Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 10: The Winds of Winter
Holy god, this episode! This article went through like three or four iterations before I finally decided to post this version, and is probably the reason why the Shonen Jump chapters are delayed by a couple of days. But, hey, there is a lot for me to talk about in this episode. It's the final episode of the season (and the year), and we're definitely going to the conclusion of this mammoth of a series, Game of Thrones, with two more seasons' worth of material to deal with the final coming of the forces of winter. This episode? Man, I thought Battle of the Bastards would be the big event of this season, but no. We get a gigantic shake-up of the figurative chessboard of Westeros, bringing us to bear a new War of the Five Kings (and Queens). Every single player in the game is moved around, with characters gathered around several very influential people: Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, plus there's the Lich King Night's King coming down with his army of undead and winter itself, as well as Balon Greyjoy somewhere in the mix.
And this episode, I think, features the highest body toll for named and major characters in any Game of Thrones episode, which is definitely a big shakeup.
Let's talk about King's Landing, and let's talk about the music of this episode, because, holy shit. Game of Thrones has always had an exceptional score, with the orchestral renditions of its spine-tingling opening theme being one of my all-time favourite soundtracks from any TV series or movie ever. And the composer and musicians really proved their worth because for the first, oh, ten minutes or so of the episode there wasn't even dialogue, just powerful music building up as we show the main players of King's Landing -- Cersei Lannister, Tommen Lannister, the High Sparrow, Margeary Tyrell, Loras Tyrell, Grand Maester Pycelle, Qyburn, the Mountain, Lancel Lannister, Mace Tyrell, Kevan Lannister... and we know that this trial is going to decide something.
Of course, the show hasn't really been that subtle about hiding the fact that Cersei is hiding a cache of wildfire as her endgame. We've got the little stealth-peek of wildfire explosions in Bran's vision waaaay back when (though only the geekiest of Game of Thrones fans will catch that), we've got Tyrion last episode bringing up Jaime stopping Aerys from burning King's Landing, and we've got hints of Qyburn finding 'much more' than what the rumours said there were. Of course it's still great fun to see it being enacted. And Cersei's plan is honestly simple yet extremely elegant. It boils down to 'kill every enemy in my way', and we get her dressing up in one of the most gorgeous dresses the show has ever given us.
We get to see the many-pronged attack at Cersei's enemies, with Grand Maester Pycelle being lured away by Varys's former birds to an ambush by Qyburn, happening alongside Lancel Lannister being led to an underground location by another 'bird', the immovable Mountain stopping Tommen from exiting his room, and the scenes as everyone else witnesses the trial of Loras Tyrell. This all ended in a brute master stroke as Cersei just literally blows everyone up, and the sheer audacity of what Cersei just did is absolutely insane. When the dust and flames settles, this leaves a gigantic crater in the middle of King's Landing, absolutely every single one of Cersei's enemies in the city dead, Tommen jumping down to his death and Cersei Lannister as the first Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
Let's walk through the scenes one by one.
I honestly wished Pycelle had more scenes in the series. We've got a very awesome deleted scene between Pycelle and Tywin from season... three or four that is one of the deleted scenes that really would've made the series so much better -- surely they could've taken out one of the Theon torture scenes and replaced it with this? Jeez. But Pycelle has been shoved increasingly to the background that I don't think he had more than two lines throughout the entirety of this season and we really could've had a scene or two with Pycelle more overtly antagonizing Cersei, showing that her enemy isn't just the Faith Militant. But oh well. Pycelle meets his end, being stabbed to death by a (supposedly) apologetic Qyburn and an army of psychotic children. Who really do look psychotic! And Pycelle's death is absolutely horrific. Honestly he might be a gigantic asshat of a politician -- and the episode tries to give us a little shorthand, showing him still fucking random prostitutes and refusing to pay them -- but he doesn't deserve this brutal of a death.
Lancel Lannister definitely deserves, though. He's the High Sparrow's biggest flunky, and he was led and crippled by one of Qyburn's little birds. And it's a great scene as the realization of the wildfire barrels set in, and his crippled self just tries to crawl to stop the candles from burning down and igniting the wildfire. It's a tense scene, and a well-shot one, because as much as everyone probably hates Lancel, I don't think anyone really wants to see Margeary, Loras and the other non-Sparrows blow up. But even if Lancel managed to reach the candle, really, there were others, and he couldn't have taken them all out. Lancel got a long, agonizing pre-death scene and it's a great one. Fuck Lancel!
