Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 2: Stormborn
A running theme I see throughout this episode is choices. Theon has to make the choice of charging in to fight his big scary Viking warrior uncle and save his sister, or succumb to past mental traumas and jump overboard. Jon has to make the choice to submit to the popular opinion that he should stay in the North, or to abdicate leadership to Sansa while he goes off to meet Daenerys. Sam has to make a choice on whether to help Jorah Mormont or not. Daenerys has to likewise make various choices -- submit to popular opinion of her court to one-shot King's Landing, or go through a more intricate plan to win the hearts of the people; as well as the choices on what to do with Varys the Spider. Randyll Tarly has to make a choice of taking the dishonourable deal Jaime offers him, or to follow what's honourable and pledge his loyalty to the Tyrells. Hell, even Nymeria the direwolf has to make a choice whether it will follow Arya back to Winterfell, or ignore her and continue being the pack mother to the wolves of the forest.A fair amount of this episode's still a holdover from the previous one, where the three main rulers in place -- Daenerys, Jon/Sansa and Cersei -- consolidate their armies and strategies. Cersei's insanely outmatched, but Daenerys wants to rule instead of conquer, whereas Jon's far more concerned with the White Walker threat and he knows that the motley crew of wildlings, northerners and night brothers, as powerful as they are, won't stand a chance against the army of the dead. So both Daenerys and Jon really try their best to go and do what they think is best.
We spend only a brief moment with Cersei in this episode, seeing her basically do what Tyrion predicted she would do -- talk about how Daenerys, daughter of the Mad King, crucifier of noblemen (it's some really nice selective propaganda) is coming with a horde of savage Dothraki barbarians and mindless, soulless Unsullied -- which, of course, Tyrion and Daenerys direct away from King's Landing to deny Cersei this advantage. Cersei's forces are still relatively nobodies other than Jaime, Qyburn and Zombie Mountain, but Jaime gets to talk with Randyll Tarly, Sam's father. Randyll gives a pretty cool speech about how the Tarlys' name means something and he doesn't stab people in the back, but Jaime pulls out the silver tongue and promises the Warden of the South position to Randyll, potentially putting Randyll at odds with Sam. Really, really want to see Sam shishkebab this fucker with Heartsbane, that's for sure. Highly unlikely, though.
Cersei also discusses with Qyburn about how to deal with dragons, and apparently Qyburn watched the Hobbit. He stages a demonstration with a gigantic crossbow with one of the dragon skulls they have in their basement, working on the actually-solid logic of 'they can be hurt, they can be killed' considering how Drogon being hurt with spears apparently spread enough to Qyburn's ears.
That's about it for Team Cersei in this episode, though, unless you count Euron at the end. So let's talk Team Jon.
A good chunk of the Team Jon episodes is just Jon waffling on whether he needs to go to Dragonstone. Sansa and Davos and various other house heads remind Jon that this is exactly how his grandfather Rickard died, as well as Robb and Ned. Jon actually listens to this until he gets Sam's raven from last episode, which shows that the huge pile of Dragonglass? It's actually under Dragonstone, making Jon and Daenerys's team-up all the more important. Except every single person in the room (even cute miss badass Lyanna Mormont!) thinks it's a fucking bad idea to trust Daenerys -- not to mention that distrust against Lannister and Targaryen houses are still insanely high. I did love the callbacks to Tyrion's interactions with Jon and Sansa in older seasons, but Sansa's guarded suspicion, considering what she's been through, is certainly understandable. Sansa and the others are painted as short-sighted fools, but can you blame them? As Jon Snow reminds us all, none of them have seen the Army of the Dead or what it'll take to defeat them. Apparently, the man knows far, far more than nothing this time around.
This leaves Sansa as the de facto Lady of Winterfell as Jon and Davos head down to Dragonstone to negotiate with Daenerys. Daenerys expects Jon to bow, though I'm pretty sure the conversation will go slightly differently than that. Littlefinger's role in all this is expounded upon. He's been woefully underused for the past season and I believe completely absent in the one before, so seeing him back in full slimy form is amazing. He doesn't get to do much but deliver ominous smirks and smiles from the background, but finally gets to have a conversation with Jon in the Stark crypts, where he, in his own words, tries to have a full conversation with Jon. Jon just straight-up doesn't trust Littlefinger (although I would argue that he hasn't properly met the man before, I could believe someone else like Sansa or Robb telling him all about it), although he was at least civil when Littlefinger brilliantly spins around events to make it look like he's a steadfast ally to not just Sansa but the Stark family all along. Of course, ending the conversation with "I love Sansa, just as I loved her mother" is going to get Littlefinger punched in the face by Sansa's brother (well cousin but whatever), what did you expect was going to happen there, Littlefinger?
