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5.9 “The Dance of
Dragons”
Written by David
Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by David
Nutter
Commentary by David
Nutter, Peter Dinklage (Tyrion), and Ian Glen (Jorah)
Once again, there are two or three completely awful moments (adaptationally and narratively) in this episode
with a bunch of “meh” moments in between them.
Let’s just get right to it. This was another episode that
set the Internet on fire by going off-page and brutally murdering a young girl.
Benioff and Weiss, of course, claim that Martin told them this would happen in The Winds of Winter, but obviously the
context is going to be completely different, since Shireen, Selyse, and
Melisandre aren’t even with Stannis’ army in the books.
Having refused Melisandre’s suggestion that they burn Shireen
once already, Stannis is now dealing with the sabotage Ramsay set up, which
caused complete devastation to their supplies and a good chunk of their horses.
Davos suggests immediately going back to Castle Black, which Stannis rejects,
and Davos notices Selyse and Melisandre staring at them in the creepiest way
possible. Stannis orders the remaining horses butchered for their meat and
leaves, Melisandre with him. Later, Stannis sends Davos back to the Wall to get
more supplies with the promise that Jon will have enough men to guard all
nineteen castles once he’s taken the throne. Davos is understandably nervous
about being sent away and offers to take Shireen back with him, but Stannis
refuses.
So Davos goes to see Shireen before he leaves because we
needed one more bit of foreshadowing before they actually kill her. He gives
her a present—a hand-carved stag—to thank her for teaching him to read, which
his son tried to do before he died.
Insert heavy-handed foreshadowing here. Is there a stronger word than
foreshadowing? What do you call it when it’s not a shadow anymore but a giant
flashing arrow screaming she’s gonna die?
Davos leaves, and Shireen’s fate is sealed.
Stannis comes to visit Shireen and she tells him about “The Dance
of Dragons,” which she’s been reading about. They talk about making choices and
how it’s hard, and she understands that he’s upset and offers to help. So he
leads her out of the tent and hands her over to Melisandre, who has her tied to
the pyre and burns her alive. In a small mercy, they don’t show it happening
like they did with Mance, instead focusing on Stannis and Selyse, who changes
her mind about halfway through but it’s too late. Selyse loses her mind when
Shireen finally dies, apparently just now realizing that she actually loved her
daughter. Dave Nutter says the reason they didn’t show Shireen’s death was to “not
get too gratuitous with it,” because lord knows they worry about gratuitous
violence on this show.
Here’s the thing, though—the sacrifice was gratuitous by
definition because it changed nothing. If anything, it made everything worse.
We’ll get into that more next week.
Speaking of big gestures that change nothing, Dany’s opening
Daznak’s Pit over in Meereen. Tyrion and Hizdahr disagree about philosophy and
violence as entertainment, with Hizdahr claiming that nothing great was ever
accomplished without violence and Tyrion saying “It’s easy to confuse what is
with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked out in your favor.”
While these philosophies do make sense for these two men, it’s interesting that
Tyrion—author-, showrunner-, and fan-favorite) is speaking out against violence
as entertainment on a show that has commodified
violence as entertainment, while Hizdahr—the foreign, nonwhite Other who represents
the world of slavery and violence—speaks up for it. I’d wonder if this was done
on purpose, but I don’t think Benioff and Weiss are that self-aware. Hizdahr
says that these fights are an essential part of Meereen, part of her legacy, if
you will, and Tyrion remarks that Tywin would have liked Hizdahr.
In order to start the fights, Dany has to clap her hands,
which forces her to be not only complicit in the ensuing violence and
bloodshed, but an actual instigator of it. She can no longer sit on the
sidelines and pretend that she’s not an active part of a tradition that
glorifies violence; it is ultimately her word that begins the massacre. And it
is a massacre; the second fight is a melee involving six fighters, including
Jorah, who can’t take a hint.
Then the whole arena turns into a massacre as the Sons of
the Harpy attack, slaughtering people left and right, including Hizdahr. So he
had absolutely no ties to the Sons, then? He had no influence on the violence
in the streets? So why did Dany marry him? What purpose did it serve? Also, how
ironic is it that the vocal supporter of violence-as-entertainment dies
violently for our entertainment? The odd thing is that, again, the Sons are
just murdering everyone. There’s no rhyme or reason to it; it seems very much
like they’re just there to cause mayhem, not to make a political statement.
