Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 6: Beyond the Wall
Before I say anything, let me just acknowledge the similarity of the final scene to the Wrath of the Lich King trailer released 7 years ago. Not accusing any plagiarism, because icy-cold undead and giant undead frost dragons isn't some copyrighted unique idea, but hey. Lich King and Night King really need to sit down and form a club.So this episode was leaked early, but I waited until HBO legit released it to wathc it. And then my laptop ate the review I made for the episode and in retrospect, that was actually a good thing. After giving two or three days to sit on the episode, I felt that while the episode functioned amazingly well to keep me gripped to my television screen during the gigantic final battle, other than being an amazing, breath-taking visual spectacle the episode honestly felt like a bit of a dud hit considering no one significant actually dies, and some characters (Jon and Drogon) are just protected with so much plot armour that it ended up feeling ridiculous at times.
Mind you, as an action episode, as a fantasy action episode in particular, the episode more than delivered. Hell, at some points it even looks so much better than some high-budget cinematic flicks I've seen. Zombie bears! Giant armies of the dead! Flaming swords! Dragons! Dragons versus the undead! Dragons versus the Night King! Ice javelins! Daenerys's absolutely swanky winter-travel clothes!
Yet as an entry in Game of Thrones, once the impact of the ZOMG DRAGONS VS ZOMBIES has died down you start picking apart plot holes, you start trying to consider just what happened, and the episode doesn't feel as impressive as it looked. Why didn't Benjen ride the horse with Jon? Where did Benjen come from? Why didn't the Night King launch the lance at Jon, or at Drogon, and instead kill the flying dragon in the distance? How did Gendry get to Eastwatch and the raven flying to Dragonstone happen so fast (though the ice did freeze over, so there is a passage of time implied)? Why didn't Jon have a backup plan instead of hanging on Gendry's running speed to get backup?
Add that to my disdain that they included a bunch of random fodder wildlings that magically appear just to get ripped apart by zombie bears and zombie hordes -- making me go "oh god who is that? Who is that, who did they get? Oh a literal nobody" four or five times throughout the episode, and... yeah.
And let's get the worst part of the episode out quickly -- the Winterfell scenes. I've always been iffy about the Winterfell scenes, but by and by this season while they're certainly the B-plot compared to Dragonstone and King's Landing, they've never been as horrifyingly bland and outright bad like this episode. I get that they're trying to brew up a conflict between Arya and Sansa, and I can kind of believe that the two, not having the full picture about the other's tribulations, wouldn't think much of the other, but for Arya to be a complete idiot and threaten to expose Sansa's treacherous letter? That's not just an utterly stupid thing to do -- to Jon and the North, if she doesn't care about Sansa -- and then add that to her basically dismissing Sansa's tribulations as "eh, you've been safe, shut up" from such a cocky, conceited high horse... I get that Sansa probably didn't share her mental torture and certainly not her rape, but god damn the episode didn't make Arya likable at all. Plus her gigantic hypocrisy at trash-talking Sansa for submitting to the enemy... even though Arya herself did something similar in season three, pretending to be Tywin's serving girl for a while in the name of survival? Yeah. And then Sansa, who's been "shut up, Littlefinger" the entire season... randomly pours out her entire heart to Littlefinger? Unless it's some huge, elaborate plan between the sisters to dupe Littlefinger at his own game, it felt really freaking stupid. It's like both Arya and Sansa have regressed to their pre-character-development selves, and it just feels so out of place and jarring. Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner act amazingly considering the roles they're given (evil Arya is impressive, even if it doesn't make sense) but it doesn't really excuse the weird spot that the show's given those two characters. Especially two episodes ago Arya was complimenting how well-done Sansa is settling into her role as Lady of Winterfell... how dense must she have been if she still sees Sansa as a willing accomplice of Cersei? So much of the ending of her story arc last season with rejecting the Faceless Men's unpersonification and the Lannister soldier scene this season is in the service of showing that A Girl is still Arya Stark, so none of the Winterfell scenes really made a lot of sense... especially considering that despite all that she's done, Sansa Stark's argument that her political maneuvering and general day-to-day housekeeping is the only thing keeping the Stark house in power is very on-point.
