Read the next piece in this series here.
6.9 “Battle of the
Bastards”
Written by David
Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by Miguel
Sapochnik
Commentary by Miguel
Sapochinik, Sophie Turner (Sansa), and Kit Harrington (Jon)
Well, it’s a penultimate episode, so in keeping with the
traditional pacing of this series, it’s time for a knock-down, drag-out battle!
Now with even less tactical sense and more dumb luck!
First, though, we have to wrap up the siege of Meereen. Dany
plans to do that by burning everything to ash, but Tyrion stops her initial
Targaryen impulse by reminding her that that’s the sort of thing Aerys would
have done and suggests maybe using diplomacy instead. So she meets with the
masters down on the beach and they give her their (completely unacceptable)
terms. This prompts Dany to hop on Drogon’s back and set the entire fleet on
fire, because it’s not like she needed those ships or anything. While she’s off
playing Aegon the Conqueror, Tyrion, Missandei, and Grey Worm negotiate the
surrender of the masters, which ends with two of them dead and one left as a
messenger.
Luckily for Dany, the Ironborn fleet magically appears in
Slavers Bay. Yara and Dany negotiate their alliance, Yara flirts with Dany, and
they agree to terms—Dany gets the fleet, Yara gets her help “murder[ing] an
uncle or two who don’t think a woman’s fit to rule” and ultimately the
independence of the Iron Islands when Dany’s queen. But first they have to get the non-verbal approval of their men—Tyrion
and Theon—before sealing the deal with a forearm-grab.
The entire rest of the episode takes place in the north,
near Winterfell, where Jon and Ramsay finally have their face-off. They start
with a parley, which Jon tells Sansa she doesn’t have to attend, but she says
of course she does. Ramsay thanks Jon
for returning Sansa to him and demands that he kneel and swear fealty, which
Jon is not doing under any circumstances. Jon suggests single combat, and Ramsay
says that’s idiotic because he’s well aware his army can stomp Jon’s into the
ground. He reminds them that he has Rickon, and Sansa asks how they know that
for sure, at which point Shaggydog’s (incredibly well-preserved) head gets
tossed on the ground again. So much for parley.
Back in camp, Jon et al. discuss their plans. They know there’s
going to be a battle because Ramsay’s not the type to just wait out a siege.
Tormund’s worried about the cavalry ripping through the Wildling forces, but
Jon says he’s digging trenches to prevent that. Sansa finally speaks up and
reminds them that she’s the only one here who knows Ramsay and nobody’s asking
for her opinion. This kind of reminds me of Catelyn’s plight (more in the books
than the show, since the show dumped her entire tactical mind) in that nobody
will listen to her (even though she’s right) because she’s a woman. She says
that they’ll never get Rickon back alive anyway, and they should wait to fight
him until they have more men. She doesn’t,
however, tell them that more men are coming because she’s got the Vale army on
its way. For some reason.
Davos and Tormund have a talk about loyalty, and Davos has
apparently written off Stannis just as hard as Melisandre did. So much for
undying gratitude for not executing him for smuggling. Davos then wanders away
from the camp and miraculously discovers Shireen and Selyse’s graves and
discovers the stag he carved for Shireen—scorched. Dun dun dun. This is the point when Ramsay’s army arrives and
everything hits the fan.
Ramsay’s set up a bunch of crosses with flayed bodies on
them and taunts them with Rickon’s impending freedom only to shoot him just as
he reaches Jon. (And Benioff and Weiss continue to clean house.) Jon has to
charge forward a bit more to get inside the range of Ramsay’s archers, but his
horse still gets shot out from under him. Ramsay’s cavalry is charging, and Jon
pulls Longclaw, all ready to go out in a blaze of glory, just as his own
cavalry charges past him and it’s
actually kind of a funny moment.
Both sides queue up their archers again, but while Davos
realizes the folly of firing into the fray, Ramsay doesn’t give a crap and
keeps his archers firing. At this point, there’s a big, strategic pile of
bodies, and everyone sends in their reserves.
Ramsay has a shield wall, which Jon manages to allow to
surround his army, pushing them into that strategically-placed pile of bodies
which would in no way have fallen that conveniently. (This is the point in the
episode where my husband actually left
the room because he couldn’t stand how bad the tactics were on both sides,
but especially on Jon’s.) The shield wall keeps pushing the Wildlings back,
crushing them into the body-pile, which is covered with Bolton men who are
slaughtering everyone back there. Jon gets knocked down and almost trampled but
somehow manages to climb up the men around him and break through to get a
breath in a moment that’s clearly meant to be symbolic of rebirth but that
symbol makes no sense in this context.
Finally, the Vale army arrives with Sansa and Peyr and
destroys the shield wall. Ramsay flees, and Jon and Wun Wun go after him.
Ramsay thinks he can still wait out a siege in Winterfell, but he forgot about
the giant; Wun Wun takes down the gate and then takes an arrow to the eye. Ramsay
offers to take Jon up on the one-on-one combat offer, and Jon beats the crap
out of him, almost killing him until he notices Sansa and realizes she should
be the one to get to kill him.
And then Darth Sansa feeds Ramsay to his dogs. And smiles
about it. Because violence is the only answer.
Yes, Sansa getting to be the one to take out Ramsay is
dramatically satisfying (once again, though, she’s not really wielding the
power; Jon had to subdue Ramsay and get him in a position where Sansa could use
the dogs to finish him off). But the north is supposed to be all about codes of
conduct, and killing Ramsay like this doesn’t fit it. Also, we again get a
woman wielding power through violence. Ramsay totally needed to die—there wasn’t
any other way around it. However, rather than beheading him for treason (along
with all his other crimes), which is what Ned would have done, they lower
themselves to his level and essentially torture him to death. This doesn’t make
me super optimistic for Jon’s upcoming rule of the North. It makes it feel like
this whole fight was less about returning law, order, and the status quo to the
North and more about revenge and power-grabbiness, which makes them not at all
better than the Boltons.
RIP:
Belicho Paenymion
Razdal mo Eraz
Rickon Stark
Jon Umber
Wun Wun
Ramsay Bolton
Slews of wildlings and northern fighters and probably some
Vale knights
Next week:
Stills from screencapped.net; gifs from Giphy and Tumblr
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