While all this is going on, we get to see Loras's trial, and honestly Loras is just so divorced from the far more carefree character we saw earlier in the series, being left a mere shell of a man. Margeary apparently made a deal with the High Sparrow (which he seemed eager to honour, but he does seem to have broken a prior deal) that Loras will be allowed to go home to Highgarden if he would admit to all his sins, and presumably in exchange for the High Sparrow having more agency behind the throne. We get to see an absolutely horrific scene as Loras just breaks down crying and forcing himself to spit out the words 'traitor Renly Baratheon' and as he's helplessly branded by the Faith Militant while Mace Tyrell has to be physically restrained. Man, poor Mace. Really wished we had more Mace scenes.
And the High Sparrow is just so secure in the protection of his little army of fanatics. I mean, yeah, I guess he's expecting Cersei to charge in with Lannister knights and the Mountain, not to freaking blow everything up with fire bombs. We get Margeary's act breaking down pretty quickly as she gets absolutely fed up -- Cersei and Tommen not showing up is indicative of something wrong, and I do love Margeary confronting the High Sparrow, first privately, then outright calling him out with a line that goes along the lines of 'forget about your damn gods and think for a minute' once she starts to figure out what's going on. Kudos to Margeary for building up a sneaky long-term plan, but it tragically just didn't come to fruition thanks to Cersei's bombs.
Alas, RIP Margeary Tyrell and Loras Tyrell, which is a shame. Margeary is easily one of my favourite characters of the series and I wanted to see her do so much more instead of pretending to be brainwashed and all, not just to see her fall as one fallen enemy along so many others of Cersei's... but I guess this is Game of Thrones. At least Margeary and Loras died holding each other, so bitterly close to freedom. Also joining the dead killed by Cersei's wildfire explosion are every influential person in King's Landing that showed up to watch the queen's trial... including Mace Tyrell and Kevan Lannister (the latter not getting a line). Mace might be bumbling, but he's still a member of the Small Council, and Kevan definitely is antagonistic towards Cersei. This also means that, well, no one is left in King's Landing to challenge Cersei's rule.
I also like the little touch that even up to the end, the High Sparrow's personal hubris is so much that even when everyone realized that Margeary is telling the truth, he still orders his little sparrows to stop everyone from going out -- even though Margeary is simply telling them to evacuate and postpone the trial, pointing out all the logics in her argument. Alas, the High Sparrow doesn't have that much sense in him, and up until the walls start to rumble he's still stern in wanting to go through with the trial. I did love the fact that the show doesn't fall into the very easy way of portraying the High Sparrow as an outright hypocrite of his religion -- it's a very common and easy way to paint religious antagonists as outright evil. Oh, the antagonistic pastor/priest/clergyman happens to be a pedophile or a secret sadist! No, up until the end, the High Sparrow is true to his faith -- he's just a fanatic about it. And that's just some masterful writing.
The majority of the CGI budget this season went to last episode with the giant armies and the long scene of Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal burning the Mereenese fleet, but we get an equally awesome one of the wildfire absolutely ripping the High Sept apart, vaporizing the High Sparrow into a burning skeleton and showing an absolutely insanely awesome imagery of the High Sept erupting in green flame. The later scenes of Jaime seeing a literal burning crater in the middle of King's Landing is great as well, but we'll talk about Jaime later.
Let's, instead, return to King's Landing, where we cut to Cersei tormenting another one of her antagonists in King's Landing, Septa "Shame" Unella. She chains up this nun to a table, waterboards her with wine (wineboarding?) and starts blatantly telling her all about her sins, admitting freely to every single one of them, before telling Unella that she killed every single Sparrow and blew up the Sept, and then leaves Unella to the tender mercies of the Mountain, telling her that she will not die 'easily'. We get some absolutely chilling lines courtesy of Cersei, telling Unella how she understands doing things because she likes doing it, and how she doesn't really blame Unella for enjoying inflicting pain. And that's the best motive rant of any villain ever. Cersei just does things... because she likes them.
Of course, King Tommen, the naive fool that he is, has been prevented from leaving his room by the Mountain, so it's obvious that when the Great Sept explodes, he knows his mother has something to do with it. We end up with Tommen removing his crown before falling out of the window. And it's tragic, really. Tommen really wanted to be a good king to his people, listening to Margeary, compromising to the church and not using his kingly powers to bully the way that Joffrey did. We see him as foolish for cooperating with the High Sparrow and through his inaction and spinelessness caused harm to Cersei, Jaime and Margeary, the last two definitely being symathetic protagonists and Cersei being a villainous main character whose villainy is apparent, even moreso, in this episode.