On more positive news, Brienne got sent to King's Landing to attend the meeting, and Sansa saying "hell naw!" on being invited to King's Landing is a great bit of character continuity that her other scenes sorely lacks. Also, Jaime and Brienne reunion, yay!
The titular 'beyond the wall' scenes were better, but because there were zombies. The pacing was sometimes choppy, and there were insane coincidences all around, but I am a gigantic fan of the scene when the members of the Westerosi Suicide Squad just bro out during their walk. From the Hound's absolutely hilarious dismissal of Gendry's complaints about being sold to Melisandre "you're still alive, so what are you bitching about? He's died six times!", to Tormund gushing over Brienne much to Hound's nonplussed reaction, to Tormund talking about how wildlings kept warm in the North, to Jorah fanboying about Thoros, to Jorah and Jon's amazing moment as they both told tales about Jeor and Jon tries to give Jorah Longclaw back, Beric and Jon reflecting about their purpose on returning from the dead... all great stuff. It's these sort of slower character moments that the breakneck pacing in season seven has robbed from many of our characters (Arya and Sansa get hit the hardest, I fear).Mind you, I still think the 'get a wight back to show Cersei' piece of the plot felt rather oddly shoehorned in, but I can buy that the show takes that premise and runs with it. Plot holes aside, we got action scenes. From the first zombie bear that they fought (which was amazing CGI, by the way) which mauled Thoros, and Jon Snow killing another White Walker general, it's a neat burst of short, brutal action scenes. Yes, I'd probably want to tell apart the characters better considering that anyone that doesn't have a flaming sword or a gigantic barbarian ginger beard is just some dude covered in fur -- the addition of random redshirt wildlings didn't help -- it's a bit to tell the action unless the camera zooms in on their faces. But god, they really did the undead horde justice, yeah? "Hardhome" already had an amazing undead horde sequencce, but here, between the shambling sea of the dead, to the imposing Night King and his four horsemen, to the unearthly shriek that the wight they bagged... great visual and audio stuff all over.
We also get the information that apparently if you kill a White Walker, all the wights he raises drop dead. Which is neat, but also feels like a cheap cop-out considering all they have to do now is to kill the Night King, and a good chunk of why the army of the dead felt so imposing in previous seasons is the sheer volume of the undead minions the White Walkers have under their command. It's also hilariously convenient that apparently the scouting squad Team Jon ambushes has a grand total of exactly one wight that wasn't raised by the White Walker Jon kills.
The set piece was amazing, as the entire army of the dead and the Night King himself arrives, and Team Jon ends up being trapped on a little island within a frozen lake, with the thin ice keeping the undead out to allow Gendry time to Usain Bolt his way back to Eastwatch, and for Daenerys to fly there. Oh, and Thoros of Myr ended up being the only named casualty. And while the episode gave Thoros some neat lines of dialogue with the Hound and Jorah, neither Thoros or Beric Dondarrion have been in the TV show for a long time that if either one of them, or both of them, died it honestly doesn't quite have the same impact as if Jon, Jorah or Hound did bite the dust.
Oh, and the Hound throwing rocks at a random jawless wight and calling him 'dumb cunt' before the rock clues the wights that the lake has frozen over? God, that was so stupid, but so hilarious and just perfect.
The actual battle between the Westerosi Suicide Squad and the Army of the Dead was nothing short of thrilling, mind you, and there was a terrifying moment when the highly likable Tormund (who's another popular but ultimately disposable character) seems like he's about to die -- he holds back the line, gets overwhelmed by zombies and was being dragged by his feet towards the ice... and the camerawork is amazingly done in getting me afraid for ol' Giantsbane as he gets dragged closer and closer... and the Hound shows up to bail him out. The fight scenes were perhaps slightly unclear with all the similarly-garbed people, but it was okay.