Anyway, Sansa's Lady of Winterfell and that's going to give her a lot more agency to be proactive instead of just arguing with Jon all the time. Jon's going to Dragonstone... but so is Davos even if he doesn't get a lot to do this episode -- and, lest we forget, Melisandre is also at Dragonstone. So that's going to be an interesting conversation.
Let's talk Arya, actually. Despite the gigantic uproar about the Ed Sheeran cameo last episode (which I don't get, all you silly people overreacting, the man had like two, three lines and then just sat in the background, I didn't even notice him until after the episode and someone told me) she didn't follow that particular plot line, and she went back to retracing her steps towards King's Landing. We get the welcome return of Hot Pie, her old travelling companion, and we get to see how much of an antisocial, soulless Faceless Girl she's became, as she ends up being almost entirely alien to Hot Pie despite still being technically friendly (her remark about making pies is hilarious and I shouldn't have found it so funny but I laughed my ass off). She also gets the in-universe revelation that Jon Snow has became the King in the North and killed the Boltons. Then she has to choose between two paths, on whether to continue on to King's Landing and turn Cersei into a pie, or to return to her family. She ends up returning to her family, and that was more emotional than I expected it to be.
She meets Nymeria's pack of wolves in the way, which is yet another callback to the rich history that the TV series has developed over the past six seasons, and Nymeria's grown to titanic proportions and is the alpha female of her own pack of wolves. It's a logical explanation, and a payoff everyone's expecting... yet, just like Arya herself having changed from a spunky little tomboy girl into a morose, sometimes-emotionless psychotic assassin, so has Nymeria. We haven't seen Nymeria at all since Arya drove her away to run into the woods back when Joffrey was doing his prat-prince deal, yet she's gone through her own trials and tribulations. "It's not her", Arya says at the end of the beautifully-choreographed scene, and while I am sad that Nymeria and Arya won't be this awesome hunter-and-pet team murdering queens and mountains together, it... makes sense? "It's not her" could apply to the fact that Nymeria had grown into a different wolf herself, and as such won't accept being reduced to a simple pet to a human anymore, but it could also be Arya trying to rationalize Nymeria's thinking -- the Arya that stood before Nymeria is so alien, so changed, from the Arya that Nymeria knew waaaaaay back in season one, that she's not going anywhere with her. So yeah, that's a scene that I liked more after reviewing.
Oh, we have another member of Team Jon that's separated from the main North cast, and that's Samwell Tarly. We get a brief conversation about Archmaester
So, back to Team Daenerys, then, of whom we get the most screentime in no small part due to it having the most big name characters. Daenerys spends a fair bit of time around the big map table, and in the opening scene, dissects Varys's contributions to her cause. Keep in mind how Daenerys has been (similar to the problem Jon faced last episode) been unrelenting in her 'justice', uncompromisingly exiling Jorah Mormont only to find him still loyal in exile. Now he had a choice. He laid out Varys's sins to bear -- how he betrayed any member of the royalty he didn't like and supported the next. The Mad King, Robert Baratheon, even his brother Viserys. Varys's role in planting the idea for Viserys to obtain a Dothraki Horde via marriage, and his subsequent ordering Daenerys's assassination back in season... three? is also brought up. But Varys's impassioned speech to Daenerys, about how he's always done for the people, is something we know of him during Varys's past conversations with Tyrion, and it's a very, very awesome unflinching speech from him as he tells Daenerys -- behead him, feed him to the dragons, but he is doing what he feels is right for the people. Daenerys opts to keep those valuable to her, those known quantities she can control, and decides to keep Varys around as her conscience. If ever she becomes the type of ruler that Aerys, Robert or Joffrey became, Varys should tell her how to change instead of plotting behind her back.
