Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 8: No One
Season six of Game of Thrones have two more episodes to go before it ends, and it's honestly been... pretty flat. It's not to say that it's bad, per se, but other than the Hodor thing, everything that's been going on has been mostly just 'okay, this thing happens.' It's very even and solid writing, but at the same time you can't help but think that there's a lack of real excitement beyond 'Jon Snow is marching on Winterfell'. I dunno. Slower pacing, I guess? Less sudden deaths?
The big star sequence in this episode involves Arya finally confronting the Waif in Braavos. And honestly, as a two-season character arc, it's a bit anticlimactic mostly after what happened last episode. The fans, myself included, have speculated endlessly as to just what was Arya's big plan, because it seemed like she was going to give herself away -- flamboyantly swaggering around Braavos, throwing money around, all that stuff. The theories range from Arya trying to fake her death by letting the Waif 'get' to her, or that Arya is Fight Clubbing herself, or Lady Crane is secretly another Faceless Man, or Jaqen is actually the 'Arya' that is swaggering around to test the Waif. Or something. Maybe Jaqen is involved with his own faceless men abilities.
Except that, y'know, Arya is just that sloppy. Apparently despite having been trained by an order of assassin cultists and travelling with the Hound, she just is apparently being an idiot last episode. And while the Terminator-style chase throughout Braavos this episode is cool as all hell, I can't help but roll by eyes at how Arya could've avoided all of this, really. We get Lady Crane being a far more effective actor, embodying Cersei's rage and desire for revenge, before dying horribly after she eventually helps Arya recover... which is honestly a big stretch considering she got stabbed multiple times in the gut and had to wade through the muck. To see her in fit condition to run through the city and survive tumbling through flights of stairs and whatnot is a bit stretching it.
And yes, her ability to fight in the dark (apparently the Waif never had the 'blind yourself' part of training?) is the obvious way to take down the Waif, and seeing Needle brought out and the aftermath with the Waif's bloody removed face nailed to the wall is cool as all hell, and Arya quite deliberately lured the Waif to the room where she hid Needle and a candle... but it felt way too far of a stretch to really believe that Arya planned all this. She seemed to survive purely on dumb luck and plot armour, and honestly if the Waif stuck in parkour mode throughout the entire pursuit instead of alternating into Terminator badass walk, this would've ended way differently.
Jaqen seems more amused than anything, which raises a lot of questions to what it means. He's obviously pleased that Arya Stark is not No One, but has regained her identity, but why? What's his motivations? We've all been theorizing that this Jaqen isn't the same Jaqen that Arya met earlier in her journey and just someone with the same face, but we never get confirmation either way, and we don't understand just why Jaqen is happy with the result that one of his Faceless Man allies is dead, and another basically said 'fuck you' to the whole order and buggered off to Winterfell.
It is executed well, but the lead-up to it and the eventual payoff, and the general cohesion of the story, really felt off. I'm glad we're done with all the Faceless Men arc, though honestly I expected something more beyond 'Arya is careless and fucks up, gets nearly killed, somehow survives with sheer plot armour and kills the Waif'. I dunno. It's not bad, but it certainly is a bit of a disappointment.
Meanwhile, the Hound is going around disemboweling and beheading random Brotherhood brigands, but he meets Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr, who are actually good guys and are about to execute the members that massacred Hound's buddies. It's a fun scene as we see Beric, Thoros and Hound recount their past encounter and arguing about who gets to kill the Brotherhood renegades, and the fact that the Brotherhood isn't actually evil. But again it all felt slow-paced, and as charismatic as the characters involved are, I'm still unsure about the whole point of bringing the Hound back and honestly not doing much with him.
In Mereen, Tyrion's season-long plotline of trying to fix the problem with negotiations ends up falling apart spectacularly, and I honestly hoped that we had more buildup to this in previous episodes, showing Tyrion negotiating terms with the slave masters and seemingly succeeding, instead of showing the red priestess and the city at peace, showing yet another scene of Tyrion trying to make joke with Missandei and Grey Worm, before seeing a fleet of warships launching fireballs at the Mereen pyramid. More than anything, it felt like Tyrion's entire journey throughout this season felt pointless. Daenerys and Drogon show up at the end of the episode, and while Drogon flies off to the distance, presumably it's to burn the slave masters' fleet to cinders instead of Drogon going Exit Stage Left for the fifth time for no good reason.