And oh my god, I cheered alongside any other sane fan of the show when Daenerys shows up with all three dragons, unleashing tongues of dragonfire that quite literally explodes the icy lakes and vaporizes the undead armies. It was absolutely amazing, and nothing short of phenomenal. And then the Night King lobs his ice javelin at the flying Viserion, and suddenly Viserion's neck explodes in blood and flame (amazing visuals, there) as the poor dragon just screams in agony and crashes down into the lake before finally sinking. It's insanely brutal, and after the huge curb-stomping that the dragons gave onto the undead armies, it's the first real reminder that the dragons, as impressive as they are, can be hurt -- can be killed. It also makes the Night King feel a lot more formidable than just a dude who sits on a horse and looks creepy.
(And also, considering that the entire fandom has been speculating about three people riding the three dragons, this kind of dashes all the hopes -- Jon gets to ride the dragon named after his blood-daddy, though, so there's that.)
And then the dust settles and you realize, shit, you don't actually really care about Viserion at all. Neither Viserion or Rhaegal got any more screen time beyond "those two other dragons that aren't Drogon", and while, like Thoros, they had more to do in the books, as far as the show is concerned Viserion's death was a gigantic shock value moment which ended up being not much else since the main heroes -- Jon, Daenerys, even freaking Drogon -- are still protected with seventeen layers of plot armour.
It was still an insanely badass moment when the undead scourge used gigantic chains to drag Viserion's corpse out of the lake, and the Night King touches his snout to bring him back to life, blue eyes and all. In retrospect, Zombie Bear from before isn't just a colourful, flavourful enemy, but an actual foreshadowing to this bit.
The scene of Longclaw's hilt at the mouth of the lake as Jon Snow, left behind by Daenerys and the others to hold the dead off and give Drogon time to lift off (though Jon did run to try and solo the Night King by himself, which is a dumb move on Jon's part), is amazingly chilling and melancholic... it's just a shame because threatening us with "IS JON SNOW GONNA DIE" doesn't really work when he's literally been reborn from the dead, and he's not just going to die like this randomly. I'm also insanely baffled when Uncle Benjen, of all people, randomly shows up, gives Jon a horse, whacks some fools with his chain-weapon, and then gets killed. The episode could've had Benjen show up earlier in the episode, remind us of his significance, or something, I dunno, but honestly Benjen's role here feels just randomly shoehorned in, making me go "OOH OOOH OOOOH BENJEN!" into "oh he died, welp."
Still, at least they got the wight in the bag, and Jon manages to ride on a horse to Eastwatch where he's picked up by Daenerys's ship. They have a pretty cool conversation, where Jon, having seen Daenerys first-hand go and rescue the people under her command, as well as an earlier conversation where Tormund reminds Jon of what happened to Mance Ryder and how cooperation and peace is so much mroe important than pride... Jon decides to bend the knee. Figuratively. Oh, and there is no insignficant amount of ship tease between Jon and Dany, which... I'm... m'eh about? The fact that it's still technically incest still creeps me out.
I also really wished that Daenerys and Jon showed more emotion about Viserion and Benjen's deaths, respectively. They reacted, sure, but it didn't feel as intense or grief-striken as it should -- really was expecting Daenerys to let out an ear-piercing name-calling shriek of her son's death. Especially Daenerys, considering she keeps reminding us that the dragons are basically her children. Jon and Daenerys's... romance, I guess, is also rushed, but at least with Jon and Dany we've seen them in different phases since their initial meeting, something that the Arya/Sansa stuff I talked about earlier didn't quite have -- Arya and Sansa turn from "yay the Stark sisters are back!" into "you're a bitch and I will fuck you up!" in literally no time for no real reason.
It is an amazingly well-done episode in terms of hype. Big things happen, gigantic action set pieces are done, but when all is said and done as well-done it is as an action episode, I can't help but think that the scripting and general storylines being explored couldn't have been rewritten and re-edited a bit better -- in particular, I still don't buy the necessity of the 'we need to get a wight!' plot and the general stupid decisions the cast makes in ervice of that plotline. I did really love the opening scene with Tormund and the rest walking through the snow talking and being amazingly-written, but they don't actually do much with it for the rest of the episode. Still, zombies versus dragons. I'm a simple man, and seeing zombies versus dragons keeps me happy enough not to complain that much.
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