Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 6: Blood of My Blood
This episode's pacing was honestly a bit all over the place, but it's still an entertaining hour and a half nonetheless. The problem, probably, was because there never really was a focal scene that stole everything else. Every single plot of Westeros (save for Castle Black and Winterfell) moved forward a little, and we get payoffs all over... it's just that, well, the pacing wasn't the best that it could've been. That's not to say that it isn't a bad episode, of course -- there's just a lack of cohesion within the episode itself, but as an installment in a season, it's definitely awesome.
We start off where we ended last episode, with Bran and Meera failing to outrun the wights, making Hodor's big sacrifice last week honestly kind of even more of a downer. Meera was basically giving up, while Bran's half-catatonic... and then a Death Knight shows up! Who proceeds to absolutely dismember the wights in the most awesome manner ever, with a cpair of chained flaming sickles. Book-readers might recognize this character as Coldhands, a character cut out of the show (Coldhands would've appeared in season 3 at the very earliest, helping Ginny and Sam escape the White Walkers, and would've helped Team Bran find the Raven's tree). Except while Coldhands' identity is still a mystery even for book-readers, we get instant revelation about his identity here... Benjen Stark!
Who Jon Snow's group marched out of Castle Black to search for back in season one, and ended up being thrown to the wayside when, y'know, the whole army of undead and wildlings became far more important for them to deal with. Benjen tells Bran about his backstory. He was very nearly turned into a wight by a White Walker, but midway through his transformation the Children of the Forest stabbed him with a dragonglass dagger, and magic turned him into, well, what's basically a Death Knight. Benjen recognizes Bran as the new 'Three-Eyed Raven', whatever that actually really means.
Apparently the Raven might've just managed to upload a thousand years' worth of greenseeing into Bran's brain, though, because he sees a gigantic series of flashbacks that had taken place throughout the season. While most of it involves White Walker related scenes, we also get several short one-scene wonder scenes with Aerys Targaryen the Mad King shouting "BURN IT ALL", a vision of dragons flying over King's Landing (which we saw before) and a vision of wildfire blowing up in tunnels, which we definitely haven't seen before. It's implied to be Aerys's master plan which caused Jaime Lannister to become the greatest hero Westeros doesn't know, but is this a portent of things to come?
The most eventful bit in this episode is probably the showdown between the forces of Jaime and the Tyrells against the Faith Militant to rescue Margeary Tyrell. Who, to the disappointment of both the audience in-universe and in real-life, does not get to make her walk of atonement naked through the streets. While we get a pretty awesome moment with Jaime Lannister, Olenna Tyrell, Mace Tyrell and a host of knights besieging the high sept -- Mace's hilariously-goofy speech notwithstanding -- the High Sparrow proves himself to be as shrewd and manipulative as the likes of Littlefinger and Varys. He's apparently succeeded in brainwashing Margeary, who, in turn, manages to rope in King Tommen into entering an alliance with the church.
The jury's still out on whether Margeary was truly broken by the High Sparrow, if she has truly repented... or if she's hatching a long scheme to get both King and Church under her thumb. Margeary seems like a shrewd enough woman to dupe that fuckwad High Sparrow, but on the other hand her long speech about how she cared more for her own image compared to helping the poor really sold me too. I dunno. And the fact that she seemed to have sold Loras out? That doesn't jive with what I would think Margeary would do.
Regardless, Tommen exiles an indignant Jaime Lannister, telling him to head off and be a knight... but not as part of the Kingsguard. Jaime and Cersei have a bit of a discussion, and Cersei seems to want to play the longer game -- despite, y'know, being the one that caused this whole mess in the first place. Jaime brings up the very tantalizing mental image of recruiting Bronn and an army of mercenaries to go all Ezio and murder the High Sparrow, but alas that is not the way we're going to. Oh well. That whole King's Landing business is done and dealt with, and hopefully we can get something more interesting for all the characters involved.
Speaking of unrest in the kingdom, Jaime is sent to quell the big mess in Riverrun. Apparently, off-screen, Brynden "Blackfish" Tully has taken over Riverrun (not the Skyrim starting town) from the forces of the Freys, and we see two of the Freys -- whichever they are -- reporting to Walder Frey, returning after several seasons' worth of being absent. Walder Frey tells his sons to take over Riverrun with his usual, ahem, encouragement. He's also got a new sex-wife thing, dirty old fucker that he is.
