Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 4: Book of the Stranger
I forgot to watch Game of Thrones last week! It's a pretty good episode once more, as we develop the various characters a bit more. The episode starts off with the big elephant in the room people were talking about when Jon Snow decides to abandon the Night's Watch last episode. With Jon apparently leaving Castle Black, will it be yet another reason why two Starks will miss each other in the nick of time? Well, as it turns out, Sansa is a lot luckier than Arya, and shows up before Jon left. It was a great, really emotional moment without words as the two just stared at each other before hugging, finally two members of the broken-apart Stark family reunited with each other. No, neither Sansa nor Jon had a proper scene with each other at all before being separated (both in the novels and the show), and Sansa even lampshades how she was an ass to Jon... but it didn't matter. After all the shit that both Jon and Sansa had gone through, seeing them finally find solace in a sibling really tugs at the heartstrings.
It wasn't a spectacular scene that followed, with Sansa and Jon just reminiscing about Winterfell, Jon joking about how he used to skulk and Sansa joking about how much she was an ass, the two of them wistfully regretting ever leaving Winterfell at all, Jon even joking about his own death and rebirth... which leads into a short argument with Sansa wanting to lead an offensive to retake Winterfell, while Jon's just tired of fighting. It doesn't come to any real angry words spat at each other, though. The final scene, though, really seals the deal, as the news of Ramsay holding Rickon captive and threatening to, well, basically kill everyone Jon Snow loves springs Jon and Sansa into action.
Is it great, seeing Sansa read Ramsay's threat of mass gang-rape unflinchingly, and being the driving force to whip Jon out of his apathy? Is it great to see Tormund Giantsbane offering to help Jon Snow fight Ramsay even before the threat to genocide the Wildlings? Yeah, Jon and Sansa may be tired and broken, but they have allies. Jon has the Wildlings and the Night's Watch (Lich King wight invasion notwithstanding) around, Melisandre's apparently now a fanatic of Jon's, and Sansa plans to gather all the allies of the North.
Meanwhile, though, the individual allies of Jon and Sansa aren't really happy with each other as something I didn't even consider before happens. Brienne of Tarth confronts Ser Davos Seaworth and Melisandre. Having been extremely loyal to their respective retainers, Brienne brings up the murder of Renly with shadow magic (with a pointed glance at Melisandre) before gloating that she was the one who executed King Stannis. Davos is Stannis's best friend, and while he seemed content in serving alongside Jon Snow, will the fact that he's serving alongside Brienne cause any kind of conflict? We'll see.
Speaking of possible Stark allies... the Iron Islands may or may not help out too, depending on how the politics on that side end up. Oh, and the Eyrie!
Littlefinger finally returns after being absent for... quite some time, and he immediately returns to his scheming, swindling ways. He wastes no time in giving autistic little Robin Arryn a caged falcon (which is symbolic in itself, since the Arryn banner is a falcon) and then subtly deflecting suspicion over the treachery to Sansa Stark to poor Lord Royce, easily showing in public how Littlefinger, moreso than anyone else present, has the ear of the lord Robin Arryn. And, well, while he seems to be going to fight the Boltons to rescue Sansa Stark (for... whatever weird reasons he might have) he's at least the lesser evil in this case. It's really unclear if Littlefinger has some bigger plan, or if he's just cleaning up the mess he did by sending Sansa to be married off to Ramsay Bolton, but hey.
Because, well, Ramsay's still horrible. Osha shows up here to pull off another season two and seduce Ramsay to slit his throat, but, well, Ramsay is a lot smarter and more brutal than Theon, and, well, kills Osha instead. I think her death would've had a lot more meaning if we had seen Osha at all for the past three or four seasons, but still, that's another death on Ramsay's hands. I... just didn't feel this one. Sorry.
Tyrion, meanwhile, meets up with the Great Masters of Yunkai and Astapor, and while Tyrion makes it clear that he hates slavery and wants it to be abolished, he also knows that you can't just wrangle a system out by the roots, and gives the slave masters a time of seven years to reconsider this. Of course, seven years is a short time if we're speaking from a global scale, but from the slaves' viewpoint? Seven years could be an eternity. Missandei and Grey Worm are trapped in between trying to voice their complaints to Tyrion and being soothed by Tyrion's words about 'I also want to end wars' speech, and being pressured by their fellow slaves to say 'fuck you' to the slave masters. It's a lot less interesting than taming dragons, but hey, it's something. Also it's great to see Missandei and especially Grey Worm finally growing out of their submissive shells and defending their rights.
