Read the next piece in this series here.
6.2 “Home”
Written by Dave Hill
Directed by Jeremy
Podeswa
Commentary by Dave
Hill, Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton), Liam
Cunningham (Davos), and Ben Crompton (Edd)
Hey, Bran’s back! Apparently his storyline is now “cinematic”
enough to be included, despite the showrunners stripping out every indication
of how important and powerful Bran is/will be! In this episode, Brynden takes
him back to Winterfell when Ned, Brandon, Lyanna, and Benjen were about 15-19,
and he watches them train. Lyanna teases Benjen about not having anyone to spar
with when Ned leaves for his fosterage at the Eyrie, and suggests Wylis, the
stableboy who will become Hodor when this whole storyline plays itself out to
its awful conclusion. Brynden pulls Bran out of the vision, and he whines for a
bit, but Brynden tells him he’s got to come up for air occasionally. Bran calls
Hodor “Wylis” and tries to ask him what happened, but one guess what Hodor’s
reply is.
Hodor carries Bran out to see Meera, who’s sitting in the
snow sulking. Apparently she doesn’t like hanging out in the cave when there’s
a war coming (also she lost her brother and doesn’t have anyone to talk to, but
we’ll just ignore those particular issues). Hodor takes Bran back inside and
Leaf explains that Bran won’t be staying here forever (wait, what?) and that he’ll
need Meera when he leaves.
Now, it’s entirely possible that in the books, Bran will
physically leave the cave and not replace Brynden as the greenseer. However,
that’s not been so much as foreshadowed in the books. Martin very much seems to
be setting up that Bran will stay here, merge with the godswood like Brynden has,
and do some seriously powerful stuff by warging into trees, people, animals
(maybe dragons?), but never physically being involved with the rest of the
world. Maybe that will turn out to not be enough, maybe the dead will get
through the magical barriers and drive them out, anything is possible, but at
no point in the books does anyone so
much as hint that this isn’t Bran’s
eternal fate.
This also sets up some very un-book issues with Bran’s
visions of the past. In the books, Bran can see through the eyes of weirwood
trees into the past—and that’s it. He wouldn’t have been able to see what
happened in the courtyard of Winterfell because there’s no tree there. He really wouldn’t have been able to see
some of the stuff that happens later in the season because it’s so far south
that weirwoods don’t exist down there anymore. Also, it’s not like Brynden
could be sharing his own memories, because he’s been up here under the tree for
close to a hundred years and was never anywhere near Winterfell or the Tower of
Joy. Also also, Bran can’t be seeing
the memories of anyone who was at the Tower of Joy, because they’re all dead.
If we stretched slightly, we could argue that he’s seeing Hodor’s memories of
Winterfell, because it’s not like Bran hasn’t snuck into Hodor’s mind before,
but that doesn’t explain the Tower of Joy visions later.
Essentially, Benioff and Weiss had no idea what to do with
Bran, so they used him to set up Hodor’s death and reveal Jon Snow’s parentage
without giving him his own arc, really. And what there is of this story that’s Bran’s story and not a convenient way to
show flashbacks makes him incredibly selfish and stupid. We’ll get into more of
that later.
Two different vigils over the dead are held in this episode,
too. Down in King’s Landing, Jaime and Tommen discuss Cersei over Myrcella’s
body. Tommen thinks Cersei was the one who had Trystane killed, probably as
revenge for Myrcella’s death. Jaime asks why Tommen wouldn’t let Cersei come to
Myrcella’s funeral (in an earlier scene, we see Lannister guards refusing to
let her leave her rooms, despite Ser Robert standing right behind her, having
just murdered the dude who flashed her while she was on her Walk); Tommen says
if she’d returned to the Sept, they’d have arrested her again (why he couldn’t
have made that clear in his orders to not let her come, who knows). Tommen
feels bad about everything that’s happened to Cersei and Margaery, but
continues to buckle to the High Sparrow’s decrees. Jaime and the High Sparrow
have a discussion about death and Jaime points out that while the High Sparrow
humiliated Cersei, he’s not strong enough to take Jaime and put him on trial. He’s
got a point, too—this version of the High Sparrow seems to like picking on
women (and one gay man), but doesn’t touch anyone physically strong enough to
fight back. The only reason he’s getting away with any of this is that nobody
wants the bad optics of attacking the Sept. If any one of these houses were to
storm the Sept, with the full strength of knights and soldiers with them, the
High Sparrow and his Faith Militant wouldn’t stand a chance. Get two or more of
them together—like, say, the Lannisters and the Tyrells—and the whole system
would crumble. But religion is important in Westeros (and is important now in Game of Thrones because the story needs it to be), so it would be
political suicide to do any such thing.