With Coldhands finally making an appearance despite seemingly being written out, will another character related to that particular locale of Westeros finally be making an appearance? The off-handed mention of the Brotherhood without Banners honestly might be a hint to her appearance. I shan't say any more for spoilery reasons.
Walder's plan is to shake the Blackfish by showing not only the knives used during the Red Wedding (we get an off-handed mention that, yeah, Blackfish just escaped off-screen)... as well as Edmure Tully, who has been prisoner to the Freys all this while. That would be interesting.
Meanwhile, we finally get some progress on Arya's front. We see a bit more of the stage version of the Game of Thrones, and Arya seemed to swallow her morality and poison Lady Crane's drink, with the Sansa-actress being quite obviously ready and hoping to take over... right up until Lady Crane stops Arya dead in her tracks. She seemed to be just a pleasant lady who wants to talk about how she, too, used to sneak into the actors' dressing rooms and how she really could've improved on the script, and she asks Arya an armour-piercing question: "do you like pretending to be someone else?" For a moment, I thought Lady Crane was actually a Faceless Man, until, nah, that's just conveniently the very question that Arya needed to hear.
Arya ends up reneging on the Faceless Man's ideals, saving Lady Crane from being poisoned, and throwing away her third chance, and regaining the identity of Arya Stark, with the awesome moment when she finally dug Needle out from where she hid it in a pile of rocks. Arya Stark is back, and has definitely regained what she lost when she fell down the dark path of being an assassin. Her little speech about wanting to 'get back and those who took her family from her' is an awesome bit as well, probably applying more to Arya's state of mind than it does for actor-Cersei's.
Of course, the Waif is now sent off to murder Arya... and honestly, my money's totally on Arya Stark now. The question, really, is what "Jaqen" will do, and whether all this is a cleverly planned screenplay courtesy of the Faceless Men themselves.
We get a long, extensive sequence as Sam and Ginny return to the Tarly homestead, which is quite impressive! We meet Sam's douchewad of a father, Randyll Tarly. Who's just a hugely dismissive fucker, marrying off Sam's sister to someone she clearly doesn't like, a gigantic dick to Sam and when he finds out that the woman who 'seduced' his son is a 'wildling whore', goes off into a big rant about what a piece of shit Sam is. He's decent enough to oblige to keep Ginny around as a servant and raise the 'bastard' Little Sam, though this really seemed to be to win favour with his wife more than anything else.
Honestly, it's horrible and all, but really the only smart thing for Ginny to do is to just play along, no matter how horrible Randyll's insults to Sam are. It just seems too ridiculously naive for her to go 'I can't believe bad things happen to good people!' when this is, y'know, season fucking six of this series. It ends up with Sam deciding to bring Ginny and Little Sam along, and steal the family sword Heartsbane, his legacy that was denied to him, though, so good for him! Hopefully Sam gets to stab Randyll through the heart with it.
I just wished it took a lot less screentime, because, y'know, I still don't care that much about Sam and Ginny.
Meanwhile, in the Dothraki desert, Daenerys decides to bugger off for a minute or two, and returns with Drogon. And, yes, it's majestic as all fuck, and very much an impressive 'cheer for the Khaleesi' moment, but it feels very anticlimatic considering Daenerys's previous attempts to cooperate and tame Drogon ended up with Drogon throwing a tantrum and going to sleep and causing Daenerys to be captured by the Khalasar. I dunno, showing us a scene of Daenerys actually taming Drogon again really would've made this scene a lot better instead of just 'LOOK DRAGONS'. It's a great speech from Daenerys... though honestly I groaned a little at the way-too-obvious "I need ships! A thousand ships!" right after last episode had Euron Greyjoy say that he wants to give Daenerys a thousand ships to get in her good favour.
With Bran's speech, though, having Daenerys march on King's Landing with an army of Dothraki, Second Sons and Unsullied, plus three dragons, an imp and an eunuch, would definitely be possible in the near future. Of course, we still have to find out which Greyjoy Daenerys finds herself allying with.
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