Read the next entry in this series here.
5.10 “Mother’s Mercy”
Written by David
Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by Dave
Nutter
Commentary by David
Benioff, D.B. Weiss, David Nutter, and Lena Headey
Gather round, children, for this season finale begins the
random wild flailing that characterizes all of season six. Benioff and Weiss
have just about run out of book material, and now they’re just making stuff up,
though they’re still not above claiming that their more shocking moments are
totally going to be in the books because Martin told them so.
Stannis is generally unhappy with Melisandre, despite her
claims of victory over the elements and upcoming victory at Winterfell. Then
her optimism is dashed as messengers begin running up to Stannis. Every
remaining sellsword they hired has deserted, taking all the remaining horses. Another
messenger arrives, and Stannis tells him to spit out whatever the news is: “It
can’t be worse than mutiny.” And that, my dears, is how Benioff and Weiss
turned Selyse’s suicide into a punchline. Tres
hilarious! By the time they get Selyse cut down, Melisandre has abandoned
them ’cause she sees which way the wind is blowing, and it ain’t pro-Stannis.
Stannis marches on Winterfell anyway, because he’s
apparently lost all hope and reason to live along with all of his strategic
prowess. The march is intercut with Sansa escaping her room and hiking up to
the tower, where she lights her candle just
after Brienne has learned that Stannis is here and abandons her post because
who needs to keep their oaths, amirite? Revenge totally takes precedence over a
sworn oath to a dead woman, especially one that you’ve been insisting on
keeping even though the new recipients of that oath have told you to go away
multiple times. Stannis tells the men to start digging in for the siege, but
there isn’t going to be a siege because ain’t nobody got time for that; the
Boltons’ army is descending on him right now.
Then we skip a bit, Brother Maynard, because we spent all
our money on Hardhome and Dany’s miraculous dragon escape. Instead we go
straight to the aftermath, where all of Stannis’ men are dead and he’s nearly
dead, too, but not so nearly dead he can’t fight off two Bolton soldiers. When
Brienne shows up, though, he gives up. He admits to killing Renly with blood
magic, and when she sentences him to death and asks for his last words, he
simply says, “Do your duty.” The actual killing blow isn’t shown, because
apparently that would have been gratuitous.
Back at Winterfell, Sansa tries to sneak back into her room,
but Theon and Myranda catch her. Myranda is super gross about wanting to torture
Sansa because Ramsay only really needs her reproductive system intact, and then
Theon shoves her off the walkway. (Somehow showing her fall, hit the ground and
bounce once, then the red smear under her, wasn’t gratuitous like showing Stannis taking a sword would have been.) Now
that Theon has switched sides, he and Sansa run away and jump off the wall of
Winterfell apparently into a snowbank, though it’s not as clear as it could be,
so a lot of people were wondering whether Sansa and Theon were dead over the
hiatus.
So, Sansa’s pretty much rescued now, and despite all the
protests that her situation would make her stronger
and better and not a victim anymore, she (surprise!) got rescued by a dude. The
most she managed to do in her own rescue was plant a “come help me!” signal
that wasn’t even seen. So much for not being shoved into Theon’s storyline and
rescuing herself. (It only gets worse next season.)
Over in Braavos, Meryn is being absolutely disgusting
because we have to further establish that he’s a Bad Guy who Deserves to Die.
He apparently not only likes raping little girls, he likes to hit them first.
He decides which one of the girls the madam brought him he wants to play with
by smacking them with a whip; the one that makes no noise even when being hit
three times is the one he picks. Unfortunately for him, it’s Arya wearing
another girl’s face and she proceeds to stab the unholy hell out of him before
bragging about getting to be the one to kill him and cutting his throat. She
then goes back to the Hall of Faces and puts the girl’s face back; Jaqen is
less than pleased and the Waif gloats about Arya not being cut out to be No
One. To make his point, Jaqen says that killing Meryn was theft from the
Many-Faced God and now that death has to be repaid—with more death, apparently?
Because he poisons himself, and when Arya starts crying and tells the Waif he
was her friend, she says he was no one, and now her face is Jaqen’s, too, and
Arya pulls faces off the body on the floor until she gets to her own. She
freaks out and suddenly goes blind.