Varys buggers off to Westeros to get new allies for Daenerys, and the Greyjoys still haven't showed up yet, and the Dothraki are all offscreen, so it all isn't that exciting. Maybe next episode we'll get a big war scene against the slave masters? I highly doubt it, though.
King's Landing isn't all that exciting, either. It's cathartic as all hell to see the Mountain tank one of the Faith Militant's spiky mace things and then literally rip his head off, and Qyburn apparently has a secret weapon to help Cersei (probably the Wildfire, telegraphed several episodes ago in Bran's flash-forward... where's Bran anyway?) but while it's cool to see Cersei beat back the Faith Militant's bullying and telling them to fuck off with the awesome 'I choose violence' line, her short-sightedness has caused the High Sparrow to neutralize her one advantage -- the Mountain -- by getting Tommen to annul trial by combat.
We see Tommen getting more and more religious and making stupid decisions because of it, and while Margeary is no doubt plotting something, the boy king's getting worse and worse. He's technically a better and more sensible king than Joffrey, and with the support of the High Sparrow (and Pycelle and Kevan, though we only see these briefly) seems to be moulding into a solid, if pushover, king. Joffrey was more entertaining to the show if nothing else. Though Cersei might just go off the deep end and decide to fucking burn everything and blow up the Great Sept, which would be fun and entertaining if nothing else, because she has been pretty static in King's Landing this whole season despite season five's ending seeming to hint that Cersei's going to go all berserk on the High Sparrow's forces this season.
Meanwhile, Riverrun's plot also ends in... honestly a bit of disappointment. Despite Brienne coming in and making use of her past friendship with Jaime to try and broker a deal where the Tully forces will go with Brienne to aid in retaking Winterfell, while Jaime takes Riverrun... none of this ends up panning out. The Blackfish ends up being utterly resolute and unreasonable, refusing to give up Riverrun, but his men feels differently and obediently obeys the rightful lord of the castle, Edmure Tully... even when those orders end up surrendering to Jaime's forces and killing the Blackfish. Granted, the Blackfish's death is offscreen and we never saw a body, but I highly doubt that he survives -- his return has been unimpressive, and ends up doing nothing, really, beyond being an obstacle for both Jaime and Brienne in different ways before dying.
Jaime and Brienne's interactions (and Pod and Bronn's short scene) are sweet, but ultimately, Jaime's long speech to Edmure is one of the best moments the character has. For all the honour that he truly has demonstrated to us, the viewers, and people like Brienne and Tyrion... the world still views Jaime as the Kingslayer and nothing else, and no one can ever know the real reason Jaime killed King Aerys. And, yes, while Jaime has done some questionable things like push Bran out of the window, it's all, as he notes, done in the service of love and, hey, Jaime Lannister is honestly grown to be a lot more heroic than I reckoned he would be. He's no different than Jon or Sansa fighting for their families, and yes, there's the whole incest thing but unlike Cersei, Jaime is a genuinely good person.
Even if he threatens to trebuchet Edmure's son onto Riverrun walls, though I suspect that's more scare tactics to get poor pushover Edmure to cooperate more than anything, and in the end no one but the Blackfish died. It feels kind of like a distraction, but oh well, the Jaime moments is rather entertaining.
Definitely a slower episode, and one that's starting to show. A lot of the things built up earlier this season hasn't been explored, with things like Bran, Coldhands, Ramsey, the Martells and so many others still left hanging and not honestly doing that much. Hopefully episode nine's big action episode will help to inject some excitement... though what exactly will happen -- Cersei blowing up King's Landing, Team Daenerys fighting the slave masters, Team Stark besieging Winterfell -- is still up in the air.
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