Tommen goes to see Cersei and apologizes for his behavior.
He tells her that he’s not strong, and he needs her help to become strong. Too
bad he’s so ridiculously easily manipulated.
The other vigil is still
being held over Jon’s body, because seriously
these men have lost all perspective on what the risks are of keeping a dead body
around. Alliser finally starts breaking the door down like he should have done
last episode, and they’re interrupted by the arrival of Wun Wun and the other
wildlings. Edd takes charge and has Alliser and Olly arrested.
Tormund goes to see Jon’s body and says he’ll start
gathering wood for a pyre. Finally
someone who knows what to do with the dead in the north! Before he can do that,
though, Davos goes to see Melisandre. For some reason, he has the idea that her
powers might include raising the dead. She says she’s lost her faith and can’t
do anything cool anymore; he says to hell with her faith, she can do magic. Because every woman in this show
needs a man to give her meaning and a reason to go on, Melisandre agrees to
try. She bathes Jon’s body, trims a bit of his hair and tosses it on the fire,
washes his hair, and chants in Valyrian. This goes on for a while, and finally
she gives up. Everybody else leaves, and just as Davos is about to go, too,
Ghost sits up, and Jon opens his eyes.
I mean, we all knew it was coming. Nobody was fooled for one
second that Jon was going to stay dead and that Melisandre wouldn’t have a
major hand in his resurrection. In the books, he’s not quite dead (A Dance with Dragons left him bleeding
out in the snow, but not dead), but I’m
absolutely certain that Melisandre will be involved in keeping him
alive/bringing him back to life. The campaign of misinformation that Benioff
and Weiss roped Kit Harrington and the HBO people into regarding Jon’s fate was
just insulting—they could have just said, “look, we’re not going to tell you
anything” rather than “nope, he’s dead, he’s totally dead, he’s really most
sincerely dead and he’s not coming back” and then “OH LOOK he’s back!
Trollolololol.” Forcing Harrington to lie to everybody he knows—keeping in mind
that for him, this isn’t just about a story, but about his job, and as I understand it, his family was really concerned for
him about whether he was going to be able to get another acting job very
quickly—is just . . . rude.
We also have two major deaths that lead to a shift in power
in two major kingdoms—the North and the Iron Islands. As part of their continuing
culling of characters not deemed Absolutely Necessary to the “Plot,” this
episode gets rid of Balon Greyjoy and Roose Bolton.
Roose we saw coming. Anybody who thought Ramsay would just
take all the insinuations and attempts at manipulation regarding his position
as heir to Winterfell lying down hasn’t been paying attention. Walda’s already
had her baby (how long was she pregnant before they announced it? Cause it
seems like this whole thing’s taken maybe
six weeks). Ramsay congratulates Roose, then stabs him in the belly, and in
grand tradition of lord-slaughtering on this show, the maester and the
Karstarks don’t do anything about it. Ramsay then takes Walda and the baby out
to the courtyard and somehow convinces her to go into the dog pens (seriously,
Walda?) and sics the dogs on her and the baby. And of course we’re treated to
screaming and ripping and tearing and all sorts of awful noises but not actual
visuals because that might be gratuitous.
