snow is one of the few truly wicked people in the story—he’s like Joffrey if Joffrey had nobody to keep him at bay.
Scary stuff, but important given where this story goes.
Speaking of which, we’ll clamber further north to The Wall. Just south of it we get yet another brief scene of Bran Stark and his band of misfits. Osha and Meera squabble over rabbits; Jojen has a seizure brought on by his visions, and Bran begs everyone to get along. Hodor and Rickon make an ever-so-brief appearance. Basically, the Bran story continues to tip-toe along, but there’s not much to say about it.
On the opposite side of The Wall, Sam and his wildling girl sit by a fire and Sam shows off the loot he found at the Fist of the First Men: an obsidian spear-head (or dagger?) Dragonglass.
“What does it do?” she asks, to which Sam replies, “I don’t think it does anything.”
Well, let’s just say it’s called dragonglass for a reason.
Finally we have Romeo and Juliet: two lovers from opposite sides of warring houses, making out on a thousand-foot-high balcony of ice. Wherefore art thou crow?
I liked the climb scene. Maybe because I have a perfectly rational fear of heights, but I always get tense in scenes like this even though I know what’s going to happen.
I still can’t connect well with Jon Snow, which is too bad given how much I liked his character in the books. Things should get more interesting soon, though. I hope.
Nevermind the north. Things continue to plod along there. Let’s go south once again to the sweltering, stinking streets of “the worst place in the world,” according to Loras Tyrell: King’s Landing.
Here we have the scene I’ve been waiting for since the beginning of Season 3. The showdown between Olenna Redwyne, the matriarch of House Tyrell, and the patriarch of House Lannister, Tywin. They’re an even match, with both managing to play their cards at exactly the right moment to make the other uncomfortable.
The problem is, Tywin holds the trump. He threatens forcing Loras into the Kingsguard if the Tyrells refuse Tywin’s proposal to marry him and Cersei. This leaves Sansa to Tyrion, who has to break the bad news to the poor girl. It’s all very awful and sad as all the good things that finally started happening quickly degenerate and unravel.
And why do they all fall apart?
Because chaos is a ladder. Littlefinger leers at Varys, gloating about his success in foiling The Spider’s plans to wed Loras and Sansa. It only gets worse when he reveals that he knew who Varys’s spy was and gave her to Joffrey. This is the second really chilling moment in the episode, when we learn the fate of Ros, a character made up for the show but whose role in it seemed unfinished nonetheless.
We didn’t need her death to reveal what a sick and twisted person king Joffrey is, but it did help remind us just how cruel and ambitious and vengeful Littlfinger in his quest for upward momentum.
Of course, Varys is clever and cruel as well, even if he was outplayed. Varys is still a master at the game of thrones, and one gets the feeling Littlefinger may underestimate him. His little speech on chaos, for instance, is a pretty clear sign that he doesn’t really understand what Varys really means when he says he’s doing what he does to serve the realm. Varys understand chaos.
So we’re left with just four more episodes of Game of Thrones, and this makes me sad. We need at least ten more, twenty perhaps. Whereas last season I found myself enjoying the show, but with mixed feelings one episode to the next, this season I remain glued to the TV. There are easily as many changes from the books this time around, but the spirit of Storm of Swords is here in a way that I never felt happened with Season 2.
We have at least three weddings ahead of us, though I strongly suspect only one before this season is over, and many funerals. And next Sunday is much too far away.
by Erik Kain