Dany, Daario, Missandei, and Tyrion are driven down into the
pit itself, where they’re surrounded by Sons. Things do not look good for our
heroes until Drogon descends from the heavens and begins a massacre of his own.
Dany yells at him, and he calms just enough for her to climb up on his back and
completely abandon her companions in the pit to fly off.
This is, again, really bad adaptational work that suffers
from a complete loss of context. They’ve shifted the entire meaning and purpose
of Drogon’s arrival from Dany finally getting so uncomfortable with being the
person she needs to be to rule Meereen that she literally sheds the trappings
of Meereenese society—taking off her toqar—and
preparing to leave the pit before Drogon shows up. She rescues Drogon from the
fighters who attack him, not the other way around, and while she abandons her
people, she doesn’t abandon them in immediate mortal danger. Hizdahr survives
to take control of the city and immediately start undoing a lot of Dany’s
decrees, sidelining her non-Meereenese advisors (like Barristan). Tyrion and
Jorah haven’t even made it into the city yet. (Tyrion’s actually been in the
pit with Penny, doing their dwarf jousting routine.) Instead, we have Dany as a
damsel in distress being rescued by her dragon and continuing to be a terrible
leader and friend by abandoning her people in their time of greatest need. And
this is framed as a triumphant moment for her.
There's a really brief moment with Jon and the Watch when they return from Hardhome, where it looks for a moment like Alliser isn't going to let them in. He does, of course, and Olly gets super pissed off about the Wildlings coming through the gate, especially Wun Wun. Alliser tells Jon he has a good heart, and that it'll get all of them killed. But not if Alliser, Olly, and company kill him first.
Over in Dorne, Jaime, Doran, Myrcella, Trystane, and Ellaria
have a big meeting in which we find out that Jaime’s whole sneaking in plan was
completely unnecessary because someone stole Myrcella’s necklace and Doran
would have let Jaime come by to visit without being sneaky and murdering people
if he’d just asked first. D’oh! Diplomacy
might have actually worked! Who’d have thought? Doran has no intention of
starting a war with Westeros proper, much to Ellaria’s disgust, and actually
wants to continue the engagement and send Trystane to King’s Landing to serve
on the Small Council in Oberyn’s place. He also agrees to release Bronn,
despite having struck a prince, on one condition.
Down in the dungeons, Nym and Tyene are playing some sort of
hand-slappy game and taunting each other because these girls have such a healthy relationship. Aero takes
Bronn out of the cell and Tyene gets him to tell her she’s pretty again before
he leaves, prompting Obara to call her a slut. Totally healthy relationship.
The condition turns out to be Bronn taking an elbow to the
face.
Doran tells Ellaria she can get in line or face the
executioner; she kneels and takes his hands, sobbing, while the Sand Snakes
look on, aghast. Ellaria then goes to try to make up with Jaime, admitting that
Myrcella and Jaime didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Oberyn. Of
course, it’s all a big fake-out, because women can’t be reasonable about anything,
especially hot spicy southern foreign women,
amirite? (Gag.)
Over in Braavos, Arya’s headed out to do her very first
sanctioned job but she gets distracted by Lannister sails in the harbor and
even more distracted when she spots Ser Meryn, who murdered (we’re supposed to
believe) Syrio Forel (still refusing to believe he’s dead). She stalks Mace
Tyrell and his entourage for most of the day, then follows Meryn into a
brothel, where Meryn rejects girl after girl until the madame brings him a very
young one. Arya has a plan. She goes back to the House of Black and White and
lies to Jaqen about failing to kill the Thin Man, then goes about her duties.
Jaqen, of course, isn’t fooled.
These last couple of sections are setup for the great big
slaughter of major characters that starts in the season finale and continues on
into season six. Apparently, when they’re completely set loose from following
an established storyline, Benioff and Weiss really
go nuts and just start hacking people out of the story (often literally).
RIP:
Shireen Baratheon
Hizdahr zo Loraq
Pit fighters
Meereenese spectators
Sons of the Harpy
Next week: Death. Murder. Mayhem. A jump off a wall. The
return of the Dothraki. Cersei goes for a walk.
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