You see, many characters like the High Sparrow mention that despite the many, many horrible things that Cersei Lannister did, she truly loves her children and that is the most, if not only, redeeming things about the woman. But when she is presented with the dead body of Tommen, she does not freak out or break down the way she did when Joffrey or Myrcella died. She just looks at Tommen's (offscreen) ruined face, basically did a shrug and tells Qyburn to burn Tommen so he can be buried where the bodies of Tywin, Joffrey, Myrcella and Robert are -- in the ashes of the Sept. Maybe she's just flown off the deep end? Maybe she just thinks Tommen dead to her after foiling her attempts to win via trial by combat? Whatever the case, Cersei Lannister is so unstable now, and she is even more unpredictable than before. Previously her plans has been to do what's best for Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen, but now without her children to rein her in, she's full-blown became the first Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and the technical rightful ruler at the moment until someone throws her off the chair.
Now let's be honest. Who expected Tommen to die like that? I expected Tommen to die, but I had expected something more tragic, like Tommen showing up in the Great Sept anyway and perishing as an unfortunate side effect of Cersei's wildfire bomb. Or killed when Daenerys attacks King's Landing. Or killed by... well, literally anyone else except for him jumping to his own death. So good job, Game of Thrones, for making a character with the biggest death flag on his head still have a pretty surprising death.
We get to see Cersei and Jaime exchange glances when Cersei is coronated, and Jaime... looks disapproving. Considering the fact that he finds the idea of burning the city and killing innocents to abhorrent that he kills the king he is sworn to protect... and the fact that Cersei and Tyrion are probably the only people he trusts with the knowledge of the wildfire caches... yeah. Jaime's probably not going to be 100% onboard with Cersei. Especially with Tommen now dead in partial thanks to Cersei.
We've got all sorts of great events in the episode other than King's Landing -- which takes up slightly less than half of the airing time... and, yeah, I talked a lot about it already. Whoops. The real big meat of everything, really, is Bran's flashback. We get a short scene of Benjen "Coldhands" Stark dropping Bran and Meera off near a Weirwood tree, before telling us the very important information that the undead cannot pass through the Wall. Which is new information, so it begs to wonder just why are we worried that the undead will spill over and murder everyone in Westeros in the first place... presumably there's more magical intricacies at work, because we've seen that the White Walkers did end up bypassing the barriers around the Three Eyed Raven's tree...
But more importantly, we get the freaking confirmation as to why it takes Winter forever to come.
Benjen buggers off to murder some undead and gain some ranks in his Death Knight class, while Bran finally gives us what we've been asking for a while now -- the conclusion to the Tower of Joy scene. And boy oh boy, L + R = J has finally been confirmed! We (and Bran) get to see Lyanna Stark dying in childbirth, talking to Ned in her last breath and telling him that Robert cannot know of the existence of Lyanna's son. The show all but outright confirms this by cutting away from the baby's face to Jon Snow's face in the present.
L + R = J, the theory that Jon Snow is not the bastard child of Ned Stark but instead the secret lovechild between Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, passed over to Ned and raised as a bastard to protect him from the Targaryen purge, is finally confirmed after so many long years of theorizing. And the amazing thing is, the hints are there even in the very first novel. I could go in depth because I've actually read the first book, but the article's long enough as it is.
From an in-universe standpoint I don't think it really matters all that much that Jon Snow is technically Jon Targaryen (or whatever the hell his actual birth name is, we don't get to hear it), because, well, only Bran knows and despite him being the new Three-Eyed Raven, he's technically still just the crippled Stark kid and no one's really going to buy his story all that much. But it might lead to some really interesting developments when Daenerys finally arrives in Westeros.