So, just like in Jon’s story, they’re telling the whole
thing out of order and minus a whole lot of context. In the books, Arya’s
blinding is part of her training. She alternately loses all her senses to give
her experience navigating deaf and blind. It’s not a punishment, because
book-Arya is legitimately trying really hard to do everything the Kindly Man
wants her to do. Book-Arya doesn’t go off-mission when tasked with killing the
Thin Man; she strategizes and thinks hard and figures out a really clever way
of doing it that can’t be tied back to anyone in particular. She does get to
kill one of the men on her list (Raff the Sweetling) while in Braavos, and it
does burn the identity she’s using at the time, but what longer-reaching
repercussions it has remain to be seen (this happens in the sample chapter from
The Winds of Winter). But this is after she’s done most of her training,
not in the early stages of it. Again, they’re turning Arya into a little
killing machine rather than really examining her character and her psyche. (It
only gets worse next season.)
Jaime is finally leaving
Dorne, but Dorne—more specifically, Ellaria—isn’t going to let it be that easy.
Bronn bids Tyene farewell and she says maybe she’ll come visit him; he says
she’d better hurry because he has a noblewoman to marry back home. She nuzzles
up to his ear and tells him he “want[s] the good girl, but [he] need[s] the bad
pussy” because of course she does.
Ellaria bids Myrcella farewell by kissing her on the lips. On the boat, Jaime
and Myrcella get to have one kind of sweet moment where she reveals that she
knows he’s her father and then her nose starts bleeding and she keels over. Back
on the docks, Ellaria’s nose also starts bleeding before she downs the antidote
which apparently can stop the poisoning process when it’s already far enough
along to start tissue damage.
There’s so many problems here and they all deal with the way
women of color are hypersexualized. Exhibit A: Tyene. If any of the women
exemplify Bronn’s “fight and fuck, fuck and fight” comment, it’s her. So of
course he kind of likes her, despite her embodying the “crazy” he claimed to
want nothing to do with on the way to
Dorne. Exhibit B: Ellaria. This is where the problems get really tangled up
with each other. First, you’ve got the young white woman who spends a whole lot
of time around people of color and gets all “corrupted”—look at Myrcella’s
clothes and the way Jaime reacts to them. Look at her acting like a spoiled
teenager instead of a poised princess. Then you take that same
POC-corrupting-our-white-girls motif and throw in some gay panic—Myrcella is
literally killed by a same-sex kiss. So they’ve hit just about every offensive
stereotype possible here: POC women are hypersexual. Gays are dangerous. White
girls can be corrupted by POC. White girls can be assaulted/seduced by POC and
killed because of said assault/seduction. Women, especially women of color, are
irrational, uncontrollable, and treacherous. Not to mention the whole thing
about how Ellaria’s sexual orientation is used for titillation until it’s used
to murder an innocent white girl. Like, seriously, did they pick up a bingo
card for this? (It only gets worse next season.)
Over in Meereen, Dany’s advisors discuss what to do now.
Jorah and Daario decide to go find Dany and rescue her, but they refuse to
allow Tyrion to come along. Instead he gets to stay and govern the city because
the people will totally accept a
foreigner they don’t know who didn’t even conquer the city with dragons and
freedom. Also he’s going to have help: Varys swans in and offers to act as the
Spider for him.
Off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Dany tries to get
Drogon to take her back to Meereen, but he’s having none of it. He’s actually
acting a lot like a spoiled puppy and it’s adorable.
So she starts walking, but a few hours later a Dothraki outrider finds her, and
the rest of the khalasar isn’t too
far behind. She takes off her ring and drops it in the grass, I guess trying to
leave a trail? As if the thousands of horses currently trampling every inch of
grass aren’t enough of a marker that something happened here. Also the riders
of those thousands of horses are war
whooping like a Native American horde out of an old Western and could this be any more problematic?! (Guess what?
It only gets worse next season!)