Her big strategy discussion with her far-more-developed lieutenants is a lot more interesting than Cersei or Jon's strategy session where only two or three people mattered. Yes, Varys is silent throughout the actual discussion, and Tyrion is more of a spokesperson for Daenerys, but Daenerys's deft handling of the situation as she tries to juggle Yara Greyjoy, Ellaria Sand and, most importantly, the most badass old lady in the entirety of Westeros, Queen of Thorns Olenna Tyrell, is amazing. Olenna and Ellaria are very, very ready to just tear down King's Landing out of vengeance, and Daenerys's initial plans to just have the two of their forces (and the Ironborn) besiege King's Landing so they don't feel like an army of invading foreigners, is a solid rebuttal against Cersei's character assassination attempts and very logical, and she quickly puts to rest any doubt that she won't be participating by ordering the Unsullied and Dothraki to depose Casterly Rock. She also finds it beneficial to work together with the King in the North, provided he bend the knee.
We also see her have an amazing conversation with Olenna Tyrell after the meeting, where she gives a few sage words of advice -- Margeary was a queen beloved by the people, and she also ended up quickly dead. Olenna tells Daenerys to be ruthless and ignore the advice of smart men to survive. Again, Olenna, Varys and Tyrion are all wise and have all succeeded where others have failed but they have different views as to the type of ruler Dany should be. It's interesting.
Also, Daenerys's group finally meets Melisandre. It's... it's an okay scene, I guess? It didn't last very long, and felt more like an acknowledgement of another part of the Westeros setting that Daenerys's presence has bled over into.
We get a relatively long payoff scene between Grey Worm (who's about to invade Casterly Rock) and Missandei, where Grey Worm gives a speech about how the Unsullied are trained to conquer their fears at a young age -- some horrid swim or drown type of shit. But Grey Worm never had any fear... yet now he has fear thanks to finding love. It's standard stuff but both Grey Worm and Missandei have been characters we know and followed through for a long time and to see their relationship pay off is definitely nice. Grey Worm's raw embarrassment and hurt as Missandei takes off his clothes and sees his disfigured genitals is well-portrayed, as is the quick discussion of the logistics of a castrated man having sex -- oral!
And then, Yara and Theon are supposed to bring Ellaria and the rest of the Sand Snakes back to Dorne. We get a brief scene of the Sand Snakes teasing each other, and Yara and Ellaria flirting and trying to fuck. It's about time for the episode to end at that point, and I was honestly caught off-guard when the ship suddenly shook, and apparently Euron's gigantic Ironborn fleet shows up and the two go to war with each other. We get some cool scenes especially on the part of the Ironborns, with Euron, Yara and even Theon hacking apart goons on all sides. It's a suddenly tense last five minutes of the episode as chaos breaks out and Euron completely smashes a huge wing of Daenerys's army, kidnapping the heads of Dorne and essentially sinking the Ironborn portion of Daenerys's forces.
But let's talk about the characters themselves. The Sand Snakes were much-maligned by the Game of Thrones fandom for being, well, kind of shit and bland and personality-less, but they were at least somewhat memorable if for all the wrong reasons. One of them (the Jessica Henwick one) uses a whip, but that's all I can tell them apart from. Euron, in his murderous rampage of Yara-allied Greyjoys, is assaulted by the two that aren't Ellaria's daughters, Obara (the spear one) and Nymeria (the whip one, I had to look up these names). And say what you want about them being badly written characters, at least their fighting scenes looked cool. Euron dominated all of them, of course, but the spearfighting between Obara and Euron's pretty badass, and Nymeria's horridly impractical whip in closed quarters is demonstrated well and the two get the ax.
Ellaria and Tyene get to kill a bunch of Ironborn, but they end up being hostages to Euron. Yara gets to fight Euron a bit but is quickly overpowered, upon which we get the final scene of the episode. Theon's pussying out might be easily derided to someone who doesn't put too much thought into watching an episode, but at the same time, the composition of the shot, as well as Theon's own history with dealing with diseased, torture-happy lunatics, means that his PTSD won over and he defaults to jumping off of high buildings to escape his fate. Though honestly, even without the PTSD, it's not like Theon can really save Yara at that point.
Still, it's a pretty shocking ending to the episode, and I certainly didn't expect that. Great stuff. I don't super-care about the Sand Snakes dying, but the larger picture of what Euron single-handedly accomplishes for Team Cersei is amazingly portrayed here. As is, y'know, the rest of the episode.
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