Jon himself gets some vindication, but let's go slow first. We get some long-awaited payoffs as Davos confronts Lady Melisandre with the burnt stag toy that belonged to Shireen which we saw Davos discovering last episode, and, well, as awesome as Melisandre was for resurrecting Jon, she also, y'know, burnt poor little Shireen at the stake and Davos just has this absolutely awesome scene as he just breaks down talking about the fact that Shireen is like a daughter to him and he demands the right to execute Melisandre. Melisandre tries to give a 'the Lord of Light wills it' bullshit excuse, but considering that neither Thoros nor the Red Priestess on Daenerys's side burns children no one really buys it. Jon isn't Ned Stark, though, and we see that he's slightly more willing to compromise. One good deed does not wash out the bad, but neither does the bad wash out the good, and Melisandre is exiled from Winterfell. That's not as bloody as I expected, but we do need to get Melisandre out of the picture, because, well, having the means to resurrect someone being readily available makes it hard to be threatened when Jon (or really anyone from his side) is put in danger, which was one of the biggest problems last episode -- I don't really buy that Jon's ever in any threat because from a writing standpoint it's absolutely stupid to bring Jon back from the dead to kill him off four episodes later.
We get a powerful meeting between Sansa Stark and Littlefinger, who's the creepiest motherfucker ever, who makes it clear, even more so, that he wants Sansa -- despite crushing on her mother. Fuck, man, you're creepy as all hell, and after the bullshit you put Sansa through and all the sense of paranoia you instilled in Sansa's head, really the only reason he's still around in Winterfell is the fact that Sansa's not stupid enough to turn away the manpower of the Knights of the Vale. Littlefinger's got an awesome speech about wanting to sit on the Iron Throne with Sansa by his side, but, eesh, fuck off, Littlefinger. I'm legitimately curious to see what he's going to do in the future, though, because more than anyone else he's the wildcard of the game. He's still hanging around in Winterfell, but Sansa has an awesome scene where she makes it clear that she has had enough of Littlefinger's bullshit, and her side, forevermore, will be with her family -- bastard or no.
Also despite all of Littlefinger's disgusting brand of creepiness I would like to point out that he probably hates Jon because, well, Catelyn hates Jon (right up until her last days during the war) and it's a sick sense of trying to do what Catelyn wants to do or something. Really, Ned, you would've made Jon's childhood so much better if you told just Catelyn who Jon's mother really is, but hey, that's Ned. Honourable to a fault.
We get an absolutely sweet scene between Sansa and Jon with Sansa addressing the fact that she didn't tell Jon about the Knights of the Vale -- something that I wanted addressed, and she basically admits that it's a misstep on her part. We don't really get any drama from the two of them, though, with Jon telling Sansa that, well, they have to trust and stick with each other. And it's heartwarming, especially as a semi-book reader, because Sansa and Jon have not been the friendliest among the Stark kids, and to see them hanging out, closer than ever, with both Sansa and Jon telling each other that the other has more right to be the ruler of Winterfell -- especially right around the scenes of Sansa telling Littlefinger to fuck off -- is awesome and absolutely heartwarming.
Oh, and Winter is Here!
Jon has an awesome snarky line about how 'father always said it's going to come', while Sansa has this bemused smile as she tells Jon that, because, well, even without the whiteravens from the Citadel, it's obvious to the Northerners with the snow freaking falling down around them.
We get a scene, then, with the Northmen and Wildlings and the Knights of the Vale all assembled, and we get this wonderful scene as this little ten-year-old girl, Lyanna Mormont, just calls every single house lord shit for having pledged themselves to the Stark name and suffering from the Bolton regime and yet not responding to the calls, shaming all of them, including Lord Glover, who we saw being a bit of a twat to the Starks when they called for aid. And they had this scene where they apologized for being shit, but Jon forgives them. Again, Robb or Ned would probably execute them -- the way that Robb actually executed the Karstark patriarch for disobeying him during the war -- and this show of mercy earned Jon the apparent eternal loyalties of everyone in the room bar Littlefinger.
Lyanna declares Jon Snow the new King in the North, earning the approval of, well, everyone in the North. Hopefully Jon and Sansa can avoid the atrocities that befell their brother.
That's not all! We still have four scenes to go. In the Twins, we get a short party between Jaime Lannister and Walder Frey, and as a testament to how shit the Freys are, Jaime lists just how utterly incompetent Walder is when the latter tries to buddy up to him, noting that despite his 'I win without fighting, fuck honour' schtick, Walder really... isn't all that, because Jaime notes that 'if we have to ride up to take back the things we gave you, why do we need you at all?' Jaime may be the Kingslayer, but he doesn't think much about Walder -- in fact, Jaime, Bronn and all the Lannister men are wearing armour during the feast, which is a nice little subtle nod to how distrustworthy the Freys are.