The King's Landing scenes are pretty cool as well. Cersei (and Jaime, though he mostly just stands around) finally decides to flex her political muscles and, well, get some allies of her own. Ignoring the fact that this whole High Sparrow mess was her fault to begin with, she confronts Tommen (it's nice to see Pycelle still up to his old tricks being a doddering idiot while manipulating the people in power) and tells him that their priority should be getting Margeary back. Despite her personal dislike of her daughter-in-law, if Margeary loses her respect, so will Tommen.
Cersei barges in and manages to use the fact that Margeary is bound to be stripped naked and walked through the streets to get Olenna Tyrell on her side... and, well, Olenna is sure as hell not going to let that happen, even if she's going to get her forces in to murder the High Sparrow. Kevan initially refuses, noting how the King expressly forbade engaging the Faith Militant, but Jaime manages to get Kevan to go into a loophole -- if the King told them to stand down, well, stand down while the Lannister and Tyrell forces rescue Margeary. Yeah, kill off the High Sparrow! Rescue Margeary!
Margeary finally has her reunion with Loras, who hasn't gotten the Theon Greyjoy treatment, thankfully, but he's so broken by the Faith Militant's tortures that he just begs for it to stop and Margeary seems willing to confess, if it's only to ease Loras's suffering. Hopefully this confrontation happens sooner than later, but considering how hard and fast events in this series has been going, it's likely that it's going to happen pretty quickly.
Yara and Theon also get a bit of a reunion, and while Yara is initially hostile because of that failed rescue attempt and thinking that Theon is here to capitalize on the kingless situation, Theon only wants to go home and is fully willing to help Yara Greyjoy to lead. Well, we'll see if they can fight against the self-proclaimed Drowned God.
Meanwhile, in Vaes Dothrak, we get a lot of fun scenes as Jorah Mormont and Daario run around the city trying to rescue Daenerys, bickering as you will about how Jorah wouldn't be able to 'ride the dragon', Daario sneaking in his beloved knives into the city, Daario whacking a Dothraki to a pulp to hide evidence of foul play, Jorah's stoneskin disease being shown... it really seemed like we're going to drag out this rescue for an episode or two, but no! Jorah and Daario reach Daenerys in this episode, but apparently Daenerys needs no rescuing. I honestly thought she was going to summon Drogon down to roast everyone, but no.
She is brought before the Khals, who are more interested in making threats about fucking her than anything, and Daenerys, well, she just smiles and talks about how once in the past Khal Drogo's son is prophecied to mount the world. The other Khals are understandably dismissive of this, one of them even mentioning how Daenerys caused Khal Drogo's death by consorting with a witch (he's not exactly wrong) but Daenerys makes good on her boast by, well, making use of her immunity to fire to topple the bunch of conveniently-placed braziers down and roasting all the Khals alive. It's no secret that while Daenerys respected Khal Drogo a great deal, it was mostly because Drogo was nowhere as barbaric as the other Dothraki were.
At this point, it's kind of unclear if the braziers and the hut were just conveniently flameable, or if Daenerys's dragon blood allowed her some manipulation over fire because, well, those fires shot forwards really quickly, and when that one Khal got a brazier tipped his way the fire was accompanied by a dragon roar. We'll see in time, I guess. In any case, the Khals are all dead while Daenerys walks out of the fire naked once more, a great callback to her great scene at the end of season one. She's more than willing to make use of this far more massive Dothraki army to bolster her diminishing one, and, well, it's a pretty impressive display that also takes care of the fact that, y'know, the Dothraki Khals are a bunch of rape-happy barbarians.
Overall, a great scene, with a lot of the pieces being moved into place. Now the question is what we'll get next episode. Will Daenerys's Horde march back to Mereen and slaughter the slave masters? Will the slave masters betray Tyrion and he'll be forced to unleash Viserion and Rhaegar? Will the Stark Offensive finally march down upon Winterfell? Will the Lannister/Tyrell Alliance finally end the High Sparrow? Will we take a break and get more Daredevil Arya, or Littlefinger, or Sam, or the Sand Snakes attacking King's Landing? Or will we finally get back to the Tower of Joy, which was noteably absent here? Or maybe the King of the White Walkers will just march down with a giant army of undead and just clash against the Night's Watch and Wildlings.
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