Meanwhile, Euron shows up a bit early for this storyline and
man is he a disappointment! Where’s
the eyepatch? Where’s the blue lips? Why is he even in the Iron Islands right
now, when he needs the (very thin) plausible deniability regarding Balon’s death
to keep the Ironborn from tossing his ass off the Driftwood Throne?
Yara and Balon have an argument regarding invading the
mainland again; she tells him it’s over, that they’ve failed, Deepwood Motte
has fallen and their last toehold on the continent is gone. He tells her if she
doesn’t go back in and try to retake the north, he’ll breed an heir who will.
He storms out onto one of the bridges between towers, where it’s literally
storming, and Euron confronts him. He claims to be the literal embodiment of
the Drowned God, as men have a tendency to start praying when he shows up. He
admits to having gone completely bonkers in the Jade Sea and cutting out the
tongues of his crew because he “needed silence.” Then he throws Balon off the
bridge.
Dave Hill, who wrote this episode, mentions that “they”
worried that the frequency of these deaths would get to be almost slapstick
with how fast and thick they’re happening, and I’d say that’s a legitimate
concern. For a show that started out with deaths being a) shocking; and b)
earned by the person’s own actions, they’ve really just fallen into “do we need
this one? Is there anyone else who could do what this character does? Good.
Kill ‘em.” The showrunners have turned into the Bobs from Office Space.
Tyrion is continuing to be an overconfident ass. He’s
drinking again, because apparently that’s a core part of his character—“I drink
and I know things”—and not a coping mechanism for the physical and
psychological pain he’s constantly in. Varys makes a disappointed noise at him,
and Tyrion says that if he’d had his penis removed, he’d drink all the
time. Grey Worm doesn’t find it funny, and Tyrion tries to defend himself by
saying that this is just how he and Varys interact—Varys makes jokes about him
being a dwarf, and he makes jokes about Varys being a eunuch. Of course, Varys doesn’t make ableist jokes, but Tyrion
says he thinks them. Considering that he admitted to tormenting his
brain-damaged cousin because it made him feel more like the people who picked
on him as a kid, this doesn’t endear
him to me at all. This version of Tyrion has some seriously internalized
ableist thinking happening, and that Benioff and Weiss want us to think that he’s
clever and it’s funny that he keeps making eunuch jokes at Varys is just
disgusting.
Varys points out that every single thing that Dany did is
now being undone—everywhere but Slavers Bay has gone right back to owning
slaves (as mentioned, with the pit fights, it looks like even Slavers Bay has
gone right back to owning slaves and rubbing Dany’s face in it). The fleet has
been burned, and they have no idea who did it. Tyrion asks how the dragons are
doing and decides that now he’s an expert in dragons despite there being two
people in the room who lived with those dragons for a couple of years.
So Tyrion goes to visit the dragons and take their chains
off because chaining dragons is bad for their health. In the best piece of
writing all season (because it’s the only bit of Martin’s actual writing that
made it into this season; they stole it from A Game of Thrones), Tyrion tells them about wanting a dragon for
his birthday when he was young. He gets through the whole ordeal and then
leaves as fast as he can, practically wetting himself, and tells Varys that if
he ever has an idea like that again, to punch him in the face. I bet Varys
would have no problem with that.
Arya’s still begging, and Jaqen offers to let her come back
inside, feed her, and unblind her if she’ll tell him her name. She insists she
has no name, that she’s no one. He tells her to come with him and leave the
bowl behind.
Sansa and Brienne try to figure out what to do now and
ultimately decide that the Wall is their best shot, since Jon’s still up there.
Brienne tells her about meeting Arya, and Sansa regrets not leaving with
Brienne when she had the chance the first time. Theon decides he’s done now
that Sansa has a new protector and he’s going home.
RIP:
Roose Bolton
Balon Greyjoy
Walda Frey
Baby Bolton
Next week: The inexplicable Tower of Joy flashbacks start.
Gilly and Sam make plans. The Watch reacts to Jon, and he reacts back. Arya
trains. Dany joins the Dosh Khaleen.
Stills from screencapped.net; gif from makeagif.com
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