Throughout this scene, there's this little serving girl who gets a brief focus shot here and there, but you don't really pay attention to right up until she shows up to talk to Walder Frey alone, giving him a cake and going all 'but your sons are right here!' because, well, the serving girl apparently cut up Black Walder and Lame Lothar -- the two main Frey children -- and cooked them in a cake, before ripping off her face and revealing herself to be Arya Stark, now empowered with the skills of the faceless assassins, before she delivers a very chilling line to Walder Frey about how the last face he'll see is a smiling Stark, and proceeds to slit Walder Frey's throat in the same way that Catelyn Stark died. Does it make sense that Arya knows just how Catelyn died and manages to pull off the same method of killing Walder? No. Does it make it any less cool? Nope! Yeah, all the Braavos nonsense finally has some payoff, because, well, Arya Stark is an assassin ready to bring Stark justice, and finally, Walder Frey dies, which made me just so happy.
And the beautiful part? Right up until Arya removes her face, I honestly thought that the serving girl was sent by Jaime to get rid of Walder or to warn Walder of his incompetence or something. Last we saw Arya, she's just leaving the House of Black and White, but hey, it's a gigantic surprise, and we can presume that the Braavos scenes took place over a shorter period of time to allow Arya time to travel back to Westeros. Arya, you're a badass. You're awesome.
Before we get to the Eastern side of things, I would acknowledge that Sam and Gilly arrive in the Citadel. There is this big, awesome CGI library that's actually extremely breathtaking, but I don't care about Sam and Gilly arriving on a library when so much more is happening.
In Dorne, we have Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, showing up to meet up with Ellaria Sand and the Sand Snakes, and Olenna is more hungry for vengeance than distraught. Ellaria tries to strike up an alliance, but even while grieving Olenna is so full of sass, telling the three Sand Snakes to shut the fuck up before they open their mouth and say some stupid C-movie one-liner, which is hilarious. Olenna also doesn't think that much of Ellaria, not until Ellaria offers vengeance for all that the Lannisters have taken from them. And the mastermind between this meeting, and the promise of stronger allies?
No other than the Spider, Varys himself. And, well, shit, it even actually makes sense, because Daenerys and her Horde needs somewhere to dock, and both Dorne and Highgarden are in the way from Westeros's easternmost coast right to King's Landing. And while it's just good fortune that Varys happened to be around during the big explosion that killed the Tyrells (and Olenna is just as awesome as Margeary and seeing her get more scenes in the next two seasons is more than welcome), Varys's "secret mission" being to get Dorne on Daenerys's side is very sensible.
In Mereen, Daenerys finally fucking sails to Westeros after six seasons, but not before telling Daario to stay behind in Mereen to stop any more uprising shit from happening. Daario Neharis never really worked as a character. He's an interesting face and a quirky character to contrast with the likes of Jorah Mormont, but as of late he hasn't really done much other than to trade dialogue off of, and he doesn't even work to be Daenerys's new lover and Daenerys even acknowledges that -- he doesn't feel a thing telling Daario away, but maybe it's just her forcing herself to feel nothing. Can't help but feel bad for poor Daario, because the dude clearly feels hurt by the rejection, but hey. What can you do -- you're going to compete screentime with the likes of Tyrion and Varys and Olenna among Daenerys's court, and honestly you don't stand a chance.
What's touching, though, is the interaction between Daenerys and Tyrion. The two have been through so much, and it's easy to mark the two of them as two of the absolute A-list main characters of the series. And while we don't get to see much interaction between the two, the few that we did does make it pretty clear that Tyrion respects Daenerys a great deal, and vice versa. Daenerys has forged a Hand badge and makes Tyrion the halfman her Hand, a gesture that touched Tyrion so much it actually drove him to tears. For someone who was practically kidnapped to Essos by Varys and noted how his job is only to 'drink and to know things' several episodes ago, to see Tyrion finally be acknowledged for his skills and not treated as the last possible resource is wonderful.
Anyway, we see Daenerys's gigantic fleet, comprised of the Ironborn ships let by Theon and Yara Greyjoy, as well as the Martells from Dorne and the Tyrells from Highgarden that Varys has secured an alliance with. She has three gigantic full-sized dragons that are easily the size of a warship. She has a horde of Dothraki raiders and horses riding on those ships, not to mention Grey Worm and an army of Unsullied. She has Tyrion and Varys, two of the most intelligent schemers of Westeros. And she's coming to King's Landing. Fuck winter, Daenerys is coming! And, yeah, it's six seasons overdue.
Man, I have to wait a year for season seven? Shit!