In King’s Landing, Cersei finally breaks, or pretends to
break enough to be released from her cell to negotiate her own release, since
nobody’s doing it for her. She confesses to adultery with Lancel (since they
already know that), but nobody else. She rejects the idea that she committed
incest with Jaime, claiming that was Stannis’ lie to claim the throne for
himself. The Sparrow says she’ll be put on trial, and she asks if she can go
home. He says sure! After her atonement. Which involves being completely shorn
and shaved, scrubbed down, and awkwardly stared at by Septa Unella. Then she’s
hauled out to the Sept steps, the High Sparrow says a few words, and Cersei
begins her walk from the Sept to the Red Keep, naked, through the streets,
practically in real time.
This is another place where not being in Cersei’s head is
actively detrimental to the scene. Without the clear decline in her mental
state—from “I am the queen and I am beautiful” to “I’m a withered old woman and
the people will never respect me again”—to give this whole thing a reason for
existing, all it is is a voyeuristic, deeply cringeworthy scene that gives us
just about every conceivable angle on Lena Headey’s naked body double.
Especially when contrasted with the old High Septon’s abbreviated,
non-full-frontal walk, it’s just gross. Maybe if the show didn’t use female
nudity as casually as it does, this would be more impactful. Instead, the camera
turns into yet another member of the screaming, leering crowd, forcing the
viewer to become that, as well, instead of allowing the viewer to see it from
Cersei’s point of view and understand her character development through this
scene. And, no, the three seconds of full-frontal male nudity when a dude jumps
out of the crowd to taunt her does not balance this out.
When Cersei finally reaches the Red Keep, she’s smeared with
filth and her feet are bleeding. Qyburn covers her with a cloak and introduces
the newest member of the Kingsguard, Ser Robert the Strong (who they’re not
even pretending isn’t the Mountain, so I’m not sure why they bothered with the
name change). Qyburn says it like this is super
important, but they haven’t set up that the reason it’s important is that, as queen, Cersei must be defended in
her trial by combat by a member of the Kingsguard. Jaime’s away, and missing a
hand, so Cersei needs a champion, and Qyburn makes her one out of Gregor’s
poisoned (in the books also headless) corpse. The look on Cersei’s face
promises fire and blood, and next season will deliver on both those promises.
Up on the Wall, Sam declares that he needs to go to the
Citadel to get training to become a maester since Aemon is dead. Also, he wants
to get Gilly away from here. On the one hand, I kind of like that this Sam isn’t
a wet noodle, but on the other hand, the whole point of Sam being a wet noodle
(except when it really matters) in the books is the toxic masculinity of this
hyper patriarchal society and the abuse his father piled on him as a child. It’s
a wholly realistic response to his upbringing, which has caused serious psychological
damage from which he’s still recovering. Also, there’s a difference between
giving the character a bit more spine and turning him into I Killed a White
Walker and a Thenn, Everybody! Jon reluctantly gives him permission to go
(unlike in the book, where he has to force
Sam to go with his authority as Lord Commander).
Later, Davos reaches the Wall and he and Jon argue about Jon’s
inability to give Stannis any more than he already has. Davos wants the
Wildlings to come help fight, but their argument is ended by Melisandre’s
arrival. She looks super bummed about having been wrong about Stannis, and oh
yeah also having murdered a kid for no reason. Jon asks what happened to Stannis;
Melisandre looks bummed. Davos asks about Shireen; Melisandre looks bummed. I
have zero sympathy for her.
Later, Jon’s reading letters from the lords of the north,
all of whom have refused to send men to help defend the Wall. Olly busts in and
says one of the Wildlings has seen Benjen! And he’s still alive! Jon completely
doesn’t see through this obvious ruse and follows Olly down to the courtyard,
where he gets cornered near a post that says “traitor” and stabbed by no less
than four men before Olly steps forward and puts the last knife in his chest. Jon’s
last word is “Olly?” because of course this whole thing is about how Olly doesn’t
like Wildlings, not about the layers of politics they stripped out of the show,
or Jon’s decision to abandon his vows to go South to fight Ramsay Bolton (which
they stripped out of the show), or any number of other things. I have
absolutely no idea why they chose to center the whole treachery-and-murder
storyline on this kid who doesn’t even exist in the books.
So that’s season five! It was pretty much a hot mess, but
season six is even worse, so stay
tuned!
RIP:
Selyse Baratheon
Stannis Baratheon
Myranda
Jon Snow
Lots of soldiers
Screencaps from screencapped.net. Gif from giphy.com
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